Von Neumann’s War

“I was thinking about that nuclear Katyusha Alan was pitching,” Shane said. “What about mounting the mines in some sort of rocket? One that released cluster bomb mines into the swarm?”

“And it would be easy,” Roger said, nodding. “Hell, why use cluster bombs? Mount them on K engine rockets. You can make those like…”

“We could probably get up to about ten an hour, if we were just making K engines,” Casey said, nodding.

“What?” Alan asked blearily.

“That’s where I work, Rocket Ram-Jets, down off James Record Road by the quarry where the divers dive and the boys play paintball and the sheep are nervous,” Casey replied, smiling. “I mean, my day job. And we’ve been really falling off. Not many people are making home-built rockets right now. The K line is about shut down and we’re mostly making Es. They’ve got some sort of military application. But if we hired some people, we could probably make about ten K engines an hour, twenty-four hours a day. Maybe more if we set up another line and could get the raw materials in place.”

“Casey,” Roger said carefully. “Make a note for the… what am I?”

“Deputy Secretary of Defense for Advanced Defense Concepts and Testing,” Traci said, grinning.

“…the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Advanced Defense Concepts and Testing to call your employer and give him a spec contract on full K production and probably upgrade of the line tomorrow. Please. Thank you?”

“Call Rocket Ram-Jets,” Casey said, slowly filling out the napkin. “K engine production. Good news, I even know the number.”

“She’s feeding you beer,” the colonel said, smiling. “Does this fall into the category of lobbying?”

“I’m paying for it,” Roger said, reaching for the pitcher and then pulling back as Casey, without looking up, reached out with her left hand and poured him another beer. “I think I’m covered.”

“Right you are, sir,” Bull said, grinning.

“An ABL,” Roger said, nodding. “I’d say that’s going to give us a throw to about sixty klicks. Inside that we’ve got the Falcons using modified Sparrows and ceramic bullets. Inside that we’ll have the K rockets. They’ll go to six klicks, straight up, so that gives us a linear ballistic of—”

“About a factor of two as near as makes no difference,” Tom replied without thinking. “Fired at a forty-five degree angle.”

“Twelve kilometers then,” Roger said, nodding. “Then inside that we’ve got the probe mines, Gecko mines, Coyote glue, the M240B with ceramic rounds, what have you.”

“And if they get inside of that?” Traci asked.

“Staffs,” Cady, Shane and Alan all chorused. Then Alan hiccupped and slid off his stool onto the floor.

“I think the meeting is adjourned,” Roger said, picking up his glass. “Time to toast my promotion!”

* * *

“Mr. President, from these satellite images taken by the Neighborhood Watch’s new birds we can actually determine where the alien machines have spread.” General Mitchell pointed at the flat world map on the flat screen.

“That group down there in Alabama has come through again, sir,” the NSA added. “Those are some very bright rednecks.”

“That’s why I appointed Roger to his position, Vicki,” the President said mildly.

“Well, sir,” Mitchell continued. “We see that the expansion wave has begun to touch into northeastern Greenland and that is getting close, sir. The AS Program has developed a first generation set of weapons that are entirely nonmetallic that they believe will be effective against the probes. Dr. Guerrero and Dr. Reynolds continue to request a recon team to capture and bring back some of the probes to study. I think northeastern Greenland would be the most likely place to make such an attempt.”

“Why do they want to catch one of these damned things?” the President asked.

“It’s Dr. Reynolds’ theory that bullets and bombs might, and he emphasizes might, hold them off for a while,” the NSA answered. “But simulations say that they’ll have a limited long-term effect. The theory within the AS team is that we’ll need something new, some tool that attacks the probes specifically and on a very large scale. To have any chance of doing that, we need one or more to study.”

“As the NSA said, sir.” General Mitchell flipped the slide to a map of Greenland. “We can fly in low and fast to God’s Thumb. The team will go from there to the edge of occupied territory and try to find regions with low concentrations of the probes. The plan is to find a small subswarm of the probes and kill or capture all of them. They intend to bring back any and all debris that can be managed and hopefully one or more full probes. The Huntsville AS team is leading the way on capture methods while the Denver and Boston teams are point units for analysis and countermeasures.”

“Jesus Christ, what if that just pisses them off and makes them follow the team back to the U.S.?” SecDef Stensby asked.

“Well, sir, they’ve been building a pretty extensive underground bunker at both the Huntsville and Denver Redoubt and the plan is to do all of the research as deep underground as possible,” General Mitchell said.