By the time Operation Great Holdings was underway, in the fifty-second year of the Taikong emperor, the war between the Middle Kingdom and the Mexic Dominion for possession of the red planet Fire Star had raged for over twelve years.

It had been twenty-eight years since the Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne had reached Fire Star, ten vessels of ceramic and steel powered by nuclear furnaces, which carried the men and women of the Middle Kingdom to a new world. But when the Treasure Fleet arrived on the red planet, they found that subjects of the Mexic Dominion had beaten them there, a team of researchers exploring the red planet’s surface from the safety of their stepped-pyramid habitats. The men of the Treasure Fleet had made short work of the Mexic researchers, and then laid uncontested claim to the world they called Fire Star.

It had been one hundred-twenty-two years since the Mexica drove the Middle Kingdom out of their isthmus, establishing the new Mexic Dominion. In the long years between that day and the hour in which the Mexica attacked the Middle Kingdom colonists on Fire Star, there had been no armed conflict between the two great powers, only an uninterrupted cold war, employing proxies to fight in their stead.

It had been one hundred and forty-seven years since the end of the First Mexic War, when the forces of the Dragon Throne had defeated the armies of the Mexic’s Great Speaker and brought the Mexica to heel. For twenty-five years the Mexic isthmus would be ruled by the emperor’s hand-picked governor-general, and for the first and last time the banner of the Dragon Throne would fly over every nation on the Earth.

It had been almost four hundred years since the Manchu emperors of the newly-established Clear Dynasty had begun to expand their influence through conquest as well as trade, on land and on sea. Constructing navies that dwarfed even the innumerous ships of the Treasure Fleets, they initiated a campaign of conquest in Hind, Arabia, and Africa, before begin to extend their reach even into parts of Europa.

It had been almost six hundred years since the Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne had circumnavigated the African Cape of Storms and reached the ocean the Europans called the Atlantic. In the months and years that followed, the Treasure Fleet had opened trade routes by sea with the Europans, beginning with Espana and Italia, then Britain, France, and Deutschland.

It had been more than four thousand years since the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, had invented the calendar, taught men how to keep track of the seasons, and instituted the Middle Kingdom.

But for those who fought on Fire Star, either on the ground or in the skies or in the heavens above, history was far from the most pressing concern. The men and women of the Middle Kingdom’s military—the Eight Banners, the Green Standard Army, and the Interplanetary Fleet—were more concerned with the taking of a hill or farm, or the destruction of a Mexic convoy or crawler, or the establishment of one beachhead or another. History was something for scholars to remember; all that mattered to the soldiers, airmen, and sailors of the Dragon Throne was the duty they carried, and the red earth beneath their feet.

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PREVIOUS CHAPTER: Hexagram 1
Pure Yang
Below Heaven Above Heaven
The action of Heaven is strong and dynamic. In the same manner, the noble man never ceases to strengthen himself.


NEXT CHAPTER: Hexagram 3
Birth Throes
Below Thunder Above Water
Clouds and Thunder. In the same way, the noble man weaves the fabric of government.

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Chapter 2 of Three Unbroken by Chris Roberson. Copyright © 2007 Monkeybrain, Inc. For more action from the Celestial Empire don't miss The Dragon's Nine Sons.

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