Chapter 560 - D-Day

The sky had turned a pale, watery gray. In Dadonghai Bay, the slumbering fleet began to stir. On deck, soldiers checked weapons; below, laborers were roused from their fitful sleep. With the ships at anchor, seasickness began to recede, replaced by the hollow ache of empty stomachs.

On vessels equipped with galleys, hot meals were served. Sailors distributed disposable wooden bento boxes containing white rice mixed with vegetable flakes, a whole fish, and a hard-boiled egg.

For the soldiers and laborers, this was a feast. Morale, battered by days of misery, began to climb. Those who finished eating lined up for steaming iron buckets of soup—a thick broth of broad bean paste, dried fish, and seaweed. It was warm, salty, and infinitely comforting.

Ships unable to provide hot meals distributed "Type A-1" rations—high-energy biscuits made from rice flour, lard, nut meal, egg powder, salt, and sugar. To the average Ming peasant soldier, who had never seen such refined food, these dense blocks were a marvel. Zhuo Tianmin had insisted on piping hot soup to every ship via small boats; he saw it not as welfare, but as fuel. These men needed to burn calories to build a city, and they needed to recover from the voyage immediately.

Squad leaders and foremen moved through the eating crowds, barking orders to pack gear. The time was near.

Nervous excitement crackled through the transmigrators. D-Day. T-Hour.

Over sixty ships had circumnavigated half of Hainan Island to be here. This was the collective's largest maritime operation to date, the prototype for all future conquests. Months of planning hung on the next few hours.

"Commence operations," Wang Luobin ordered from the bridge of the flagship trawler. He handed the headset to the naval commander. "Command is transferred to Li Haiping until shore HQ is established."

Radios crackled. Semaphore flags snapped in the morning breeze.

On the decks of the Xunjing and Dajing, cranes groaned as heavy wooden motor launches were lowered into the water. Smoke chugged from their small steam engines. These boat teams acted as pathfinders, splitting toward Luhuitou and the Tiandu River mouth.

Their mission was to mark the landing zones. In day, they would use color-coded panels; at night, colored lights and smoke. Every ship captain held a task card with a matching color strip. It was a system devised by Wen Desi—simple, idiot-proof, and rigidly standardized. "The future nation is an ISO-compliant nation," as he liked to say.

As the motor launches sped away, the Type 67 landing craft in the center of the formation roared to life. White spray erupted from its stern as the veteran vessel once again assumed the role of assault vanguard.

Its cargo deck was packed with heavy armor: two "Dongfanghong" tractors fitted with dozer blades. Wedged around them were cross-country motorcycles, a platoon of Marines, and the Sanya Detachment of the newly formed Special Reconnaissance Battalion.

The Marines eyed the Recon troopers with a mix of envy and awe.

The Recon soldiers looked alien. They wore USMC woodland camouflage and carried modern modular gear, marred only by the outdated Type 80 steel helmets on their heads (the Kevlar ones had expired).

But their weapons were the real envy. The standard trooper carried an SKS carbine. The marksman held a scoped Mosin-Nagant. The fire-support gunner lugged an MB77B1 assault rifle. And then there was Qian Shuixie.

Standing on the bridge wings, Qian Shuixie looked like he had walked off the set of a South American mercenary movie. A VZ68 submachine gun slung over one shoulder, Russian binoculars on his chest, a GLOCK 17 on his hip, a US military Ka-Bar and a jungle machete crossed on his lower back. He wore aviator sunglasses even in the dawn light, held a radio in his left hand, and gripped a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun in his right. At his feet sat a golden Labrador retriever strapped into a custom canine life vest. If he'd had a cigar, the caricature would be complete.

Qian Shuixie was a former long-haul trucker recruited into the Special Recon Team by Xue Ziliang. He was a gun nut, a veteran of IPSC and IDPA shooting competitions in the old world. He had drifted after D-Day until the "North American Gang"—Xue Ziliang and Bei Wei—recognized his talent.

Qian Shuixie had blazed through the twelve-week basic training in eight. His physical endurance, honed by years of trucking, was exceptional, and his familiarity with firearms was second nature. Bei Wei was impressed; the Americans really did have a culture of violence that no other nation could match.

His appointment as Detachment Commander had caused a minor political stir. The Special Recon Team was already becoming known as the private army of the "North American Gang." With Chen Sigen and Xue Ziliang (both Chinese-Americans) leading other detachments, Qian Shuixie's promotion meant three out of four commanders were effectively "American-aligned."

But Qian Shuixie didn't care about politics. He wanted action.

"All hands check equipment!" Qian bellowed. "Life vests on!"

The soldiers strapped on their kapok-filled vests.

"Protect your weapons!"

Qian reached into a pouch, pulled out a condom, and unrolled it over the muzzle of his shotgun. Around him, his men did the same. It was the cheapest, most effective waterproofing available.

"Slow down! Lookouts, eyes open!" shouted Meng De, the captain of the landing craft. He had taken the helm himself; the entrance to Dadonghai was littered with submerged reefs.

He checked his watch. 05:50. T-Minus ten minutes.

"Rowboat at 3 o'clock!" the lookout shouted.

"Battle stations!" Meng De ordered instinctively. The starboard machine gun swiveled.

"Yellow flag! I see a yellow flag!"

"Stand down." Meng De exhaled. It was the pilot boat.

Shi Jinxi, a corporal from the Yulin marine detachment, stood in the bow of the rowboat, waving the yellow signal flag. A former fisherman, he had spent months sounding every inch of this bay, mapping every rock and current while pretending to fish.

Guided by the pilot boat, the vanguard formation slipped into the bay. The channel was already marked with red-flagged buoys.

Inside the bay, preparations were complete. Bai Guoshi and his team had been working for a week, laying out anchorages with buoys that doubled as gas lamps for night operations. On shore, the landing zones were cleared. A reinforced concrete cistern had been built, and latrine pits dug.

The stage was set. The invasion of Yulin had begun.

(End of Chapter)