Sound the Combat Alarm! Get the Fighters Airborne and Find Out What It Is!

Jinghai Military Region, underground combat command center.

Dense streams of data flickered across a massive electronic screen.

The only sound in the air was the faint hum of running servers.

Lieutenant Colonel Liu Jianjun, a staff officer, held a cup of strong tea and stared at the radar airspace display with his brows tightly furrowed.

Suddenly.

"Woooo-"

A shrill red-level combat alarm tore through the command center's silence without warning.

Liu Jianjun frowned and strode over to the main console.

"What's happening? Did the air-defense radar pick up an enemy aircraft?"

The duty operator's fingers hammered frantically at the keyboard.

"Reporting, Chief of Staff! It's not our radar! The city air traffic control center patched in through the highest-clearance encrypted hotline!"

The words had barely left his mouth when the red secure telephone on the console began vibrating wildly.

Liu Jianjun snatched up the receiver.

Liu Weidong, director of the Jinghai Air Traffic Control Center, spoke from the other end.

Liu Weidong was fifty-two that year, renowned throughout Jinghai's aviation circles as a needle that steadied the seas. He normally spoke slowly and deliberately, the sort who could take a sip of tea even if Mount Tai collapsed before him.

But now, the veteran director's voice was shaking uncontrollably.

"Jianjun! Something's happened! Something huge!"

Liu Jianjun frowned. "Director Liu, calm down. Has an unidentified flying object entered our airspace? A civilian drone or a weather balloon?"

"Not a drone! Not a balloon either!" The sound of a fist pounding a desk came through the phone. "It's a person! A living person! He's fucking flying through the sky standing on a sword!"

Liu Jianjun froze.

He moved the receiver away from his ear and checked the secure-line marking on it, confirming that he had not picked up the wrong line.

"Director, has someone hacked your system in the middle of the night?" Liu Jianjun's voice turned cold. "This isn't something you can joke about."

"I stake my head on it! The radar's working! The system hasn't been hacked!" Liu Weidong roared into the phone. "Over a hundred passengers aboard Jinghang Flight 8732 witnessed it with their own eyes! A thermal-imaging satellite has already locked on! I've faxed it over. See for yourself!"

The military encrypted fax machine beside him beeped twice and began feeding out paper.

Liu Jianjun tore off the fax sheet while it was still warm.

One glance was all it took for his perpetually stern face to crack.

The paper showed a high-resolution thermal-imaging screenshot.

Against the deep-blue background of the bitterly cold upper atmosphere, a human-shaped heat source glowed a dazzling bright red, racing along atop a long, narrow object.

That posture could not have been more brazen.

At the very bottom was another glaring line of data: altitude, 11,000 meters; speed, Mach 0.8; approaching the airspace over urban Jinghai.

Clatter.

The teacup in Liu Jianjun's hand fell to the floor and shattered.

He shoved his chair aside, grabbed the fax sheet, and ran like a madman toward the office in the deepest part of the command center.

Without even knocking, Liu Jianjun burst straight through the door of the military region commander's office.

Behind a broad rosewood desk, Gu Changshan, the major general commanding the Jinghai Military Region, sat wearing reading glasses, reading a yellowed history of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea by lamplight.

"Sir!"

Gu Changshan looked up and removed his reading glasses. "What's the panic? Even if the sky falls, the tall ones will hold it up. What's that alarm outside about?"

Liu Jianjun reached the desk in a few strides and slapped the fax sheet onto it.

"Sir! An unidentified humanoid target has been detected at an altitude of ten thousand meters, traveling at close to the speed of sound and approaching Jinghai City!"

Gu Changshan said nothing. He picked up his reading glasses from the desk, put them back on, and looked down at the fax sheet.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Gu Changshan's fingers stopped tapping on the desk.

He looked up at Liu Jianjun.

"A humanoid target? Flying on a sword?"

There was a note of incredulity in Gu Changshan's voice. "Jianjun, do you think this old man is too serious all the time, so you've brought me a screenshot from some Hollywood blockbuster to cheer me up?"

"Sir! Over a hundred passengers aboard a civilian airliner witnessed it with their own eyes! Both radar and thermal imaging have locked on! It's absolutely real!"

"The target is less than two hundred kilometers from urban Jinghai! At his current speed, he'll enter the airspace over the city in twenty minutes at most!"

Liu Jianjun snapped to attention and shouted at the top of his lungs.

The trace of a smile on Gu Changshan's face vanished instantly.

Ten thousand meters in the air.

A person had reached Mach 0.8 standing on a lousy scrap of iron.

This was no longer a challenge to physics. This was ripping the lid off Newton's coffin, dragging Newton out, and slapping him twice across the face.

Gu Changshan rose.

