The Great Dragon Rises...
The fifth volume of the war in 2025-2026 is out, and with an announcement that is sure to please Kirov Series fans!
Originally scheduled to wind up at Volume 56, the author now says he will need all those volumes to finish the war in 2026. At that time, the series is set to transition into the final confrontation between Kirov and crew, and Ivan Volkov, Karpov's long time nemesis since the early days of WWII. We were already clued in on the plan being hatched by Fedorov and Karpov, to navigate north to the Sea of Okhotsk so they can pay a visit to Tyrenkov in Siberia and put together a significant military force that they can then try to move to the past using the device that Director Kamenski so graciously left on the ship. In Far Horizon, we've seen it at work, saving the ship on more than one occasion with a timely backward step when they found themselves in the dangerous waters of the future. Yet not wanting to miss out on his first love, (war), Karpov decides to operate with the USN as they make their way north.
In this volume, Firedrake, we'll learn much more of what Volkov and his doppelganger have been up to, as John devotes nine consecutive chapters to that to conclude this volume, all written from the perspective of the ship and crew. The good news now is that the struggle between Karpov and Volkov may become a war, and so the entire 8th season is now being scheduled to deal with that climactic confrontation, and the series has license to continue through book 64. Hallelulia!
Here's what's brewing now as the war rolls into the Sulu and South China Seas in 2026...
As this volume opens, the war that erupted in November of 2025 is now 100 days old, and Part I presents a brief recap of the action seen to date, setting the stage to continue operations in the Sulu Sea. There the US Carrier Strike Group Washington has been struggling to control that sea and support Marine ARG’s reinforcing Puerto Princesa on the long barrier island of Palawan.
Before that action goes full bore, the narrative diverts to Iraq in Part III entitled “Baghdad Blues,” where we again ride with Sergeant King and company, (1/7th Recon), as they are tasked with leading an operation into the sprawling concrete jungle of Sadr City. CIA operative Colonel Jason Dunn rides along and calls the tune on objectives. He obviously wants to pay a visit to the Iraqi Defense Intelligence compound, but then throws Sergeant King a curve with orders to get him to the National Museum of Iraq. Dunn is obviously on a treasure hunt of some kind, and we get some clues as to what it might be about as the light recon troops fight their way towards downtown Baghdad. Unfortunately, the museum is on the other side of the river, and what started as a sweep of Sadr City becomes a major push into the heart of the teeming city, where chaos reigns as the Iraqi military is trying to escape to better climes. This three chapter segment gives us some resolution on the war in Iraq, as US and coalition forces close on the city from all directions to complete their mission.
Then
Part IV takes us back to the Sulu Sea, and the naval air action that
has been the heart of this
season. China’s Admiral
Zheng Bao has assumed command of the South Seas Fleet, and we are taken
deeper into his plans and strategies as he now confronts not one, but
three US Carrier Strike
Groups. Relentless and
methodical, the USN begins a campaign of reducing the outlying Chinese
bases in Borneo and on the reef island bases that are so controversial
today as potential flash points
between the USN and
PLAN. In these scenes, we go deeper into the command structure that
prevails in the Chinese Navy, not a triangular system like the USN with
the Captain at the top, and his XO and
Command Master Chief on
the two corners below, but a square, where every fleet, division,
squadron and ship has a Party Political Officer (or Commissar) installed
with co-equal authority to that of
the Admiral or Captain.
From
the height of Naval HQs at PACOM in Pearl Harbor and the Chinese Naval
Theater Command in Hong Kong,
we stand like a junior
officer at the back of the room, privy to all discussions, strategy
decisions, and the rationale behind orders issued to the respective
fleets. Driven from the Indian Ocean
back into their home
waters, China is now desperate for the victory that Admiral Wu Jinlong
was unable to deliver, and here the new Admiral Zheng Bao fights with
quiet efficient skill, in spite of
his irascible associate,
the fiery Admiral Sun Wei.
As
the action unfolds we see two entirely different methods of
warfighting, largely resting on the
structure of the navies
both sides built before the war, and the weapons they carry. China has
excellent new destroyers, but lacks real strength in its carrier arm,
because its 4th Generation J-15
strike fighter is simply
too vulnerable in contested airspace. This forces Zheng Bao to use his
carriers in defensive roles as he struggles to preserve the valuable
reef island bases, and hold the
Palawan barrier intact,
while looking for any opportunity he can find to put harm on his enemy.
