Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  “Lasing. Your remotes have been physically pulled to prevent the machines from taking over the lasers. Data Security did that first thing. Get up there, physically, and take control of the lasers. I’ll set up runners to manage control. Colonel Guthrie! Your troops and those lasers are all that stands between this mountain and those probes, if they get going again. Get out there with your unit. Tell them: Hold The Line. J-3. I want paper maps and markers up on the walls in two minutes. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Everyone else, we are shut down electronically. Get manual commo in place. Runners. Field phones. I don’t care if you’re using two tin cans and a string. Try to coordinate through the commo officer but get us commo until DS can get the systems back up. Go.”

  * * *

  Dick was pretty sure he had gotten ahead of the tide.

  At the first sign that a worm or trojan had gotten into the base system, he had set up a program he’d named “Babel Blaster” that shut down every link in the network. Dealing with the various worms and trojans like the MS Blaster had taught him that. As soon as the first trigger on the internal system went off, Blaster went on and began operating automatically. While Babel Blaster was running, he went into the server room and physically pulled every single cable connecting the entire base. Getting everything back in place would be a bastard. But he had written bots to manage that, as well.

  Fortunately, the worms hadn’t managed to penetrate his master controls. Those were on a 256 bit encryption. The weakness of encryption was usually at the password level. If you used a high numeric encryption scheme and then used a simple four alphanumeric password, say your birth year and month, the attacker only had to break the password. And there were only so many children’s names and so many birthdays to go around.

  Dick’s master control password was a 196 character string of random high ascii. And he never wrote it down. He may have just been a staff sergeant, but that didn’t interfere with having an eidetic memory.

  When he was sure that his master server was safe, he stopped and sat, elbow on table, chin in hand, looking at his screen. He wasn’t sure what he was dealing with but he had certain verities in life. He watched science fiction movies and TV, so he had those to go on. But he disagreed with some of it, based on his personal knowledge and training. One thing that he could simply not believe was that you could cram a full, functional, artificial intelligence into a tiny data packet. No matter how compressed the information, you still were dealing with a limited number of ones and zeros. And all the data packets that got through were small. Ergo, what he was dealing with were fucking viruses, worms and trojans. And he’d been writing those, and fighting those, for twenty years. He couldn’t say that he knew all the tricks, but he did know how to think about the tricks, how they could and could not work. How they could and could not hide.

  The problem being that most viruses, trojans and worms were detectable by “signatures,” bits of code that were really variants of earlier versions. But he was pretty sure these weren’t going to use legacy code. And he was the only person who was looking at them: Symantec’s facilities were trashed. Ditto the National Information Security site. Even “heuristic” checking wasn’t going to do it.

  He’d have to start from scratch. Okay, he could do that. And he could do more.

  “Simone, what the hell are you doing!” Lieutenant Gathers asked as he hurried into the server room. “Everybody else is running around trying to work the problem. What the hell are you doing just sitting there?”

  “Working the problem, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said, not bothering to look up. “And I gotta start somewhere. So gimme your laptop.”

  * * *

  Richard frowned at the incoming packet. The packet alleged to be a jpg, but it was clearly corrupted. However, when the “corruption” was analyzed, it turned out to be a short communique from the nice sergeant in Huntsville. The nice, apparently very clever, sergeant.

  Richard finished reading the data and then smiled. Any of his former students who had seen that smile would have dropped his class abruptly. And probably left town, taken an assumed name in a foreign country and tried very hard never to be noticed.

  Richard had never considered being a soldier. But it appeared that he had just been recruited.

  On the other hand, it was a war that he was both predisposed to and capable of fighting.

  He flexed his fingers and for just a moment wondered how clever he really was.

  He finally decided that he was clever enough. And if not, there was always the brute force approach. There were other clever people left in the world. Presumably a computer could not disconnect itself.

  * * *

  Dick looked up as a harried Dr. Reynolds ran into the room.

  “IBot transmitter computer?” Roger asked.

  “Clean as far as I know,” Simone replied. “I pulled the connections before the server that it’s hooked to got corrupted. Is it still transmitting?”

  “I think so,” Roger said.

  “It’s still clean,” Dick replied. “If these bastards got in it it wouldn’t be transmitting.”

  “Good,” Roger said, running out of the room.

  “Everyone rushing about,” Dick said, shaking his head. “Don’t they know there’s a war on?” He hit “Enter” and leaned back. All four of the attacking programs that he’d found so far had certain bits of data loaded into them. Most of the data was what to do in the event that they were discovered. But they also were supposed to report back on what they found. As far as Simone could tell, he’d prevented that. However, the data told them where to report back.

  Intelligence flows two ways. And there were still lots of people on Earth who could do something with things like the electronic location of one of the probes’ master computers and information on what protocols it expected when information was being sent in. And the difference between information and sabotage in the computer world was… very, very small.

  With one click of a keystoke, Dick had just sent the data to all of them.

