John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“Call me Lurch,” the doctor said. “Everybody does.”

“So what do you have for us, Alan?” Shane asked, looking at the weapons curiously.

“Well, we’ve got the potato gun,” Alan said, hefting the PVC and duct tape construction. “No metallic parts, fires either contact explosive or Coyote rounds.”

He lifted the device to his shoulder and fired downrange at a man-sized target. The round landed behind the target with a puff and a CRACK ! at which he grimaced.

“It’s not terribly easy to aim…” he admitted. He looked back downrange and on the third round managed to hit the man-sized target at fifty yards. When he did, however, the center of the target disappeared in the resultant explosion.

“Very nice,” Shane said, frowning.

“Change out the magazine,” Alan said, pulling out the magazine and slipping in one marked orange, “and you’ve got…” He fired and this time managed to hit a target to the side, covering it in orange goop. “Coyote glue. It’s reinforced with Spectra 1000. Small snips of it are mixed in and they interlock to increase the strength of the glue. The glue bonding itself is massive; it’s the actual tensile strength of the glue, especially as it extends, that will cause failure. That and the site it’s bonded to.”

“DuPont was pretty close about that stuff, as I recall,” Shane said, his brow furrowed. “You get it from them?”

“Uhmmm…” Alan said, looking over at Lurch.

“Somebody sent me a sample,” Lurch said, shrugging. “It was easy enough to reverse.”

“Oh,” Shane said.

“Under current government operating rules, that’s okay,” Alan hastened to add. “Critical defense needs and all that. DuPont, pardon the pun, was getting sticky. So Lurch—”

“Fixed it,” Shane said, nodding and then grinning. “Great. I guess you really know your chemistry, Lurch.”

“I like exothermic reactions,” Lurch said, shrugging. “But I can do the rest.”

“He also did the contact explosive design,” Alan said. “You’ve got no idea how hard it is to make a stable contact explosive for something like this. It helps that it’s low velocity. You realize these things are going to be very short ranged, right?”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “What’s next?”

“These are paint-ball carbines,” Alan said, hefting one of the small guns. “They’ve got internal air-packs, all polymer, and we’ve got back packs for more air. Air’s the real killer with these, not the rounds. The rounds are very light, all things considered.”

He aimed the carbine at a new target and fired a series of rounds. These mostly impacted on the target, causing small bits of it to be blown out.

“From the description the sergeant major provided we think these will take out a probe,” Alan said. “They’re a binary explosive. Making the paint-balls with dual chambers was the tough part.”

“It warn’t that tough,” Lurch said. “Makin’ a lot of ’em’s going to be tough.”

“We’re working on an assembly line technique,” Alan admitted. “But it’s going to be… tricky.”

“Exothermic reactions,” Lurch said, suddenly grinning. “Big exothermic reactions.”

“So what’s the cover on?” Cady asked.

“Well, that’s Lurch’s idea,” Alan said nervously.

“I like it,” the chemist said, smiling again, his eyes lighting.

Alan looked at the two and went over and removed the tarp.

The weapon, if that was what it was, was the most bastardized thing Shane had ever seen. It had a long plastic barrel, a large breech and three lines running into it. The breech had a circular rear portion that looked something like the cylinder of a revolver. There was a trigger assembly and a shoulder stock, so it was clearly designed to be fired. But the lines ran to three large canisters so it was at the very least only semiportable.

“We’re working on reducing the size of the canisters,” Alan said hastily, interpreting Shane’s first question. “But right now, they’re marginally portable with straps.”

“That I’d like to see,” Shane said. Two of the canisters looked somewhat like SCUBA tanks while the third was simply a large plastic box.

“I done it,” Lurch said. “Black boy could.”

Shane blanched at that and looked over at Cady who apparently hadn’t noticed the slur.

“I bet I could, if it’s worth it,” Cady said, nodding.

So much for not noticing.

“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.”

“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.