John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“Yes, sir.”

Cady grabbed Staff Sergeant Gregory by the shoulder and motioned for him to crawl back over the ridge. He dragged the minigun beside him with one hand and eased over the edge. As the two men crested the ridge and out of sight of the probes Cady rose to his feet and slung the composite HE ball minigun on his back. That was one piece of equipment he was never letting go of.

“All right Gregory, you heard the boss. Go fetch Specialist Nelms and have him meet me down the valley five clicks south — and tell him he better beat me there. You and three others get back here and stay with the major. Put your two fastest long-distance runners on the west side of the probes and tell them to get a half click ahead of them and stay that way until they can see us through the binoculars closing in on them. When they get the signal they’re to put out the friction mines as fast as they can and then hunker down, ready to fight. Put the other two on the west side pacing with the probes. Make sure all of them are ready with the riot grenades. Got it?”

“Got it, Top.”

“All right then, move!”

The President and the Joint Chiefs studied the spysat photos of the European and Asian continent in dismay. There were already major central “hive-like” structures that were a hundred to three hundred kilometers in diameter at several major cities in Eurasia. The largest still seemed to be Paris and now that city was growing upward. More and more the recon photos showed the mammoth floating structures around the large central hive cities. Nobody had any clue what the giant floating structures were or what they were for. The alien probes had completely transformed Europe and were stretching into Russia, the Middle East, Africa, and were starting to stretch across the Atlantic into Greenland.

“Mr. President.” George Fines, the presidential science advisor entered the War Room with the SecDef.

“George, Jim, what’s happening?” The President could detect the look of urgency on their faces.

“Sir, about seven minutes ago our nuclear watch seismographs detected seismic wave activity that could only be caused by multiple detonations around the globe. The detonations were of very large nuclear devices and it appears that there must have been more than fifty of them. Following that by about four minutes there were several more, perhaps ten, detonations detected,” Fines reported.

“Where were the detonations?” General Mitchell asked.

“There’s no way to know until the next downlink from the Neighborhood Watch sats come in. That’ll be in about twenty or so more minutes before we get any pictures that were taken after the detonations.” SecDef Stensby looked at his wristwatch to mark the time.

Specialists Jones and Mahoney had been the two unfortunate enough to be the fastest long distance runners in the group. They had to get back up the valley and over the ridge where Major Gries was waiting, pace faster than the men taking the west flank, and cover about ten kilometers in the same time the other men covered five. They had to do all this while not giving their positions away to the alien probes — if the things were even paying attention to them.

Major Gries understood what was being asked of his men and he set the pace at an easy march with light bursts of run here and there. Fortunately, the terrain of the early springtime Greenland tundra was easy to make time over and only the occasional ridgeline would put his other troops or the bots out of sight. Without radio communication they had to make certain that each member of the squad was in sight of somebody else within the squad so they could daisy-chain the communications back and forth to the major. Normally they could have used watches and timed it, but they left all metal at the evac point about fifteen kilometers east before this mission, watches included.

Major Gries still wanted to give the alien probes a wide berth and be cautious about letting their rear position overtake the alien subswarm of the boomerang-shaped bots. Gries slowed the rear group to almost a stop and surveyed the tundra through the binoculars. At least this time I’m running after the damned things instead of from them , he thought.

“Sir, it looks like Top is in position, but he hasn’t signaled that he’s seen Jones and Mahoney yet,” Staff Sergeant Gregory whispered while looking through the binoculars at the large man brandishing a minigun like it was a paperweight. Of course, this one was, compared to a minigun that shot real bullets instead of paintballs filled with impact-mix-detonated HE.

“Right. I can see our men on the west flank. Top is set up on the east. As soon as we get the signal from Top, we’ll start closing in on the metal bastards.” Shane rested for a second and tightened the lid on his plastic canteen. The subswarm of Von Neumann probes still looked like a herd or swarm or flock of creatures milling about the tundra and in no particular hurry. They seemed uninterested in the troops at the moment. Shane hoped it stayed that way. It would make their job a whole hell of a lot easier.

“Sir,” Gregory whispered.

“What?”

“Top’s giving us the go-ahead signal, sir. Orders?”

“Staff Sergeant Gregory, check that all team members are in position and signal the slow advance.” Shane tucked the canteen back in his standard insulated carrier pack and hoped it kept it from freezing since the sun would be going down soon.

“Team’s ready, sir!” Gregory said quietly.

“Move out.”

Jones and Mahoney had just enough time to catch their breath when Top started signaling for them to get set up. The probes were headed in their general direction and would cover the kilometer or so up the small valley to the ambush point in probably fifteen minutes at the pace they were traveling. That would be just long enough to plant the special riot mines that Major Gries had brought along for the trip.

The mines, as with everything else, had to have exactly zero metallic content. The weapons could be activated in several ways, all of which came down to direct motion and friction.

Mahoney dropped to his knees, looking around and figuring out the best configuration for the mines. Among other things, they didn’t want to “paint themselves into a corner.” The only way to do it was to start at one side and work back to their position. They’d practiced extensively before deploying, but he still needed to get the lay of the land.

“Mine one here,” he said, pointing. He pulled out the carbon fiber digging tool, which looked like a cross between a knife and a spatula, and stabbed it into the ground.

“Crap,” he said as Jones dropped to his knees nearby.

“What?” Jones asked, stabbing in himself. “Hey! It’s fucking rock!”

“Permafrost, you hick,” Mahoney replied digging some of the soil aside. There was only about four inches of soft soil at the point he was digging and then it turned to solid permafrost.

“This sucks,” Jones said, hacking at the ice-bound soil. “What the hell do we do now?”

“Mound them,” Mahoney said, thinking quickly. He dug down as far as he could get, opened up the hole so that the mine could slide in, slid it into the hole and then dug soil from around it until there was a large mound. Packing it in on the sides held the mine in place.

“Now for the tricky part,” he said. He took a long piece of carbon fiber that looked something like a thin whip and screwed it into the top of the mine. With the whip trigger in place he carefully pulled out the safety pin and pocketed it.

“This really sucks,” Jones said, as he got his second mine in place. “Nobody said nothin’ about no permafrost shit.”