The veteran general, as steady as a mountain, now had a terrifying gleam blazing in his eyes.

"I don't care whether he's an immortal or an alien! If he dares fly around our airspace, he follows our rules! This is Jinghai, not his backyard!"

He strode over to the red secure telephone by the wall and snatched up the receiver.

"Relay my orders!"

"Air-defense missile units are to enter level-one combat readiness immediately! All ground-to-air radars are to illuminate across every frequency band! Keep that airspace under constant watch!"

"Order the 1st Air Division to scramble its alert aircraft for interception immediately! I don't care what that thing flying up there is. Find out exactly what it is!"

As Gu Changshan issued one military order after another, the entire national war machine around Jinghai City thundered into motion.

At three concealed air-defense missile sites.

Massive radar antennas slowly rotated as countless officers and soldiers rushed out of their barracks toward their battle stations.

"Move, move, move! Activate all frequency bands!"

"Power up the missiles! Begin the launch sequence!"

The previously silent positions instantly boiled into activity.

The radar operators stared hard at their screens, watching a flight path that completely defied aerodynamics, their jaws all but dropping in shock.

"Company Commander, this flight path's wrong! He just traced an S in the sky. That's at least thirty Gs! What aircraft could withstand a maneuver like that? It would've broken apart already!"

The company commander slapped the radar operator's steel helmet.

"I don't care whether he breaks apart! The commander said that if he dares cross the red line, even if he's Monkey Sun, we're blasting him down with missiles! Lock on to him!"

At the same time.

On the outskirts of Jinghai City.

At the 1st Air Division's secret air base.

A piercing combat alarm split the night sky.

Twenty-nine-year-old Xu Hu launched himself out of bed.

He was the undisputed ace of the 1st Air Division, callsign "Fierce Tiger," with fifteen hundred flight hours and a championship in the military-wide Golden Helmet competition.

His favorite pastime was forcing those foreign reconnaissance aircraft that didn't know better into pissing their pants up in the sky.

"A level-one combat alarm?"

As Xu Hu pulled on his flight suit, he exchanged a glance with the wingman pilot sharing his room.

"Brother Hu, it's the middle of the night. Don't tell me some country's reconnaissance plane is skirting the border again?" His wingman cursed as he put on his shoes.

"Whoever it is, if they dare stir up trouble, I'm blasting my wake right in their face today."

Xu Hu grabbed his helmet and rushed out of the room.

On the apron, two fighter jets had already been armed.

Xu Hu nimbly climbed the boarding ladder, stepped into the cockpit, put on his helmet, and switched on the internal communications.

"Tower, tower, this is Fierce Tiger, requesting takeoff instructions. What's the target's status?"

The tower controller's solemn voice came through his headset.

"Fierce Tiger, the target is at thirty-one degrees north, one hundred twenty-one degrees east, altitude eleven thousand meters, speed Mach 0.8. Moving toward urban Jinghai."

Xu Hu expertly flicked the switches on the control panel.

"Copy, Mach 0.8. Probably some ancient reconnaissance plane. Leave it to me."

The tower fell silent for two seconds.

"Fierce Tiger, the situation is a little unusual. The target... has no radar cross section. Only a thermal-imaging signal."

Xu Hu paused.

No radar cross section? A stealth fighter?

"Tower, are you sure? An F-22 or an F-35?" Xu Hu's blood began to boil. This was a big fish!

"Neither." The tower controller swallowed. "The target... is very small. You'll understand once you're up there. The commander's orders are absolute: intercept him. Under no circumstances can he be allowed into the airspace over the city!"

Xu Hu grinned, revealing his trademark pointed canine.

"Whatever that thing is, as long as he's flying up there, he answers to me, Fierce Tiger. Requesting takeoff!"

"Runway clear. Cleared for takeoff!"

"Roooom-"

Two deafening engine roars tore through the night sky over the base.

Dazzling orange-red flames spewed from the tails of the two fighter jets as they shot into the clouds.

The powerful acceleration pinned Xu Hu firmly to his seat. He watched the rapidly moving red dot on the radar screen, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

As he entered the stratosphere, another order from the command post came through his headset.

"The target is at your ten o'clock, fifty kilometers away. Remember, keep him outside urban Jinghai at all costs!"

The controller paused for a second, his voice turning utterly cold.

"You are authorized to lock on with fire-control radar."

"If necessary, you are cleared to fire!"

Xu Hu's heart pounded wildly.

Cleared to fire!

Issuing an order to open fire in inland airspace during peacetime was an unprecedented first.

Just what level of monster was this?

"Fierce Tiger copies! Mission will be accomplished!"

Xu Hu hauled back on the control stick. His fighter carved a sharp arc through the night sky and pounced toward that mysterious heat source.