The Excalibur File: a warning

By John Somerset

By the year 2024 world debt has skyrocketed to over $300 Trillion, and with the US dollar in free fall a desperate G20 votes a return to the gold standard.

The gold price skyrockets overnight, fortunate for Australia which has plenty of gold in the ground – hugely boosted by the discovery of the legendary Lasseter’s Reef.

But there is a problem.

Now boasting the world’s largest navy and a modern air force, China has been expanding its military bases south and resolves to use them in a ‘military solution’ in its quest for gold and territory.

Fortunately, US intelligence has penetrated the PLA State Security Centre and supplies ASIO with China’s complete invasion plan of PNG and northern Australia.

Aware that under the ANZUS treaty an isolationist America will supply weapons and technology but no ‘boots on the ground,’ Australia has five years to shore up its defences and find a way to stop the juggernaut.

They may have found it in a most unlikely place.

A weapon that becomes known as Excalibur.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398471832

John Somerset

John Somerset is the best-selling author of Lasseter’s Truth and The Excalibur File. He was born in Melbourne, Australia and educated at Geelong Grammar and Melbourne University. He spent his working life in international marketing and latterly advertising, is a winner of the Hoover Award for Marketing, Australia’s premier marketing award of its time and is a qualified PADI scuba diver. He lives and writes at Anglesea, Victoria with his wife Marion and one-eyed kelpie.

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Cast of Main Characters

Prologue

The World: 2025

As dawn broke on New Year’s Day, 2025, the world was in trouble.

Too long had we lived on money borrowed from our grandchildren. The long-awaited bounce in the shattered economies left in the wake of the 2023 Global Financial Crisis and the fallout from the Ukraine war was way short of forecast, with the world staggering along the edge of a financial precipice, its leaders seemingly oblivious to the warnings of the prophets of doom.

Despite the financial thunderheads failing to disperse, the West had weathered political crises of varying intensity.

The worst of these was not the 2025 Wall Street crash, the constantly replicating Covid 19 mutations or even the war in Ukraine, but incoming US President Thomas Trott’s 2024 pissing contest with President Zu of China over the long-disputed freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Both leaders had ramped up nationalistic rhetoric as a survival mechanism to distract their populations from the failure of their governments to address the parlous state of their respective economies, creating a pressure-cooker that was bound to blow.

A punitive PLA was in the final phase of supressing Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and found that despite some inspiring rhetoric by the US, backed by sabre-rattling and naval ‘exercises’, and ‘strong protests’ by Britain, neither was going to do anything concrete to defend this disappearing outpost of democracy. The long-standing US defense treaty with The Republic of China on Taiwan was also looking distinctly shaky, as Beijing stepped up its ‘One China’ rhetoric and the PLA continued to build up what was looking more and more like an invasion force aimed at Taiwan, assembling large numbers of landing craft in the huge caverns at the beefed-up Yulin naval base, together with reinforcing its concrete islands in the South China Sea with missile batteries and air force assets. Chinese nationalistic fervour was sky high and President Zu Chao was riding the wave, feeling increasingly confident as leader of the world’s newest superpower. This was not a good thing, if you happened to be Taiwanese.

Words changed to action on July 4, 2024. Following completion of its bases on the Spratly and Paracel Islands plus the Scarborough Shoal, China moved to lock in its territorial claims in the South China Sea once and for all. In defiance of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Chinese government announced it was closing the Straits of Taiwan, bringing the long-running freedom of navigation and territorial claims issue to a head, and directly testing the US and allied alliances with Taiwan.

Still on his Independence Day high, ‘The Thomas’ resolved that despite the damage to US prestige that Vietnam, Afghanistan and holding back on direct involvement in Ukraine had caused, this president would prove to an increasingly dubious US population that even with its unemployment at a record high and double-digit interest rates America was great again, ruled the waves and would not be dictated to by China or anyone else.

Determined to take up a legacy-defining fight ‘on behalf of the free world’, The Thomas proceeded to charge into the fray like a war horse with blinkers.

Following the Chinese edict, the US Commander in Chief convened the Joint Chiefs to assemble in the White House ‘situation room’ at five o’clock in the morning on July 5. Hung over from the ‘Salute to America’ banquet (and over-stimulated by three cups of coffee), the conduct of the president in that critical meeting was that of a hungover bully playing a game of catch up.

