Read Online Systemic Shock by Dean Ing - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dean Ing
Tags: Science-Fiction
Ads: Link
as though Tom had died yesterday, or the day before. It was all a long time and many deaths ago, his mind soothed. Just don't look back for a refresher course.
Slowly, Quantrill took his radio from its sunny lashing atop his pack. After several minutes he stiffened, thinking hard on the outcomes of bacteriological weapons west of Winston-Salem and a flat prohibition against travel westward on US 40. So Asheville was not to be spared after all; and while fallout might be lethal, it diminished with time. Germ warfare, he decided, might not—and it was harder to hide from, and to counter.
Two hundred klicks west was a towering mushroom over what had once been a military research facility. To the east was home, under another such cloud—and microbes were there too. Quantrill repositioned his radio, shrugged his pack higher on his shoulders, and turned his back on home.
Chapter Twenty-One
The US/RUS attack was full of glitches, and there was no hope of catching the enemy by surprise. But while the tunnels under Dairen, Tsingtao and Canton resounded with survivors streaming toward the countryside, fleet installations adjoining these cities were wiped from existence. Karachi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta were no better prepared than American seaports and suffered as many casualties as Oakland, Honolulu, San Diego, Norfolk.
The extended Chinese presence to leased bases in Albania, Cuba, and AIR countries brought a hard-won lesson to her friends as we pounded her sub pens at Durres, Bengazi and Manzanillo. Highland marines stormed a secret supply depot on the Irish coast, took its comm center intact, and lured three Sinoind subs to offshore rendezvous where two of the craft were captured. The third, a small two-hundred-ton experimental job, evidently was shaped very like a whale. Sonar traces suggested that its power plant was unconventional and, British Naval Intelligence inferred from its pygmy dimensions , must have been launched from some vast tender, a hiveship. Pygmy subs simply could not carry enough fuel for extended pelagic cruise unless nuclear-powered.
These tentative conclusions were not reached for some days because the British had very little hard evidence to work from. The pygmy sub had gone down in deep water, scuttled in a half-dozen blasts aft on the pressure hull that took all but one of its dozen crew members to the bottom.
The surviving crewman yielded little under normal interrogation. He was particularly careful in his choice of words when asked about his craft's induction system, and could not hide his educated diction well enough to pass as an ordinary seaman.
Under modest drug-induced hypnosis, the crewman revealed that he was a mechanical engineer entrusted with the little sub's Snorkel and exhaust systems. He knew approximately zip about its engine; only that steam was its exhaust. The British hypothesized about sponson tanks with hydride fuels, and forwarded their findings to US Naval Intelligence. It seemed an odd way to push a sub around, but it was after all an experimental model. Ninety per cent of everything, the Admiralty quoted, was crud. Few analysts entertained suspicions that this was part of the other ten per cent.
Tiny Israel, still a nation surrounded by implacable foes except for moderate Turkey, felt an increasing squeeze as most AIR countries embargoed petroleum and high-grade ore to her shores. Under the circumstances, visitors thought it bizarre that Israel's internal transportation system would grow so dependent on air cushion vehicles that, even with the most effective ACV skirts, still used a third more fuel than wheeled vehicles and many times more than electric trains. Israel's Ministry of Transportation pointed out that an ACV did not require expensive roadbeds, and that her synthetic fuel industry was expanding on a crash basis. From Elat to Acre, Israel's noisy ACV transports levitated centimeters off the sand and left dust-tails in their wakes, until the night of Monday, 12
Slowly, Quantrill took his radio from its sunny lashing atop his pack. After several minutes he stiffened, thinking hard on the outcomes of bacteriological weapons west of Winston-Salem and a flat prohibition against travel westward on US 40. So Asheville was not to be spared after all; and while fallout might be lethal, it diminished with time. Germ warfare, he decided, might not—and it was harder to hide from, and to counter.
Two hundred klicks west was a towering mushroom over what had once been a military research facility. To the east was home, under another such cloud—and microbes were there too. Quantrill repositioned his radio, shrugged his pack higher on his shoulders, and turned his back on home.
Chapter Twenty-One
The US/RUS attack was full of glitches, and there was no hope of catching the enemy by surprise. But while the tunnels under Dairen, Tsingtao and Canton resounded with survivors streaming toward the countryside, fleet installations adjoining these cities were wiped from existence. Karachi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta were no better prepared than American seaports and suffered as many casualties as Oakland, Honolulu, San Diego, Norfolk.
The extended Chinese presence to leased bases in Albania, Cuba, and AIR countries brought a hard-won lesson to her friends as we pounded her sub pens at Durres, Bengazi and Manzanillo. Highland marines stormed a secret supply depot on the Irish coast, took its comm center intact, and lured three Sinoind subs to offshore rendezvous where two of the craft were captured. The third, a small two-hundred-ton experimental job, evidently was shaped very like a whale. Sonar traces suggested that its power plant was unconventional and, British Naval Intelligence inferred from its pygmy dimensions , must have been launched from some vast tender, a hiveship. Pygmy subs simply could not carry enough fuel for extended pelagic cruise unless nuclear-powered.
These tentative conclusions were not reached for some days because the British had very little hard evidence to work from. The pygmy sub had gone down in deep water, scuttled in a half-dozen blasts aft on the pressure hull that took all but one of its dozen crew members to the bottom.
The surviving crewman yielded little under normal interrogation. He was particularly careful in his choice of words when asked about his craft's induction system, and could not hide his educated diction well enough to pass as an ordinary seaman.
Under modest drug-induced hypnosis, the crewman revealed that he was a mechanical engineer entrusted with the little sub's Snorkel and exhaust systems. He knew approximately zip about its engine; only that steam was its exhaust. The British hypothesized about sponson tanks with hydride fuels, and forwarded their findings to US Naval Intelligence. It seemed an odd way to push a sub around, but it was after all an experimental model. Ninety per cent of everything, the Admiralty quoted, was crud. Few analysts entertained suspicions that this was part of the other ten per cent.
Tiny Israel, still a nation surrounded by implacable foes except for moderate Turkey, felt an increasing squeeze as most AIR countries embargoed petroleum and high-grade ore to her shores. Under the circumstances, visitors thought it bizarre that Israel's internal transportation system would grow so dependent on air cushion vehicles that, even with the most effective ACV skirts, still used a third more fuel than wheeled vehicles and many times more than electric trains. Israel's Ministry of Transportation pointed out that an ACV did not require expensive roadbeds, and that her synthetic fuel industry was expanding on a crash basis. From Elat to Acre, Israel's noisy ACV transports levitated centimeters off the sand and left dust-tails in their wakes, until the night of Monday, 12
Similar Books
