Invasion: China (Invasion America) (Volume 5) (29 page)

She’d missed it because she had been following
the Chairman’s orders. Several days ago, she’d flown to Japan, studying the situation there. The country had become restless. The mass nuclear strike had something to do with that. Hong also disliked the Japanese, and the country’s displeasure had hardened him against them. He’d lowered their rank on the food chain, putting them on hard rations. The Japanese had become angry, rebellious and finally publicly outspoken.

Two days ago
, Shun Li had personally witnessed the execution of fifty-three high-ranking Japanese, including politicians, business leaders and police commissioners. Foreign news sources already laid the blame at her feet. They gave her credit for far more power than she deserved. Hong ran China through people like her. The important decisions were always his.

“You dealt with the Japanese, did you not?”

“Yes, Leader,” she said.

“They are a
stubborn people and understand a strong hand.” With a stick, Hong poked the pigeon, making it strut about the cage. “Once, many thought of the Japanese as a warrior people. They roamed the seas as we do now, but they only reached the Coral Sea at the height of their glory. We have gone beyond to the Tasman Sea, gone even farther south than the South West Cape of New Zealand. There, Admiral Ling smashed the American armada. His drone operators counted forty-five vessels, and he sank them.”

“
That is wonderful news, Leader.”

“
Over one hundred years ago, the Japanese fought the battle of Coral Sea. They suffered some minor losses and pulled back. The Americans struck at us in the Tasman Sea with THOR missiles, and inflicted losses against us.”

“This is terrible news.”

“No,” the Chairman said. “We survived, and Ling destroyed the invasion fleet and has been sinking American submarines at a prodigious rate. It is very gratifying. However—”

Hong pointed the
pigeon stick at Shun Li.

She sat erect, waiting
for the worst.

“There are hints that more American task forces slink around the area,” Hong said.

“Will Admiral Ling sink them too, Leader?”

Hong stared at her, and she wondered
in what manner she had misspoken.

“Are you faithful to me?” Hong asked.

“With all my heart, Leader,” she said.

“I want to believe you. Yes, I’ve sent you to do many unpleasant tasks. Yet isn’t that the lot of a Police Minister?”

“It is, Leader.”

“Would you like a different post, Shun Li?”

She hesitated for just a fraction of a moment. Indeed, she would. The bloodletting wearied her soul. It stained her, she knew, and she’d become afraid of an accounting someday.

With
her hesitation, something changed behind Hong’s dark eyes. They seemed to glitter, and it wasn’t good, but a dark evil.

“No,” Shun Li said. “I am what I am. Your question so startled me, that for a moment I could not speak.”

Those wet eyes watched her, and she felt the furnace heat of his wickedness. Yes, it was evil the things he’d done. Murdering his foes, unleashing nuclear war—the Leader had become a human devil.

What are you thinking
? Shun Li asked herself in alarm.
It’s possible he can read thoughts, or sense emotions like an empath
. Some of his guesses and political moves were uncanny, unnatural, possibly supernatural.

“You are lying to me,” he said in a quiet voice.

She wanted to shudder, but suppressed it. Instead, as calmly as possible, she parted her lips and laughed gently. This was a gamble, but she felt the need to do something.

At first, the shine in his eyes intensified, and she knew the guards would throttle her soon at his orders. Then he smiled, and he, too, chuckled.

Shun Li stopped, letting herself listen to his laughter. It was frightening.

“You speak truth, Police Minister. You are a killer, my killer. You will do exactly as I tell you, won’t you?”

“With all my heart, Leader,” she said. “I live to obey China.”

“It is good to have at least one person you can rely on. I won’t say I fully trust you. That is too difficult to
mouth, and who would believe it? But I can rely on you to carry through chilling tasks.”

“That is why I am here,” she said.
And that is what I must escape
, she thought.

“Yes. I ordered Admiral Ling back to the Coral Sea. We have lost too many carriers, and I cannot risk
his in the submarine-laced Tasman Sea. Nor can I risk losing the battleship. Its particle beam cannon performed prodigiously during the THOR strike.”

“
That
is wonderful news.”

“
Indeed, we have found an answer to them. And the construction of more PBW stations around the country continues. Unfortunately, the Americans still possess a few tricks. But we shall overcome them through our superior technology. Once our new particle beams stations can defend every area of China from THOR missile attacks, then we will unleash a new nuclear strike. The Americans are going to learn a harsh lesson.”

“They deserve nothing better,” Shun Li said.

The Chairman grunted an affirmative. “As I said, you perform chilling tasks. I have another one for you. It is possible the Americans will try to land a few amphibious troops onto Australia. Some of the Australians might be foolish enough to throw in their lot with America. Most of our occupation forces are in the northern and central parts of the continent. The deserts have bloomed, and the grain shipments are everything. I have promised the Indians and Russians much, and I need Australia’s bounty. Shun Li, you will take East Lightning operatives and cull the Australian herd for China.”

“Leader?”

“You must risk going to the continent, finding and killing those who love America, or hate China. I have ordered several elite divisions there. If the Americans land…” Hong poked the pigeon in the cage. It flapped its wings, hopping away from him.

“When do I leave?” she asked.

“In an hour,” he said. “I have already chosen the East Lighting police battalions that will accompany you. There is one other thing, Police Minister.”

“Yes?”

