John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“I guess they thought it’d be melted off,” Mahoney said. “Now shut up and dig.”

With the last of the sixteen mines planted, Mahoney tapped Jones on the shoulder and motioned to back off to their cover point. The two specialists slipped back up the valley about thirty meters and took cover in a low spot in the tundra. Jones lay flat on a bed of yellow tundra poppies.

“Did you signal Top?” Jones nudged the other specialist and pulled out his binoculars.

“Shit, I thought you did. Hold,” Mahoney raised to a knee and made a couple of quick hand motions. “Did he see it?”

“Top gave thumbs up. Do the same and get the fuck ready.” Jones set the binoculars on the poppy bed in front of him and took aim with the HE ball gun. Mahoney signaled and readied his HE ball gun and loaded a riot grenade canister in his potato gun.

“Nelms, when you get the word I want you firing that potato gun as fast as you can, got it?”

“Right, Top! Ready.” Nelms had all ten of the riot canister magazines he and Top had brought strapped across his shoulders on their bandoliers and his potato gun at the ready.

“Okay, hold one.” Top looked to the north and gave the major the signal that they were ready to go and waited for the return signal to go ahead.

“Sir, west side is ready,” Sergeant Gregory informed the major.

“Good.” Shane readied his potato gun and the Kevlar and Spectra 1000 net that the Huntsville scientists had put together for him.

“All right, troops, remember your orders. We shoot the motherfuckers dead! Every goddamned one of them but the one the major shoots with his special bag. I want suppression fire to keep those damned things from flying away and stay ready with the potato guns.” Staff Sergeant Gregory gave a nod to the major. “Ready, sir.”

“Move out!” Shane gave the go signal to Top on the east flank while Gregory motioned the west flank on.

The first two or three minutes were uneventful and nerve-racking as the rear and side flanking positions closed in around the little alien probes. The forty or fifty some-odd shiny metal boomerangs skittered over the ground as if they were cattle grazing. Perhaps that’s what they were doing.

But the ambush plan was perfect. The little bots sauntered unaware right into the minefield.

The long whip was attached to a detonator. As soon as the first bot touched the whip it was bent slightly sideways. This released a shear pin, which in turn released a spring-loaded firing pin. The firing pin detonated the primer, which triggered a pre-charge. The pre-charge traveled downwards to a launching booster and a moment later the primary charge detonated.

The first riot mine erupted upwards, then the primary detonated, spreading the Coyote glue into a small spheroid cloud that settled over several of the probes.

“Fire!” Gries gave the word and the rear flank opened up on the unsuspecting bots.

FWOOOMP! FWOOMP! FWOOMP! FWOOMP! Sounded the potato guns from all directions. Several riot grenades detonated just above the small swarm of boomerangs and spread the Coyote glue, covering a majority of the swarm sparsely, but enough to stick them to the ground and temporarily prevent them from flying away. And then came the rapid spikt spikt spikt of the HE ball guns, followed by the kerpow of the HE balls detonating against the bots and the tundra.

FWOOOMP! FWOOMP! FWOOMP! FWOOMP! Several more riot grenades detonated and the confused bots triggered several more of the mines that Jones and Mahoney had emplaced. Top rushed to the edge of the gooey cloud, spattering away at the loose bots with the minigun. HE balls exploding at more than two hundred a second made an interesting visual and sound effect. The HE balls were proving effective against the bots. It appeared that the alien boomerang-shaped probes were no more or less fragile than earthbound vehicles and materials and the HE balls disposed of them in a nice little fireball of scattering bot shrapnel.

Jones and Mahoney held their positions, firing both HE balls and riot canisters as fast as they could. Gries and the rest of the rear flank pressed inward until the major didn’t think moving closer was a wise idea.

“Check advance! Round ’em up!”

Privates First Class Gibson and Letorres pushed the west flank inward. The Coyote glue would hold an individual bot for a few seconds while it tried to spin and wriggle out of the glue’s grip. When that would fail, the alien boomerangs would propel upward very fast, stretching the glue to its elastic limit. Where a bot was held by a thick glob of the riot glue it would be yanked back downward into the tundra hard. The impact would render the probe useless in a shower of sparks. Gries noted how it looked like a special effect from a cheesy science fiction movie when the things malfunctioned or were knocked down.

Several of the bots nearly reached the elastic limit of the sticky mess to freedom — nearly. But the flower that rises above others is cut down. Out of the mix they were natural targets for the HE ball guns, and the entire herd of the alien probes was nothing but cattle to the slaughter. The HE ball guns were performing well above Gries’s expectations in dispensing destruction on the probes. He owed Alan Davis a beer.

“That one on the edge, there!” Gries pointed. “I got that one.” Shane took aim on the bot and depressed the trigger of the compressed air cannon. FWOOMP went the potato gun. Just as the bot stretched to the edge of the Coyote glue trap the canister Gries fired exploded open into a thick spider web of Kevlar and Spectra 1000 filaments with synthetic gecko-skin patches mixed in. The hi-tech net spread open and wrapped and tangled around the alien thing. The bot started spinning wildly, trying to free itself. Pieces of the composite fiber net began to fly off in multiple directions. And it looked like the bot had some capability of cutting through it since large portions were disappearing. If the thing had not been doused in Coyote glue before Gries fired the net, it would have gotten free.

“Riot grenade!” Gries yelled and pointed at the nearly escaping bot.

“Got it!” Staff Sergeant Gregory hit it with another net grenade, giving Major Gries time to reload his potato gun.

As the last bot was blown the hell up, Gries flung his last net grenade around the captive one. It wasn’t going to hold and Sergeant Cady realized this at about the same time Gries did. Like an Olympic sprinter Cady rushed the little alien probe, wielding his custom battle club. With one muted blow from the club the bot stopped resisting captivity, sputtered silent with a shower of sparks and fell back into a pool of the thickening riot glue with a subdued thud !

“Cease fire, goddamnit!” Gries ordered as one of the specialists on the west flank fired an HE round way too close to Top. Cady dropped and covered as the explosion sent an aftershock through the cold and hardening Coyote glue. A finger of the glue plopped a few inches from Top’s face.

“Goddamnit Gibson, what have I told you about blue on bluing me?” Cady yelled.

“Don’t do it, Sergeant?”

“You bet your ass, don’t do it!” he yelled at the private.

“Uh, Top,” Gries grinned offering him a hand up from the ground. “Thought we were gonna take home a live one.”

“Sorry, Major, but I just couldn’t see anyway we were gonna catch a live one. It was eatin’ right out of that net the eggheads made us. I figured if I just banged it lightly, they might could put it back together. And I sure as hell didn’t want that thing gettin’ away and bringing back a few hundred thousand of his buddies. Besides I just tapped it.”