John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“It hasn’t been ruined. Oh, it has been exposed to the air. We’ll have to cook it and can it or vacuum seal it, but we can save a lot of it. Believe me, from what I’ve been reading about the rest of the world there will come a day when this mess will look like a feast.”

“Yuck, that is just gross.” Jeff turned up his nose. It was all Helena could take.

“Listen here ya goddamn idiot.” Helena stood in front of Jeff looking down at him. She could not help but think how badly her family in St. Petersburg must have suffered once the aliens took over. Thanks to Richard, she might be the only member of her family still alive.

She cocked her head and leaned on her war club. “We’re tirty or fordy miles up de goddamned mountain and don have no way to get back. Where we gonna go anyway, huh? You should have taken dese babies to a shelter months ago you fuckin’ dumbass hick. Goddamn if you don listen to Dr. Richard now. He de only ting gonna save your babies, your wife, and your goddamn dumb ass. So shut your fuckin’ mouth and go an do what de fuck he says.”

“Just do it, Jeff.” Sara Jo frowned at her husband but kept her voice low so she wouldn’t upset Precious.

Richard took a smaller three-gallon pail from inside the larger bucket and handed it to Helena. “See how much of the baby formula you can salvage. If you get a little dirt in it, so what, don’t worry about it. We’ll sift it later.” Richard looked at the small amount of the white powder scattered throughout the pile. There couldn’t be more than three gallons of it. He was not quite sure how much of it got mixed with water but he knew damned well it was a long way from being enough to feed that little baby for more than maybe a month. These two fools had no idea how bad a situation they had put themselves and their helpless children in.

He reached in the smaller pail and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty garbage bags. “Mommy, when you are done feeding the baby start gathering up everything you can find that is still useful or might be salvaged.”

“We… we can’t stay here!” Jeff said looking around for more of the alien machines.

“You can stay in the old cabin up the road if you want,” Richard grunted. He didn’t much care for these two stupid adults or at least the male.

“Richard!” Helena stamped her right foot into the ground. “Dey will do no such a fucking ting and you goddamn know it.”

“But Helena dear—”

“Don you goddamned ‘Helena dear’ me. No way dese babies gonna stay up dere in dat drafty old cabin with no lectricity and water.”

“But—”

“You’re being an asshole. Dey stay down de hole with us and dat is goddamn dat!”

“So you are absolutely certain this is the frequency distribution of the alien transmissions?” Roger Reynolds turned and glanced at Ronny Guerrero excitedly and then back to the NSA MASINT specialist giving the briefing.

“Absolutely, Mr. Deputy Secretary. We have verified it against the bots currently occupying recon herds in this area. This is the sequence of frequencies they’re using.”

“Then are you saying we can understand their communications?” Ronny asked.

“No. They’re high-bit encrypted, over 256, and we haven’t cracked that. For that matter, they seem to cycle their encryption with higher encryption bursts. But it’s at least a start. We now know exactly what the frequency spectrum of their transmissions is. Without that, decryption would never be possible.” The technician pointed out the several spikes of the transmission frequencies and continued to explain how they hopped based on a fractal basis across the spectrum. But, and it was the big but, they still needed the decryption key.

“All right. Post all this on the website immediately,” Roger ordered.

“Mr. President,” General Mitchell said, looking around the War Room Advisory Committee, “latest intel shows that the bots have jumped tubes from NYC to Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore as well as all the smaller cities in between. We’re still in communication with the MIT redoubt at Hanscomb Air Force Base, but we’re hearing that the battle is not going well. They anticipate being overrun within the hour.”

“The cities have been evacuated and the loss of civilian lives should be basically nill, sir.” Vicki reminded him. “There were holdouts, but less than ten percent of the population. And, of course, the forces in the redoubt.”

“We can’t maintain people in those refugee camps forever, Vicki. There simply isn’t enough food and supplies. What’s the time frame we’re looking at?”

“Sixty days,” the director of FEMA replied. “And those tent cities aren’t entirely metal free. If the bots hit them, there is going to be reduced impact but not zero impact. Among other things, any large population requires security forces. The security is provided by National Guard at the moment, but if you rip away their weapons they’re just a bunch of kids with uniforms.”

“We anticipated that issue,” General Mitchell replied, smiling faintly. “We’re implementing training in nonprojectile and zero-metal projectile weapons.”

“Care to translate that for me?” the President asked, frowning.

“The units are being rearmed with staffs, quarterstaffs, and bows,” General Mitchell said, shrugging. “We’re also falling back on historical communications models.” He looked over at the aide de camp at his shoulder and then back.

“The original purpose of an aide de camp was to carry messages, and messengers were a primary communications method as late as the First World War. We’ve established cavalry messenger posts across a large area and we’re slowly expanding that area. Even if the Internet goes down entirely we should be able to maintain communications across the U.S. Slow communications, but communications. The Army has extensive experience in continuing under rather odd conditions, Mr. President. I mean, we’ve got manuals that cover most of the conditions we’re going to be running into. As long as the food holds out, we’re going to stay an Army.”

“Good to hear that at least one thing is working,” the President said, nodding. “Any projections as to what cities might be next?”

“Not at this time,” General Mitchell said. “So far they’re hitting the East Coast and seem to be working south and east. We’ve established lidar sites across the country hooked into the internet and SIPARNET.”

“Lidar is…” the President said, holding up a hand to forestall response. “That’s using lasers as radar, right?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Mitchell said, trying not to grin. “Close enough. The problem is that it’s limited as hell. But, on the other hand, the bots don’t seem to detect low-power laser. The lidar is where we’re getting some of the data on spread. We got the idea from the satellites that NRO managed to field.” He paused as an aide entered the room and handed him a message. He looked at it for a moment and then frowned.

“Speaking of lidar, we just picked up a… call it one of the ‘main’ tubes lifting off from near where Trenton used to be. The other attacks came in on relatively low vectors, that is they didn’t get very high since the other cities were relatively close. This one is heading for altitude.”

“Where’s it headed?” the President asked, frowning.

“Unknown at this time,” the general said. “West. But that’s the rest of the country. Chicago? St. Louis? Here? The West Coast? Unknown at this time.”

Another aide came in and gestured at the plasma screen on the wall.

“We’ve finally gotten the lidar software working, sir,” the female aide said in a soft voice. “Channel ninety-two should give you a view. It’s controlled from the battle center; if you—”