The more restricted waters here make it more difficult for the US
carriers to abide by “Standing
Order-1,” the dictum
that they must never operate inside the 300 mile range marker, because
doing so brings China’s deadly YJ-18 Strike Eagle missiles into play,
doubling their
fleet’s offensive power.
By
contrast, the power of the USN clearly resides in the tremendous
versatility of its Carrier Strike
Groups. The long arm of
the US Tomahawk missile is used to reduce enemy bases, and the carrier
air wings have no equal in the world when it comes to the dizzying array
of weapons they can put on an
enemy target. Before the
war, would-be pundits proclaimed the USN was woefully outranged by the
Chinese Navy, pointing out the much longer ranges of the YJ-18 and
YJ-100 strike missiles compared to
America’s largely
obsolete Cold War era missile, the Harpoon. Yet in this history, the
Harpoon isn’t even deployed, and the USN fights with weapons that are
now being rushed into
development in our
world, like the LRASM which is slated for deployment on the destroyers,
and the modified maritime Tomahawk, also called the “Multi Mission
Tomahawk,” which has a range
of 1500 nautical miles,
almost four times longer than China’s YJ-100’s 400 mile range.
Authors
of those articles inveigh on the fact that China’s destroyers
completely outrange those of
the USN while forgetting
that these weapons are in the pipeline and coming soon as the USN
rediscovers the art of surface warfare. The so called experts also
forget that, despite all the recent talk
about “Distributed
Lethality,” the Navy doesn’t fight wars with its destroyers in one,
twos, and threes. In war, a US destroyer will never be far from a big
deck fleet carrier, and
that strike group is how
America fights to win at sea. Of course, China knows that, which is why
they have designed an array of hypersonic ballistic missiles capable of
targeting ships at sea. Thus
far the US missile
shield has held firm, but as the war comes close to mainland China, the
PLAN fights with renewed energy and strength, like the great Firedrake
its is now rapidly becoming in our
world.
The
heart of this novel is therefore the intensifying struggle for the Sulu
and South China Seas, 18
consecutive chapters
that pit the wily new Chinese Admiral Zheng Bao against the three US
carrier Captains and Admiral Cook. The Chinese Fire Dragon is putting up
a furious defense, realizing that
the stakes now are
extremely high, and that they simply must find a way to stop the
relentless advance of the US Navy. In the midst of it all, Karpov,
Fedorov and company take a prominent role, as
they push for the
Palawan Gap. Kirov and Kazan must get through if they are
to get back to the Pacific and head north as planned, but along the way,
they encounter a derelict ship that suddenly sends the story off in a
most unexpected direction.
Long time series readers know that the real meat and potatoes of the saga has always been about Kirov’s
movement in time, taking the ship and crew across far horizons and into
troubled and dangerous waters at every turn. This season, the temporal
instability of Kirov has already taken us on one ride to a
distant, bleak, and perilous future in the last volume. This evolution
is something quite more.
The
author devotes the last nine chapters of this volume to the ship and
crew of Kirov as they face another
bewildering series of
events after the discovery of the derelict, and finally realize what
they are now facing. Behind it all, both Fedorov and Karpov can sense,
feel, and finally know that the
shadow that seems to
darken their path is being cast by their arch nemesis—Ivan Volkov. It is
a segment very much like the chapters presented in the 2021 war, where Kirov
and crew got a glimpse of the war just getting started in 2025, but on
the Meridian they helped build with their interventions in WWII. Now, in
this volume, the machinations of Ivan Volkov take a frightening new
shape.
Loaded
with naval air action at its heart, and twisted with mystery at the
end,
Firedrake’s pounding
narrative leads us into the most decisive battles of the war in 2026. It
will be followed with equal vengeance and furor in the next volume, Alpha Strike,
as the USN
and PLAN clash like two
armored gladiators in the arena of the South China Sea. The author plans
to take the war in 2026 to its conclusion by the end of this season in
volume 56, but in this book,
those last nine chapters
give is a riveting preview of what will follow this season—the war
against Ivan Volkov that will take the long saga to its final tumultuous
and fiery end. In the
meantime, hang on to
your seats!
