Shoji Kawamura clung to the floating wreckage as he watched his ship, the 350,000-deadweight ton former ULCC supertanker Green Voyager go slowly beneath the waves amid fire and smoke. Many of the other ships in the convoy, too, were burning. All this happened because he and everyone else had been held in thrall by a madman.
Looking east, he could see the American warships. Some were still firing on the convoy, the ones that had not entered the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone. Turning west, he could see the EOGC warships, the destroyers and two battlecruisers, also firing upon the convoy -those that had entered the EEZ.
Only four years ago, this vast fleet of ships had been built up, drawing people from many nations to it with the hopes of living a brighter future, free from the conventions and traditions that shackled them. This fleet of ships was supposed to pave the way to a new concept of nationhood: a nation not limited by borders and natural resources, one free to move about the world, physically avoiding those countries that didn't like it and being free to travel anywhere in the world. It would be a nation that would have freedom of movement throughout the world, but at the same time, those who lived in it would have to have the spirit of pioneers: adventurous and hardworking It would also be safeguarding the world's ecosystems and pioneering in the use of green energy.
A strange new concept indeed and yet in only a few years the dream descended into madness. Their leader, a shipping tycoon who inherited the nucleus of the fleet from his forbears, had made war upon the world. How did it all begin?
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