The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series Read Online Free

say something, then stopped. Kato looked at her. After a few seconds, she began again: “I almost wish I hadn’t hijacked his ship. It’s possible he only popped up again in the twenty-fourth century to get revenge on me.”
    “You don’t know if he did. He could have been alive all along, getting Renewed every twenty years so he wouldn’t die,” Kato said.
    “True. He’s still the devil incarnate though. I don’t doubt he’ll kill a lot more people if he’s not bluffing about that virus thing being worldwide.” She gulped and sighed. “Is there anything that can be done to stop him? What about the FSE?”
    “The FSE is a damn talking shop,” a nearby short man with thinning hair said angrily. He walked over to them. “Any real power they had is gone. Dissolved by national and regional interests. In some ways, the world’s heading back to how it was before the Tribulation.”
    “Academician Korolev!” Kato said. “Didn’t even notice you were here. As for the Tribulation, its main cause was resolved, although with much violence. The ingredients for another Tribulation aren’t there, surely?”
    “You mean other than the imminent extinction of mankind?” Korolev said.
    “Point taken.”
    Another man walked over to join them. He was nearly six feet tall, with a mop of gray hair parted just left of the center, and bushy eyebrows. He was General Peter Phillips, of the US Army. He extended a hand. Kato shook it weakly. “I can’t even call the damn Pentagon!” Phillips said. “All the military channels are busy.” Kato nodded. “I came over because I heard the FSE mentioned,” Phillips continued. “They can’t agree on anything, so I don’t know how much use they’ll be in responding to this disaster. It may be up to America. Again.”
    “Yes,” Korolev said.
    “Problem is,” Phillips said, “we don’t have a space force to go and take him out. That’s even if we knew where this Seung Yi character is located, which we don’t.” The others nodded. “All the services have a handful of spaceships, but none of them even have weapons. They’re just used for personnel transport. Still, I think the only defense against this maniac is going to be a good offense. Once we find him. I mean, even if we handed Mars over him, what’s to say he won’t hold us all to ransom again, for something else?”
    “True,” Kato said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s on, or in, a rock in the asteroid belt. It’s the only place in the Solar System he could hide.”
    Phillips shook his head. He looked at both the others in turn for a moment. “You’re both smart men. Is there some kind of super weapon we can come up with that would just take the asteroid out?”
    “Vesta!” Kato interjected. “I’ll bet he’s there! It’s the largest body in the asteroid belt besides Ceres, which no longer exists, of course. How he hid there for a hundred and five years, I’m not sure, but I’d almost put money on that being his location.”
    Korolev sighed. “I don’t know of any weapon, Phillips. An enormous nuke could do quite a bit of damage. But if that’s where they are, they’re probably cocooned right in the center of Vesta. There’d be two hundred and fifty kilometers of rock protecting them. All it would do is shake them up a bit.”
    “We no longer have any enormous nukes, anyway,” Phillips said. “The biggest nuke ever detonated is still the one the Russians set off in the 1960s. Our force is down to three thousand warheads, none of which exceed five megatons.” He sighed. “I was thinking of some kind of miracle weapon, like whatever blew up Ceres in 2357.”
    “We still don’t know what happened to Ceres,” Kato said. Then his eyes widened. “What about a cluster of nukes, General? Get hundreds, perhaps. Time them all to off within one microsecond of each other!”
    “By God, you’re right!” Phillips said.
    “All of ISI’s resources are at your disposal, General. Ships,