Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  “Hold on, I’ll get it!” Helena grabbed another large piece of the tent material that had been slung out of the bot’s metal-eating whirlwind and she popped it like a bed sheet over the briars and the bot. “Grab de goddamn end!”

  Richard forced his way up through the briars ignoring the pain of being cut and pricked by the briars just in time to snag the middle of the light green nylon material with his left hand. He pulled it to him and got purchase with both hands and then rolled over onto it and the wildly spinning bot. Helena fell face first into the back of his head, busting her lip and cussing with every breath. She shook her head twice and raised up pushup style so she could put her knees in the middle of the tent material and on top of the boomerang. She punched at it several times through the material, never once missing a chance to use an obscenity.

  “Goddamn fuckin’ sonovabitch ting!” She kicked at it. “It von’t fuckin stop, Richard!”

  “Good! Let’s wrap it up more if we can and tie it off to something inside.” He bear-hugged the boomerang and the wad of tent and duffel bag and rolled with it out of the briars. Helena grabbed at the other side when Richard came to a stop. Richard and Helena fought with the bot and it looked to Sara Jo and Jeff like two idiots wrestling a cougar in burlap sack. A cougar might have been easier.

  The two held tight to both sides of the wad of bot and nylon and carefully moved toward the entrance to the mine. The propulsion system of the bot even in its damaged state was strong enough to lift both of them off the ground a few feet at a time, but it was no longer strong enough to get away from them. But it tossed them to and fro quite readily and was beating the two of them together, pushing them to their physical limits. Helena cursed some more.

  They made it into the mine about thirty feet and tied the bot to the nearest support beam they came to that Richard thought could hold it. He pulled the tent material around the backside of the twelve-by-twelve beam between it and the rock wall of the mine shaft. He looped it through several times and tied it in a large knot. The wad of nylon and canvas material rose upward toward the ceiling of the shaft and pulled the material tight, looking like an odd shaped helium balloon tied off to the post — a helium balloon with a cougar trapped inside it. But it was holding.

  * * *

  Jeff and his family sat huddled together sobbing and hugging one another and trying to shush the infant. They were covered from head to toe in canned goods and radiator water. Fortunately, Jeff had about run out of gasoline or they’d have been covered in that, too. There was little left of his truck but there was a pile of supplies that were dried or powdered goods in plastic or cardboard containers strewn about. And things like pinto beans, creamed corn, baby food from jars, baby formula powder, and various other food stuffs all mixed up.

  “Helena, stay with them. I’ll be right back. Find out if they’re hurt.”

  “Poor poor babies! De goddamn mean robots scare you? Don vorry, dey gone now.” She knelt beside Sara Jo and put her hand on the baby girl’s head. The baby was still crying. “I tink she needs feeding?” Helena looked at Sara Jo.

  “I need a bottle and the formula is all smashed!” Sara Jo cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she panicked.

  “Don you worry, baby. Can you breastfeed her?”

  “I can’t produce enough milk,” Sara Jo cried.

  Helena looked at Jeff as she stood. He was still holding the toddler to him. Both of them were covered in a gooey mess but they seemed unharmed. “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “De baby?”

  “Yes.”

  Helena picked up an empty torn baby formula container. The cylindrical shaped container was cardboard but it had a metal top and bottom, both of which were gone. The coffee-can-sized container lay in a pile of white powder. She scooped it up with the cardboard container, holding it sideways so as not to spill. Sara Jo realized what she was doing and started scanning the pile of debris.

  “There — the diaper bag. There’s a bottle in it.” Sara Jo pointed.

  Helena rummaged through the little blue and white cloth bag until she found a clear plastic bottle with a nipple on the end. She unscrewed the nipple from the top of the bottle and then looked at the side of the formula container.

  “It takes one scoop for two ounces of water.”

  “How much is a scoop? Dere is no scoop.” Helena looked around the pile of foodstuffs for a scooper but did not see anything useful.

