Eden's War (A Distant Eden) Read Online Free Page A

and tow back to their harbors. Fishing boats, cruise ships, container ships, and tankers. Our best count right now is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen-hundred of those. Those worry me a lot. With their almost unlimited resource of personnel, they can man every one of those ships and easily put over a million total fighting men on them. Some of those men would be new recruits – forced recruits probably – but with two months of training, that is still going to be a major force to contend with. An all-out assault, using all the ships, coming at the west coast simultaneously, in spread out formation… and protected by their war ships…” the Admiral shook his head. “It could be insurmountable using conventional warfare. We could be looking at the necessity of using nukes to take out large chunks of their fleet at a time.”
    “And if they come at us spread as far apart as they can, how effective will our nukes be?” Adrian asked. “Wouldn’t it be more effective to nuke their harbors right now to take out not only their ships but also their shipworks?”
    The Admiral took a sip of his coffee without answering. He understood a rhetorical question when he heard one.
    After a long silence, Adrian said “We can knock them out where they are right now. We have the capacity for that.”
    The Admiral answered, “Yes. We can damage them to the point that they won’t be able to attack and shove them back years in their efforts, bringing them down to our level or worse; giving us time to catch up.”
    “But, they have the ability to hit us in much the same way, don’t they?” Adrian asked it like a question, but it was a statement. “They have ICBMs and submarine-launched nuclear missiles. If we launch on them, they launch on us. So we use nukes as the last option. We would win in number of strikes launched… it would end the war. But they would counter-attack and we would sustain a great deal of damage. That would basically destroy us both, so I only want to consider that option if it comes to the point that we recognize that we can’t win. But, I want to maintain that capability for immediate use if needed. We have a great deal more nukes than they do.”
    Adrian took a sip of his coffee. “They’re also involved in wars with Russia, Korea, India, and Japan. Wars they’re winning, but they have to keep most of their nukes in reserve because Russia and India have their own nukes. Russia has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and China doesn’t.”
    “The next question to consider is whether or not making that plain to the Chinese leadership would avert the war. If I called up their Chairman and told him point blank that we will launch an all-out nuclear attack on his homeland if the invasion attempt isn’t called off – would he call it off? And if he did, for how long? They couldn’t have started this without fully considering that possibility. I have to believe that they are willing to bet – are already betting – that we won’t launch. Calling them up and threatening them won’t do any good, and it won’t stop the invasion. So I don’t see any reason to even try it. Better to keep silent and let them worry about it on their own. They already know that they face a mutual suicide situation, no need for me to tell them what they already know.”
    Adrian fell silent, in deep thought again. Linda came into the kitchen and sat down with them. She saw the strain on Adrian’s face and asked, “What’s the latest then? It can’t be good from your expression.”
    Slowly Adrian looked up and into Linda’s eyes. “It amounts to this; China is going to hit us with an overwhelmingly large number of ships and soldiers, numbers that we don’t have a chance of stopping. We can launch nukes on them now or later, but in either case they’ll retaliate – and they have enough nuclear capability to do too much damage to us to risk it. So, either we figure out a way to beat them without nukes, or we