Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  As the rounds, hosing out of the modified paintball guns at over six hundred rounds per minute, began to slam into the packed-together probes it created chaos. For the probes. Probes hit on a wingtip tumbled sideways, slamming into the probe next to them or jinked up or down or knocked even into a spin. Up meant a brief shower of crackling electric metal as the probe, armored as it was, hit a multimegawatt laser at very short range. Down meant slamming into a tree, the ground or the onrushing bluff. Probes crashed into each other in a shower of metal, turning into nearly ton-weight balls of shattered metal and electrical discharge.

  But momentum wins every time, and the probes had been headed for the cliff. Which meant that all that shattered metal was headed for the five people lining the cliff-top.

  Jones couldn’t look sideways as he saw a chunk of probe the size of a large bicycle pass through the space to his right but he didn’t really have to; there was a sudden spray of arterial blood that wasn’t really survivable. Whatever had happened to Nelms, the sniper wasn’t going to be going home to Des Moines, Iowa.

  Top was next to him, hosing just as he was and screaming just as loud. There was just something about the situation, a seemingly unstoppable wall of metal winging towards them at four hundred miles per hour with only a wall of very small exploding rounds keeping the metal from hitting them, that called for one primal scream after another. Top’s was just a lot deeper than everyone else’s.

  * * *

  One of the vids on the laser bunker had a good shot of the firefight going on at the edge of the cliff and Shane nodded to himself as he watched. There was only one thing wrong with the picture from his perspective. Too many of the probes were getting too high before being hit by the laser. Two had made it over the edge of the bluff but the backup team had managed to hit them before they did whatever they intended to do to the laser bunker. So he keyed his mike.

  “Platoon, get lower. The laser is coming down.”

  * * *

  Jones didn’t really hear the CO. He could only focus on the onrushing wall of metal. But he did notice when the probes started exploding much closer overhead.

  This led to louder screaming. But he kept his finger firmly planted on the trigger.

  Two thousand rounds. Six hundred rounds per minute. Three and a half minutes. How long as this been going on? It seems like about a year… I think I’m already in hell.

  * * *

  “Colonel,” Shane said over the link to the 82nd Brigade commander. “I very much need someone to get some ammo up to my platoon, sir.”

  “Already on it, Major.”

  * * *

  Suddenly the gun stopped spitting little plastic death and Jones pulled the trigger in shock. His extensive experience told him there should be more rounds in the massive box he was carrying.

  He quickly looked right and realized that Letorres had replaced Nelms. On the other side of Letorres a trooper he didn’t recognize was holding one of the big ammo boxes and preparing to replace the one on Mahoney’s back. A quick check back and he realized that another troop, from the 82nd by his shoulder patch, and Private Gibson were both working to replace his. The 82nd trooper grinned at him and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “You’re up,” the trooper said, standing up.

  Jones jerked his head around in time to keep the splash of superheated fluids out of his face, but he heard the thump and felt something warm and very wet land on his legs as part of the trooper’s helmet, and some skull, landed next to him.

  The scream he let out segued nicely into opening fire.

  * * *

  “Damn,” Shane muttered.

  The probes attacking the laser site seemed to realize they were losing. Or, at least, were very close to stalemated. So they’d changed tactics. He’d always suspected that at the top of the slope they would sacrifice the lead ranks to cover for the followers. As he watched, they started doing just that, but created two cover groups, one against the fire at the top of the hill and one against the lasers. About fifty meters downslope, the probes began rotating their bodies so that their upper portion was pointed towards the fire. They also began to slow, perhaps as a function of air resistance but more likely as deliberation. The combination of the laser and the troopers on the ridgeline hammered this wall of metal, but the upper portion, at least, of the probes was armored. And in this more deliberate formation they were no longer slamming into each other catastrophically. Probes were dying, but not faster than the overall group was making it up the mountain.

  “Major,” one of the intelligence NCO’s said over the link. “You might want to know that we now have four groups spotted that have stopped assimilation of Huntsville and appear to be reconfiguring.”

  And they had plenty of probes to throw away.

  * * *

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUUUUCK!” Jones shouted as the wall of flipped up probes rode over his position. At that point they were taking the direct fire of the laser, which had been narrowed down to only fire on the vector the probes were attacking from.

  The laser was destroying rank after rank of the probes, but the result was air full of melted metal showering down on the few survivors of the platoon.

  The sound was indescribable, a screaming maelstrom of shrieking metal unlike anything Jones had ever heard. He was being continuously pounded with chunks of metal falling on his arms, his head, his legs. He tucked into a ball, trying to take as much of the impacts on his armor and helmet as possible, his hands tucked into his stomach and legs drawn up under him. But some of the “chunks” were spitting enough electricity to supply a large home and much of it was arching into the bodies of the survivors. He was continuously jolted with lighting bolts. If he survived this he swore he would never come near anything electrical again. Other chunks were nearly full sized probes and when one of those slammed into him he felt at least one bone in his arm crack, which elicited another scream.

