The residence, White House – Washington. March 7th, 2041 06.27LT

  The scent of pancakes and crisping bacon lingered in the air, mingling with the soft murmur of morning sunlight filtering through bulletproof windows. It was one of the rare quiet moments in a life that allowed so few — breakfast with her family.

  President Ellen Carter sat at the head of the table, her hair still slightly damp from a quick shower, dressed in a navy-blue robe over her slacks and blouse, half-buttoned, not yet presidential. Just a mother.

  Andy, her son, had turned twelve today — tall for his age, full of questions, and still young enough to grin at a plate piled high with syrupy pancakes, scrambled eggs, and extra bacon. His sister, Sophie, ten going on sixteen, picked at her food while subtly trying to swipe a second strip of bacon from his plate.

  Carter smiled to herself. This was the one time in her day when the title didn’t matter. She was just "Mom." And for twenty quiet minutes, she got to live in that illusion.

  Until the door opened.

  Michael Harrington entered like a storm held in check. His jacket was unbuttoned, his tie loose and askew. Sleep hadn’t touched him, and it showed in the heavy bags under his eyes and the clipped urgency in his movements.

  “Happy birthday, Andy,” he offered with a tired smile, ruffling the boy’s hair.

  Andy grinned. “Thanks, Uncle Mike.”

  Carter’s stomach tightened. She knew that tone. Knew that walk.

  Her smile froze. “Kids, eat slowly. I’ll be right back.”

  Andy looked up with wide eyes, already suspecting. Sophie stopped chewing.

  Inside the sitting room, the door clicked shut behind them.

  “What is it?” Carter asked, the warmth draining from her voice.

  Harrington didn’t waste time. “The Reagan is gone.”

  Everything inside her stilled.

  “Gone?”

  “Confirmed sunk at 05:31 our time. Coordinated strike — Hypersonics and subsurface torpedoes. It was clean. Catastrophic. She went down with all hands.”

  There it was — the drop. That free-fall moment where the floor didn’t so much vanish as quietly recede beneath your feet.

  Carter pressed her palm against the wall, fingers digging into the woodgrain.

  “How many?”

  “All hands. Nearly five thousand.”

  She exhaled slowly, once. Not in shock. Not anymore. Just in sheer, bitter grief.

  “Meet me in the Situation Room in thirty,” she said, voice flat. “Let me finish breakfast with my son. We’ll deal with this after.”

  ***

  Situation room, White House – Washington. March 7th, 2041 07.15LT

  The room was a storm barely held in check — aides, analysts, officers in uniform and suits alike, trading fragments of chaos. Voices clashed over comms chatter. The table glowed with tracking overlays, threat assessments, force disposition maps.

  Then Carter stepped in.

  The noise died in stages, like a pressure valve releasing. Within seconds, the room was silent.

  She walked to her chair at the head of the situation table — not rushing, not hesitating. Authority didn’t need to shout.

  “What’s the new crisis?” she asked flatly, sinking into the seat.

  Around her, the circle formed: Joint Chiefs, senior Cabinet, security advisers.

  General Harris Davidson — the Marine four-star now serving as Chairman — answered first.

  “Madame President. At 05:31 hours, local, the USS Ronald Reagan and her group were sunk in the Sea of Japan. All hands lost.”

  Carter didn’t react at first. Then her shoulders dropped — just slightly — before squaring again. A crack, masked by habit.

  She remembered this feeling. She’d told Reynolds, twelve years ago, that this would happen. That they were skating on glass, and the cracks were already spidering beneath the surface.

  Now? The glass was gone.

  “…Three supercarriers,” Secretary of defence Linda Caldwell said grimly, her voice measured but sharp. “Eisenhower in the Gulf over a decade ago. Lincoln off the Philippines last year. And now Reagan. That’s a third of our active front-line fleet wiped off the board.”

  Davidson gave a curt nod. “And unless something changes fast, that number’s going to climb.”

  Carter turned toward Admiral Reuben Trask, Chief of Naval Operations. “Walk me through what’s left. No fog. No lipstick. Just the truth.”

