watches. What should I tell the ratings?"
"Tell them I want no surprises."
"I mean about the A-Sat attack, Sir."
A pause. Then, "Tell them the SinoInd effort to sweep our satellites away has been repulsed. Failed. Defeated."
The chief brightened. "Aye, Sir."
Boren Mills permitted himself an almost silent snort at the ease with which men could be manipulated. Statistically, the SinoInd attack was a failure. But it had been a tactical success. Our hunter-killer teams would suffer delays in coordination. Allied bases in Germany, South Africa, Australia, the Seychelles, and Scotland were to take loads of fast-dispersing nerve gas launched from SinoInd subs offshore. Even these ghastly weapons implied a certain restraint; a hope on the part of Peking that US/RUS strategists would follow her lead in avoiding nuclear weapons and attacks on mainland centers.
But China could not dissuade India from repeating her one-two punch which had overwhelmed Pakistan. Once India's closest ally, the RUS had rained cruise missiles with poor discrimination onto Kanpur; and the RUS presence among Afghans was a chronic thorn in Islamic flesh. Two waves of Indian choppers formed near Peshawar and essayed a blitzkrieg liberation war on Afghan soil. The immediate gains, they felt, could be bargained away after the cease-fire that must surely follow China's sweep of Allied satellites.
RUS patrol craft spotted the first wave of assault choppers using side-looking radar that scanned valleys in the towering Hindu Kush range. Indian choppers, though limited in speed and range, were almost equal to the task of dodging the grid of particle-beam projectors that flared from hardened mountain sites. Almost, but not quite. Offense and defense can celled, leaving the way clear for the Indian troop choppers. The RUS then drew its defensive curtain.
The curtain bomb, a megaton-yield nuclear device, was the culmination of two generations of research into directional-effect neutron bombs. Properly oriented, delivered by unmanned vertols to various altitudes, a curtain lanced its deadly radiation in a tight conic pattern that was lethal a hundred klicks from the detonation site. Since the RUS detonated her devices in a wavering line from Qandahar to Kabul—territory of a tribute state, if not precisely RUS soil—she did not expect this tactic to be considered as a nuclear attack on foreign soil. The fallout, blast, and thermal effects would be largely confined to Afghan regions.
But thousands of India's first-line assault troops perished in the actinic glare of curtain bombs, and by the political definitions that led her into Afghanistan she did not consider that to be RUS soil. China did not know how closely her enemies were linked and interpreted the neutron curtain as an Allied willingness to tempt Armageddon. Within an hour, the full panoply of SinoInd nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons was committed.
The first strategic exchange had favored our side, with the survival of a few US/RUS satellites while the SinoInds had only orbital debris. But both China and India had placed much of their air power on submersibles, some with skyhook choppers to provide midair retrieval for aircraft that could not land vertically.
Both the US and the RUS had spent tens of billions on surface craft, enormous nuclear-powered floating airfields that were too easy to find, too vulnerable to nukes. SinoInd attack subs, with data provided by drones and buoy translators , fired their missiles without surfacing and moved off at flank speed to make second strikes as necessary.
The SinoInd air-launched ballistic missiles were easier to spot, and many were creamed by the tremendous wealth of defensive fire from our carriers and missile frigates. But our carriers were such potent offensive platforms that the SinoInds threw everything at them at once. For every
US/RUS carrier in the Indian Ocean, at least one nuke got within a thousand meters or so; and that was all it
"Tell them I want no surprises."
"I mean about the A-Sat attack, Sir."
A pause. Then, "Tell them the SinoInd effort to sweep our satellites away has been repulsed. Failed. Defeated."
The chief brightened. "Aye, Sir."
Boren Mills permitted himself an almost silent snort at the ease with which men could be manipulated. Statistically, the SinoInd attack was a failure. But it had been a tactical success. Our hunter-killer teams would suffer delays in coordination. Allied bases in Germany, South Africa, Australia, the Seychelles, and Scotland were to take loads of fast-dispersing nerve gas launched from SinoInd subs offshore. Even these ghastly weapons implied a certain restraint; a hope on the part of Peking that US/RUS strategists would follow her lead in avoiding nuclear weapons and attacks on mainland centers.
But China could not dissuade India from repeating her one-two punch which had overwhelmed Pakistan. Once India's closest ally, the RUS had rained cruise missiles with poor discrimination onto Kanpur; and the RUS presence among Afghans was a chronic thorn in Islamic flesh. Two waves of Indian choppers formed near Peshawar and essayed a blitzkrieg liberation war on Afghan soil. The immediate gains, they felt, could be bargained away after the cease-fire that must surely follow China's sweep of Allied satellites.
RUS patrol craft spotted the first wave of assault choppers using side-looking radar that scanned valleys in the towering Hindu Kush range. Indian choppers, though limited in speed and range, were almost equal to the task of dodging the grid of particle-beam projectors that flared from hardened mountain sites. Almost, but not quite. Offense and defense can celled, leaving the way clear for the Indian troop choppers. The RUS then drew its defensive curtain.
The curtain bomb, a megaton-yield nuclear device, was the culmination of two generations of research into directional-effect neutron bombs. Properly oriented, delivered by unmanned vertols to various altitudes, a curtain lanced its deadly radiation in a tight conic pattern that was lethal a hundred klicks from the detonation site. Since the RUS detonated her devices in a wavering line from Qandahar to Kabul—territory of a tribute state, if not precisely RUS soil—she did not expect this tactic to be considered as a nuclear attack on foreign soil. The fallout, blast, and thermal effects would be largely confined to Afghan regions.
But thousands of India's first-line assault troops perished in the actinic glare of curtain bombs, and by the political definitions that led her into Afghanistan she did not consider that to be RUS soil. China did not know how closely her enemies were linked and interpreted the neutron curtain as an Allied willingness to tempt Armageddon. Within an hour, the full panoply of SinoInd nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons was committed.
The first strategic exchange had favored our side, with the survival of a few US/RUS satellites while the SinoInds had only orbital debris. But both China and India had placed much of their air power on submersibles, some with skyhook choppers to provide midair retrieval for aircraft that could not land vertically.
Both the US and the RUS had spent tens of billions on surface craft, enormous nuclear-powered floating airfields that were too easy to find, too vulnerable to nukes. SinoInd attack subs, with data provided by drones and buoy translators , fired their missiles without surfacing and moved off at flank speed to make second strikes as necessary.
The SinoInd air-launched ballistic missiles were easier to spot, and many were creamed by the tremendous wealth of defensive fire from our carriers and missile frigates. But our carriers were such potent offensive platforms that the SinoInds threw everything at them at once. For every
US/RUS carrier in the Indian Ocean, at least one nuke got within a thousand meters or so; and that was all it
Similar Books
