Chapter 122: Give Some Face
In the central Pacific Ocean waters, densely packed warships were slowly moving toward the east.
Auro temporarily took command, stationed on their aircraft carrier flagship, serving as the chief commander of this joint military exercise.
Outside the window, on the carrier deck, their carrier-based aircraft took off from time to time, routinely completing scheduled tasks before returning to the carrier.
Auro recalled in his mind that not long ago, during an internal meeting, Roy had shown a video taken by the camera mounted on the Hunter Nine second stage booster.
How shocking that was.
A spaceship the size of a large heavy truck was actually able to fly within the atmosphere.
At that time, it completely overturned his and a group of military industrial enterprise representatives’ modern scientific concepts.
Not only that, as professionals, they knew that the spaceship’s maneuvering ability to always keep its nose pointed at the camera during descent was even more inconceivable.
At that moment, gravity and aerodynamics, these two disciplines with profound influence on aviation, seemed to be smashed to pieces by Great Xia with a single hammer.
From the subsequent news, it was learned that the spaceship, which seemed like alien technology, was called Young Dragon by them.
Auro smirked mockingly at the corner of his mouth.
This was merely Young Dragon; he truly wondered if they had an adult dragon model spaceship as well.
But it didn’t matter anymore; nowadays, even the United States needed permission from Great Xia to launch a single satellite.
Otherwise, it would be like Hunter Nine, dragged to the Space Hub to await return to Earth.
The most ridiculous part was that without paying a fee, their space station would remain detained by Great Xia.
It was precisely because of this that Wells, in anger, immediately ordered the Baiyue Alliance to form the largest joint fleet in history.
After assembling here, they would conduct large-scale exercises to try to deter Great Xia.
Actually, there was no real purpose; it was just Wells’ pathetic self-esteem at work.
While he was lost in thought.
The orderly hurriedly ran over and whispered gravely in his ear: “500 nautical miles to the east, Great Xia’s dual aircraft carrier group has completed formation and is currently heading toward our fleet.”
Hearing this, Auro put away his relaxed thoughts.
The time to test him had arrived.
He knew Great Xia would never easily yield the Pacific Ocean sphere of influence they had worked so hard to gain.
“What about the garrisons in South Island Country and Little Japan? Why hasn’t there been any news?”
Auro voiced the question that had been worrying him, but the adjutant knew nothing about it.
A trace of worry arose in his heart, but there was nothing he could do.
The sea area to the east was now filled with 90% of Great Xia’s warships.
Among them were their most advanced No. 55 missile destroyers patrolling everywhere.
It could be said that, setting aside the garrisons in those two places, Great Xia now truly held absolute military control over the area 2000 nautical miles east of the Pacific Ocean.
The most terrifying thing was that they couldn’t even contact those two military bases.
Their intelligence system seemed useless now, without even the slightest news from those two garrisons.
Auro looked at the sea chart; they were now 100 nautical miles inside the 2000-nautical-mile military management zone delineated by Great Xia.
“Order: The fleet stops advancing, and all scheduled exercises begin immediately.”
“Yes!”
The adjutant shouted loudly and hurried toward the command platform.
Not long ago, after Great Xia towed away their space station, Wells ordered their fleet to definitely intimidate Great Xia at sea, with the ideal state being to drive Great Xia’s fleet back to their nearshore waters.
In her view, only this could stabilize her precarious position.
Otherwise, under this situation, she might not last until the end of her term and would be ousted by angry citizens.
There was no choice; the huge gap in aerospace had caused the United States populace to lose all trust in her as president.
“This is the Great Xia Navy. Your fleet has entered 100 nautical miles into our military jurisdiction waters. We now inform you to immediately leave the relevant waters within 5 hours.”
In the command room’s public channel, Great Xia Navy’s awkward English sounded at this moment; Auro irritably stepped forward and shut off the public channel.
He didn’t believe that at just 100 nautical miles, Great Xia would dare make any drastic moves.
This 100-nautical-mile distance was carefully calculated by him, just enough to meet the fleet’s minimum activity area.
The significance was to let the reporters on the fleet know that this exercise had successfully broken through the military management zone delineated by Great Xia.
“Ruthlessly” slapping Great Xia’s face.
And with Great Xia’s wisdom, they would certainly detect this small demand of his.
In plain terms, it was just mutually giving some face.
Space Hub Command Headquarters.
“Report to the chief: The opponent has cut off the communication channel. Their fleet has stopped in the 100-nautical-mile planning line area. According to radar, their exercise should have already begun.”
The adjutant softly reported the current scene in the Pacific Ocean to Liu Shengzhan.
Since the quantum communication system was available, the communication delay issue that had plagued military headquarters for so long no longer existed; communications from Earth to space no longer needed cumbersome relay satellites or ground lines for transfer.
Xinghai’s developed communication system could now directly transmit communication content to any communication terminal within 500 million kilometers via quantum satellites in space.
If not for this, Liu Shengzhan now wouldn’t be able to directly command the dual aircraft carrier group in the Pacific Ocean.
At this moment, upon hearing this news, a flash of disdain crossed Liu Shengzhan’s face.
To say direct war, that was of course impossible.
The aircraft carrier group couldn’t just charge head-on either; he knew the opposing fleet commander’s purpose was just for the media, to salvage some of the United States’ fallen prestige during this time.
However, it was obvious that the three-service commander named Auro was thinking too naively.
If it were in the past, he really wouldn’t have had any good methods.
A fleet composed of nearly a hundred warships of various types would be very difficult to drive away.
In a sense, this composed fleet was already a small human ecosystem.
With the opponent refusing to leave, even with Great Xia’s dual aircraft carrier group and several No. 55 missile destroyers.
Without using firepower to drive them away, the most that could be done was to intercept them in place, keeping them immobile.
But now it was different.
Fan Ren’s once-spoken words echoed in his mind.
The era has changed!
He stood up, feeling the inertial gravity brought by the self-rotation centrifugal force under his feet, and spoke.
“Order: All on-duty Star Transport industrial ships, immediately deploy. According to the prior deployment, immediately capture all GP4 satellites in low orbit and drag them to the Space Hub, awaiting further arrangement.”
“Yes!”
The adjutant expressionlessly acknowledged and ran off to make arrangements.
In his view, there were still hundreds of satellites once launched by the United States in space without implanted tracking monitoring systems.
These were very unstable factors that could pose hazards to the Space Hub and spaceships traveling the Earth-Moon route at any time.
Taking this opportunity to pull out some of these nails was good too.
As for whether Blue Star would face troubles from losing satellite navigation.
Great Xia’s satellite positioning system had long been opened to the public; it was just a matter of changing software, not a big trouble.
