Jack of Harts

Guam boasts the largest armed forces in Micronesia, and probably the most experienced in all of Pacifica. They maintain small and fast warships for both the blue and black navies, and specialize in escort duties for larger fleets, or spoiling attacks against said larger fleets. Their blue navy conducts daily missions defending the western approaches to Guam from Chinese saboteurs, while their black navy’s primary mission is defending the numerous interstellar colonies or fleets one can find their people in. Guam also plays host to one of the central nodes of the Great Pacific Firewall that keeps Chinese hackers at bay. Cybernetic intelligences on Guam coordinate the cyber defenses located throughout the entire Mariana island chain, while the primary firewall is actually spread out over a network a hundred kilometers wide from east to west so as to absorb any cybernetic attacks before they reach the island chain.

Guam was the most populous Micronesian island before the Second Great Depression fell upon us. That is why it became the heart of the last defense against China when it reached its hands out to grasp all of Asia. America’s diminished military was the heart of the defense, but every surviving free military unit of Fallen Asia bolstered their numbers. Korean stood beside Vietnamese or Japanese in defense of Guam’s beaches, while scratch-built squadrons flew every flag of Asia. China owned some of the best blue-water warships and transports in the world, but it lacked the experience of projecting power far from the coast. America could no longer project her power, but those naval crewmen who remained were heirs to the institutional knowledge of the greatest navy the world had ever known. Even in their twilight, they gathered together the rag tag remnants of Fallen Asia’s fleets and air forces and charged out into one of the greatest storms of the century as it lashed the Philippine Sea and scattered China’s invasion fleet all over the ocean. They sunk or captured every single Chinese vessel that set sail to attack Guam. It was one of the most lopsided victories in naval combat history, and not a word of it is ever spoken of in China to this day.

The fall of Palau and Okinawa to China’s unstoppable juggernaut changed politics in Micronesia forever. They’d been spending the last half century slowly moving towards independence from America, while at the same time seeking close alliances with the nation that liberated them from the Japanese Empire. Watching a new, or very old depending on your point of view, empire arise crystallized their choices with remarkable clarity. As the largest and most populous island in Micronesia, it fell to Guam to accept most of the refugees fleeing from Fallen Asia. It also fell to Guam to be the target of China’s first step into the realm of those nations capable of conducting blue-water invasions. China had spent the last half century building its navy up from being barely able to patrol the brown-water straights between it and Taiwan, to boasting the best blue-water designs the First World nations sailed with. And it was those ships they used to attack the rag tag collection of refugees at Guam, defended by the waning military power of an America caught firmly in the chaos of its Second Great Depression.