He raged against the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs that the US hold the Seventh Fleet at its Yokosuka base in Japan and negotiate with the Chinese; calling his military advisors ‘gutless pussies’ (an unfortunate phrase considering the president’s personal history), forcing through the executive order to test Chinese resolve with a head-on naval confrontation.

The decision that was to bring the two superpowers to the brink of war unfolded in under thirty minutes.

The latest meeting of the US War Cabinet on the South China Sea commenced to a formal agenda. ‘Three Sticks’ tried his best to defuse the situation. Channelling his favourite episode of West Wing, he confronted the back-lit tactical screen map, waving a laser pointer across the disputed areas and Chinese island bases.

Our satellites confirm that the PLA have finished fortifying the Spratly and Paracel islands, and the Scarborough Shoal is also now fully operational. All their island bases have installed missile batteries and extended their airfields to accommodate combat squadrons, he said, poking each island in turn with the red dot from his laser pointer.

In addition to that, we have this morning confirmed the departure of five nuclear attack submarines from their underground pens at Yulin naval base, obviously headed for the Taiwan Straits. They represent a clear and present danger to our sailors should we send in the navy, he said, moving his pointer in a dramatic circle, encompassing the potential battle ground."

The Commander in Chief was not to be denied, however:

Haven’t you read your history? We forced China to back down on freedom of navigation by sending just one cruiser through the Taiwan Straits in twenty-nineteen, two in twenty-twenty following the ‘China Virus’ debacle, and a number of naval assets since, raged ‘The Thomas’.

"Not only that, but we’ve been patrolling within pissing distance of the Spratly Islands all year, with no response apart from hot air and a couple of pathetic fly-bys by a few fighters. We cannot allow China to lay claim to the Taiwan Straits and then take Taiwan unopposed.

"Today we’re sending a whole battle group through the Straits, and the Chicoms will back down again. We’ll show the world America rules the waves."

‘Three Sticks’ tried one last time.

"This time it’s different, as China is now in a far stronger position. America may well still rule the waves, but that doesn’t matter as far as the South China Sea is concerned. If we force a direct confrontation in the Taiwan Straits, it will be our two sinkable carriers taking on their three unsinkable islands packed with combat-ready aircraft and missile batteries, not to mention their submarines. Mr President, I would respectfully remind you I have read my history; Custer’s Last Stand in particular."

The over caffeine-ed Thomas lost it, in a move that was to change the geo-politics of the region forever. ‘Three Sticks’ was sacked in a thirty second tirade and thrown out of the room. Forty-five minutes later, the order to deploy the Seventh Fleet was issued by the erstwhile Vice Chairman, Admiral Wallis ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, a political appointee who unlike his historical namesake was no military strategist and was not very bright, but who was starting to envision his own place in history based on watching too much television.

‘Stonewall’ drew himself up to his full height of five foot seven and the infamous encrypted order to Vice Admiral Justin P Overland, commander of the Seventh Fleet was beamed to Yokosuka naval base direct from the White House situation room.

It read as follows:

Strike Force 5 is to proceed immediately to the Straits of Taiwan. Your terms of engagement are to respond to any Chinese attack with restricted non-nuclear lethal force against its ships, aircraft and island bases.

The Vice Admiral was in the middle of breakfast when the printout of the War Cabinet order to ‘deploy and engage’ was thrust under his nose. With only one cup of coffee consumed, there was no caffeine-induced hysteria from him, but he was more than worried.

He was terrified.

His left his second coffee, most of his scrambled egg and half his hash browns to go cold, and literally ran down the passage to Yokosuka control centre to enable the direct link with his military superior, the newly-appointed ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. Mindful that he could well come out of this as the admiral who had commanded a twenty-first century naval defeat of Trafalgar-like proportions, or even started World War 3, the Vice Admiral recorded the conversation.

This is crazy. If everyone starts shooting, at best I will have sent 20,000 American sailors into an unwinnable battle – and at worst, we will have started a catastrophic war with China.

Death or glory, resolved ‘Stonewall’ (although it was not going to be his death – not immediately, anyway). He sat bravely to attention in his ergonomic chair, gripping the handset with white knuckles.

We are here to serve our country and our President, pontificated Stonewall, recording it all for posterity on his smart phone. In his mind’s eye, he envisaged best-selling memoirs and a world tour; possibly even a run at the 2029 Presidency itself. Now for his very own ‘damn the torpedoes’ moment; his footnote in history:

The Seventh Fleet will proceed as our Commander in Chief has ordered, he barked and slammed down the phone.

