John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

The explosion tore the winning probe to bits, sending more metal scything in every direction, and the detonation and flying shrapnel ripped apart the wing of the accompanying probe, hurling it to the ground.

The swarm and the soldiers recovered at about the same time. For just a moment both groups seemed to pause, as if to take stock and a breath. Then Shane opened his mouth.

“Open fire!”

Each of the potato gun “catcher” rounds was designed much like the scatterable mines. As they flew through the swarm, the probes, sensing metal, swooped down and caught them, pulling them into their metal embrace and then… died. After a bit of aiming, each of the potato gun firers stopped bothering and just threw the rounds towards the reduced swarm. Those that missed the swarm entirely were often picked up by probes while they lay on the ground, acting much like the scatterable mines.

The probes were going absolutely frantic. Here was this huge target of metal and… at every turn there was MORE! Of course, the “more” was their fellows being blown to bits, but they didn’t seem to care or even notice. They were flying all over the place, picking up bits of metal, reassimilating probes and… dying.

Each of the potato-gun firers only had five magazines and they expended them in less than three minutes, reducing the swarm to a bare thirty or so individuals. Of course, the probes were assimilating the metal flying around them very quickly, but it took a bit of time to “twin.” When one started to twin it tended to float upwards away from the fray. Each of these Shane picked out and had Nelms target with his 7.62 BDL sniper rifle. The rifle fired standard ceramic rounds, although he had a packet of “super rounds” if he needed more range. But at this range he was ignoring his scope and firing under it over open sights. The probes entirely ignored the ceramic round but the rounds did not ignore the probes. One round of 7.62 was more than enough to take down a probe. He got most of the “twinners” and those that he missed Cady directed the carbine teams to engage.

Twenty, then ten, then only six probes were left, all of them trying to breed. The carbine gunners, Nelms, and Cady with his minigun took care of them with only two managing to twin and those two staying in the area to assimilate until blasted apart by the sergeant major.

With that probe down, there were no more functioning probes in sight. Just a twisted field of shattered metal.

“Damn,” Jones said, standing up and looking out over the “battlefield.” “We won.” He paused and that didn’t seem to be enough. “WE WON!”

“Yeah, we did,” Cady said, looking out at the masses of twisted metal scattered around the tundra. “But they got our wheels.”

“Alien bastards,” Nelms shouted. “You killed our Humvee!”

“Boss,” Mahoney said, quietly. He’d set up his laptop, then taken a place in the line, but as soon as the fighting died he’d hurried back to his beloved electronics.

“What?” Shane asked, somewhat loudly. His ears were still ringing from the detonation of the case of mines.

“I think we’ve got a live one out there.”

The probe was upside down, lying sideways on another much more damaged boomerang. The only probe was missing the tip of one wing, but the wing looked… odd. The wing narrowed towards the tip, then flared outwards to a jagged break.

“It was breeding or whatever,” Jones said, bending down and prodding the thing with his carbine. It was shuddering and sparks were shooting off the exposed interior but it couldn’t seem to fly.

“There’s something seriously wrong with it,” the sergeant major said, frowning.

“Yeah, Top, it can’t fly,” Jones pointed out.

“More than that, shit for brains,” Cady replied. “It’s sitting on a big hunk of metal and it’s not tearing it apart.”

“I guess we’re going to find out if they can repair themselves,” Shane said, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the trophy. “Top, tag and bag this thing. If we’ve got to dump some of the pieces out, we’ll do it. Mahoney!” he yelled.

“Sir?” the specialist called from the small hill where the rest of the team was still waiting.

“Any sign of more of ’em?”

“Negative, sir,” the specialist called back. “There’s some radiating off to the northwest and a lot to the northeast. But it’s all more than twenty klicks off. That one’s radiating, but very weak.”

“Keep an eye on it,” Shane yelled. “Tag it and bag it — and make sure it’s wrapped so it’s not radiating — and then we’re going to go find out if there’s anything left of the base.”

There wasn’t.

They’d kept up a steady pace, walking through the strange arctic twilight and into the “dawn” as the sun began, once again, to ascend into the sky. As they approached the base at God’s Thumb, though, it was apparent that the probes had been there before them.

The region around the base was flat as a pancake so the control tower was normally visible from at least ten miles away. However, nothing of the base was apparent until they got into the last kilometer.

“Holy shit,” Jones said. The approach brought them in close to the massive runways that had been the original reason for the base’s existence.

Used as far back as WWII for antisubmarine patrols, the facility had been heavily upgraded during the Cold War to support long-range bombers. The runways were designed to launch loaded B-52s on their way to gut the Soviet Union, thus they were very long and made of very thick concrete.

They were now… long, plowed-looking sections of dirt and crumbled concrete.

“They pull the rebar out of the concrete,” Shane said, balancing his end of the pole. There had been long carry-poles in the Humvees. On the way to the ambush it hadn’t been worth carrying them, in Shane’s opinion. But once the Humvees were trashed they’d picked them out of the debris. The long poles could be run through the handles on the catch-bags so the soldiers detailed to carry them didn’t have to use their hands the whole time.

And Rank Hath No Privileges when there was over three hundred pounds of probes and parts to carry sixty kilometers.

“What are we going to do, sir?” Jones asked as they continued to follow the edge of Runway Road. The road itself had been torn to bits.

“Get down to the main base,” Shane said, gesturing tiredly at the cluster of buildings. “Find something to spell out ‘Come Get Us!’ Then leave it up to Roger and the rest of the guys to figure out how.”

The specialist nodded and continued to trudge forward. They hadn’t been able to carry all that much ammo with them — it had been a trade-off between time, ammo and probe bits. Shane had edged towards time and probe bits over ammo, so if they had to fight the probes off again they wouldn’t have all that much of a chance. Of course, the old man knew that, too. So mentioning it would be pointless.

As they approached the main base, which was connected to a small port by road, it was apparent that it was, essentially, rubble. Not a single building was standing and all of the concrete roads had been torn up. Some of the roads, those with asphalt surfaces, were intact.

“Jesus,” Mahoney said as Shane stopped, raised a closed fist and lowered the burden to the ground.

“Well, they don’t rape or burn,” Letorres said, drifting over to pick up a piece of paper that was blowing by in the incessant wind. “There’s that.”

“But they sure as hell do loot and pillage,” Sergeant Gregory said, nodding. “Anything useful?”

“Training schedule,” Letorres said, flicking the paper to blow towards the ocean. “About as useless as it comes.”