Von Neumann’s War

But momentum wins every time, and the probes had been headed for the cliff. Which meant that all that shattered metal was headed for the five people lining the cliff-top.

Jones couldn’t look sideways as he saw a chunk of probe the size of a large bicycle pass through the space to his right but he didn’t really have to; there was a sudden spray of arterial blood that wasn’t really survivable. Whatever had happened to Nelms, the sniper wasn’t going to be going home to Des Moines, Iowa.

Top was next to him, hosing just as he was and screaming just as loud. There was just something about the situation, a seemingly unstoppable wall of metal winging towards them at four hundred miles per hour with only a wall of very small exploding rounds keeping the metal from hitting them, that called for one primal scream after another. Top’s was just a lot deeper than everyone else’s.

* * *

One of the vids on the laser bunker had a good shot of the firefight going on at the edge of the cliff and Shane nodded to himself as he watched. There was only one thing wrong with the picture from his perspective. Too many of the probes were getting too high before being hit by the laser. Two had made it over the edge of the bluff but the backup team had managed to hit them before they did whatever they intended to do to the laser bunker. So he keyed his mike.

“Platoon, get lower. The laser is coming down.”

* * *

Jones didn’t really hear the CO. He could only focus on the onrushing wall of metal. But he did notice when the probes started exploding much closer overhead.

This led to louder screaming. But he kept his finger firmly planted on the trigger.

Two thousand rounds. Six hundred rounds per minute. Three and a half minutes. How long as this been going on? It seems like about a year… I think I’m already in hell.

* * *

“Colonel,” Shane said over the link to the 82nd Brigade commander. “I very much need someone to get some ammo up to my platoon, sir.”

“Already on it, Major.”

* * *

Suddenly the gun stopped spitting little plastic death and Jones pulled the trigger in shock. His extensive experience told him there should be more rounds in the massive box he was carrying.

He quickly looked right and realized that Letorres had replaced Nelms. On the other side of Letorres a trooper he didn’t recognize was holding one of the big ammo boxes and preparing to replace the one on Mahoney’s back. A quick check back and he realized that another troop, from the 82nd by his shoulder patch, and Private Gibson were both working to replace his. The 82nd trooper grinned at him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re up,” the trooper said, standing up.

Jones jerked his head around in time to keep the splash of superheated fluids out of his face, but he heard the thump and felt something warm and very wet land on his legs as part of the trooper’s helmet, and some skull, landed next to him.

The scream he let out segued nicely into opening fire.

* * *

“Damn,” Shane muttered.

The probes attacking the laser site seemed to realize they were losing. Or, at least, were very close to stalemated. So they’d changed tactics. He’d always suspected that at the top of the slope they would sacrifice the lead ranks to cover for the followers. As he watched, they started doing just that, but created two cover groups, one against the fire at the top of the hill and one against the lasers. About fifty meters downslope, the probes began rotating their bodies so that their upper portion was pointed towards the fire. They also began to slow, perhaps as a function of air resistance but more likely as deliberation. The combination of the laser and the troopers on the ridgeline hammered this wall of metal, but the upper portion, at least, of the probes was armored. And in this more deliberate formation they were no longer slamming into each other catastrophically. Probes were dying, but not faster than the overall group was making it up the mountain.

“Major,” one of the intelligence NCO’s said over the link. “You might want to know that we now have four groups spotted that have stopped assimilation of Huntsville and appear to be reconfiguring.”

And they had plenty of probes to throw away.

* * *

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUUUUCK!” Jones shouted as the wall of flipped up probes rode over his position. At that point they were taking the direct fire of the laser, which had been narrowed down to only fire on the vector the probes were attacking from.

The laser was destroying rank after rank of the probes, but the result was air full of melted metal showering down on the few survivors of the platoon.