Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  “Worth it,” Lurch said, lifting some straps down from the walls and hooking them up. When he was done he had stuff dangling all over.

  He lifted the rifle, for want of a better term, and pointed it at a target. The weapon discharged with a rapid series of “phuts” that sounded like one continuous hiss. But that was quickly overridden by the sound of the rounds hitting the target, which began to disintegrate as the exploding rounds tore it apart in a continuous explosion.

  Lurch continued to play the weapon around the area, blowing away targets, target stands and a few wholly innocent bushes. The whole time his face was creased in a giant smile.

  “I like it!” Cady said, grinning just as widely.

  “It’s basically a Gatling gun,” Alan said, pointing to the cylinder on the breech. “The box is the ammo feed and the tanks supply air. It takes two air points to drive it, thus the two tanks. We should be able to double mount them with the feed box underneath.”

  “I think you’ve made the sergeant major’s day,” Shane said, shaking his head.

  “He can probably heft it,” Lurch said, setting the rifle down and then unslinging the canisters. “You wanna try, boy?”

  “I’ll even let you get away with that ‘boy’ crack,” Cady said, smiling. “But not forever, you Cajun hick.”

  “We gonna get along,” Lurch said, smiling and holding out the weapon.

  * * *

  “Okay, Mr. Deputy Secretary,” Danny said over the video link. “You’re set up. Advanced Research Testing and Scouting Team Alpha has been authorized with a manning of one field grade officer, two company grade officers and fourteen enlisted personnel as direct action specialists and a group of support and administrative personnel.”

  “Translate?” Roger said, smiling as his brow crinkled.

  “Shane’s got a new command,” Danny said, smiling in turn. “He requested certain personnel from his former command and they’re on their way here as we speak. I’ve drawn a few clerks and support personnel from my boys and girls. He’s only going to have about half his TOE personnel when those people are in, so he can pull for more personnel. Their primary mission is reconnaissance and analysis of alien methods and materials. Secondary mission is testing of new equipment and materials to analyze their utility for anti-probe defense. Tertiary mission is primary security for advanced design concepts personnel.”

  “I thought we had lots of soldiers around to do that,” Roger said with a grin.

  “We do,” Riggs said, still smiling but this time a bit darkly. “But if the redoubt falls, their mission is to get you to a remaining redoubt, with your material and knowledge, alive.”

  Chapter 19

  “You know what they say about Greenland, Top?” Major Gries adjusted the collar on his parka and pulled his toboggan down over his ears better as he tore open one of the new plastic-wrapped MREs and tried to eat the PowerBar without breaking his teeth. Even though he’d held the damned thing under his arm for the last fifteen minutes it was still hard as a rock from the extreme cold.

  “Other than it being goddamned cold, no, sir, what’s that?” Cady asked as he bit down into some armpit-warmed granola.

  “Well, Top, legend has it that there is a beautiful woman hiding behind every tree in the land.”

  Cady scanned the horizon in front of him and didn’t see anything taller than a yellow poppy. He knew from the fifteen kilometers that they had already hiked that there hadn’t been any f’n trees nowhere.

  “Right, Major.” Cady nibbled on the granola and worked his frozen fingers. Shane surprised him by handing him his new issue plastic field binoculars.

  “Would you look at that?” Gries nodded to the west and choked down the bit of frozen PowerBar.

  “Son of bitch. You think that tundra bird even knows what he’s sitting on?” Cady laughed at the sight. Specialist Nelms had crawled to the peak of the next ridgeline to take up the forward recon point and had remained so still that Cady and Gries were taking bets on if he was frozen to death. The specialist had been still for so long a small flock of tundra birds had wandered near him and one of them was presently perched on his head.

  “Why doesn’t he move?” Gries asked.

  “Look to the north of him about two hundred meters, sir.” Cady handed Gries back his binoculars.

  “Hmmm.” Gries scanned to the north of Specialist Nelms and found the rest of his squad.

