John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“Well, Top, legend has it that there is a beautiful woman hiding behind every tree in the land.”

Cady scanned the horizon in front of him and didn’t see anything taller than a yellow poppy. He knew from the fifteen kilometers that they had already hiked that there hadn’t been any f’n trees nowhere.

“Right, Major.” Cady nibbled on the granola and worked his frozen fingers. Shane surprised him by handing him his new issue plastic field binoculars.

“Would you look at that?” Gries nodded to the west and choked down the bit of frozen PowerBar.

“Son of bitch. You think that tundra bird even knows what he’s sitting on?” Cady laughed at the sight. Specialist Nelms had crawled to the peak of the next ridgeline to take up the forward recon point and had remained so still that Cady and Gries were taking bets on if he was frozen to death. The specialist had been still for so long a small flock of tundra birds had wandered near him and one of them was presently perched on his head.

“Why doesn’t he move?” Gries asked.

“Look to the north of him about two hundred meters, sir.” Cady handed Gries back his binoculars.

“Hmmm.” Gries scanned to the north of Specialist Nelms and found the rest of his squad.

Staff Sergeant Gregory was moving fast through the tundra valley toward Gries and Cady, his fully automatic HE ball gun at the ready. Gregory stopped about halfway between Nelms and Gries and started making hand gestures and signals. The ground around him started to come to life as the rest of the squad rose from their camouflaged positions. Staff Sergeant Gregory continued giving orders to the seven soldiers and then suddenly he stopped, knelt, and became motionless.

“What the hell? Want me to check it out, sir?”

“Let’s hold it up, Top. Something’s going on here.” Surprise occurs in the mind of the commander , Shane thought. He scanned the edge of the ridge from north to south. Top had his binoculars out now and was doing the same.

“I don’t see anything, but something has them spooked, sir.” Cady didn’t like this damned tundra. There was nothing to hide behind. No place to take cover. There was an occasional yellow poppy, grass, lichen, or sedge bush, but nothing substantial enough to stop a bullet or just to simply lie low behind.

A flock of birds rose up squawking from the other side of the ridge, startling Gries at first since they seemed so much closer through the binoculars. Once his sense of distance adjusted he noticed the birds around Specialist Nelms take flight as well. Then a herd of reindeer crested the ridge. The reindeer ran at a ground-eating canter past the troops in the valley southwestward and did not appear as though they would be slowing down anytime soon.

Then Shane noticed more movement on the crest of the ridge on both sides of the specialist. And the ground continued to look as though it was moving. Gries focused the binoculars again, thinking they were out of focus, and then he realized what he was seeing as the sunlight started to glint and glare back at him from the ridge.

Forty or fifty little shiny boomerangs crested the ridge one after the next, right past and over Nelms. The boomerangs looked as though they were walking on the surface but from what Gries could see the things had no legs. The alien probes were moving slowly and although in random paths they all seemed to be moving in the same general direction — right for the troops and directly at Gries and Top.

“Shit!” Top muttered and reflexively grasped the big ornate oak warrior club that Alan Davis had given him.

“Well, we wanted to get close.” Shane watched as the alien boomerang-shaped probes skittered and swarmed like ants over the hill and poured down over his squad in the valley. “Don’t move, boys. Don’t move.”

The subswarm of boomerangs made no noise as they moved except occasionally when they would do something that would cause the dirt to roll, churn, and be blown aside like from a leaf blower. But they didn’t do this often.

“I think the little dust clouds must be when they find something they like,” Gries whispered.

“Well, I hope there ain’t nothing on a ground pounder that they find appetizing, sir.”

“Roger that, Top.” Shane nodded. “Looks like they’re gonna head right for us. I guess we’re gonna find out if the shakedown worked.”

“Should we move, sir? Or are you wantin’ to dance with ’em again?” Cady asked.

“Too many to dance with, Top. But they don’t seem to be bothering the rest of the squad and we came here to get intel and a bot!”

“Somehow, sir, I knew you were going to say that.” Cady felt his HE ball minigun to make sure it was ready to go. The geeks had done a good job with the first production model. It wasn’t even a fourth as heavy as a real minigun and Cady could carry it and all the air packs and HE ammo for the thing he wanted without being weighted down. Then he felt up his warrior club one more time, fondling it for confidence. “We wait, sir?”

“We wait… quietly and very goddamned still.” Gries made himself comfortable on the ridge as if he were getting ready for a nap. A light bead of sweat rolled on his forehead even though it was only five degrees above zero.

“Yes, sir! Still as a goddamned rock, sir.” Cady didn’t like this at all.

Shane was quiet as a mouse, but he was nervous as a freaking cat as the subswarm of shiny meter-long stubby boomerangs blotted out the sky as they crawled over him. Although he could see very closely — very closely — that the bots had no legs, it felt like they were walking over him as they went by. He could literally feel something stepping on him. And he could hear the faintest rustling of the tundra from the alien bot herd. Whatever they used to stir up the ground made a slight perceptible noise from that close a range.

He and Cady had seen the things rip metal right out of concrete with some sort of invisible grasp, so he figured that they used the same force for crawling and flying. Dr. Reynolds would be better at answering that question and Shane knew he had to catch one of these things so that Roger could do just that.

The fifteen minutes it took for the boomerangs to crawl over them seemed like at least seven years. Shane could no longer hear the faint rustling noise but that could mean they were only a few tens of meters away. He raised his neck slowly so he could see the subswarm over his feet. The bots had gotten more than thirty meters away and appeared to be paying them no attention. Shane motioned to Cady to hold fast for five more minutes.

By the time Shane thought they had given them enough time Staff Sergeant Gregory was easing quietly up beside them. He tapped Cady on the shoulder and made some subdued hand gestures and then pointed to the southwest. Cady relayed the same message to the major. The probes were now two hundred meters southwest of them.

“Good work, Gregory.” Shane rolled over to see the small swarm of the alien boomerang-shaped probes still traipsing across the tundra as though it were an evening stroll for them. Who knew? It might have been just that. “Gregory, are there more behind them gonna come over that ridge behind us anytime soon?”

“No, sir,” the staff sergeant whispered. “As far as we can tell the main swarm is still four or five clicks northeast.”

“Good,” Shane whispered. “Then that’s our target.”

“Understood, sir,” Top whispered and nodded. Down to business , he thought. “Orders, sir?”

“Let’s stay on their tail. Get me two or three runners out ahead of them and set the trap. Then we’ll ambush them, trying to kill all of them but one completely and we’ll just knock that remaining one out. We better do it all at once, since those damned things can fly. Let’s do it, Top.”