“Make Australia scream for mercy,” Hong said. He took a pistachio nut out of a small brown paper bag at the foot of his chair. With his thumbnails, he broke the shell, popping the kernel into his mouth. “Make an example of them, so the rest of the Pan-Asian Alliance becomes terrified at the thought of helping our hated enemies.”

Shun Li’s heart sank
—yet more mass killing—but she nodded. “It will be done as you ask.”

“No,” he said, frowning.

“Leader?” What had she done wrong now?

“I haven’t
asked
you to do this. I
order
it.”

“Leader,” she said, propelling herself off the chair and
falling face-first onto the grass before him. For a moment, she felt the sole of his shoe on her back, and he sighed. Then he removed his shoe and told her to stand.

“Go, Shun Li, and make me proud.”

She saluted, bowed low, and kept her tears inward. He was a devil, and in the eyes of the rest of the world, he was turning her into one, too.

From
Military History: Past to Present
, by Vance Holbrook:

INVASION OF AUSTRALIA, 2042

2042, March 13. The Sydney Landings.
Task Force B.
The landings east and west of Sydney met unenthusiastic resistance from Australian military forces. They had no choice but to fight with Chinese political police guns to their heads. Three submarines attempted to storm the main port. Chinese bombers sunk two. The third submarine launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo, creating awful havoc and mass evacuation of the irradiated city. In the turmoil, the American forces forced a beachhead and began broadcasting stories of Chinese perfidy, blaming them for exploding the nuclear device. The propaganda trick worked, and units of the Australian military began defecting to join the Americans.

Task Force C
. Brigades landing on both sides of Melbourne Harbor converged on the city. The outrage of the “Death of Sydney” produced immediate results. En masse, the defending Australian military joined the Americans.

2042, March 15-20. Consolidation
. Australia quickly divided into Chinese and American-allied camps. Reinforcements flowed in from China, strengthening PAA forces on the continent. Lieutenant General Daryl C. Forbes
requested immediate reinforcements from North America. The US government gathered another fleet.

2042, March 20-28. Chinese Blitz
. Australian enthusiasm for the American liberators and freedom from Chinese domination brought a massive response from the people. Ad hoc Militia battalions formed, swelling allied numbers so they exceeded Chinese strength. Despite this, on March 20, Marshal Yang unleashed the Chinese assault.

The new divisions from China were rich in tanks and artillery.
This gave the PAA forces a three to one advantage in armor and a two to one advantage in artillery. The biggest difference was in air forces. With the drones from the
Sung
, the Chinese possessed a five to one advantage. Even so, the conclusion was far from certain. The American-Australian forces had high morale and many veteran soldiers.

The Battle of Brisbane proved
decisive, as Yang outmaneuvered the allied divisions, falling upon them with his armor. It was a debacle for Australian Militia battalions and saw 20,000 American casualties.

Although the remaining allied formations retreated in good order, the conventional portion of the Australian campaign was over. Now would see the bloody
city siege war and the later guerilla conflict, fought with unrelenting savagery on both sides.

COMMENT:
In retrospect, the Americans brought enough soldiers—
if Task Force A had landed
—but not enough heavy equipment and too few arms for Australian volunteers. The loss of Task Force A proved critical and the lack of tanks was never rectified. Slowly, brutally, the PAA military machine hunted down allied soldiers, burning the southeastern cities in the process. However, the Chinese divisions sent to Australia critically weakened China for the coming perfidy, and their absence would be sorely missed. Two nuclear explosions, the first in Sydney Harbor and the second at the South Wales Military Installation, had negative results for China as world opinion continued to shift against them for what many considered Hong’s
unleashing the genie of nuclear war.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Shun Li
walked through the city’s police ministry building. There were blue tiles on the floor with little black flecks in them. Her eyes were haggard and her shoulders slumped. For weeks, she’d been in this bleeding wreck of a country. Her task had been to lead the liquidation. In this instance, it wasn’t through death squads, but a killing machine process that methodically butchered the Australian people.

Chairman Hong wanted to punish them for siding with the Americans.
He desired…a lesson.

Shun Li wore
a long leather coat, with a pistol at her side. She no longer felt like the Police Minister of Greater China, but a Guardian Inspector again.

It meant she lived with killers, the men and women who pulled the triggers. She
’d watched convicted Australian “terrorists” dig a mass grave. Then East Lighting personnel rounded up North Korean soldiers. Those soldiers manned the machine guns and did the actual murder. If they failed, the East Lightning operatives would pull the triggers and blow out North Korean brains. The soldiers never failed to perform the butchery. Bulldozers pushed the dirt over the holes. Shun Li was certain some people yet lived in the gory piles, buried alive.

It was ghastly,
all of it, and Shun Li was sick of doing this.

She marched down a corridor, flanked by East Lighting officers. They were Hong’s creatures, body and soul. She knew they reported
to him about her.

The world believes I delight in this. I can’t believe what Hong has done to me
.

As she passed an open door, with a
naked woman screaming in pain while strapped down on a table, her mind went inward. Had that been Hong’s plan all along for her? Had he wanted to paint her as a monster?

On, Hong was a genius on these matters. He didn’t do as well running a war, but on secret police matters, no one was his equal. It’s why he remained in power.

I’m a figurehead without real authority. That must change
.

Yet how could she
effect such a transfer? He knew how to buy the loyalty of damaged individuals, the kind who became government killers.

I need to buy loyalty, if even that of
a single killer
. That would be her beginning.