Eden's War (A Distant Eden) (16 page)

Chapter 22

“C
ertainly we can do that, Mr. President,” said Rafe, scratching his head. “But as before, time is the critical factor. How many do you need? I know we’re behind already, so I won’t ask when you need them. I can get you twenty… maybe thirty in a week.”

“That’ll be a good start, but can you get me ten in three days? I have transport on the way here ready to distribute them within two days after that. Ten will give us a good start, and with a ton of luck they may be enough. Ultimately I’ll want two hundred, as fast as you can churn them out.”

“Once we get an assembly line set up and running, we can assemble them quickly. I’d say it will take us about three weeks to make two hundred; remember we have limited personnel capable of this kind of work, and I’m talking full court press with them. If I may suggest… I think if you were to meet with them and explain why you want these… the urgency of the need… it would go a long way towards motivating them to their maximum effort. They’re still exhausted, you know. We all are.”

“I’ll be more than happy to. Would you go ahead and gather them up?”

“Give me thirty minutes.”

Adrian remained at Pantex for the next four days, and was on-site when the transport planes arrived. He looked them over and shook his head at the motley assemblage of the aircraft that were still running.

Every day the number of flying aircraft in the country became smaller. Lack of maintenance mechanics and lack of new parts were taking a heavy toll. Before the CME collapsed the world’s technologies, Adrian had never given a thought to the massive effort it took to keep airplanes flying – it seemed the more complex the aircraft, the faster it became useless. By this time, very few military aircraft could be put in the air. However, the simple single-engine, fixed-wheel private aircraft were still holding up fairly well. They were small and slow and they didn’t carry a lot, but they tended to still work because they were simple to work on, and there had been tens of thousands of them that could be cannibalized for parts.

Adrian was on the roof looking over the small aircraft parked nearby. He turned to Rafe, “You know if these weren’t so damn easy to shoot down we could really use them. But they are just too slow and have no defenses. For them to be effective they would have to fly in low and slow. The Bed-Check-Charlie system of warfare won’t cut it. Way too easy to shoot down. Every one of these is now a major transport asset, no point in getting them shot down.

“Rafe, you’ve done tremendous work. I’m heading out with the cargo, probably won’t get to come back here for a long time.” Adrian reached out to shake Rafe’s hand. Rafe extended his and when they clasped Adrian pulled the older man to him in a brief hug. “Thank you Rafe. I won’t waste your efforts.”

It took two days for Adrian to reach the militia headquarters in Sumter, South Carolina. There had been several refueling stops. Matt’s invention of the plastic-waste-to-refined-fuel-still had sparked a revolution in fuel production across the country. It was a simple process to convert the abundant waste plastic to oil, and the stills were easy to make from scrap metal. It took hard work to harvest the plastics and run the stills, but hard work was no longer a rare phenomenon in the country – it took hard work to survive, and the only people left from the CME disaster, were by definition, survivors.

At each fuel stop, there was an enthusiastic, cheering crowd waiting for Adrian, people coming from miles around to see him. The crowd that greeted him when he arrived in Sumter was larger than those he’d seen at the fuel stops. To Adrian’s dismay, he wasn’t getting used to the welcoming crowds. He’d thought that in time it would be easier to deal with, yet he was still as discomfited each time as much as he had been the first time.

After the crowd began to disburse Adrian went into the building used as headquarters. It was a small building that had once been a private residence before being converted into a boutique office building. It stirred memories of one of the homes he’d lived in growing up. After a brief moment, Adrian shook off the nostalgia, and addressed the militia’s leaders.

“Gentlemen, you no doubt know why I’m here.” Nods all around assured him they did know. “Please brief me on the situation on the ground.”

Twelve hours later, Adrian was standing on a ridge top in North Carolina, looking down on a Chinese invasion force a mile away. The Chinese were moving south, following Highway 77. They were two miles north of the intersection with Highway 34. The militia leader, Larry Bowman, said, “We’ll have a good view from here sir. We have five minutes.”

Adrian picked up his radio microphone and said, “Admiral, I’ve always admired this quote. It’s from way, way back, and has particular meaning for us now. In five minutes you will ‘
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war
!”

“Mr. President, that is a most particularly appropriate phrase. Our ships are in position and ready to release total and utter havoc on the enemy. The other three land sites are prepared to simultaneously launch with you. The Chinese emperor will get your message loud and clear, sir, very loud and very clear.”

Adrian hung up the radio and looked at his watch. “Larry,” he said to the militiaman, “you are about to make history. What you are about to see will be something else entirely from anything you’ve ever seen before.”

“Time to put on the goggles, sir.”

Adrian took another long look at the Chinese below. Intelligence had studied them thoroughly; there were three thousand men down there, almost three hundred trucks carrying not only men, but helicopters, tanks, artillery and missile batteries. Inwardly he shuddered at the destruction he was about to unleash on them, most of them would die without knowing they had died, gone in a blink.

But they came here, here to our home, to kill our people, take over our land, use us like slaves. We’ll send them to Hell in a blind fury for that.
With that thought Adrian slipped the goggles down over his eyes.