  Trask stood straighter. His voice was clear, clipped, and all business.

  “As of 0700, we have five carriers operational to some degree. Three of them are actively deployed. The other two are either damaged or incomplete.”

  He tapped his tablet, then spoke.

  “Nimitz is the backbone — hard to believe, but it’s true. She was hauled from retirement after Eisenhower went down. Ten-year full refit: EMALS, reactors, combat systems, the works. She deployed last year. Task Force 52, Indian Ocean. Holding steady.”

  Carter gave the faintest nod. That decision had been hers — a desperate call made in the dark. For once, it had worked.

  “Carl Vinson is with Pacific Southern Command. She’s still afloat, still flying — but running hot, minimal downtime, and no backup.”

  “John F. Kennedy is forward-deployed to Japan under Pacific Northern Command,” Trask continued. “Now that Reagan’s gone, she’s exposed. No rotation, no depth. That line is going to strain hard.”

  He took a breath. “Enterprise… is limping. Badly. She took a cluster strike during Bismarck and she’s en route to San Diego. Her air wing’s gutted. Flight deck’s partially offline. She’s not coming back soon.”

  “And Ford?” Carter asked, knowing the answer wouldn’t be good.

  “Still in testing. The post-refit upgrades are incomplete. EMALS integration and arrestor sequencing keep failing under combat stress conditions. If we had to, we could send her out. But she’s not a carrier — she’s a target with engines.”

  Caldwell jumped in. “That’s the best-case read. Worst case? She breaks down mid-deployment and has to be towed home.”

  “And the rest of the fleet?”

  Trask scrolled. “George H.W. Bush is standing duty on the Atlantic seaboard. She’s covering for Truman, which went in for deep refit back in ’32 — same package we used on Nimitz. She’s still at least a year out.

  Stennis entered the yards in ’34, following the same plan. No earlier than ’43. And Washington…”

  He hesitated.

  “Yes?” Carter pressed.

  “Washington was supposed to be the second completed. But a fire in Norfolk last April — faulty conduit during systems integration — hit her mid-deck power relays and set the whole service bay alight. Took out a swathe of cabling and damage control systems. Not terminal — but it set her back over a year. Best-case, she’s combat-ready by late ’42.”

  Carter closed her eyes. “So we have… what? Three carriers we can fight with. One limping. One stuck in testing. And four completely out of play.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Trask confirmed. “And of the three still in theatre, only Kennedy and Vinson can respond to a fast-flash crisis. And they’re stretched razor-thin.”

  A silence settled over the room like a dropped curtain. No one wanted to speak first.

  So Carter did.

  “We bet on the future. And we lost the present.”

  Davidson nodded. “That’s exactly what happened.”

  “And no reserve ships?”

  Caldwell’s voice was flat. “The conventional fleet’s been gone for decades. The handful of carriers that weren’t scrapped were stripped, sold, or turned into floating museums. Even if we pulled them back, they’d be steel ghosts.”

  “And the new builds?”

  “Clinton and Bush,” Trask said. “Still on paper. Not even laid down. Congress can’t get the bills past committee. The only thing moving is the PR.”

  Carter drew a long breath, then released it. “Fine. Then we hold. We triage Enterprise, finish Washington, and get Ford into live ops whether she’s ready or not. Every hull we have goes to work.”

  She looked directly at Caldwell. “I want fallback options for Kennedy. Wargame it. If she goes under, I want more than ideas. I want contingencies.”

  “And the public?” Davidson asked quietly.

  “They’ll know when I tell them,” Carter replied. “And when I do — they’ll know exactly how we got here.”

  Around the table, the tone shifted — not panic, but weight. The kind of silence you find after a bridge has collapsed behind you.

  Caldwell spoke again, her voice low but unwavering. “Madame President, we’re stretched too thin. It's time to make the calls no one wants to make.”

  Carter looked up sharply. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Guam is lost. Too much damage, too exposed. But Wake and Midway are online ahead of schedule. The Navy has dredged the harbours, so they can take the bigger ships and the Army and Air Force engineers have rebuilt the base infrastructure from scratch, they’re coming on line now, real viable alternatives, it’s not ideal, but it will work. The issue now is the carriers.”

