Under the setting sun, the red bridge and black ships mirrored each other; sparks and smoke intertwined. The long rainbow that pierced the sun tangled with the twisting serpent of warfare, while the splendid neon signs symbolizing consumerism intertwined with the deadly flashes representing the flames of war…
Ah, the grotesque yet picturesque Golden Gate Bridge!
It was—beautifully explosive!
Rumble—!!!
With a thunderous roar that split clouds and shook stone, the restless sea suddenly bulged visibly to the naked eye.
A dazzling light erupted beneath the waves—fire clashed with water, expanding violently like an orange sun rising from the ocean floor. Air churned madly, and the spreading reverberations turned into a deafening explosion echoing throughout the entire bay.
The shockwave raced underwater, spreading outward like a white, curved sheet of light.
The Golden Gate Bridge was the first to suffer.
The high temperature and pressure of the thermonuclear explosion unleashed a glowing plasma sphere, swallowing the orange-red suspension bridge in an instant.
BOOM!
With a metallic screech that made one's teeth ache, the shockwave slammed into the bridge, producing an ear-splitting, rolling thunder.
The bridge's structure melted. The holographic advertisement pillars went dark. Thousands of cables snapped apart; the main roadway fractured. Under immense tensile stress, inertia, and the nuclear blast's shockwave, both towers collapsed together…
On the disintegrating bridge, cars and people alike were either carbonized on the spot or flung skyward, indistinguishable from the debris whirling in the wind.
In seconds, the Golden Gate Strait was filled with a sky-piercing column of vaporized mist.
Everything happened within mere moments.
The radiant nuclear fireball flared and vanished, replaced by a semi-transparent column of grayish-white vapor. Millions of tons of boiling seawater and seabed sand had been hurled into the sky, forming a water wall nearly two kilometers high. Then, as the air pressure behind the blast wave plummeted, the vapor condensed into clouds.
From afar, it looked as if a colossal gray-white mushroom had sprouted between the strait.
And it was still growing—expanding, thickening.
At that moment, to the west of the mushroom cloud's slender stem, the Adelheid-class carrier battle group surged amid raging waves.
The supercarrier—an island of steel—remained largely intact. Its sheer mass, reinforced hull, and distance from the blast spared it the worst. The Blaze Luminous energy shield had absorbed much of the pressure. Aside from a dozen aircraft wrecked during launch and minor deck and system damage, the watertight compartments and damage control kept the ship operational.
But the two escort frigates closest to the blast—the ones nearly touching the "stem" of the mushroom—were not so lucky.
They were first caught by the tsunami-like surge, then sucked downward by the vacuum created as the blast displaced massive volumes of seawater. When the surrounding sea rushed back to fill the void, the ships were dragged under, their bows striking the seabed—capsizing, exploding, and sinking.
Roughly five hundred meters out, a destroyer took on water and tilted; its integrated mast was severely damaged, rendering it temporarily combat-ineffective.
Other frigates, destroyers, and cruisers farther out—hundreds or thousands of meters away—had been forewarned by the San Francisco division. They turned their bows toward the blast to minimize exposure. While still damaged, they avoided total destruction.
The dense formation near the flagship also helped disperse the shockwave's force, lessening overall impact. Some ships suffered severe damage, but none sank.
For a fleeting moment, the world stood still.
Then, chaos returned.
BOOM—BOOM—RUMBLE—!!!
The close-in defense cannons roared again. Guided fire resumed—intercept missiles tangled with incoming anti-ship warheads, their explosions deafening.
As the mushroom cloud's condensation veil dissipated, the top of the water column blossomed into a cauliflower shape. All the water, sand, and vapor exhausted their momentum and fell back into the sea. The searing streaks of the fleet's energy weapons once again illuminated the night.
The firepower net, though thinner than before, was quickly restored—though it could never match what it had been prior to the nuclear blast.
Arasaka's naval vessels were scrambling to repair damage from the Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (NEMP), working frantically to restore combat readiness.
After four corporate wars, "triple-defense standards" — anti-chemical, anti-nuclear, anti-biological — had long become standard for modern military technology.
The Adelheid's bridge, now operating under its activated nuclear defense emergency protocols, was filled with the wailing of alarms.
"...Hai! Yes, I understand, Lady Vela. The war has already begun."
Having briefly reported on the fleet's status, Katsutoshi Murata said solemnly, "Salute to you. Please extend my gratitude to Ms. Song So Mi."
Beep-beep.
When the call ended, Murata's expression was dark.
Not because Vela had reprimanded him — far from it. For front-line commanders like him, having a superior like her — someone competent, experienced, and disciplined enough not to micromanage unless necessary — was a rare blessing.
No, his scowl came from pure anger.
Anger at being treated like a soft target — "Murata-brand clay," squeezed at will by the bastards of the New United States.
Had those NUSA agents succeeded — if that specially modified submersible vehicle carrying a live nuclear warhead had managed to reach the center of the fleet —
the outcome would have been catastrophic.
In the worst-case scenario, he might've died right here — on the opening night of the Fifth Corporate War.
Just like his uncle, Murata Ozuru, who had perished at the end of the Metal Wars of 2069–2070. One at the start, one at the end — the Murata family would've been remembered as nothing but a joke.