  Life had become trying to survive the clash of two behemoths of destruction. There was nothing to do but try to live through it.

  Corporal Zirnheld can kiss my ass. I just want a nice quiet house someplace with a garden and pool…

  * * *

  The scenario on Monte Sano Mountain was being repeated. But this time his troops were caught in the maelstrom and Shane could see them being covered in chunks of metal. They hadn’t had time to get their masks on so even if they survived, they were liable to die from the gaseous metal they were breathing.

  The worst part was, the probes were now over the rim and they were starting to flip upwards. Most of them were being killed but he watched as one group finally managed to flip so that those cannon-like projectors faced the bunker.

  And then the screen went blank.

  * * *

  With a final series of rending crashes, all the sound stopped.

  Jones just lay still for a moment wishing that whoever was screaming in pain right by his ear would just stop for the love of God. Then he realized that it was him. The sound was being reflected back by the piles of melted bots covering him.

  The air tasted and smelled foul with metal so he reached for his gas mask and let out another, quieter, scream when he realized that his left arm was the one that was broken. He reached across his body and got the bag open, then pulled the mask out and fitted it. He had to take off his helmet. This required moving a few bits of probe wreckage.

  He finally managed to get the mask fitted and sealed one-handed, then pushed up with his right hand, shoving upwards and shedding off the cloaking layer of metal.

  The first thing he noticed was metal. Lots of it. Scattered. Metal. Lots. Ouch. Some of it was still sputtering with electricity.

  Looking around he realized why the bots had left. The bunker had been chewed. Either they were using some sort of explosive round or a gee-whiz science-fiction ray that they hadn’t shown off before. It was definitely something explosive; the chunks taken out of it weren’t uniform like they’d been cut out by the probe recycl
er beam or whatever. They were big, nasty explosive holes.

  The line of bodies at the base of the bunker he almost didn’t notice. Apparently the 82nd guys had taken shelter by the bunker. Fat lot of good it did them; it looked like the bunker buster beams or whatever had hit some of them. And the rest had probably been killed by spalling.

  “Top?” he croaked, “ ’Torres?” then was shaken by a round of hacking coughing. He managed to get his mask off and spit out the nasty metallic-tasting phlegm, sealed the mask, got a breath of air, unsealed, got a drink, sealed and got another breath. Then another set of coughing, repeat.

  “Top? ’Torres? Mahoney?”

  “Fug ib,” he heard from under the rubble and then Mahoney slowly pushed his way to the surface. He had a mask on as well. “Fug ibs!”

  “Yeah,” Jones replied, looking at where Letorres and Top had been. He wasn’t sure about anyone else. There was a big pile where Top had been and one of the bots…

  “Oh… fuck,” he muttered, stumbling towards the spot.

  * * *

  “General, Laser One is down,” the J-3 said. “Forty percent of the defense points on the mountain are out of communication. Penetrations on tunnels four and nine. Penetration halted, temporarily. Forty percent penetration across Phase Line Ugly. And there’s a new wave of bots headed for the mountain. Some of them are configured for antilaser attack and they appear to be vectoring for the discovered tunnels.”

  “Play the music,” the general said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. Like a gambler who has turned his last card, tossed his last chip and thrown his wallet on the pile, all he could do now was see what Lady Luck would turn up in the other player’s hand. He’d keep his poker face on to the end.

  * * *

  Jones looked down into the valley and tried not to throw in the towel. The entire mass of probes had risen up from Huntsville, like a Krystal burger after a late night of drinking, and was headed for the mountain. Clearly, however, the bots “thought” on an operational level; they’d decided that the mountain was the center of the defenses and needed to be eliminated.

  He was less worried about them at the moment, though, than the pile of metal around the sergeant major. One of the chunks was most of a bot, and the “wing” had fallen downward, directly onto where he remembered the sergeant major being.

  He began digging at the pile frantically, trying to get under the heap as the cloud of probes rose up the mountain like an evil fog.

  * * *

  Shane swore, softly, as most of the bots in view stopped moving. Those that had been screaming through the air towards the mountain drifted to a stop with a certain amount of jostling and then just… hung as if waiting for something.

  “IBot is working,” the J-3 called. “Probe advance halted.”

  “Open up with lasers three and four,” General Riggs said. “Have them engage all bots in the valley.”

  “Yes! Yes!” “Hot Fuckin’ Damn!”

  The control center erupted in cheering soldiers as the lasers began tracking across the still probes, blasting them out of the air. Shane, however, still was glued to his seat, unable or unwilling to believe that this was as complete a victory as it appeared. So he was one of the few to hear the J-2 section.

  “Increase in traffic,” J-2 reported. “Signal strength increasing. Something’s going—”

  Suddenly, the halted bots started moving again. And every bot in the valley was now headed for Weeden Mountain.

  “Lidar reports probes lifting off from Chattanooga, Tuscaloosa, Atlanta area — Christ, every damned probe in the Southeast is headed for us!”

