433: Chapter 433 This is the Navigation Law

"The third decision—the Kra Canal and Singapore Port will implement integrated management effective immediately.

All vessels passing through the Strait of Malacca, the Singapore Strait, and the Kra Canal must declare their routes, cargo manifests, and final destinations upon entering the identification zone of the Federation of Myanmar South China Sea Fleet.

The Federation of Myanmar South China Sea Fleet will provide security escorts for all transiting military vessels—yes, this escort plan has already been confirmed in the draft annex to the Geneva Agreement, and a joint implementation memorandum has been signed with the Dragon Kingdom, Cambodia, Thailand, and Mozambique.

From today on, your ships will sail flying the Baobab flag.

This is not a request.

This is the Channel Law."

Zhang Cheng lowered his voice when he said the last sentence.

It wasn't that the microphone volume had been turned down; he had lowered it himself—like a judge unconsciously slowing down their speech when reading out the final grounds for a verdict before sentencing.

"You have a generation—about twenty years—to rediscover who you are.

Your grandparents were told in 1965: You are Singaporeans.

They had no choice back then but to believe it.

Because if they didn't believe it, they would have no identity to hold onto.

So they carved those words into their passports, printed them on banknotes, wrote them into the national anthem, and sealed them into the brickwork of every HDB flat.

They didn't truly believe it—they just had nothing else to believe in."

"Now you do.

You haven't had your country stolen—you have been liberated from a fictional concept built on shipping routes, financial pipelines, and a military umbrella.

The roots of the Baobab can take hold in any land, as long as there are people on that land willing to believe in it."

The situational map behind him switched to the flag of the Federation of Myanmar.

Not a military flag, not a party flag—a national flag.

Embroidered on a blue silk background was a white baobab tree, its roots extending through the lower edge of the flag into a thin line, at the end of which were connected seven smaller flags—Thailand, Cambodia, Mozambique, Yemen, Jerusalem, the Kra Canal Zone, and one flag not yet marked on any map in the world, with a line of empty text embroidered on a dark green background.

Zhang Cheng reached out and pointed to that blank flag.

"This flag is reserved for the place willing to become the next special municipality of the Federation of Myanmar."

At 9:37 AM, the holographic projection turned off.

Speaker Tan Chuan-Jin gripped the last page of the negotiation memorandum, took a deep breath, and said into the microphone: "We will now vote—on whether the 'Memorandum on the Negotiation of Singapore's Special Administrative Status' shall be formally passed as an emergency resolution, and whether the full text of the memorandum shall be submitted concurrently as the Instrument of Unconditional Surrender of the Republic of Singapore to the Federation of Myanmar.

For—keep your original voting buttons.

Against—stand up."

Eighty-three green lights lit up at the same second.

No one stood up.

The chandelier under the dome suddenly flickered at that moment—the power supply system had not yet fully stabilized after the electromagnetic pulse strike, and the voltage fluctuation caused all the lights to dim for an instant before brightening again.

When the light fell again, someone noticed that the quiet figures under the colonnade had already withdrawn, though no one knew when.

All that remained were the empty dark brown wainscoting and a few bougainvillea petals on the marble floor, brought in by rain and military boots.

11:00 AM, Washington, USA.

The door to the White House Situation Room was pushed open from the outside, and when Minister of Defense Austin walked in, he did not shake hands with the President as usual.

He placed a freshly printed situational report on the table; the paper still retained the residual heat of the printer.

The report cover bore the red and white eagle emblem of the U.S. Pacific Command, with a single line of bold text as the title: "Singapore."

The President opened the report, read it for forty seconds, and handed it to the National Security Advisor.

"Conclusion," the President said.

"The formal agreement for the Singapore Armed Forces to transfer defense duties to the Federation of Myanmar Defense Forces took effect at 9:41 AM Yangon time.

Lawrence Wong, Lee Hsien Loong, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, and the forty-four members of the former cabinet—a total of forty-seven people—have been escorted to Yangon.

Our supply pier at Changi Naval Base was destroyed by a DF-17, the ammunition depot at Paya Lebar Airbase was completely wiped out by thermobaric weapons, and the 'Reagan' carrier strike group turned and withdrew forty nautical miles from Singapore.

Three reconnaissance satellites were simultaneously blinded within forty-seven seconds after the suppression began.

Our space-based situational awareness over Southeast Asia has been zeroed out."

He turned the page.

In the bottom right corner was a handwritten annotation by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley; the handwriting was scrawled, yet every word was like a steel stamp: "The First Island Chain—broken."

The President put down the report.

"What about the Second Island Chain?"

"Guam.

A DF-17 was launched from Pursat Province, Cambodia, and hit a target ship east of Guam, 4,600 kilometers away.

Terminal maneuvering—three times per second, with a lateral load of 25 Gs.

The interception probability for Aegis is zero."

The President's fingers tapped lightly on the table twice.

It wasn't anger, it wasn't anxiety—it was calculation.

He was calculating the distance for the U.S. Navy from Pearl Harbor to Guam, from Guam to the Philippine Sea, from the Philippine Sea to the South China Sea, and on each of these routes, the coverage circles of the DF-17 brigades deployed in Pursat Province and west of Phnom Penh.

These circles coincided and overlapped, locking a string of islands in the western Pacific into an invisible pebble beach flying at Mach 10.

"Singapore has fallen," the President said.

He didn't need anyone to continue.

He added the next sentence himself: "The First Island Chain is broken.

The Seventh Fleet has retreated.

The satellites are blind.

Aircraft carriers cannot approach.

What is left then?"

No one answered.

The National Security Advisor twirled his pen.

General Milley touched his tie knot with his fingers.

CIA Director Burns took off his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, holding it for a long time, just like he had done before in his Langley office.

This silence was not the silence of a tactical error.

Military plans have contingencies, tactical simulations have bottom lines, and no matter how strong an opponent is, there are always calculable variables.

The silence at this moment came from a deeper fact that no one in the corridors of the Ministry of Defense building dared to say out loud: We did not lose because of weapons.

We lost because we didn't know how many weapons the other side had, we didn't know the range and accuracy of those weapons, we didn't know when they would launch, we didn't know where they would launch from, and we didn't know why they were able to know we were going to act twelve hours before we did—and that only satellite capable of answering these questions had been blinded by lasers one minute after the conflict began.

Three, forty-seven seconds, a few minutes, zero.

"The Pentagon will issue a statement," the President said, his tone devoid of inflection.

"Use the wording 'expresses deep concern, urges all parties to exercise restraint.' Do not mention sanctions.

Do not mention military response."

Austin wrote a few notes on the memorandum and looked up, asking: "The bottom line for the wording?"

"There is no bottom line."

The President stood up, picked up the report, pressed his palm over the title "Singapore" on the cover, and walked toward the door of the Situation Room.

When he gripped the doorknob, he didn't turn back, only adding: "Singapore is gone.

If there is nothing to defend, there is no need for a bottom line in the wording."