John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“Yeah, okay, what radio show? Maybe we can have them put out a call for him if they’re still broadcasting on the Internet.” Roger didn’t believe that finding somebody would be difficult with the resources available to them. If they had to, the entire FBI could be brought to the task.

“Well, he calls in to that Ret Ball show, the Truth Nationwide, all the time as Megiddo,” Alice said, smiling slightly. “He never realized that his students knew that was him, but it was always obvious to us.”

“Oh my God. You mean that whacko is a real scientist?” Alan asked.

“You’ve heard of him.”

“Mr. President, the Internet traffic across the country being monitored by the NSA project is turning up some interesting information.” General Mitchell sat down at the conference table in the War Room. He put a jumpdrive into the laptop connected to the flat screen monitors and brought up a map of the country.

“The Internet is just fascinating isn’t it?” the President said.

“What do you mean, sir?” Mitchell asked.

“Well, more than two-thirds of the world has been eaten by alien machines, most all phones are out, all telecommunications is out, but the damned Internet is still clicking away. There’s probably still plenty of porn sites available.” The President shrugged. “That damned Al Gore was brilliant. All those algorithms.”

“Uh, right,” Mitchell was, almost, sure that was the President’s attempt at a joke. “This is actually the type of disaster that Dr. Licklider had in mind when he started the ARPANET concept back in 1962.”

“He expected alien invasion?” The President raised an eyebrow.

“Uh, no sir, or at least not to my knowledge he didn’t. I meant a massive global scale war that would knock out comms around the world. The ARPANET was to enable communications between various shelters and redoubt locations in the event that the Cold War ever got hot.”

The President considered the general for a moment and the Chairman realized that his leg had been pulled. At least, he thought it had. Sometimes the President’s sense of humor, and it could be quite black, was so dry that even his closest friends weren’t sure if he was joking.

“What kind of interesting data has Dr. Licklider provided us, Kevin?” the President asked. He spent most of his time in the War Room nowadays. Planning, hoping, and praying that somebody would figure out a way to stop these damned menacing alien robots. So far, the Americas and Australia were about all that was left of the world, but nobody expected that to last much longer.

“Well, as you see the red dots scattered across the country sir, these are bot sightings or incidents.”

“What do you mean?”

“In more than a thousand different locations, there have been boomerangs either sighted flying overhead, wandering through the terrain, or actually attacking and acquiring metal. One incident that was reported on the Internet to a radio show claims that his pickup truck was devoured by a swarm of bots leaving nothing behind but the plastic, vinyl, and rubber parts. There are several other similar cases.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“From the report we just received from the NSA it appears that the first incident was reported about three days ago, and the sightings have picked up nonlinearly.” Mitchell flipped the screen to a graph of the bot sighting frequency versus date.

“What does this mean, Kevin?” The President didn’t like the sound of this. A chill ran up and down his spine and his skin began to crawl.

“They’re doing just like we would do before an attack sir. I think this is reconnaissance.”

“No shit it’s fricking recon,” Gries responded to Roger after he read the report to him. “I don’t need a brain the size of Chicago to figure that one out. We recon them, they recon us. The side with the big battalions still wins.”

“Ronny agrees also. We’re getting close to an all-out attack from the bots… and—”

“We’re not any closer to figuring out how to beat ’em!” Shane finished Roger’s sentence for him.

“Goddamnit! Goddamnit! Goddamnit!” Roger pounded his fist on his desk and then kicked his trash can across the office.

“How in the hell did you get these things here?” Colonel Matthew “Bull” Ridley ran his fingers across the empennage of the sleek composite aircraft in front of him and whistled. “Nice.”

“Yeah, I thought the damned bots were taking out all air traffic globally now.” Sergeant Cady said looking at Alan and Dr. John Fisher, who were standing beside the squadron of sleek swept-wing and forward canard aircraft. Both Alan and John were looking like an opossum with a certified north Alabama shit-eating grin.

“The airframes and control systems were built by Scaled Composites out in the Mojave. The engines were delivered there and the aircraft were assembled and then flown here,” John said.

“Yeah, but why didn’t the bots eat them?” Gries asked.

“Magic?” Belgian RAF Flight-Lieutenant and Bull’s right hand Rene Lejeune asked and shrugged his shoulders. “Luck?”

“Actually, y’all can blame the sergeant major there.” Alan grinned and nodded to Top.

“No sir. I had nothing to do with such black magic and evil wizardry,” Cady asserted.

“Well, Top, you remember talking about that ceramic car engine you saw on television back when I showed you the ceramic jet-propelled bullets for the M-240B?” Alan asked Top.

“Vaguely, Alan. I think that part of my memory got frostbitten in Greenland.”

“Well, I didn’t go to Greenland so I remembered it just fine. Dr. Pike, Dr. Fisher, and I came up with a ceramic aircraft engine design. They’re actually jet engines. The control surfaces are controlled by Kevlar wires and graphite composite pulleys and gearboxes. We also had a few larger cargo and troop transports delivered. The only metal in the whole thing is in the tiny computer chip that controls the ignition system and the ignition system itself. Alice used the same kind of design that she used for the little picosat. There ain’t no more metal in this thing than in a dollar’s worth of change.” Alan waved his arms a bit and smiled.

“And, they flew tree-top high from California to here without getting compromised by the bots,” Fisher added.

“No shit!” Gries said. “Good work, Sergeant Major Cady!”

“Sir!”

Alan and John seemed chagrinned. Of course it was Cady who sparked the idea in Alan, and Roger had told Alan to figure out how to build composite aircraft — completely composite. But had Cady not mentioned the ceramic engine he had seen on television years back they just might not have figured it out. Gries had to give Cady credit anyway just to goad the eggheads.

“So when do we get to try them out?” Rene asked.

“Thought you were never going to ask,” John said. “The crew that flew them in are inside ready to debrief you and then take a well-deserved nap, I guess. Go get debriefed and then shake them down. These fighters belong to your squadron, Colonel. I suggest you start training in them. Scaled’s test pilots also sent some information and video training guides. I suggest you take a look at those also.”

“Hot damn! Rene, gather the clans,” Bull ordered his sidekick.

“Yes, Colonel.” Rene saluted and the two of them rushed toward the hangar where the debriefers awaited them.

“Wheeeww,” Gries whistled. “You really outdid yourselves didn’t you?” The major turned to Alan and Dr. Fisher.

“Oh, we’re not done with you yet,” Alan said. “Get back in your Humvee and follow us.”