Von Neumann’s War

“Really, Kevin? How would we know that?” Dr. Vicki Johnson, the national security advisor asked. “What if it turns out to be a natural phenomenon? Or if it’s unnatural, then what if they’re just moving in or building a home? If it’s an alien race, they might prefer Mars.”

“Vicki,” the President interrupted. “I don’t know which thought scares me most. Whether we’re talking about preparations for attack or just moving in, we might still be talking about strangers — aliens — moving into our neighborhood. And we know absolutely nothing about them.”

“We need to know more about what is going on, Mr. President,” the national security advisor commented. “But how to get that information is the hard part. Mars is a long way away from Earth.”

“John, what do you think?” The President turned to the director of Central Intelligence. “Is there a way to get the recon we need?”

“Not today, not tomorrow, hell, Mr. President, not even this month, maybe not even this year. We would need to complete a Mars satellite design and build and mission implementation in an extremely compressed schedule. I don’t know much, if anything, about that. What do you think, Mike?” he asked the director of the National Reconnaissance Office. NRO handled all the satellites used by the intelligence and military branches and developed the new technologies for the next generation systems.

“I don’t know, either, Mr. President,” the DNRO replied. “I would like a couple of weeks to have my guys run some numbers. We would need some budget for this and I mean serious budget.”

“Well, figure it out,” the President said. “But if they’re preparing for something, do we have two weeks? Hurry. Vicki, John, Kevin, I want y’all to make sure that NRO gets whatever support they need on this. For now this is to be kept quiet. Got it?”

* * *

“Major Shane Gries reporting for duty,” Shane said, saluting the Navy captain behind the desk. The officer, the equivalent of a full colonel in the Army, which meant a senior division staff officer or brigade commander, occupied just one cubicle in the large room in the bowels of the Pentagon, indicative of just how important the “Bureau” was considered by the real powers in the building. The desk itself had a high-end monitor on it with some sort of blueprint displayed and was just about covered in paper. Shane didn’t even recognize most of the forms on the desk but he did see that most had Top Secret cover sheets.

“Welcome, welcome,” the officer said, returning the salute lazily. “I’m Captain Sparling, as you can see from that plaque on my overloaded desk. Welcome to Chaos Central. I’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival, Major. Nay, I can only say how ecstatic I am to see you. Do you like traveling commercial?”

“I can hang, sir,” Gries said, trying not to shake his head at the greeting. He’d expected the usual “you’ve joined the best outfit in the division” speech. Or fleet, he supposed, given that his new boss was Navy. Not “I’m ecstatic to see you.” That had a note of… foreboding.

“I’ll give you the quickest run-down in history, Major,” the captain said, spinning his computer chair back and forth. Sparling was a short, frankly rotund, officer, which was very unusual to find in the modern military, wearing rather rumpled undress blues. He was balding and entirely unprepossessing, but Shane realized after just a moment that he had about the sharpest eyes the major had ever seen. He gave an impression of casual unconcern, but Shane could tell that there was a mind behind those eyes going a mile a minute.

“The mission of this bureau is simple in concept,” Sparling said, smiling broadly. “So simple I’m sure you can keep up, even if I use words of more than two syllables. We’re here to look at projects that have reached the preacquisition stage and determine if they have ‘real world’ flaws. There are two sides to that, Major. The first is that we definitely don’t want anything going out to the forces that is not enhancing to their mission. The second is equally important. The U.S. is a world master in combat because we have good training and we have the best damned technology in the world. Each new system that is an enhancement spreads the gap between us and the rest of the world. You ever gotten something new and gone ‘Crap, I wish I had this last week when it would have helped’, Major?”

Shane thought about the squad tac-net that they’d gotten just before deploying. It had taken about a week for the troops to really understand it and after that they’d used it to communicate in ways that hadn’t been possible days before. He knew guys had been saved by that deceptively simple system; it was far more than just a radio. Then there were some of the new field medical items, like the blood clotter that was made from shrimp shells, that had saved more lives. But he just nodded, continuing to look the officer in the eye calmly.