  “I know what the issue is, Linda,” Carter snapped. “We just spent the last fifteen minutes laying it bare.”

  Caldwell didn’t flinch. She waited a beat, out of respect, then continued.

  “We need to pull Carl Vinson back from the South Pacific. Move her to Wake. Consolidate what we have.”

  Carter blinked, once. Her voice was quiet when it came. “You’re telling me to abandon our allies.”

  “We’re not abandoning them,” Caldwell replied softly. “We’re buying time for ourselves. Right now, Vinson is exposed. If we lose her, we lose coverage over the entire western flank.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Carter held her breath for a beat, then two. She momentarily felt the room spin. This was not what she signed up for. This was not the way America did business. Leaving their allies to fight for themselves was not how they operated, not since the 2020’s. America was tired and so were its people, but other than that brief moment, they always met their commitments, kept their promises wherever they were able. Carter could feel the America she believed in circling the drain, and the room kept spinning. She let the breath out.

  “But that leaves the Australians, the Kiwis, the Brits and the Canadians—hell, the whole southern corridor—without our direct support.” Carter’s voice cracked. “We promised them—”

  “And we will keep that promise,” Caldwell said gently. “But not today. Not unless we want to keep making promises with ships we don’t have. They’ll just have to make do with their own.”

  Carter’s face had gone pale. Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for her water glass and set it down again without drinking.

  “This isn’t just about strategy,” she said, staring at the table. “It’s about trust. About not walking away again. We need them. We asked them to fight. To bleed. And now…”

  No one interrupted.

  “I watched my country turn its back after Afghanistan,” Carter continued. “I watched it again when Europe burned the first time and now we’re doing it to them again! And we’re about to tell our closest friends that what… they’re on their own? Even for a moment?”

  Harrington spoke, his voice low. “They’ll understand, Ellen. They won’t like it. But they’ll understand.”

  Carter didn’t look at him. Her eyes were on the glowing battle map. The empty ocean around Vinson’s marker. The flashing red where Reagan had vanished.

  “Do it,” she said finally, barely above a whisper. “Pull her back to Wake. But I want another plan, I can’t leave them with nothing!”

  The President leaned back in her chair, she could feel the weight of leadership and in that moment she hated it. Hated making the calls no one else was able to make. She thought about the smile on her son’s face when she and her husband had woken him up for breakfast. The look of excitement when he spied the stack of presents in the corner. She wanted that moment back again. She wanted a simpler life.

  Davidson picked that moment to clear his throat. “Madame President… I didn’t want to push this unless we had no other choice, but we’ve been working a contingency.”

  Caldwell shot him a glance. Harrington caught it, there was something interesting there, but he let it lie for now.

  “What is it?” Carter’s eyes snapped up, she was desperate, grasping at straws now. “What kind of contingency?”

  “We can’t give them carriers, not yet — but the Devil Dogs of Pendleton will keep them going until we can! A full-strength Marine Expeditionary Task Group built around I MEF. Two America-class LHAs, reinforced escort screen: Flight IV Burkes, modern frigates, subsurface cover. Amphibious punch, air support, long-range fires F-35Bs, Attack helicopters — the works. It’s not a replacement for a carrier group, but it’s not far off. And it’s ready. We’ve had it on standby for weeks — fully forward-deployable under alliance command.”

  Carter blinked. “You’re serious.”

  “Deadly,” Davidson replied. “They’ve trained with the Aussies and the Kiwis. Some of the command staff went out last year to train with the new NZ Marine Regiment, they know their command staff. The Brits and Canadians already greenlit shared logistics. The whole unit can stage through Darwin and be operational within days.”

  Carter straightened slowly. The cracks in her voice were gone.

  “Yes, I like that plan, I like it a lot!” Carter replied instantly. “Make it happen!”

  Maybe she was wrong, maybe. The world was changing, and America was struggling to keep up with it, but she was damned if she was going to leave friends swinging in the breeze, not on her watch!