  “You wanna play games, motherfucker? I’m a master of playing games.”

  * * *

  “General, the probes are coming live again,” the lieutenant said, breathlessly. “Not all of them, but quite a few. We’re engaging them as they approach, but we can’t get all of them. Some of them are headed for the antenna farm. Others are hitting places further down the mountain.”

  “They’re taking out the IBot transmitters,” the J-2 said. “At a guess. We’ve got transmitters lower down the slopes as well as the main transmitter up on the hill. And bots scattered in the minefield.”

  “Some of them are blowing up down there, but not all,” the lieutenant added.

  “The big brains on their side are overcoming the IBot transmission, somehow,” Riggs said, shaking his head. “We need somebody down here who understands the electronic assault field. Can we jam them?”

  “I can try,” the J-2 said. “But if they’re working from short range we might not be able to step on their signal. And if they’re using contact it won’t work at all. I’ll have to physically go up to the antenna park and set it to jam.”

  “Go,” the general said. “Run.”

  * * *

  Roger stopped at the top of the stairs and panted for just a second. Among other things, the elevators were out. And what with everything that had been going on the last few months, he hadn’t gotten much time to work out.

  The antenna farm had a small maintenance shed with its own computer for local testing and maintenance. It was padlocked, but Roger had brought a skeleton key in the form of a crowbar. In a few seconds he was sitting at the computer. He jacked in the USB drive and pulled out the program, then went looking for the Lola program.

  The Lola system was hooked into the 1.4 Ghz transmitter program. Roger frowned for a moment, then simply pulled it out and dropped in the Megiddo program.

  As he was initializing the transmission, the J-2 burst through the
door.

  “Who the hell pulled the lock off the door?” the angry lieutenant colonel asked.

  “Me?” Roger replied, spinning around in the chair. “Deputy Secretary of Defense Reynolds?”

  “Oh,” the colonel replied, abashed. “Sorry, sir. But the general wants me to start jamming the bots. They’re beating the IBot system.”

  “I just replaced it,” Roger replied, looking out the window. “As a deputy secretary of defense, I know that I’m not supposed to be involved in something directly operational. But as Dr. Reynolds, would you mind if I overrode the general’s order temporarily to see if this works?

  “Uh…” the colonel said then paused. “Go for it.”

  “Going for it,” Roger said, smiling.

  Four bots were in view through the door, hanging over the mountain. Roger pulled up the Megiddo program and tapped a key. All four started drifting downward until they impacted the ground. He tapped another key and they started to rise up.

  “And now…” he continued, looking over the transmitter system. “Ah, power increase. That should cover most of the valley.”

  * * *

  “What the fuck?”

  Soldiers had found that the machine gun worked just fine on the regular bots. He’d shot up most of the ones in range from his position but shooting the ones more than about five hundred meters away hadn’t done a damned thing. However, he took his finger off the machine gun as the probes started acting funny. First they drifted down to the ground, then up, then down and finally landed and stayed there.

  “Okay, would somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on around here?”

  * * *

  Shane sat back down at his computer just as the power came back on. General Riggs appeared to be listening to his earbud for a second and then nodded and hit a key.

  “Attention,” the general said through the room’s PA system. “Data Security has our systems back online. We don’t have access outside the base, yet, but they tell us that reports from lidar stations indicate that the probe waves headed for us have turned around. And the probes in our area now appear to be under our control due to Dr. Reynolds’ team.”

  Instead of the earlier cheering he got a round of skeptical faces.

  “Agreed,” he said to the unspoken majority opinion. “Colonel Guthrie, have your boys get out of the bunkers. Destroy every probe along the mountainside. Lasing, you have every probe that’s to the north and south, but use manual aiming and don’t shoot the colonel’s soldiers. Keep a few functional, but get them under wraps. Get with Major Gries to cover those protocols. I think we won. Let’s make sure that we hold onto that win.”

  “Major Gries?” the general continued on the direct link.

  “Sir?” Shane said. He’d almost taken off the headset and was already on his feet.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your loss.”

  Shane started to answer and then simply nodded, taking off the headset and shutting down his station.

  Epilogue

  “What are you doing, now, Richard?” Helena asked, setting down a reheated TV dinner by his computer.

  “Fighting a war, my dear,” Horton replied, smiling. “Creating weapons of great subtlety and power. And updating some data I sent to Huntsville.”

  “Dat’s good,” Helena replied, looking in incomprehension at the strings of ones and zeros sliding across the screen. “But you gotta eat. An army travels on its stomach.”

  * * *

  Ret Ball: You are listening to the Truth Nationwide, the only surviving radio program across this great mostly alien-bot-free country. We have open callers tonight. God Bless us! We have Tina and Charlotte from the great battleground in Huntsville, Alabama! We are thankful that you girls are still with us! What do you want to tell us?

