From the Author: I am a rather large fan of your Shattered Citadel website and believe and can contribute a pretty good fan-fiction. There is more to come and this is just the first segment.

From the Creator of SC: TY so much for your story and I cannot wait for more of it. 25052012.

SCFF: Anchors Aweigh


Creator: C.R. Smith

“For he to-day that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother”
-William Shakespeare in Henry V


[I walk into the small house, more like a hut, a small box with one side made of glass sits on a wooden cabinet, a large hole in the wall exist where wood seems to be stacked inside, and other such oddities are within its walls.]

[An old man, seems ancient to me, greets me as I enter. His hands and head shake, his skin sags in every place that it can, his veins are clearly seen through his paper thin skin, his skin itself is the colour of snow, his head shines like the sun, and his glasses are nearly an inch thick.]


Me: Good morning, sir.

Interviewee: Morn’ son, you th’t man who called me up yes’day?

Me: Yes, I believe we agreed to an interview.

Interviewee: We did?

Me: Yes, I believe so.

Interviewee: If ya say so.

[Sits down in large plush chair and motions for me to sit on the sofa facing said chair. I sit.]


Me: For the record, what is you legal name?


Interviewee: Christopher Ray Smith

Me: Birth date?

Smith: September 22, Anno Domini 1996

Me: That would make you 102? Why do you look so, well, old then?

Smith: I chose to naturally age, I am over a century old. I’ve seen the rise of nations, the fall of empires, and the death of so many. Trust me, boy, when you’re 102 you’ll regret extending your life span.

Me: So it seems, I shall respect your opinion if you respect mine.

Smith: Easy enough.

Me: Alright… final rank/rate?


Smith: Captain, that’s an, um, um…

[Begins counting on fingers]


CPT Smith: O-6? Yes that’s an O-6.

Me: Which branch?

Smith: United States Navy.

Me: Birth place?

CPT Smith: City of Kissimmee, State of Florida, Untied States of America, Earth, Sol System.

Me: Very well. I would like to ask what you deployed in during the Third Human Civil War.

CPT Smith: Civil War? WW3 ain’t no Civil War. That denotes we was in one unified state. We were separate, we was in different nations, it wasn’t no civil war, it was a straight up classic conventional war between states.

Anyway, to answer your question I served in the Sea Air and Land. Otherwise known as the Navy SEALs, to further answer your question I served in SEAL Team 6.

Me: Those are the elite of the elite, you must be proud of your service.

CPT Smith: Of course I am, I killed more men then you’ve probably seen in your lifetime. I was feared, vicious; I was a force of nature, a demi-god, the destroyer of all. Otherwise known as a common Navy SEAL.

[Short, hissing laugh, followed by coughing and the spitting up of phlegm and blood into a napkin]

Me: Are you alright, sir?

CPT Smith: No, I’m dying. I am old and mortality is catching up to me. But I’ll live long enough to finish this.

Me: Okay, just making sure. So, what was service during the war?


CPT Smith: Please be a bit more specific.

Me: Alright let’s start at the beginning. When did you join the service?

CPT Smith: I joined the Annapolis Naval Academy in summer of 2016. I finished out at the top of my class in 2020 and applied to be a SEAL. I became one in 2022, right before the War to End All Wars.

Me: Excellent, was your training difficult.

CPT Smith: You ever burned your hand?

Me: Yes.

CPT Smith: Imagine burning it for 2 years and stabbing yourself in the face while dogs attack your genitals and you’ll get a pretty romanticized view of what it was like.

Me: Ouch.

CPT Smith: You can say that again.

Me: What did you do before the war?

CPT Smith: We’ll I was deployed to nearly 70 places with SEAL Team 6. Everywhere from Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, to Mecca. And pretty much every stopping point in-between.

Me: What happened when the war broke out?

CPT Smith: Me and my team were at first really in shock at the news of the attack, then hate, then there was screaming and shouting and calling for the killing of all chinks, towel-heads, and Ivans.

Then it got real quite. Then, most shocking of all, we cried. Every last one of us broke down sobbing. Grown men, killers, destroyers of whole cities were broken down into sobbing babies. It would be the first and last time this happened until the end of the war.

Me: Where was your first deployment?


CPT Smith: Shanghai.

Me: What happened there?

[Leans forward, nearly out of his chair, and says real quietly]

CPT Smith: Classified.

Me: Is that it? Just classified?


CPT Smith: All I can tell you is this every single last PLAN ship in port sunk in the amount of time it took me to tell you this.

Me: Okay, what isn’t classified?

CPT Smith: What happened next, and to answer your next question, we ran from that place as far as our legs could take us. We crossed over 1,000 miles of jungle, city, grassland, highland, etc. Before we reached the Indian front.

It started out well. We escaped Hong Kong in the middle of the next day and began on foot towards the Indian front.

We crossed paths with a group of Chinese soldiers, 5 APC’s in total, heading towards Hong Kong, probably looking for us; we found that perhaps it would be easier to show them where we were. Unfortunately for them that meant they found us at the end of a Spartan shoulder-mounted anti-tank missile.

The first missile struck home and destroyed the lead vehicle. The next got the rear vehicle in the gears and made it just a sitting hulk. We then used the more numerous tank mines and put those suckers underneath them with a delay attached. Needless to say every last vehicle was destroyed.

A single chink tried to make a run for it, he made nice target practice.

A little while later we ran upon a small hut on a rice farm. We silently killed its inhabitants and bunked there for nearly a week. When we got going again chink troops were everywhere. But thankfully it wasn’t hard to pretend to be a Chinese farmer as they rarely even paid attention to them.

Over the next 16 months we stayed under the guise of Chinese farmers and made our way to Rangoon, in occupied Burma. We then found ourselves at a dilemma; Chinese farmers would never be this far into occupied territory. Thus we conned our way onto a chink infested rape fort. My friends were able to sneak into one of the larger tents, it was currently occupied by a Burmese POW.

We stayed in there for three days without being noticed. Then the moment of truth came. On Friday four chinks came into the tent, most likely to gang-rape her. That’s when we sprung. They were all silently dispatched and we took their clothes.

Then disguised as PLA soldiers we were able to enter on of the troops transports heading to India. There was an “accident” 2 miles off shore that made the boat spontaneously combusted, and we escaped on a small dingy to friendly territory.




SCFF: Anchors Aweigh
A man remembers his time fighting the Chinese Hegemony during the Third Human Civil War as a US Navy SEAL. Written by C.R. Smith based on the Shattered Citadel Universe.