Twenty-four hours later, Carrier Strike Force 5 departed Yokosuka, heading south to ‘death or glory.’

Strike Force 5 consisted of one of America’s newest carriers, the nuclear-powered Gerald R Ford, backed by an escort fleet of three missile cruisers and seven missile and anti-submarine destroyers. A formidable force capable of defeating any navy on earth, but essentially not capable of sinking concrete islands unless nuclear-armed US bombers on Guam were brought into play. And that would mean thermonuclear war.

The American battle group soon crossed the newly-claimed Chinese territorial limits, tracked on the radar screens of all three of China’s island bases.

The hot line between the US and Chinese presidents is not as famous as the one linking the leaders of America and Russia, but it does exist. It is not actually a red telephone as in the movies; that had been upgraded to a slim silver handset cradled in front of a high-resolution LED screen with integrated web cam.

This situation was too important to be handled by a mere tweet. President Trott’s hot line rang, with a clearly worried President Zu of China on the other end. Zu dispensed with diplomatic greetings and got straight to the point.

President Trott. Your Seventh Fleet has just entered Chinese Territorial Waters. If you do not turn it around, we will sink it, he said.

President Zu. You are facing the most powerful navy in the world, responded The Thomas.

"We will not be turning around, and if attacked our fleet has instructions to defend itself with extreme prejudice," he continued raising his fist at the screen cam (for the benefit of both Zu and the US national nightly news feed).

This is madness, responded Zu.

We have no intention of restraining your freedom of navigation. Our only interest is in finalising the One China principle with Taiwan, and our territorial claim and military build-up have been made entirely to that end. This situation does not affect the US at all, he said.

I have spoken, replied the God-like Thomas, shaking his fist at the winking camcorder and hanging up with a flourish.

The American warships sailed into the South China Sea, through the Straits of Taiwan, and north to Taiwan’s Keelung Harbor.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

Well, not quite nothing. A little ‘ping’ registered on the sonar of each American warship. Probably just a glitch in the electronics of the ships state-of-the-art defense arrays?

The might of the US Seventh Fleet had triumphed, and China had backed down.

More importantly, in calling China’s bluff Thomas Trott had in his mind’s eye established himself up there with the great military Commanders in Chief of US history.

Washington, Roosevelt, and Ike eat your hearts out!

‘The Thomas’ got to strut the boards for one whole day. During the next twenty-four hours, the White House press secretary made hay; releasing video footage and quotes from the great leader successfully calling Zu’s bluff, and triumphant tweets spewed from The Thomas like confetti.

Then the swarm of tiny, underwater limpet drones that had been fired onto the hulls of the USS Gerald R Ford and all three cruisers by the PLA submarine attack group started to emit ‘beeps’, clearly picked up by the sonar of the US ships. But these were not random ‘beeps;’ they were the dots and dashes of Morse code, spelling out a short but to-the-point sentence clearly understood by the captains and crews of every US warship:

Bang. You’re dead.

A lot has been written about Russian interference in US presidential elections. Consensus was both Russia and China had influenced the 2024 contest, with online hacking and robo-transmissions favouring the Republican campaign.

They had. Intent on similar mischief, the PLA cyber centre in Beijing had commenced gearing up to hack the 2028 US election, this time backing the Democrats and their clearly articulated ‘isolationist America’ policies. Beijing controlled an enormous US database, and twenty-four hours after the touted ‘non-event’ in the Taiwan Strait they used it to announce China’s bloodless naval victory that would succeed in humiliating both the Trott administration and the US navy, in one fell swoop.

The Chinese media production of the naval battle that never happened was worthy of Steven Spielberg at his best. Video footage of the Chinese submarine skippers counting down and firing their mini limpet torpedoes at the US fleet; their tracks lit up on the targeting screens of each submarine, were launched into cyberspace, with confirmation of the Chinese Morse code taunt that too many American sailors had translated for US government spin doctors to have any chance of supressing (a sub title translation was provided for US public consumption). This was augmented by close-ups of the missile targeting screens of the Scarborough Shoal control centre also locked on to the American ships, with grinning PLA weapons control personnel hamming it up, their fingers hovering over their missile launch buttons, then firing ‘hand’ six guns at their screens and blowing non-existent smoke from their index fingers in the tradition of America’s Wild West. It was indisputable that the Chinese had theoretically sunk every capital ship of Carrier Strike Force 5, and had managed it without a single loss of life. It was humiliating, it was complete, and it was featured on the front page of every US newspaper and every TV news broadcast in America and around the world.