  Staff Sergeant Gregory was moving fast through the tundra valley toward Gries and Cady, his fully automatic HE ball gun at the ready. Gregory stopped about halfway between Nelms and Gries and started making hand gestures and signals. The ground around him started to come to life as the rest of the squad rose from their camouflaged positions. Staff Sergeant Gregory continued giving orders to the seven soldiers and then suddenly he stopped, knelt, and became motionless.

  “What the hell? Want me to check it out, sir?”

  “Let’s hold it up, Top. Something’s going on here.” Surprise occurs in the mind of the commander, Shane thought. He scanned the edge of the ridge from north to south. Top had his binoculars out now and was doing the same.

  “I don’t see anything, but something has them spooked, sir.” Cady didn’t like this damned tundra. There was nothing to hide behind. No place to take cover. There was an occasional yellow poppy, grass, lichen, or sedge bush, but nothing substantial enough to stop a bullet or just to simply lie low behind.

  A flock of birds rose up squawking from the other side of the ridge, startling Gries at first since they seemed so much closer through the binoculars. Once his sense of distance adjusted he noticed the birds around Specialist Nelms take flight as well. Then a herd of reindeer crested the ridge. The reindeer ran at a ground-eating canter past the troops in the valley southwestward and did not appear as though they would be slowing down anytime soon.

  Then Shane noticed more movement on the crest of the ridge on both sides of the specialist. And the ground continued to look as though it was moving. Gries focused the binoculars again, thinking they were out of focus, and then he realized what he was seeing as the sunlight started to glint and glare back at him from the ridge.

  Forty or fifty little shiny boomerangs crested the ridge one after the next, right past and over Nelms. The boomerangs looked as though they were walking on the surface but from what Gries could see the things had no legs. The alien probes were moving slowly and although in random paths they all seemed to be moving in the same general direction — right for the troops and directly at Gries and Top.

  “Shit!” Top muttered and reflexively grasped the big ornate oak warrior club that Alan Davis had given him.

  “Well, we wanted to get close.” Shane watched as the alien boomerang-shaped probes skittered and swarmed like ants over the hill and poured down over his squad in the valley. “Don’t move, boys. Don’t move.”

  The subswarm of boomerangs made no noise as they moved except occasionally when they would do something that would cause the dirt to roll, churn, and be blown aside like from a leaf blower. But they didn’t do this often.

  “I think the little dust clouds must be when they find something they like,” Gries whispered.

  “Well, I hope there ain’t nothing on a ground pounder that they find appetizing, sir.”

  “Roger that, Top.” Shane nodded. “Looks like they’re gonna head right for us. I guess we’re gonna find out if the shakedown worked.”

  “Should we move, sir? Or are you wantin’ to dance with ’em again?” Cady asked.

  “Too many to dance with, Top. But they don’t seem to be bothering the rest of the squad and we came here to get intel and a bot!”

  “Somehow, sir, I knew you were going to say that.” Cady felt his HE ball minigun to make sure it was ready to go. The geeks had done a good job with the first production model. It wasn’t even a fourth as heavy as a real minigun and Cady could carry it and all the air packs and HE ammo for the thing he wanted without being weighted down. Then he felt up
his warrior club one more time, fondling it for confidence. “We wait, sir?”

  “We wait… quietly and very goddamned still.” Gries made himself comfortable on the ridge as if he were getting ready for a nap. A light bead of sweat rolled on his forehead even though it was only five degrees above zero.

  “Yes, sir! Still as a goddamned rock, sir.” Cady didn’t like this at all.

  * * *

  Shane was quiet as a mouse, but he was nervous as a freaking cat as the subswarm of shiny meter-long stubby boomerangs blotted out the sky as they crawled over him. Although he could see very closely — very closely — that the bots had no legs, it felt like they were walking over him as they went by. He could literally feel something stepping on him. And he could hear the faintest rustling of the tundra from the alien bot herd. Whatever they used to stir up the ground made a slight perceptible noise from that close a range.

