Rumors of Salvation (System States Rebellion Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

carrying high-yield fusion warheads were about to devastate Earth.
Billions would die instantly from the blasts themselves, and billions more
would die within the following days, weeks and months as the millions of tons
of dust blasted up into the upper atmosphere blocked out most of the sunlight
and heat, triggering a massive plunge in temperature. The resulting nuclear
winter would wipe out all plant and animal life. If people weren’t killed by
the radiation from the fallout, they would eventually starve to death. He
looked up at the two men who were holding onto her wrists.
     
    “Keep
her where she is until we can get some security people up here with
restraints.” He didn’t think she would cause any more trouble now, but in light
of her unusual strength, he didn’t want to take any chances. He looked over at
the Com Officer who was sitting up while trying to stop the bleeding from his
wound.
     
    “Lieutenant
Ryan!” The Astrogator jumped forward.
     
    “Sir?”
     
    “Help
Sanchez get to the Medical Bay, and as soon as you pass a working intercom
unit, order Security Personnel to the Bridge.” With his order acknowledged and
the wounded officer on his way, Romanov got up and walked back over to the main
display. The first wave of missiles was only seconds from entering Earth’s
atmosphere.
     
    Romanov
shook his head in despair as he examined the perfection of Majestic’s plan.
Those missiles were all designed to evade radar detection, just like his
cruisers. Earth’s orbiting radars couldn’t see them, and therefore the x-ray
lasersats couldn’t fire at them. Planetary Defense didn’t even know those
missiles were on their way, and he had no way to warn them! His other cruisers
had followed digital instructions from the flagship as they normally would,
under the assumption that he had ordered the attack and that his Weapons
Officer was carrying out his orders. Majestic had thought of everything.
     
    Planetary
Defense Ops:
    Chenko
jerked in surprise at the double ping emitted by the tactical display. A double
ping meant that missiles had been detected! He looked down at the display just
in time to see it zoom in to a much smaller scale. Instead of 20 light seconds,
it was now showing everything within one light second. A red triangle was
indicating the position of a newly detected ship, with multiple flashing red
dots representing missiles. Chenko felt a shiver go up his spin as he figured
out where the missiles were going. The optical sensor satellites had seen them
and could track them enough to figure that out, but with the distances
involved, optical data wasn’t nearly accurate enough for the lasersats to have
much chance of hitting them. That didn’t matter though. They had to try.
     
    “Activate
anti-missile defenses!” he shouted. The order was acknowledged immediately.
After a few seconds he heard the voice of the Duty Officer.
     
    “We
don’t have good firing solutions, Admiral. Hit probability is less than 11%.
Even if we fire multiple shots at a given target, we’ll use up all our
available lasersats, and we still won’t get them all!”
     
    Chenko
took a deep breath. “Understood. We still have to try to get as many of them as
we can. Allocate your targeting for optimum results and fire, Commander.” The
Duty Officer didn’t even bother to acknowledge the order, and Chenko let it
pass. Under the circumstances, protocol was not that important. After a few
seconds, the display flashed as those lasersats that had line-of-sight to any
detected missile exploded with thermonuclear energies that were focused for a
fraction of a second into highly concentrated beams of x-rays. Most of the red
dots disappeared, but not all of them. Chenko counted the ones left. There were
thirteen, and he was knowledgeable enough to understand that there were bound
to be more missiles that they hadn’t detected yet.
     
    “Send
out the General Alert and get me the Council Chairman,” said Chenko in