John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

They rocketed out of the mouth of the tunnel doing nearly a hundred and twenty and as soon as they were out Cady took his foot off the pedal.

“I’m getting damned tired of running away from these things,” the master sergeant said, angrily.

“Then figure out a way to fight back,” Shane said.

The C-130 lifted from London just as the probes began to spread across the English Channel. The giant cargo plane was filled with shell-shocked and wounded soldiers and civilians packed in as tight as they could fit. Gries and Cady made their way to the back of the plane, taking stock of the people on board and gathering intel from their stories. As they made it to the back of the plane Shane noticed in the dim lighting of the cabin a lieutenant colonel in flight gear with a bloody stick poking out of his left shoulder. The man looked like he had seen better days. Shane saluted him.

“Major Shane Gries, sir. This is Master Sergeant Cady.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Ridley.” Ridley half saluted the major and the master sergeant. “This Belgian fellow here is Flight-Lieutenant Rene Lejeune.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind my saying, you look as though you could use some medical attention.” Gries nodded to the stick.

“Well, they promised to take that damned thing out in London, but I guess it’s been in there for more than a day now so it can wait till we get to the States,” the lieutenant colonel said dryly.

“What happened to you, sir?” Gries asked.

Ret Ball: We have yet to hear any word from Europe. We can only pray that the NATO troops there are holding their own. Next caller, Frank from Albuquerque, you’re on the Truth Nationwide.

Caller: Hi, Ret! The media is only coming across on local stations and over Internet broadcasts! My satellite dish gets no signal and my cable company only has the local channels active. I don’t think the infrastructure is there any longer to get the news from around the world. Are we being pushed back to the pretechnology era?

Ret Ball: That is a really good question, Frank. Are we? What is the intent of this alien threat? Aha, Megiddo is on line two. Go ahead Megiddo, old friend, you are on the Truth Nationwide.

Caller: Hello, Ret. I’ve been listening to all of the military channels with my spectrum analysis equipment and I can tell you that the units that were deployed have stopped transmitting.

Ret Ball: How could you know that, Megiddo? The forces were deployed in Europe.

Caller: Oh that, I’ve been DXing by listening to signals bouncing off the ionosphere. I’m sure others out there have noticed this. Not long after the deployment there was plenty of encrypted communication taking place. But now… there is nothing.

Ret Ball: And why do you think that is, Megiddo?

Caller: I think it’s obvious, Ret. Those units no longer exist; they have been destroyed.

“They wanted to keep you in Washington,” Roger said as Shane settled into the chair in the hastily made conference room. The “core” of the Neighborhood Watch group was seated around the table, which was really a dining table, to debrief the two soldiers. “But we convinced them you’d be better utilized giving us the skinny directly.”

“Thanks,” Shane said, sighing. “I really don’t want to be in D.C. when those things get here.”

“I don’t know where I want to be,” Cady interjected. He’d gotten a new uniform and a new set of sergeant major’s insignia to go with it. “Maybe on a mountain somewhere in a log cabin with some wooden farming implements.”

“What’s the word on England?” Shane asked, nodding at the sergeant major’s comment.

“You made it out of England just in time,” Tom answered somberly. “They crossed the Channel when your flight was still in the air. All contact has been lost with the south of England and it’s spreading north. All of northern France, half of Germany, all of Belgium and the Netherlands are gone.”

“Belgium, huh. I guess Rene will be staying with us for while,” Shane said. Cady nodded in agreement.

“Who’s Rene?” Alan asked.

“Long story, you’ll meet him sooner or later, but he was one of the two surviving pilots of the northern aerial assault. He and USAF Lieutenant Colonel Ridley were both part of the NATO-Euro Falcons. They were on the plane with us from London. They were really banged up. I told him they should come visit us when they were better.”

“They had a rough go of it,” Cady added.

“Go ahead and tell us what you saw,” Roger said, nodding at Shane and turning on a digital recorder. “Start from when you first saw the probes. When you’re done, we’ll get to the questions. We’ll send the recording out on the net so everybody can get a look at it. There’s not going to be any securing data from this point on; that decision has already been made. But you’re the only people we can find who got an accurate look at the probes and made it back to tell about it.”

Shane related the story of the fallen Stryker battalion and the flight through the tunnel, shaking his head as he did.

“I didn’t want to just run away,” he admitted. “But Colonel Schon made it pretty clear that that was my job.”

“That’s what he was telling you,” Cady said, “when he drew you aside.”

“Yeah,” Shane replied. “That’s what he was telling me.”

“And he was right,” Roger said firmly. “There’s important stuff in what you just described.”

“How long do you think it took those two to twin?” Tom asked. “It sounds like mitosis, just like a bacteria.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Shane admitted. “It was just like watching a cell divide. I wasn’t timing it but maybe thirty seconds, a minute. No more.”

“How close did they get?” Tom asked, his eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?” the sergeant major asked.

“How far away were they from the metal when they… sucked it up?” Tom expanded.

“Oh,” Shane said, frowning. “Not far. They got down to within a meter or so when they were ripping apart the Humvee. I… you know, I never saw them… pull from farther away than a meter or two.”

“They were right above head height when they attacked me,” Cady said. “They seemed to stay down at that level most of the time when they were… searching, I guess.”

“Two meters or so?” Tom said, nodding. “Interesting.”

“You think the… what is going on with that?” Roger asked. “Tractor field?”

“Something like that,” Tom said, nodding again. “Call it that for now. How is the sixty million dollar question. But it appears to be range limited.”

“Yeah, point,” Roger said, making a note.

“And they were only going for formed metal?” Alan asked.

“Yeah,” Cady said. “But they went for everything. I mean, they were ripping the dog tags off so fast people were getting their heads cut off.”

“No dog tags,” Roger said, making a note.

“Way beyond that,” Shane replied. “They ripped out everything. Wiring, torn-apart cars. And you should hear Lieutenant Colonel Ridley describe how they tore apart their F-16s.”

“They really liked the armor on the tanks,” Cady pointed out.

“Heavy metals,” Tom said, nodding. “Makes sense. Heavy metals are going to be universally in short supply due to the way they’re made.”

“Well, all you need is a lot of heat, right?” Cady asked. “You sort of melt it and roll it out—”

“He means how the atoms are made,” Roger said, smiling slightly. “Not how you form the metal. You know how atoms are made?”