  He and Cady had seen the things rip metal right out of concrete with some sort of invisible grasp, so he figured that they used the same force for crawling and flying. Dr. Reynolds would be better at answering that question and Shane knew he had to catch one of these things so that Roger could do just that.

  The fifteen minutes it took for the boomerangs to crawl over them seemed like at least seven years. Shane could no longer hear the faint rustling noise but that could mean they were only a few tens of meters away. He raised his neck slowly so he could see the subswarm over his feet. The bots had gotten more than thirty meters away and appeared to be paying them no attention. Shane motioned to Cady to hold fast for five more minutes.

  By the time Shane thought they had given them enough time Staff Sergeant Gregory was easing quietly up beside them. He tapped Cady on the shoulder and made some subdued hand gestures and then pointed to the southwest. Cady relayed the same message to the major. The probes were now two hundred meters southwest of them.

  “Good work, Gregory.” Shane rolled over to see the small swarm of the alien boomerang-shaped probes still traipsing across the tundra as though it were an evening stroll for them. Who knew? It might have been just that. “Gregory, are there more behind them gonna come over that ridge behind us anytime soon?”

  “No, sir,” the staff sergeant whispered. “As far as we can tell the main swarm is still four or five clicks northeast.”

  “Good,” Shane whispered. “Then that’s our target.”

  “Understood, sir,” Top whispered and nodded. Down to business, he thought. “Orders, sir?”

  “Let’s stay on their tail. Get me two or three runners out ahead of them and set the trap. Then we’ll ambush them, trying to kill all of them but one completely and we’ll just knock that remaining one out. We better do it all at once, since those damned things can fly. Let’s do it, Top.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cady grabbed Staff Sergeant Gregory by the shoulder and motioned for him to crawl back over the ridge. He dragged the minigun beside him with one hand and eased over the edge. As the two men crested the ridge and out of sight of the probes Cady rose to his feet and slung the composite HE ball minigun on his back. That was one piece of equipment he was never letting go of.

  “All right Gregory, you heard the boss. Go fetch Specialist Nelms and have him meet me down the valley five clicks south — and tell him he better beat me there. You and three others get back here and stay with the major. Put your two fastest long-distance runners on the west side of the probes and tell them to get a half click ahead of them and stay that way until they can see us through the binoculars closing in on them. When they get the signal they’re to put out the friction mines as fast as they can and then hunker down, ready to fight. Put the other two on the west side pacing with the probes. Make sure all of them are ready with the riot grenades. Got it?”

  “Got it, Top.”

  “All right then, move!”

  * * *

  The President and the Joint Chiefs studied the spysat photos of the European and Asian continent in dismay. There were already major central “hive-like” structures that were a hundred to three hundred kilometers in diameter at several major cities in Eurasia. The largest still seemed to be Paris and now that city was growing upward. More and more the recon photos showed the mammoth floating structures around the large central hive cities. Nobody had any clue what the giant floating structures were or what they were for. The alien probes had completely transformed Europe and were stretching into Russia, the Middle East, Africa, and were starting to stretch across the Atlantic into Greenland.

  “Mr. President.” George Fines, the presidential science advisor entered the War Room with the SecDef.

  “George, Jim, what’s happening?” The President could detect the look of urgency on their faces.

  “Sir, about seven minutes ago our nuclear watch seismographs detected seismic wave activity that could only be caused by multiple detonations around the globe. The detonations were of very large nuclear devices and it appears that there must have been more than fifty of them. Following that by about four minutes there were several more, perhaps ten, detonations detected,” Fines reported.

  “Where were the detonations?” General Mitchell asked.

  “There’s no way to know until the next downlink from the Neighborhood Watch sats come in. That’ll be in about twenty or so more minutes before we get any pictures that were taken after the detonations.” SecDef Stensby looked at his wristwatch to mark the time.