  She rose, slow and deliberate, her hands braced against the table’s edge. The shake was gone from her voice.

  “And someone draft a message to Canberra and Wellington. I’ll call them myself. They deserve to hear it from me.”

  She owed them that much at least.

  As the room emptied and the tension dissipated into tired footsteps and clipped orders, Carter remained behind. The digital map still glowed in the half-light, seas bleeding red where the Reagan had vanished.

  She stared at it for a long moment, her fingers pressed flat against the glass table.

  Five thousand lives.

  A single red X where a carrier once sailed.

  She thought of the letters that would be written. The folded flags. The empty chairs.

  Then she turned to Harrington, her voice almost calm.

  “Tell the speechwriters nothing. I’ll write it myself.”

  “You sure?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded. “If I can’t speak for them now, I never deserved to lead them.”

  Carter looked up, her jaw set. “This isn’t just a pivot. It’s a reckoning. And I want the world to feel it.”

  ***

  Prime Minister’s Office, The Beehive – Wellington. March 7th, 2041 07.30LT

  The screen array inside the Prime Minister's sensitive compartmented information facility, known only by its acronym, ‘The SCIF’, flickered once, then stabilized. One by one, the Alliance leaders appeared: Winslow in a deepwood chamber somewhere beneath Whitehall, Mitchell from the secure command complex in Canberra, Bouchard in Ottawa’s war room, and Carter from a steel-gray ops centre beneath the White House.

  Miriama Kahu sat upright, dressed in a slate-coloured jacket with her customary Koru broach pinned to her lapel. Behind her, the flags of the CANZUK alliance hung either side of the recently formalised CANZUK Alliance crest.

  “Let’s begin,” she said. “Ellen, you called this meeting, I assume it has something to do with the tragedy in the Sea of Japan.”

  “I’m afraid it does.” Carter spoke, her voice husky at the recent memory. “I owe you all an explanation. We are recalling the Carl Vinson group back to Wake Island. As you know, the Reagan was lost yesterday. Hypersonic and torpedo package. That puts us down another carrier—five thousand souls.”

  Silence.

  Then Mitchell leaned forward, voice low but tight. “That group is a linchpin Ellen, its loss will be felt.”

  For the umpteenth time that day, Carter’s shoulders slumped just slightly. She had the momentary look of defeat in her eyes. The others caught it, but said nothing, leaving the woman with her dignity.

  “I know it will John, but we have no other choice. Congress is pressuring us to pull out of everywhere, even to pull our troops out of Europe and I don’t need to tell you how well that would go down.” She looked them square in the eyes. “We had to make a choice, the Pacific has been quiet since the Bismarck, this was the best option to keep congress off our backs.”

  “We’ve bled for you, Ellen. Mason risked everything to bring your people home. We took them in. Stitched them back together. Treated them like whānau.”

  “I know,” Carter said, a tear forming at the corner of her eye. “I’m not here to justify it. Just to tell you first. Before the news hits the wires.”

  Bouchard folded his hands in front of him. “And now the Pacific is down to Kennedy alone?”

  “Yes. But she’s isolated. If we lose her too, the entire architecture collapses.” Carter replied. “With Enterprise limping home and our other assets over a year away, Kennedy needs the support.”

  Winslow exhaled through his nose. “So we’re the new wall. Again.”

  “No,” Carter said. “Not alone. We’re sending you the Marines, as many as we can. I have ordered the I MEF forward—two America-class LHAs, full-strength Marine Expeditionary Task Group. They’ll stage from Darwin. Under your operational command.”

  Mitchell’s eyes narrowed. “That’s your plan?”

  “It’s not everything. But it’s the best we have left. Ford is untested. Washington is months out. We can’t leave the Atlantic exposed.” Carter took a beat. This was harder than she had thought. “We’re leaving Nimitz in the Gulf for now to support CentCOM, but chances are they will move to the Med, so will the troops, the Arab Coalition don’t want us there anymore, too destabilising they say.”

  Kahu remained still, her voice quiet. “You know what this feels like, Ellen.”

  “I do.”

