390: Chapter 390 Next Stop: Mozambique

On the day the agreement was signed, the first engineering team from "Dawn Port Services" moved into the port area. Prefabricated steel components and gantry crane equipment from the Bago Industrial Zone were loaded at Kyaukpyu Port and transported south along the Andaman Sea route to Sihanoukville Port. The construction machinery bore the "Dawn Heavy Industry" nameplate, and the noise caused the aged oil stains on the dock floor to spark into tiny, fragmented embers. A week later, the first phase of the Sihanoukville Port automated container terminal completed its equipment installation. All data within the port area was integrated into the "Dawn Cloud" port module, and the intelligent customs clearance system could complete the customs declaration for a container in just fifteen minutes—previously, this process took three days.

On Sihanoukville Avenue outside the port, another construction team broke ground at the same time. The "Sihanoukville-Phnom Penh High-Speed Railway," contracted by the Dragon Country Railway Engineering Bureau, cut through the edge of an abandoned rubber plantation. A pile driver hammered the first reinforced concrete bridge pile into the ochre-red soil of the Cardamom Mountains. The project was designed for a speed of 250 kilometers per hour; once completed, the travel time from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville would be compressed from five hours to forty minutes. The Commander-in-Chief of the construction, Tang Guodong—the same person who wielded the shovel at the Kra Canal groundbreaking ceremony—compressed the project schedule to the most aggressive figure he had ever seen, because the batch of automatic ballast laying machines provided by "Dawn Heavy Industry" not only exceeded the speed of any existing model but also worked day and night without needing shifts, requiring only periodic checks of the control software.

Seven days later. Night fell over the Sihanoukville Port anchorage, where the Federation of Myanmar Navy's Type 055 guided-missile destroyer, the "Bhamo," was stationed.

This ship had participated in fire support for the Salween River crossing during the southern theater of the Unification War. After the war, it entered the dock to install a tactical data link upgrade kit redeemed from the System Mall. Captain Senior Colonel Lin Haisheng stood before the bridge porthole, using low-light night vision goggles to gaze at the lights of the Sihanoukville Port dock. Among those lights, the brightest were the LED arrays of the newly installed shore-side container cranes from "Dawn Port Services"—they outlined the brand-new silhouette of the dock against the night sky, like a row of steel giants standing in formation.

"The President is boarding."

The shout of the officer of the watch on the deck rang out. Lin Haisheng turned around and saw Zhang Cheng walking from the direction of the gangway with Li Lanzhi and Old K. He was wearing casual clothes—a dark blue windbreaker with the collar zipper unzipped, revealing a gray crew-neck T-shirt underneath, and a pair of combat boots without any rank insignia on his feet. The only thing indicating his identity was the six Death Soldiers in optical camouflage following behind him—their armor was set to "visible" mode, maintaining a translucent strobe to inform the crew of the security zone.

"Continue your watch, no need to salute," Zhang Cheng said.

He walked to the bridge porthole and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Lin Haisheng. The sea surface was black—no moonlight, no fishing lights. Only the light array of the dock cranes stood like a wall of light, stretching the reflection of the port all the way to the waterline of the warship. Further away was the black silhouette of the Cardamom Mountains. Behind the mountains was the Kra Isthmus, being gnawed away meter by meter by the "Titan" boring machines.

"From Kyaukpyu Port to Sihanoukville Port, the straight-line distance is 1,100 kilometers. By sea, within one day." Zhang Cheng seemed to be speaking to Lin Haisheng, yet also to himself. "Kyaukpyu Port—Sihanoukville Port—Kra Canal—these three points form a line, which is the 'Myanmar Corridor' from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This corridor does not need to bypass Malacca, nor does it need to pass through any straits we cannot control."

He paused and pointed toward the stern—that was the newly reclaimed southern berth area of Sihanoukville Port. "Dragon Country Navy supply ships will start docking regularly next month."

Lin Haisheng nodded. He had already received the joint logistics agreement memorandum.

Zhang Cheng turned around and walked along the bridge gangway to the upper deck. The night wind on the helicopter deck at the stern was strong, whipping his windbreaker and making it snap loudly. A Z-20 naval anti-submarine helicopter was parked on the deck, its rotors folded, and the tie-down cables made a faint metallic humming sound in the wind.

He stood at the edge of the deck, holding onto the safety line, gazing at the pitch-black, boundless sea outside the anchorage. The South China Sea was to the south, and the Mozambique Channel was further to the southwest—there lay one of Africa's largest natural gas fields, requiring a journey across the entire Indian Ocean to reach from here.

"The next step." He spoke, not to Lin Haisheng, his voice partially snatched away by the sea breeze. "Mozambique."

Li Lanzhi stood one step behind him and heard those four words. She did not respond, only quietly noting it in her heart. Below the helicopter deck at the stern, the propeller's wake pushed aside a white trail, pointing straight toward the south.

Washington, Capitol Hill.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Collins stood before the podium, with a twenty-page draft amendment in front of him. The red lights of the television cameras were all on, and the C-SPAN live broadcast signal covered the entire nation. Collins cleared his throat and began to speak in a tone that was deliberately lowered but with every word enunciated with extreme weight.

"The 'Southeast Asia Freedom of Navigation Act'—this is the most important legislation proposed by this Congress. Its core logic is simple: the Kra Canal is not a legal shipping lane, but a strategic weapon controlled by the Myanmar military government and paved by Dragon Country capital. We cannot accept any country using artificial waterways to change the international shipping landscape. Therefore, this amendment will clarify—the United States and its allies do not recognize the Kra Canal as having international passage rights; for all ships passing through the canal, if they have a security cooperation relationship with the United States, their insurance premiums will be considered as triggering secondary sanction clauses. Furthermore, we propose to restore a comprehensive military equipment embargo on Thailand and Cambodia, covering all categories from firearm components to ship propulsion systems."

He paused, the Lens zoomed in, framing his furrowed brow.

"We must ensure that those allies who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States for decades will not, overnight, become the enemy's ports and canals."

The vote began twenty minutes later. The "Southeast Asia Freedom of Navigation Act" was passed with 84 votes in favor and 12 against. One of the senators who voted against it, Kingsley from Michigan, said a sentence to reporters after the vote: "We have just passed a bill that we cannot even enforce ourselves—the greatest ability of this Congress is to package despair as toughness."

Kingsley's words trended on Twitter.

Twelve hours after the bill was passed, south of Shikoku Island, Japan, in the Philippine Sea.

The "Dawn" conventional submarine—the standard ship of the Federation of Myanmar Navy's First Submarine Squadron, its hull covered with sound-insulating rubber tiles, and the light gray paint on the hull reflecting subtle pressure-resistant weld seams under the inspection light—was currently cruising at a speed of six knots at a depth of sixty meters underwater. The technical standard of this submarine was close to the late-model improved version of the Yuan-class, but the sonar and combat systems installed were redeemed by Zhang Cheng from the System Mall, all of which were self-developed versions by "Dawn Military Industry." Its towed array sonar captured the propeller characteristics of a cargo ship 37 nautical miles away—preliminary acoustic signature comparison indicated it was a coastal cargo ship with a displacement of about 8,000 tons, and the propulsion rhythm did not match the normal speed of a merchant ship.