  * * *

  Specialists Jones and Mahoney had been the two unfortunate enough to be the fastest long distance runners in the group. They had to get back up the valley and over the ridge where Major Gries was waiting, pace faster than the men taking the west flank, and cover about ten kilometers in the same time the other men covered five. They had to do all this while not giving their positions away to the alien probes — if the things were even paying attention to them.

  Major Gries understood what was being asked of his men and he set the pace at an easy march with light bursts of run here and there. Fortunately, the terrain of the early springtime Greenland tundra was easy to make time over and only the occasional ridgeline would put his other troops or the bots out of sight. Without radio communication they had to make certain that each member of the squad was in sight of somebody else within the squad so they could daisy-chain the communications back and forth to the major. Normally they could have used watches and timed it, but they left all metal at the evac point about fifteen kilometers east before this mission, watches included.

  Major Gries still wanted to give the alien probes a wide berth and be cautious about letting their rear position overtake the alien subswarm of the boomerang-shaped bots. Gries slowed the rear group to almost a stop and surveyed the tundra through the binoculars. At least this time I’m running after the damned things instead of from them, he thought.

  “Sir, it looks like Top is in position, but he hasn’t signaled that he’s seen Jones and Mahoney yet,” Staff Sergeant Gregory whispered while looking through the binoculars at the large man brandishing a minigun like it was a paperweight. Of course, this one was, compared to a minigun that shot real bullets instead of paintballs filled with impact-mix-detonated HE.

  “Right. I can see our men on the west flank. Top is set up on the east. As soon as we get the signal from Top, we’ll start closing in on the metal bastards.” Shane rested for a second and tightened the lid on his plastic canteen. The subswarm of Von Neumann probes still looked like a herd or swarm or flock of creatures milling about the tundra and in no particular hurry. They seemed uninterested in the troops at the moment. Shane hoped it stayed that way. It would make their job a whole hell of a lot easier.

  “Sir,” Gregory whispered.

  “What?”

  “Top’s giving us the go-ahead signal, sir. Orders?”

  “Staff Sergeant Gregory, check that all team members are in position and signal the slow advance.” Shane tucked the canteen back in his standard insulated carrier pack and hoped it kept it from
freezing since the sun would be going down soon.

  “Team’s ready, sir!” Gregory said quietly.

  “Move out.”

  * * *

  Jones and Mahoney had just enough time to catch their breath when Top started signaling for them to get set up. The probes were headed in their general direction and would cover the kilometer or so up the small valley to the ambush point in probably fifteen minutes at the pace they were traveling. That would be just long enough to plant the special riot mines that Major Gries had brought along for the trip.

  The mines, as with everything else, had to have exactly zero metallic content. The weapons could be activated in several ways, all of which came down to direct motion and friction.

  Mahoney dropped to his knees, looking around and figuring out the best configuration for the mines. Among other things, they didn’t want to “paint themselves into a corner.” The only way to do it was to start at one side and work back to their position. They’d practiced extensively before deploying, but he still needed to get the lay of the land.

  “Mine one here,” he said, pointing. He pulled out the carbon fiber digging tool, which looked like a cross between a knife and a spatula, and stabbed it into the ground.

  “Crap,” he said as Jones dropped to his knees nearby.

  “What?” Jones asked, stabbing in himself. “Hey! It’s fucking rock!”

  “Permafrost, you hick,” Mahoney replied digging some of the soil aside. There was only about four inches of soft soil at the point he was digging and then it turned to solid permafrost.

  “This sucks,” Jones said, hacking at the ice-bound soil. “What the hell do we do now?”

  “Mound them,” Mahoney said, thinking quickly. He dug down as far as he could get, opened up the hole so that the mine could slide in, slid it into the hole and then dug soil from around it until there was a large mound. Packing it in on the sides held the mine in place.