President Trott was finished, and so were the 2028 electoral chances of the Republican party.

An eight-year period of US isolationism had begun. Under the new Democrat administration, the US was to abandon its global strategy of forward defense, and pull the bulk of its forces out of Europe. Only Pacific bases were to be retained, with America to trade with the world from behind a fortress of steel.

Along with the loss of US prestige in the area, the Taiwanese independence movement was terminally undermined, depending as it did upon the US alliance to stiffen its national resolve. So much so, that the pro-Chinese unification parties triumphed in the Taiwan’s National Assembly of the Republic of China at last, and practical unification was finally achieved by the signing of the 2025 ‘One China’ occupation treaty, with no invasion necessary.

This all looked good for President Zu.

But it wasn’t.

The military humiliation of the US navy at first seemed a triumph for the CCP’s long-term political strategy, but in the event, it was a contributing cause of the very thing Zu feared above all else.

The direct result of the imposition of the ‘One China’ communist rule in Hong Kong and Taiwan was that although their now illegal pro-democracy movements continued to be supressed by the PLA, hundreds of well-educated, pro-democracy advocates were on the loose on the districts of the mainland, and they talked. And those they talked to talked. It was to build a tsunami of public opinion that no number of re-education centres or crack downs would be able to stop.

As with the USSR before it, the National People’s Congress (NPC) was facing an ideological revolution from within by its burgeoning middle class, for whom communism no longer worked. Millions joined the pro-democracy movement, their leaders created by the very Chinese industrial and international educational expansion that had made it a 21st century superpower. Inexorable internal pressure was building.

President Zu continued to exercise iron control over the communist government, but was eventually undone not by a US nuclear strike or even the long-feared peoples’ revolution, but by his proclivity for Fugu pufferfish liver, combined with poor timing on two speeches at his sixty-fourth birthday dinner, for which a grand banquet had been planned.

Being Zu’s favourite dish, the pufferfish in question was especially, but as it turned out incorrectly, prepared for the first course at the Presidential table. Fugu Chefs always sample cooked pufferfish immediately before serving as a standard safety procedure, but in this case, Zu had specifically requested that speeches were to be cut short to allow the guest of honour to wade into his birthday pufferfish with minimum delay, and the opening two speakers over-complied, shortening their speeches too drastically. This threw the timing in the kitchen out of kilter. Speeches over prematurely, the pufferfish course for the head table was summoned five minutes early, with disastrous consequences. Zu’s personal chef Akito Akiya (famously known throughout the culinary world as ‘A2’) had prepared pufferfish hundreds of times without ever making a mistake, but this one time, he got it wrong.

In the interest of timing, he dispensed with the pre-tasting, said nothing and sent in the first course.

The birthday boy managed just two mouthfuls of the delicacy before collapsing face forward onto his gold-rimmed plate, stone dead within minutes from paralysis of the heart.

The CCP secret police forced a confession and executed A2 as a Japanese subversive, but the damage had been done.

The National People’s Congress was convened, and the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee started the process of selecting Zu’s replacement to be installed at the top of its cumbersome structure.

True to history, a military leader won the nomination. A former Three Star Admiral commanding the North Sea Fleet, incoming President Da Kai had headed up the modernisation and expansion of the PLA Navy and rode to power on the kudos attached to the ‘Great Naval Victory of 2025’, combined with masterful behind the scenes politicking, involving political and financial benefits to certain key members of Congress, and a hasty political marriage (to President Zu’s daughter Xin Li).

The ascension of a hawk to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party put the fear of God into Japan, as well it might.

Kai’s first order of business was to unilaterally declare the disputed Sekaku Islands ‘Sovereign Territories’ of China. Mere words, but these were to be backed up within three months by the commencement of oil exploration in the surrounding area, with three drilling rigs towed into position by seagoing tugs backed by an impressive flotilla of Chinese war ships, including the nuclear aircraft carriers Shandong and Liaoning.

Japan protested, but in the face of overwhelming odds and a refusal of the US to become directly involved, could not mount a military confrontation.

