Neither man spoke. They simply shook their heads.

As Jones leaned in toward his young charges, the lights in the room dipped for a moment. Damn, almost like I staged it, he thought.

“They’ll make you their bitches because they can,” he said softly. “I’ve served with some of those men. They’re older than you in ways you can’t even imagine. They’ve fought their whole lives. They’ve been making war while you have merely been preparing for war, pretending at war.”

The lights surged up to full power again and he leaned back, rolling with the moment. “I don’t really expect you to win today, gentlemen,” he continued, outwardly somber. “You’d make your old man very happy if you did, of course. But I do expect you to improve. Dramatically. I expect you to learn from your training. And I expect that training to be carried out as though you are at war—and not just pretending. Because at war is where we may be, very soon.”

“You think the Chinese will move in, sir?” Chen asked in a paper-thin attempt to deflect the old man’s attention.

“I don’t know what the Chinese will do, Lieutenant. But I’ll prepare for the worst, and dare the good Lord to disappoint me,” he said.

A fraction of a second later a pure, obsidian blackness swallowed them whole.

HMAS HAVOC, 1235 HOURS, 15 JANUARY 2021

Captain Harry Windsor was growing used to the relatively spacious surroundings of the submarine. She was a monster, stealthy and huge, kitted out to operate far from home, and for months at a time. Indeed, her clean fusion drive meant that were it not for the need to re-arm the torpedo bays and refill the galley, the Havoc could stay out indefinitely. The Aussies told him there had been even more room before a refit had crammed a bunch of cruise missiles into their video lounge.

Oh well, he thought. Things have gone pear-shaped all over.

He was just happy to have enough space to work through an abbreviated series of kata before a scrub-down and a feed. He could hear St. Clair rustling around behind him, making a god-awful racket, looking for Christ knows what.

Temper, temper. He was beginning to sound more like his grandfather—a famously cranky old bugger, as he recalled fondly.

Resettling his thoughts, he worked through a full suite of atemi waza, striking techniques from the Danzan jujitsu ryu. After a quarter hour during which the world contracted to the small circle in which he moved, he forced one last, great breath out from deep within his hara, bowed to the memory of his sensei and the spirits of the ryu, and cast around for Viv, who had disappeared.