  “It feels like 2021. Kabul. Only colder.”

  Carter flinched.

  Ever the diplomat, Bouchard broke the tension. “I MEF buys us breathing space. But we’ll need to extend our naval rotation. Warrior is still supporting Invincible in the Arctic. Our second Melbourne has just finished the arctic conversion of her build phase, we’ll prioritize Laurentian’s sea trials, as soon as she’s ready we will support your efforts around Japan, we cannot afford to lose them.”

  “Mason will just have to reorganise again,” Mitchell added. “Intelligence has the Chinese also in a build phase right now, hopefully that gives us time.”

  “We’ll manage,” Kahu said. “But don’t mistake that for forgiveness.”

  Carter looked up, guilt carved into her expression. “You have every right to be furious. I would be.”

  “No,” Kahu replied, gaze firm. “I’m not furious. I’m focused. We’ve bled too much to let this slip.”

  Winslow adjusted his tie. “The Atlantic is heating up again. Russia’s threatening another push into the North Sea. We’re seeing increased traffic around Bergen. It’s not a coincidence.”

  “Everything’s coordinated now,” Bouchard said. “Russia, China, Pakistan. And the jackals nipping at the edge. The loss of Iran has hurt them, but hasn’t slowed them down much, We need to stop pretending this is regional.”

  Carter nodded. “Which is why I want full coordination with Irirangi. Real-time sat-link, naval telemetry, and whatever the hell else you’re cooking up down there. You’ve got the best eyes in the southern hemisphere, Miriama. We need them.”

  Kahu didn’t blink. “You’ll get them. But no more surprises.”

  “Agreed.” Carter replied. “I have to go, I am sorry, I wish there was more I could do, but we are working on it.”

  With that her connection clicked off, and the three men of the alliance become bigger on Miriama’s screen. The emotions were hard to read. John looked angry, but thoughtful. Thomas was his usual self, though there was considerably more concern there. Richard was nigh on unreadable.

  Bouchard was the first to speak. “Well this is a pickle.”

  “No shit Thomas, no shit!” John replied with a low whistle. The anger falling from his face now that the tension had been broken. “That was very gracious of you to offer your new carrier to the Japanese front.”

  Bouchard looked at Mitchell with his practiced diplomatic eye. He could sense no rebuke in the statement.

  “We are allies, plus, I meant what I said, if we lose Japan, this mess gets a whole lot messier.”

  “We expected this,” Winslow stated next. “We have never actually talked about it, but we have all expected it.”

  “Not this soon though.” Kahu looked deep into their eyes. “And not with Europe exploding as well… how is the situation going there?”

  Winslow appeared to stop for a moment and think. Ever the careful man, it looked like his mind was chewing the words over in his head, making sure they were the right ones before he spoke.

  “In a word, precarious.” He stated. He checked something off screen before continuing. “Montcrieff has our forces aligned along the Polish border. So far the Russians have not pushed any further than the Baltics in the North and Ukraine in the south.”

  “That won’t last.” Mitchell piped in,

  “Indeed, what has Montcrieff and my own senior staff more concerned is these corridors they have opened to the south…”

  ***

  Russian Forces Southern Advance – The Caucasus. November 2040 to January 2041

  In the short weeks after the initial assault, while Europe burned and Iran fell, a darker gambit unfolded.

  As NATO rallied in the north and the Arab Coalition, with the help of US Central Command fortified the ruins of the Islamic Republic, Russian tank columns surged south from the Volga, rolling through Dagestan and the Chechen heartlands with shocking ease. The states of the Southern Caucasus — fractured, isolated, and caught off-guard — fell one by one. Georgia tried to resist. Armenia splintered under internal pressure. Azerbaijan held longest, until Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska units seized the Baku peninsula in a lightning-fast airlift.

  By the time satellite feeds confirmed the scope of the advance, it was too late. The Caspian had been bridged. Not with concrete — but with columns.