Even if the Blaze Luminous energy shield had held against the close-range nuclear detonation, the fleet would still have been crippled — and Murata doubted Vela or Tokyo would forgive him.
A reputation for incompetence could crush a man.
Turning sharply, he demanded, "Our carrier aircraft still haven't eliminated those American bastards digging into the mountains?"
"Beyond-visual-range strikes are already underway," the staff officer replied, hesitating briefly. "But according to the latest reconnaissance, the NUSA's exposed bases in the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada are spread across multiple sites — and mixed with decoy units. That's significantly slowing the operation."
Murata said nothing.
Decoy units — simple but effective delay tactics.
Ground troops, especially those hiding in mountain terrain, could camouflage far easier than warships.
And by 2077, inflatable weapon mock-ups had evolved into perfect replicas of the real thing — life-size, coated with metallic paint, powered by heat-emitting and EM-wave-producing motors, and even equipped with hacker signal simulators capable of transmitting authentic datalink signatures. Such decoys could easily deceive hypersonic reconnaissance drones, AI-assisted wingmen, radar, and even spy satellites.
Real mixed with fake, fake among the real. Some dense, some sparse. Even if a decoy stayed still — could you risk ignoring it? If you skipped one and it turned out to be swapped with the real thing later, you'd be screwed. So, everything had to be bombed.
It all took time.
And as long as time was wasted, the decoy units' mission was accomplished.
"Tell them to accelerate the operation."
Murata longed to retaliate in kind — to answer nuclear fire with nuclear fire — but he couldn't.
The Coast Range and Sierra Nevada were within the Free States Alliance territory. The New United States were the aggressors; Arasaka and its allies were the defenders. Dropping a nuke on ally soil on the first day of war would be... politically awkward, to say the least.
Besides, the NUSA had only fired anti-ship missiles — no nuclear warheads.
As for the recent detonation?
Murata's face darkened as he glanced at the staff officer's screen showing the latest media headlines.
"The White House expresses deep concern over the nuclear explosion at San Francisco's Golden Gate Strait."
"We urge Arasaka to respect the American people's patriotic desire for unity. Your interference has provoked the righteous anger of our patriots..."
Fast. Smooth. Predictable.
Washington's statement, barely minutes after the blast, said it all: It wasn't us. We deny everything.
Claims of "spontaneous patriot acts" followed immediately. Statements romanticizing "lone wolf veterans" who, motivated by pure ideals, chose to punish the evil Arasaka Empire with their dying breath — all the nauseating propaganda flooded the feeds.
The entire narrative was a carbon copy of the Fourth Corporate War.
"Arasaka's reputation was so foul, they brought this on themselves."
Songbird's defection? A lie. Fabricated. Frame job. Fake data. And of course — "You, Vela Adelheid Russell, have the technology to fake anything!"
Deny, deflect, discredit — threefold denial and scapegoating.
Whether the world believed it or not didn't matter. They believed it — loudly, persistently, backed by media allies spinning it with perfect synchronization.
Disgusting. Filthy political theater.
But that wasn't Murata's concern. Such games were for Saburo Arasaka to ponder.
His task now was to keep the Seventh Fleet intact — and eliminate all external threats.
"Maintain formation. Increase speed. Pull away from the strait."
After a brief glance at the holographic display, Murata continued calmly, "Launch more aircraft. Suppression operations. Coordinate with allied units nearby. Clean up any remaining NUSA presence. Have the San Francisco division's garrison coordinate with our air units for precision long-range strikes."
"Cyberwarfare unit — assist Song So Mi. Track down the NUSA hacker group that attacked our command systems, and burn them out."
The bridge's armored shutters sealed the portholes. Reflected in Murata's eyes were the flashing emerald modules of the Blaze Luminous shield and the bursts of fire from distant detonations.
...
In cyberspace, amid the chaotic data storm formed by the panic and migration vectors of San Francisco's citizens, Song So Mi's expression was unreadable — somewhere between grim satisfaction and bitter irony.
As the defector who had exposed the NUSA operatives' hidden movements, she had nearly reconstructed the full scope of Rosalind Myers' scheme: the saturation missile strike was merely a smokescreen — the true goal was infiltration.
The plan had been brilliant, in a twisted way.
Back during the Metal Wars, the NUSA military had advanced westward into the Sierra Nevada, besieging the Free State capital of Sacramento. Though Arasaka's intervention forced their retreat, they'd secretly built underground munitions depots before withdrawing — backups for "future use."
This was that "future."
A suicide team had repurposed those stockpiled warheads, loaded them into modified submersible vehicles, and smuggled them under cover of chaos to the Golden Gate Bridge — disguised as unlucky civilians "accidentally falling" into the water during the missile strike.
Once submerged, they used the noise and interference from decoy missile impacts — which had deliberately "missed" to disrupt sonar and underwater scans — to sneak closer to the fleet and detonate.
Too bad for them — she had seen through it. And she had triggered the early detonation herself.
"You wanted a nuclear strike and diplomatic deniability at the same time," she muttered coldly. "Playing on a tightrope, Myers... you'll burn yourself eventually."
...
That night, in Night City, within Arasaka Tower—
Vela never received word of a second nuclear detonation.
By dawn, she finally received orders from Saburo.
Arasaka had formally declared war on Militech.