  “Uh, about a heaping tablespoon. Shhh, Precious… it’s all right, honey.”

  Helena found a bottle of water amongst the debris and mixed the formula per Sara Jo’s instructions. She guessed at the amount of powder in a scoop by pouring the powder into her cupped hand. She handed the bottle to Sara Jo and watched as the little infant took to the bottle and almost immediately stopped crying.

  “Thank you,” Sara Jo sobbed.

  “Told you. Fuckin’ crazy you have dese babies out with dose goddamned aliens about.”

  Richard walked out of the mine shaft entranceway with an armload of things. He set a five gallon bucket in front of Jeff and handed him a ladle and a dustpan.

  “These will have to do. Collect up all the foodstuffs you can. Beans, peas, creamed corn, all of it and dump it in this bucket. If it looks like it got any fluids from the truck on it don’t take it.”

  “We can’t eat this! It’s, uh, it’s ruined.” Jeff looked confused.

  “It hasn’t been ruined. Oh, it has been exposed to the air. We’ll have to cook it and can it or vacuum seal it, but we can save a lot of it. Believe me, from what I’ve been reading about the rest of the world there will come a day when this mess will look like a feast.”

  “Yuck, that is just gross.” Jeff turned up his nose. It was all Helena could take.

  “Listen here ya goddamn idiot.” Helena stood in front of Jeff looking down at him. She could not help but think how badly her family in St. Petersburg must have suffered once the aliens took over. Thanks to Richard, she might be the only member of her family still alive.

  She cocked her head and leaned on her war club. “We’re tirty or fordy miles up de goddamned mountain and don have no way to get back. Where we gonna go anyway, huh? You should have taken dese babies to a shelter months ago you fuckin’ dumbass hick. Goddamn if you don listen to Dr. Richard now. He de only ting gonna save your babies, your wife, and your goddamn dumb ass. So shut your fuckin’ mouth and go an do what de fuck he says.”

  “Just do it, Jeff.” Sara Jo frowned at her husband but kept her voice low so she wouldn’t upset Precious.

  Richard took a smaller three-gallon pail from inside the larger bucket and handed it to Helena. “See how much of the baby formula you can salvage. If you get a little dirt in it, so what, don’t worry about it. We’ll sift it later.” Richard looked at the small amount of the white powder scattered throughout the pile. There couldn’t be more than three gallons of it. He was not quite sure how much of it got mixed with water but he knew damned well it was a long way from being enough to feed that little baby for more than maybe a month. These two fools had no idea how bad a situation they had put themselves and their helpless children in.

  He reached in the smaller pail and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty garbage bags. “Mommy, when you are done feeding the baby start gathering up everything you can find that is still useful or might be salvaged.”

  “We… we can’t stay here!” Jeff said looking around for more of the alien machines.

  “You can stay in the old cabin up the road if you want,” Richard grunted. He didn’t much care for these two stupid adults or at least the male.

  “Richard!” Helena stamped her right foot into the ground. “Dey will do no such a fucking ting and you goddamn know it.”

  “But Helena dear—”

  “Don you goddamned ‘Helena dear’ me. No way dese babies gonna stay up dere in dat drafty old cabin with no lectricity and water.”

  “But—”

  “You’re being a
n asshole. Dey stay down de hole with us and dat is goddamn dat!”

  * * *

  “So you are absolutely certain this is the frequency distribution of the alien transmissions?” Roger Reynolds turned and glanced at Ronny Guerrero excitedly and then back to the NSA MASINT specialist giving the briefing.

  “Absolutely, Mr. Deputy Secretary. We have verified it against the bots currently occupying recon herds in this area. This is the sequence of frequencies they’re using.”

  “Then are you saying we can understand their communications?” Ronny asked.