Two seconds later he saw the white-hot flares of light through the dark glass, briefly lighting the up scene to a point where everything went white. When the light dimmed again, only seconds later, Adrian ripped the goggles off and looked.

He saw two small mushroom clouds forming at the third points of the column. Fire already raged on both sides of the road in the thick trees. Where before there had been an orderly march of military machinery, there was now chaos. Two large smoking craters with a clear area of several hundred yards and then a debris field of trucks and bodies. Total carnage lay below him. Carnage he had sought, mass death he had worked hard to create.

There was no sense of satisfaction for Adrian, only a grim belief that this had become necessary, and a realization that he personally would never be the same again. Something he had always liked about himself had died with the twin tactical-nuclear blasts.

Adrian raised the microphone.

Within moments in California and in Florida the scene was repeated as low-yield tactical nuclear weapons were deployed against the invading Chinese. In the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico North American Naval forces opened up on Chinese Navy fleets. Missiles flew through the air at surface ships and submarines launched torpedoes at Chinese submarines and surface ships.
Havoc
had been the launch code, and havoc had been launched. In a matter of hours, the Chinese fleets were badly crippled. Within two weeks they would be completely destroyed.

The Chinese Navy was not unsophisticated, they delivered some serious blows of their own, sinking six American ships. But those losses, hard as they were to accept, were mild in comparison to what the Chinese received.

More tactical nuclear devices were being deployed every day, to be put into use as soon as they arrived at their destinations. Adrian was confident now, estimating two weeks until the war could be declared won on both ground and sea.

Three days later, Adrian was once again on the carrier at Corpus Christi, and on the radio with the Admiral.

“Adrian, the Chinese Emperor has made contact and asked to speak with you. Interested?”

“I am now. It saves me from calling him, a small victory in itself. We’ll give it a try… make sure we have our own translator listening in. Better record it, too.”

“Call you back when it’s arranged.”

Adrian was surprised at how quickly the call came back. “Twenty minutes from now, Adrian.”

“Make sure you and Rutherford listen in, Morgan will be here with me, listening. Will we have an interpreter on the line?”

Morgan replied, “We have one here on the ship, sir; she’s perfectly fluent in all the dialects. One of our best intelligence officers, sir.”

“Alright, gentlemen. I have an idea of what’s he’s going to try. It could get very interesting very fast.”

The voice coming from the radio’s speakers was as clear as if it was coming from the next room. Emperor Xao said in perfect English, “President Hunter, I must congratulate you on your courage and ingenuity. You resisted much better than I expected. As you would say ‘my hat’s off to you.’ You are quite the unconventional warrior. I’ve enjoyed watching you maneuver – brilliant strategy, and your ever-evolving tactics have been a delight! Trebuchets! Completely and totally unexpected! Who else would have
ever
thought of that?”

The Emperor continued, “I know you believe you’ve won the war, but in fact you have only fought a small and meaningless battle. You have actually
lost
the war. Your small victory doesn’t matter. That was just the easy way I chose to use first. After all, why use a smashing blow when only a small push may be required? But for the unfortunate circumstance of you, with your unconventional thinking, personally leading the war, a small push would have sufficed. You have resisted that small push brilliantly. But I’m getting bored with this small business and I have important things to attend to, so I’ll get to the finish quickly. Total surrender now or look up into the skies at your country’s complete destruction in say…twelve hours?” The voice was smooth, polished, a timbre of arrogant confidence arrived at after a lifetime of victories and no losses.

Adrian glanced at Morgan whose expression was stunned, shock in his eyes.

Adrian smiled and winked at Morgan. Then he replied, deliberately forgoing a formal response, “Xao, you’re a real hoot. You’re over there on your knees, shaking like a dog shitting peach pits.” Adrian glanced at Morgan again. Morgan was now showing total shock. “No sir, I’ve got to hand it to you. Your war strategy wasn’t so hot, but you have some giant balls to think I’d buy that line of bullshit. No, not balls… arrogance. You’ve been sitting in your ivory tower too long, son, so let me tell you how it is.

“You send your nukes over and ours will be coming at you in the same second. You know that. Only we have a lot more of them, and richer targets to boot. What are you going to hit over here? Big cities? There’s hardly anyone in them; Hit the oil refineries? Hell, most of them aren’t working now and never will be. Most of our people are oil independent you know, we can do just fine without it. So what’s left? Nothing. We’re in the unique position that you can’t destroy our infrastructure because we don’t have any we’re using. But what can
we
target?

“Oh let’s see… cities with millions of people in them. Your capital of course, all of your military installations, shipyards, and there’s that big dam isn’t there? We can hit all of them, we have more than enough bombs for every target you offer. We’re talking a complete and final destruction of the Chinese Empire, ending how many thousands of years of rule? We’ll survive, you won’t. Compared to what happens to you we’ll barely have a scratch. You’ll also lose most or all of your nuclear capability and you still have Russia to deal with – and they’re a lot closer than we are. Taking Pantex would have been a major coup, enlarging your nuclear capability by several orders of magnitude… but you didn’t take Pantex did you? We can launch hundreds of nukes and not even touch our reserve.”