  * * *

  Sergeant Simone was pleased that this Megiddo guy, who looked to be a better cracker than it had first appeared, had something useful for Dr. Reynolds. Dick wasn’t sure what it was or how the battle was going; he worked another front. The “Real World” had its warriors and the electronic world had its own. Dick Simone knew where he sat on that divide.

  There was a ping from his system as somebody else tried to penetrate the system. As he was bringing up the program to track them, another ping went off, then a series that sounded very much like an alarm.

  As far as he could tell, at first, it was a simple Denial of Service attack. A DOS occurred when someone, usually using various controlled remote systems, hammered an ISP’s servers with pings, effectively shutting down service from the server. But this one was different. Every single packet contained some sort of cracking program, most of them things Dick, who thought he had seen them all, had never vaguely encountered. Most had dumped to the honey trap, but they were running rampant through there, while others had managed to hammer past two firewalls and were getting to his final line of defense. Somebody had managed a zero day exploit on Blowfish. And more were coming in!

  He barely had time to look as the tracker program popped up with the source of at least one of the attacks, but he was glad that he’d spared it a glance. As soon as he did, he swore, stopped what he was doing and slammed his chair backwards towards the server wall.

  “What’s going on?” Lieutenant Gathers asked. The data security officer was a nice guy and pretty good at running the show, but Dick wasn’t going to take the time to answer. Instead, he flipped open the server door, slid to the floor and hurriedly yanked the main cable connecting the system to the Internet then did the same for SIPARNET.

  “Sergeant Simone, would you please explain—” the lieutenant started to say then froze as the computer in front of him started to go haywire.

  “We’re under attack,” Simone replied, slamming back into place and starting diagnostics on the computer network. It was clear that there were worms in the system; the only question was whether he could get ahead of them and start isolating them.

  “I know we’re under attack,” the officer replied, looking at his system. “There are about a billion probes—”

  “No, I mean we are under attack, sir!” Dick yelled. “And it’s coming from France!”

  * * *

  “Can we use this?” Roger asked, looking at the code of the program. It was… complicated.

  “Megiddo’s not going to send us something that would be harmful,” Traci said definitely. “Everything he’s sent so far has been useful.”

  “We ain’t got much choice, Roger,” Alan pointed out. “We’re kinda outnumbered, Kemosabe.”

  “Agreed, okay we’ll—”

  “Whoa!” Traci said. “We’re under electronic attack. I mean, there’s something in the base system that just hit our internal wall and bounced.”

  “Huh?” Roger said. The Asymetric Soldier group used a network separate from the main base network. They used the same physical systems for accessing SIPARNET and the Internet, but their internal working server was of a higher classification than the standard base system, so it was internally sealed off from most of the base systems.

  “We’re getting more hits,” Traci said. “Something’s in the internal base system and trying to get through to ours. Damn,” she added, clicking a pop-up. “Add that it nearly made it. I just cut us off from the main base system.”

  “We can’t upload this to the base computers, now,” Tom pointed out. “Even if it worked.”

  “The hell we can’t,” Roger said. “The computer controlling the IBot program is up in the antenna farm. All we have to do is run this program up and load it to it.”

  “Roger, that’s the top of the damned mountain,” Traci pointed out, hitting another key. “I didn’t even know we had that connection. What the hell is this thing?”

  “Pull the physical connections,” Roger said, sliding a USB memory card into the side of the laptop he’d moved the Megiddo program to. “I’ll give you two guesses where that attack is coming from, and only one counts.”

  * * *

  Shane blinked as the lights in the room went off then back on, then off, leaving the room lit only by red safety lights. His monitor flickered as well, changing views wit
hout command several times then went off. He looked over to the general just as a heavyset Air Force officer burst through the doors to the command center and stumbled down to the J-2 desk.

  Most of the officers and NCOs in the room were muttering or questioning what had happened but Shane leaned back in his chair to watch the general. The major knew that there wasn’t anything in his area of control, or expertise, to be done about whatever was happening. All he could do was wait a few moments to see if things calmed down. And he wanted to watch what Riggs was going to do.

  The J-2 listened to the heavyset lieutenant and then swore and got up and headed for the general. Other senior officers were closing in around the commander but the J-2, despite being a shrimp and outranked by most of them, shoved his way through and leaned over to whisper in Riggs’s ear. Given that a colonel was whispering in the other ear at the same time, Riggs seemed to be taking both conversations in.

  Riggs nodded for a moment, then waved the J-2 and the colonel away and stood up.

  “Listen up,” the general said. “We just got hammered, electronically, by the enemy. They got past most of our electronic defenses. They’ve got trojans and worms in the system which is why everything is shut down: what wasn’t corrupted by the attack has been taken off-line to prevent them getting into it. Data Security has most of it isolated and stopped the attack from the outside. Which is good: given that these things are ahead of us technologically and they are, after all, flying computers, the fact that we could stop them at all is surprising.