  “No. They’re high-bit encrypted, over 256, and we haven’t cracked that. For that matter, they seem to cycle their encryption with higher encryption bursts. But it’s at least a start. We now know exactly what the frequency spectrum of their transmissions is. Without that, decryption would never be possible.” The technician pointed out the several spikes of the transmission frequencies and continued to explain how they hopped based on a fractal basis across the spectrum. But, and it was the big but, they still needed the decryption key.

  “All right. Post all this on the website immediately,” Roger ordered.

  * * *

  “Mr. President,” General Mitchell said, looking around the War Room Advisory Committee, “latest intel shows that the bots have jumped tubes from NYC to Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore as well as all the smaller cities in between. We’re still in communication with the MIT redoubt at Hanscomb Air Force Base, but we’re hearing that the battle is not going well. They anticipate being overrun within the hour.”

  “The cities have been evacuated and the loss of civilian lives should be basically nill, sir.” Vicki reminded him. “There were holdouts, but less than ten percent of the population. And, of course, the forces in the redoubt.”

  “We can’t maintain people in those refugee camps forever, Vicki. There simply isn’t enough food and supplies. What’s the time frame we’re looking at?”

  “Sixty days,” the director of FEMA replied. “And those tent cities aren’t entirely metal free. If the bots hit them, there is going to be reduced impact but not zero impact. Among other things, any large population requires security forces. The security is provided by National Guard at the moment, but if you rip away their weapons they’re just a bunch of kids with uniforms.”

  “We anticipated that issue,” General Mitchell replied, smiling faintly. “We’re implementing training in nonprojectile and zero-metal projectile weapons.”

  “Care to translate that for me?” the President asked, frowning.

  “The units are being rearmed with staffs, quarterstaffs, and bows,” General Mitchell said, shrugging. “We’re also falling back on historical communications models.” He looked over at the aide de camp at his shoulder and then back.

  “The original purpose of an aide de camp was to carry messages, and messengers were a primary communications method as late as the First World War. We’ve established cavalry messenger posts across a large area and we’re slowly expanding that area. Even if the Internet goes down entirely we should be able to maintain communications across the U.S. Slow communications, but communications. The Army has extensive experience in continuing under rather odd conditions, Mr. President. I mean, we’ve got manuals that cover most of the conditions we’re going to be running into. As long as the food holds out, we’re going to stay an Army.”

  “Good to hear that at least one thing is working,” the President said, nodding. “Any projections as to what cities might be next?”

  “Not at this time,” General Mitchell said. “So far they’re hitting the East Coast and seem to be working south and east. We’ve established lidar sites across the country hooked into the internet and SIPARNET.”

  “Lidar is…” the President said, holding up a hand to forestall response. “That’s using lasers as radar, right?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Mitchell said, trying not to grin. “Close enough. The problem is that it’s limited as hell. But, on the other hand, the bots don’t seem to detect low-power laser. The lidar is where we’re getting some of the data on spread. We got the idea from the satellites that NRO managed to field.” He paused as an aide entered the room and handed him a message. He looked at it for a moment and then frowned.

  “Speaking of lidar, we just picked up a… call it one of the ‘main’ tubes lifting off from near where Trenton used to be. The other attacks came in on relatively low vectors, that is they didn’t get very high since the other cities were relatively close. This one is heading for altitude.”

  “Where’s it headed?” the President asked, frowning.

  “Unknown at this time,” the general said. “West. But that’s the rest of the country. Chicago? St. Louis? Here? The West Coast? Unknown at this time.”

  Another aide came in and gestured at the plasma screen on the wall.

  “We’ve finally gotten the lidar software working, sir,” the female aide said in a soft voice. “Channel ninety-two should give you a view. It’s controlled from the battle center; if you—”

  The view on the screen was of a map of the North American continent. The tube, big as it was, wouldn’t have been visible, but there was a large karat over it as well as smaller ones over the lesser tubes spreading along the eastern seaboard.

  “There goes Baltimore,” the President said. “I don’t know if I’m grateful or hate the fact that we’ve got real-time information. Not much we can do about it, is there?”

