John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

Shane climbed in next to him as Mahoney and Gibson climbed in the back.

“Mahoney, you getting anything at all?” Shane asked as Top put the vehicle in gear.

“I’m getting intermittent radio from east of the line, sir,” the specialist replied, looking at the readout on the Gateway laptop. “Multiple frequencies, very short bursts. It’d be interesting to set up a full radio intercept site somewhere near here. I think Doc Reynolds is right; these things use plain old radio.” As the Humvee bumped over the springtime tundra he kept hitting keys and nodding.

“Interesting,” the specialist said. “There was a big burst of signals about six hours ago, sir.”

“That when we hit them?” Shane said, then shook his head. “No, that was about four hours ago. Any idea why?”

“Negative, sir,” Mahoney replied. “Big burst of signals that went on for about three minutes. There was heavier signal traffic before, then it peaked in number of transmissions and power, went down to still increased levels. Then it fell way off. It’s still down.”

“Let’s hope that’s a good sign,” Cady said.

“Concur, Top,” Shane replied, pulling out one of the new combat field ration packs. The replacement for the MRE had a heater pack built in using a friction tab starter. He pulled the tab on a packet of fettuccine Alfredo with chicken and set it on his thigh to warm. “I’ve got beef stew and chicken romaine, Top. Take your pick.”

“I’ll take the stew,” Top said, his eyes scanning the horizon. “That romaine shit gives me the shits.”

The sergeant major was just finishing his beef stew, controlling the Humvee’s wheel with his knee while spooning up the stew, when Mahoney made an interrogative noise from the back.

“Sir…” the specialist said, hesitantly.

“Go,” Shane said, pitching his finished alfredo out the window.

“I’ve got increasing probe signal strength,” the specialist said. “Could we stop for a second?”

“Hold it up, Top,” Shane said, sticking his arm out the window and signaling with a closed fist for the two following Humvees to pull up.

“What are you doing?” Gibson asked, pitching his own finished entrée out the window.

“Trying to pick out the stronger signal,” Mahoney said. “And get a direction and maybe a location. I don’t want them to have moved on us and have us run right into them.”

“That would be bad,” Cady admitted, opening up the door and stepping out to look around the tundra. Overcast had moved in, turning the land into shades of gray.

“Yeah. Sir?”

“Go,” Shane said, turning around in his seat to watch the specialist.

“We’ve got a large amount of noise to the southwest of us, sir,” Mahoney said, nervously.

“Shit,” Gibson said, opening up his own door and getting out.

“And I think it’s moving…”

“Top!” Staff Sergeant Gregory yelled.

“I see ’em,” Cady called. “Sir, we’ve got probes inbound from the direction of God’s Thumb!”

“No word from the bot recovery mission yet sir, and uh, there is more, Mr. President,” Vicki hesitated.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well sir, SEAL Team Six has returned from the French Riviera and have some very… disturbing photos.”

“Disturbing?” the President said, shaking his head. “Vicki, alien metal-eating probes are taking over the world. We’re evacuating every major city in the U.S. My daughter just started sniffing around boys. Try to up the ante, Vicki. Feel free.”

“Yes sir. If you recall we sent in a team along the periphery and into the occupied zones with hopes of conducting recon on the areas with an emphasis on determining what happened to the people in the occupied territories. Well, Alpha Platoon SEAL Team Six was the only platoon that returned. And they suffered two casualties.”

“Yes, Vicki, quit beating around the bush about it.” The President was getting tired and was ready for this nightmare to end. He didn’t expect that to happen anytime soon — if ever.

“Right, here.” Vicki set a folder in front of him and then sat quietly.

President Colby looked at the folder and at first was almost afraid to touch it — as if it were tainted with something bad. He glanced around the room at his top advisors and realized that they had all seen the pictures in the folder and they were nervous about letting him see it. He sighed, opened the folder, and spread the pictures out before him.

“Jesus Christ!”

Roger sat in his office looking at the photos that had been e-mailed to him from the SecDef’s aide. He topped his glass off with a little more Old Number Seven and then thought about adding some Coke to it — but it was a passing thought. The Tennessee whiskey was nowhere near strong enough to make him forget the images in the photos. At first he had thrown up in his garbage can, then he cried, then he started drinking.

He couldn’t believe that the human race had been reduced to what he was seeing. But, seeing is believing. The thousand words these photos told were alarming, disturbing, very sad, and… grotesque.

“Roger, do you have a minute?” Alice Pike tapped on his office door.

“Uh,” Roger looked up and tried to compose himself but Alice had already noticed the open whiskey bottle on his desk.

“Is this a bad time?” Alice asked.

“I guess the answer to that is yes. But they’re all bad times now, aren’t they…” Roger shook his head and then capped the whiskey bottle and put it back in his desk drawer. “I’d offer you a drink but I know you don’t really like the hard stuff.”

“What’s happening, Roger?” She could tell he had been crying or sick or maybe both. “Is it Major Gries and Sergeant Cady? Are you okay?”

“There is no word from the bot recovery team yet. But that ain’t it. Shane and Thomas can… will… take care of themselves. If worse comes to worse, they’ll kill a walrus, tan the hide and make a kayak to get back.” Roger rubbed his chin, then pulled up his Crimson Tide ball cap and ran his fingers through his unruly hair.

“Sit down for a minute. I need to tell somebody this… I guess I need to tell everybody but I just don’t know where to start.”

“Tell everybody what?” Alice sat.

“This.” He slid his laptop around for her to see the scanned photos.

“Jesus!” Alice gasped at the sight of a naked, lifelessly pale, and bloodied little girl or what was left of her hanging from a metal spike on a metallic wall. The spike protruded from her chest between her breasts where blood had dried around the impaling shiny metallic stake. Her left leg had been cut off above the knee and her right arm was missing. Her abdomen was open and her entrails were hanging out.

Alan toggled the image viewer and a second image with a wider field of view showed several such bodies. The bodies ranged in age and sex and some were dismembered and naked. Some looked as if they had been butchered, their bodies carved open and their organs removed. And there were two healthy bodies still clothed in military attire reminiscent of SEALs or other recon forces uniforms — American uniforms. One of the SEALs had a spike protruding from his throat and the other was leaned against the wall beneath him with his forehead bashed in and bloodied. His head leaned limply to the left.

“God, what is that!” Alice turned away.

“This is France.” Roger toggled the images again.

“She can’t be much younger than Tina…” Alice turned pale.

The third photo showed an even wider field of view. The background appeared as a vast metal landscape. There were obvious engineered structures and there were piles of junk — metal junk. There was a large metallic box the size of a coliseum hanging effortlessly above the metalscape. The fourth and fifth images zoomed in below the floating object to a group of humans in rags and all of whom looked as if they had been starved to near death. Their bodies looked like something from a World War II film of the Nazi concentration camps.