An old enemy had been cowed, a bully had prevailed, and the balance of power in the East China Sea now rested firmly with China.

Following this second bloodless naval victory, Kai turned his attention to the economy, with a less satisfactory result.

Liu Wei, the Secretary-General of the State Council had been pushing hard for a one-on-one meeting ever since Kai’s assuming leadership of the CCP, but had been fobbed off due to Kai’s preoccupation with the ‘Sekaku Solution’.

With Chinese-owned oil rigs now drilling unopposed in the East China Sea, Liu got his meeting, although he was soon to wish he hadn’t.

Liu opted for a direct approach to confronting his President with a serious, systemic economic problem that had been inexorably building for some time, but hidden from successive leaderships by nervous administrations.

Essentially, the giant was at a financial tipping point, about to implode.

Much has been made of China quadrupling its economy since the year 2,000 with a tsunami of unchecked growth sweeping away all competition both nationally and internationally.

The problem was, this explosive growth had been achieved by the State providing a bottomless supply of zero (or even sub-zero) loans, increasing national debt by a factor of 25 in the process. Common concepts in the western world such as rates of return and profit margins simply didn’t exist in expansionist China.

This model held up whilst China’s export-led economy worked, but with the advent of the 2023 worldwide recessions exports had dived to a critical level.

Added to that, China suffered not only from poor soils and a drought-and-flood prone climate geography, but a ten-year exodus of its rural youth to the cities. Food production was becoming an increasing problem, and widespread famine a real possibility.

The time to pay the piper was coming, and coming soon.

Liu was the unlucky one to inform the new President that the Party’s five-year plan was about to fail, and that China was about to face not only a financial crash of biblical proportions, but widespread famine.

Kai politely listened to Liu’s report and studied the numbers and graphs on the big conference monitor without comment, apart from thanking him at the end of his presentation.

This report is both comprehensive and timely, he said.

Has it been compiled as a confidential brief for my eyes only?

"Certainly. Only myself, the Department’s top three analysts and my PA are parties to the total picture. A national media release will need to be prepared, but the announcements should come from you, as President.

The nation needs to know.

It went well I think, said Liu to his PA on returning to his office.

I wonder what our leader can possibly do though?

He found out when the soldiers came for him, the next day.

Liu Wei, every member of his staff and their immediate families were transported to Qingcheng maximum security prison for political prisoners and effectively disappeared. Their computers and smart phones were destroyed, and the files related to the explosive report deleted from the State Council database.

Liu’s report was to be supressed at all costs – the very survival of Kai’s Communist regime and the President himself depended upon it.

The face of Britain had changed too. The inexorable combination of Covid 19, Brexit, a disastrous energy policy driven by woke climate change rhetoric and the economic war with Russia had triggered an accelerating recession in the once-proud Land of Hope and Glory, and only the intervention of Charles 3rd had briefly halted rioting in the streets, as the country continued to reel from ever-climbing interest rates and cost of living, unaffordable housing and rising unemployment.

The remaining members of the EU had fared little better since the departure of the UK. Greece, Italy and Spain had all defaulted on their sovereign debts, whilst Brexit was followed in 2025 by Frexit, the departure of France removing yet another major country from the tottering European Union.

Even given its manufacturing might, Germany too was teetering on the brink of financial ruin. Despite it’s back flip on Europe’s disastrous commitment to the West’s ineffectual climate change policy in recommissioning its coal-fired power stations, Deutschland was also exposed to the fallout from Covid 19 and its over-dependence on Russian gas and oil.

Following the financial fallout from its disastrous incursion into Ukraine, Russia was not in great shape, either. In the winter of 2024, a minor Moscow City Duma election had gotten out of hand when officials banned independent candidates on a technicality and 50,000 protesters marched on the Kremlin, pushing for free elections. Come September, whilst their ageing action-man President was once again out on the Baltic Sea, sinking beneath the waves in his favourite bathysphere, Moscow police rounded up over 2,000 protesters, shooting four of their leaders in full view of State’s TV cameras.

But as with China, a fuse had been lit and spot fires erupted across the Russian Federation, with the police and army hard-pressed to contain them. The ageing President promised $400 billion in reforms, but with vital oil and gas exports tanking and unemployment spiking, nobody believed him anymore.

Faced with financial Armageddon, the world turned to its bankers, via the G20, the world’s premier economic forum.

The 2025 G20 Summit was held