UNS Fearless
1200 kilometers west of Guam
September 10, 2015.
1:30PM Local Time

Rear Admiral Izuo Takaya leaned against the rail surrounding the
wing of his carrier's flag bridge, forty meters above the white-capped
waters of the western Pacific, short black hair blowing in the breeze
generated by the ship's passage. Sipping hot tea from an engraved mug
his daughter had bought him for his fiftieth birthday, and which he had
refused to part with in the years since, he surveyed his command.
Spread before him was a large minority of the UN Pacific Fleet's
firepower, though his entire force numbered less than a dozen ships.