It was like being back on one of those road trips, the kids in the back seat of the station wagon constantly asking the same question over and over.

“Damage crew, how much longer?” said Captain Simmons into the radio.

Yet it also nagged the old man that it had taken this kind of moment for him to see his son at his best.

Mike took in the showers of welding sparks raining down onto the crew below decks frantically trying to repair the rail-gun loading mechanism and the power cable connections.

“Twenty minutes,” said Mike.

“You have ten. That battle cruiser mounts one-hundred-thirty-millimeter main guns with a fifteen-mile range. You taught me boxing, so you know that I need that rail gun to be punching at them before we get inside their swing.”

“If we’re going to fight the rail gun, Vern says we really are going to need to power down the bilge and auxiliary pumps. We can’t do that, sir, not now. This ship wasn’t designed to take hits. Big, top-heavy design like this, we risk taking on too much water and we’ll roll.”

“Chief, I understand. Just focus on your job and I’ll do mine.”

The little bastard is even starting to talk like me, thought Mike.

The display on the far wall showed the rail-gun turret free of the debris, but then a spray of sparks shot out from one of the holes punched in the deck. Out leaped Brooks; his work overalls were already singed at the legs, and now they were blackened about the shoulders. He was literally smoking. He threw an acetylene cutting torch down on the deck and cursed, first at the malfunctioning tool, then at the hole in the ship, and then at something in the distance, evidently the enemy fleet. Then the young sailor picked up the tool and went back into the hole. In that action, Jamie saw his father’s influence.

“Sir, we’ve got a contact burning through the jamming. It must be close,” Richter at the radar station said. “Yes, I have the enemy task force at forty miles out. Four ships, one capital-ship size. That must be the Zheng He.”

The rail-gun turret tried again to swivel, but it just shook back and forth like a muzzled dog. Sneaking peeks up from their workstations, the crew whispered, getting visibly anxious.

Simmons cued his headset again, leaning forward to get a better look. “Damage control, how much longer is it going to take?”

“Jamie, I am not trying to assemble your goddamn bicycle on Christmas Eve! Just leave us alone and we’ll get it fixed,” said Mike.

A few of the crew stifled laughs as the conversation played out on the room’s speakers. Simmons grimaced in exasperation and shook his head, throwing the headset at the deck.

“Radar’s picked them up, sir. Thirty-nine miles now,” said Richter. “I’m guessing they’ve developed the same tactical picture we have. They’re now closing directly at us at flank speed.”

The two Chinese J-31 fighter jets from the task force’s combat air patrol elevated to follow the incoming target and then went to afterburner to close for a firing solution.

The pilots were angry. They hadn’t been sent on the strike mission against the enemy fleet, which had most likely kept them from dying, but it left them furious at their impotence, all the more so when their wing mates didn’t return. And now, twenty thousand feet below, the Liaoning, the carrier they had launched from, their home for the last two years, had smoke spilling out of its stern. A submarine had somehow snuck close enough to fire off a torpedo before the destroyer escort had sunk it. They had been bystanders yet again, powerless against an attack that had left their home listing badly to starboard. They were unsure if they would be able to land on it at the end of their patrol or if they would have to divert to one of the other carriers. That was a question to be answered later, though. Now, at least they could vent their fury on the American drone.

The lead pilot radioed that the radar signature of the surveillance drone coming in above them at seventy-seven thousand feet was strange. It didn’t fit any profile in the recognition software, which conformed with the report from the surface-fleet element. He fired a long-range PL-12 air-to-air missile at it, and then a second one, just for good measure.

Moments later, there was an explosion above in the distance, followed by another. And yet the radar signature stayed on his screen. Still climbing altitude to close for visual range, his wing mate firing off a PL-10 short-range heat-seeking missile as added insurance.

As the fighter jets reached their maximum altitude of sixty thousand feet, they saw what looked like the silhouette of an arrowhead falling from the sky, a triangular drone of some sort diving back down to their level. At sixty-two thousand feet, when the third missile reached the target, its proximity warhead exploded a spray of metal shrapnel a mere hundred feet away. The arrowhead was clearly hit, showing a burst of orange flame and then smoke trailing as it fell toward them.

Yet as the arrowhead passed by them, the damaged drone seemed to shed a layer; a smoking plane peeled off. The rest of the triangular drone continued to dive at maximum speed at the task force below. As the two pilots pushed their fighter jets down to follow, straining against the g-forces as they lost altitude, their threat warnings began sound. Somehow in the midst of its steep dive, the drone below had fired off six Sidewinder missiles, which turned and raced back up at them. They attempted to pull out, but it was too late.

The air-defense systems on the ships below tried to pick up a radar lock, but while the fighter pilots had had a silhouette view of the drones, the systems were faced with only thin, sixteen-inch wing edges coated with radar-absorbent material. At thirty thousand feet, a firing solution finally crystalized, but just as the system locked, the target seemed to dissolve. The Shrike drones spread out from one another, a closed network among them sharing a targeting algorithm that ensured they did not all select the same destination point. Lookouts on the ships began to visually pick out what looked like seven thin lines falling down toward them. At twenty-three thousand feet, one of the lines disappeared in an explosion, hit by a rising air-defense missile.

When the drones were at twenty thousand feet, the task force’s machine cannon opened up, and their tracer bullets tried to connect with six thin, sixteen-inch wedges from miles away. The drones maxed their power, creating sonic booms that fell behind them as they accelerated well past the speed of sound.

Another drone was hit at a range of six thousand feet, leaving the five remaining Shrikes to reapportion their targets in the final seconds of their terminal fall. Flying down at maximum speed from almost directly overhead, an arrowhead slammed into the flight deck of each of the two undamaged carriers. The speed of the dive combined with the drone’s mass drove each robotic kamikaze deep into the bowels of the ship. From five decks below, fiery explosions shot out through the gaping holes they had left. Then the explosions traveled across the length of the carriers, turning them into massive fireballs.

The listing Liaoning turned out to be the lucky one. The remaining Shrike hit its flight deck at an angle. It punched straight through the tilted flight deck and then went out through the hangar deck and into the sea below. The drone felt no disappointment at its failure to completely sink its target, just as its wing mates felt no pride at their success.

“Sir, Port Royal is requesting to be released from escort duty so it can advance on the enemy force.”