  “Something coming in on Fox,” Vicki said nodding to an aide. The screen was changed to a view of a reporter trying to describe what was going on behind him. The sound was off, but they didn’t really need it.

  Two ships, liners by the looks of them, were visible at sea. A swarm of bots was in pursuit, but even as they headed for the undefended ships another, larger, ship came into view. It was a carrier, from the perspective on the shot it wasn’t clear which, that was interposing its bulk between the fleeing cruise ships and the bot swarm.

  Flickers of tracers from the carrier’s Phalanx guns reached out towards the bot swarm but the depleted uranium rounds were swallowed to no effect. Then the swarm reached the carrier and began to cover it. And the ship began to disintegrate.

  The last shot was of the carrier’s island slumping off and splashing into the sea. By that time the ship had been eaten down below the flight deck, and fires from ruptured fuel bunkers had turned it into an inferno from which small, burning, figures could be seen falling. But the liners were well out to sea, probably beyond the range of the bots’ interest.

  “That was the Carl Vinson,” General Mitchell said to the hushed room. “Five thousand men and women. Those liners are filled with the last refugees from Washington and Baltimore. They’re headed for Bermuda. For all the good it will do them.”

  “Turn it off,” the President said quietly. “We’re just eating ourselves up watching it. But as soon as they know where that main tube is going, get me the information. And tell Dr. Reynolds that we need more than just cool toys. We need to stop them.”

  * * *

  The frequency spectrum analysis the government had made was just what Richard needed to find the key to the encryption. He generated an algorithm that would set his spectrum analyzer to follow the hopping frequency of the bots’ transmissions at maximum frequency resolution. After days of listening to the bots at those hopping frequencies he finally picked up two signals that must have been close enough for his system to pull out of the noise floor.

  As plain as day he watched the frequency modulation of each of the individual frequency spikes jitter up and down the band around the main center spike. It was that jittering signal, that frequency modulated signal embedded in the hopping frequencies that was the handshaking key.

  Richard watched as the frequency modulated signal looped and repeated a few times and then a stream of different modulations were sent. He figured that this was the exchange of encryption data between the communicating bots. He ran this data through
his credit card hacking code and there was the crypt key. Richard programmed in the algorithm to implement the key and decrypt the signals real time. He then watched a string of ones and zeroes fill the computer screen.

  He had broken the bots’ communication scheme. Now he just needed to figure out what the hell all that binary code meant. What were the alien things saying to each other? He decided to upload his data to the government with hopes that they could do something with it. Besides, he wanted to play around with the flying bot that he and Helena had caught. There was bound to be a use for it. The damaged bot was still propelling itself in the forward direction and had yet to completely fail or stop its propulsion. Richard had made some preliminary scans of the bot and could tell its communications tube was working, so he kept the thing wrapped in aluminum foil and at the lowest point of the mineshaft at the bottom of the underground river when he wasn’t analyzing it.

  * * *

  Major Shane Gries and Sergeant Major Thomas Cady stood guard around the wheeled cart. The wounded but still functional bot they had captured in Greenland was being moved down one floor of the Huntsville redoubt from where it had been stored. The thing’s propulsion unit was shot but it was still broadcasting, so they had to store it at least three stories down below the surface. Measurements of the bot emissions showed that three stories of concrete was plenty to shield the thing from its friends.

  Other than bot topography, initial analyses had only led to minimal breakthroughs in the alien mechanisms. But since Dr. Richard Horton had been in continuous contact with Dr. Alice Pike the momentum had changed for the better.

  Alice had been right all along. The program had needed Dr. Horton’s unique perspective on things. He had taken the frequency sequence discovered by Roger’s ELINT team and then used it to crack the encryption key for the alien bot’s handshaking protocols. He had e-mailed that data to her with a prospect strawman design for a bot communication device. But he had yet to figure out what to communicate to the bots that would be useful. Alice was working on that herself, but wasn’t quite there yet. She was thinking and hopefully an idea would come.