The entire Edenian fleet came to a halt a couple hundred miles southeast of Taiwan and all of the ships came to general quarters. Red lights flashed in every compartment and passageway as an alert message sounded on repeat for every Poseidon sailor to go belowdecks and prepare for vertical launches.

Less than two minutes later, the alert message ceased as all departments in the fleet reported ready, leaving only the flashing lights. Following that, the launch tubes of the Vertical Launch Systems on the Thor class missile cruisers opened their top hatches, revealing row after row of forbidden pencils.

Another automated announcement rang out from the loudspeakers. VLS firing in three... two... one.

Firing.

With a thud, the waterline of all the missile boats raised by two feet from the compressed gas pushing tens of cruise missiles out of each ship. Then, with a mighty roar, the rocket engines on each missile ignited and guidance fins activated, shifting the missiles from vertical to horizontal orientations in a short parabolic arc.

The first wave of missiles was on its way to the shore of Fujian, China, where they would ruin quite a few peoples days.

After all of the ready missiles were fired, the atomic printers at the bottom of the VLS tubes sprang to life, printing the second wave. Soon, all of the expended missiles had been replaced and the launch process repeated. Then it repeated again... and again. Five waves of cruise missiles were launched in total, making for roughly a thousand cruise missiles, give or take, all of them loaded with suicidal virtual intelligences that would guide them the rest of the way to their destination after all of the waves linked up into one enormous alpha strike against China.

If there was anything between the ships and China, other than Taiwan, they would experience the scare of their lives as the cruise missile alpha strike streaked over their heads. But thankfully, there was nobody in the missiles flight path. Citizens of Taiwan might get a shock, seeing the densely packed barrage, but it would be a momentary thing. The government of Taiwan, on the other hand, had already been informed of the strike beforehand.

Satellites, on the other hand, would easily spot the anomaly. It couldnt be hidden from visual sensors, so Eden wouldnt even make the attempt. The most they did to prevent detection of their missiles was apply a radar-absorbent paint to the exterior, giving them the appearance of a small bird if a radar were to happen to catch one.

That said, cruise missiles flew beneath the floor, meaning below the height that long-range radars scanned, so detection by an unaware radar operation was still unlikely.

A few minutes later, a second wave of a thousand-odd missiles launched, then a third a few minutes after that. The entire barrage repeated a total of five times, making six waves of missiles in total that were screaming toward the shoreline of Chinas Fujian province.

About twenty minutes after the first wave of missiles was launched, it crossed into the detection range of Taiwan. A confused radar operator leaned forward in his chair and smacked the top of his radar display in a stunning example of caveman tech support troubleshooting as the entire southeastern quadrant of it had almost entirely changed color due to the densely packed flock of birds. He power cycled the display, and when it came back up, the anomaly had disappeared.

He wasnt too concerned about it and resumed going about his business until a few minutes later, the issue repeated. But it didnt matter, so he just marked it down in his maintenance log for servicing and switched to another monitoring station next to him.

As the missiles entered Taiwanese airspace, their guidance systems woke up, separating them into clusters of five to ten missiles, which split up and headed to different ultimate destinations.

Then they disappeared from radar entirely after passing over the northwest of Taiwan, but soon, enormous explosions began echoing across the Taiwan Strait as the missiles found their ultimate destinations.

It had to be said that Edenian cruise missiles were merely upscaled versions of their already-devastating That Direction Removers, and were each on par with an American MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or Mother Of All Bombs, as they were affectionately known by explosion junkies). Thus, each of the exploding cruise missiles erupted in an enormous mushroom cloud caused by the equivalent of eleven tons of TNT, not including the hits on ammo dumps in coastal logistics centers. There, the missiles set off secondary explosions, ultimately aiding in the accidental terraforming Eden was doing by reshaping the coast of southeastern China.

As the symphony of massive booms continued, the blast wave from the continuous detonations continued propagating, kicking up towering waves that first beached, then swamped the Chinese forces currently awaiting transport across the strait. The waves continued on, sweeping away the artificial islands China had built, and militarized, much like a broom would sweep away a pile of ash in a fireplace.

The pseudo tsunami was a purposeful creation of Poseidons, and he had carefully calculated the exact timing of the cruise missile impacts to create the wave and shape it so that it would avoid damaging the coasts of the other countries in Southeast Asia, especially Taiwan. It was a brilliant demonstration of weaponized math on the part of the erstwhile god of the sea.

In a single move, Eden had almost completely crippled the Chinese military infrastructure all along the Taiwan Strait, as well as their shore installations up and down Fujian Province. It was a masterstroke and would be studied generations later by military historians... if humanity was still around by then, something that was still in doubt.

Still in VR, Aron and Alexander had been joined by John. All of the leader type AIs had joined them as well, even those that werent directly involved in running Arons ever-growing military.

Mother of god... John couldnt help but exclaim. As a lifelong explosion junkie himself, he understood the unprecedented feat Aron had achieved better than anyone else present, barring the AIs, and his shock was immeasurable and his day was absolutely made.

Is it my birthday? He moved to pinch himself, then remembered that he couldnt feel pain in the simulation.

No, its not your birthday, but I have a feeling this will become an anniversary, Aron gravely said. Im beginning to understand what Oppenheimer meant when he talked about becoming death.

Even though Arons personality had been growing much colder and his thought process much more logical, he was still slightly disturbed. The sheer amount of devastation a mere three Edenian cruisers could wreak was impressive, and beyond even his imagination.