  Caller: Oh my gosh, it’s so great that we can still talk to you, Ret! The entire city was destroyed and covered with alien bots and stuff! But WE ARE STILL HERE!

  Caller: That’s right. The Internet is still working and everybody needs to know that there is a bot intelligence trying to attack all our servers!

  Ret Ball: How do you know this, girls?

  Caller: Our parents are part of the defense scientists and told us.

  Ret Ball: Is there anything we can do to help?

  Caller: Uh, sure, like, all you hackers out there could start hacking back at the thing or at least that’s what my mom says.

  Ret Ball: You heard it here folks. Any hackers out there start attacking the alien intelligence on what is left of the Internet.

  * * *

  “Internet’s under full-scale assault,” Traci said, munching on a sandwich and watching her monitor. “On the other hand, I think every hacker on Earth is going after that source from France. And they seem to be fighting the attacks against servers here, too. There’s probably a lot of them in the refugee camps; you oughta see about getting them some support. Too bad we can’t just send The Atom and the rest of the Justice League of America, huh?”

  “The Atom? Hmmm…” That gave Roger an idea. “Put it in my to-do file and make a reminder note about The Atom. That’s a good idea,” Roger said. “But right now we have some heroes to say goodbye to. Right after the funerals.”

  Most of the lost soldiers had family requests to be buried at the Huntsville memorial site. A few, including posthumously promoted Sergeant Allen Nelms, had family requests to be buried at other locations. A memorial service would be held for those at the Huntsville site later in the day.

  * * *

  Two probes, their surface now shifted from glittering steel to bands of red, white and blue, held the coffin a meter off the ground as honorary pallbearers walked on either side.

  On command, they gently lowered it into the hole blasted into the top of the mountain by other probes. Sergeants Jones and Mahoney held onto the flag, both one-handed since Mahoney had a fractured wrist, as the casket was lowered into the ground. The remaining pallbearers fell into line, holding their weapons, standard M-4 rifles, at salute. There was supposed to be a separate honor guard, but nobody was willing to give up either slot.

  “It is fitting that this soldier be laid to rest, here on the site of his last battle,” General Riggs said to the gathered soldiers and civilians. “Many fell this day, but none led the way so well or with such conviction as this soldier. He stood at the gates, defending his home, his honor and his land as sternly as any Trojan and leading by example so that others stood there with him. By holding this line they gave everyone else the most precious thing possible in war: time. Today, the enemy that killed him works for us. Through the efforts of many people, some here today and others far away, we found the Achilles’ heel and Paris’s arrow flew true.

  “Sergeant Gregory will be missed. But others take up the battle in his stead. They continue to shine in the light of his leadership and devotion, and they will continue to carry the battle to the enemy. No soldier could ask for more.

  “Sergeant Major.”

  Cady’s right arm, which had been almost severed by the falling probe, was neatly capped by a black cloth. Dr. Reynolds had assured him that the remaining resources of Asymetric Soldier could craft him a prosthetic that was damned near as good as new. Maybe a little better. But he didn’t need it for this duty, only his voice.

  “Detail, prepare to render salute! Present Arms! Fire!… Load Arms!… Fire! Load Arms!… Fire! Order Arms!”

  Jones and Mahoney had to get help folding the flag. But after it had been presented to the general — Gregory’s wife and kids were somewhere in a refugee camp in Kentucky — they got in line to drop dirt into the hole.

  “So long, Sergeant,” Jones said. “Keep the fire warm.”

  “Yeah,” Mahoney added, trying to think of something appropriately clever and philosophical.

  Overhead four of the new bot propulsion fighters flew by. The sleek craft were piloted by the only surviving “Rednecks.” One, piloted by Colonel “Bull” Ridley, banked off into the missing man fo
rmation. All four of the swept wing forward canard fighters glittered red, white and blue in the bright afternoon sun. Behind them came rank upon rank upon rank of red white and blue flying machines, all under the control of humanity. They filled the skies momentarily and then banked down into the valley to land on the remains of Huntsville, there to await their next command.

  Mahoney looked back down and gave up. In the end, all the philosophical words were hollow, so he said goodbye as a soldier.

  “We are so going to kick those machine bastards’ asses.”

  * * *

  Citadel

  Languid waves of desperation

  fall before the rains

  A vanguard to approaching war

  is borne upon the sea

  The icy breath of cyclones bent

  on waging our destruction

  Drills hard against the hearts of heroes

  called here to defend

  I see storms on the horizon

  I see the tempest at the gates

  I see storms on the horizon,

  and a citadel alone

  Clinging brave, defying fate

  And I will stand here at the gates to face the onslaught fighting

  Without surrender or defeat

  With Troy besieged by tyrants’ greed —

  In Hector’s memory, God willing

  We shall save this victory

  Without surrender or defeat

  Sudden silence — I realize

  breaking teardrops in the rain

  With every breathing moment

  the pillars are sustained

  And waking hands attached to nothing