  Volodin’s true objective was never just the Baltics or Ukraine. It was a land corridor — one branch west through the Caucasus into northern Iran, and another plunging down through Turkmenistan and Afghanistan toward Balochistan. A Eurasian arc. From the Black Sea to the Arabian Sea. To seal Russia, Iran, and Pakistan into a single land-locked axis of power — bypassing every Western-aligned maritime chokepoint.

  But south of the red line, the coalition held. Turkey, furious and resolute, drew a line in the sand at the border of the southern states and slammed shut the back door of Europe. Backed by CENTCOM airpower and reinforced by Arab mechanized brigades, Turkish mountain units fortified the eastern frontier. Roads were mined. Ridge lines were bristling. From Kars to Igdir, Turkish artillery set its sights north.

  East of the Caspian, in the dust of Iran’s shattered provinces, U.S. and Arab Coalition forces drew their second line. Along the Mashhad–Zahedan corridor, VII Corps and allied units dug in — intercepting Russian probe units streaming from Turkmenistan and the Uzbek border. High altitude Drones patrolled the passes night and day, but it seemed with the fall of Iran, Volodin was cutting his losses and bypassing them completely. SOF teams laced the mountains with sensors just in case, but it was quiet. Strike aircraft roared overhead. And from Quetta to Kabul, the Axis advance began to slow.

  Russia still had the momentum, but the Allies had drawn their line.

  ***

  Prime Minister’s Office, The Beehive – Wellington. March 7th, 2041 08.05LT

  “…If they continue on this trajectory, they will likely subsume the smaller nations, then they will be able to resupply each other, and we won’t be able to do a damn thing about it!” Winslow finished.

  “The one good thing.” Bouchard chimed in. “The Russian nuclear supercarriers we were all so concerned about, although formidable seem to be suffering from the same problems the Chinese were, a complete lack of blue water experience.”

  The four leaders looked thoughtful.

  “What do you need from us?” Kahu asked.

  “For now, nothing.” Winslow sighed. “I hope it stays that way, even with all that is going on, we need to keep our eyes firmly on the Pacific, they fooled us once, we cannot let it happen again, especially now.”

  The meeting continued for several more minutes, but not a lot of new ground was covered. All too soon, screens blinked off.

  ***

  Joint Forces Command, RAAF Tindal – Northern Territory. March 7th, 2041 12.05LT

  Mason was pissed. He had just gotten off the secure line with Wellington. They were losing the Carl Vinson. Now he had to reorganise again. The loss of the American carrier meant he had no nuclear endurance that he could control. There was the two Indian nuclear carriers sure, they were excellent allies, courageous and hard fighters. But they were also mired in the past, where they were used to working alone and seeing to their own defence. This coalition was as hard on them as it was on the Alliance. They were coming around, but for now, unless it served their interests they were about as reliable as a chocolate teapot on a summer's day.

  What this did to his dispositions wasn’t too terrible, he moved the Melbourne to cover the gap left by Vinson, that was simple enough. No, the issue now was endurance, resupply, having a nuclear carrier he could call on at any time was a blessing, now he had to get strategic again.

  He looked at the map and started going through figures, started looking at where his replenishment groups were, those assets were about to become worth more than gold. He assigned them into roving packs, those permanently attached to groups were withdrawn and reorganised. He called up as many of the Kahu corvettes as he could get his hands on to act as escorts and called in a tanker from Koru Energy, that would sit somewhere off the coast of Darwin and act as a fuelling relay station for the oilers. They would have to rotate every few days, but it was the best he could do.

  He stepped back from the map wall, rubbing his temples with two thick fingers.

  “Christ,” he muttered. “We’re going to win this thing with tankers and spreadsheets.”

  A pause.

  “What was that thing someone said? A good general studies tactics, a great general studies strategy, a leader studies logistics… something like that…”

  Mason studied the board, he was even less happy than last time. But it would work, for now.

  “We can’t keep putting band aids on this shit and calling it cured, and if another politician pulls a surprise on me like this again, I will personally bomb their fucking house!”

  Outside, the Australian heat shimmered off the runway tarmac, and somewhere far above it all, ships were already adjusting course — silent steel giants shifting in the dark.

  The war never stopped. It just ground onward.