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

over from the day birds. The rumbling of the horses jaws as they eat the hard corn, their aroma, pungent, yet pleasing in an earthy way. The woman I love standing quietly beside me, knowing my thoughts, sharing this with me. These fleeting moments of deep and simple pleasure sustain. This is the way it should be all the time...

Chapter 4
    B ack at the kitchen table, Adrian and the Admiral were once again seated along with Matt, Perry, Roman and Tim. Sarah and Linda had also joined them.
    Adrian said, “I have an idea, but I have to put it into perspective for it to make sense, so bear with me a bit. When the solar storm wiped out the world’s electricity grids, civilization as we knew it went down the tubes over-night. We had become too dependent on a vulnerable electric supply system. Everything depended on electricity, and to top that off our food supply and distribution system was too centralized… food had to be shipped from distant places on a daily basis. When that was interrupted mass starvation quickly followed.
    “Third world countries fared better than we did – many of them were basically unaffected. Then there’s China – halfway between a third world and first world country, their population almost evenly split between agriculture and industrial. When the gird dropped, the Chinese government forced everyone out of the cities, out onto the farms. It was hard, but it worked and most of their citizens survived… they didn’t face the famine we did.”
    Adrian stood up and began slowly pacing the room as he talked. “As soon as they were stabilized they began bringing select people back to the cities. Engineers and skilled workers, and thousands of trainees. They began rebuilding their electric infrastructure, and as each area was powered up they brought factories back on line. They concentrated on the areas that would do the most good for them… including the shipyards. The major constraint for them has been fuel for their power plants. They were a net fuel importer before the grid dropped, and quickly reached growth capacity based on their own internal resources. To continue their progress they need more fuel. Primarily they need refined oil.”
    Adrian sat down again. “They took over all the oil fields they could reach – the off-shore oil platforms were the easiest to take – but they weren’t nearly enough. They also have a shortage of refineries to turn crude oil into fuels. The obvious solution for them is to look at us… thousands of sources of oil, thousands of miles of pipelines, hundreds of refineries… a greatly weakened Navy… and no centralized government running the show. Pretty much all they have to do is show up and take over, then they can send refined fuels back to the homeland as fast as they can load the tankers and turn them around.
    “Their Navy is no match for our Navy, even under these circumstances. We have superior weaponry. On their side though, they can resupply their armaments and we can’t. Once we’ve depleted our supply of munitions, we’re helpless and they can shoot us out of the water at will. But first they have to get us to shoot until we run dry, and shoot at targets other than their Navy. They have amassed a huge armada of commercial ships, and have virtually unlimited manpower to put on those ships. I believe that what they are going to do is load up all of those commercial ships with as many soldiers as each ship can carry, launch them all at us, at both coast lines, and spread them out as far apart as they can in the process.
    “They know that we can’t afford to let those ships land and deploy their soldiers onto our shores. They believe we’ll use up our munitions stopping that invasion. It’s a war of attrition – they’ll sacrifice as many ships and men as it takes to force us to deplete our fighting ability. Then their Navy moves in and destroys our Navy. Once our Navy is destroyed we’ve lost the war and they can land and take over any