Von Neumann’s War

“The big brains on their side are overcoming the IBot transmission, somehow,” Riggs said, shaking his head. “We need somebody down here who understands the electronic assault field. Can we jam them?”

“I can try,” the J-2 said. “But if they’re working from short range we might not be able to step on their signal. And if they’re using contact it won’t work at all. I’ll have to physically go up to the antenna park and set it to jam.”

“Go,” the general said. “Run.”

* * *

Roger stopped at the top of the stairs and panted for just a second. Among other things, the elevators were out. And what with everything that had been going on the last few months, he hadn’t gotten much time to work out.

The antenna farm had a small maintenance shed with its own computer for local testing and maintenance. It was padlocked, but Roger had brought a skeleton key in the form of a crowbar. In a few seconds he was sitting at the computer. He jacked in the USB drive and pulled out the program, then went looking for the Lola program.

The Lola system was hooked into the 1.4 Ghz transmitter program. Roger frowned for a moment, then simply pulled it out and dropped in the Megiddo program.

As he was initializing the transmission, the J-2 burst through the door.

“Who the hell pulled the lock off the door?” the angry lieutenant colonel asked.

“Me?” Roger replied, spinning around in the chair. “Deputy Secretary of Defense Reynolds?”

“Oh,” the colonel replied, abashed. “Sorry, sir. But the general wants me to start jamming the bots. They’re beating the IBot system.”

“I just replaced it,” Roger replied, looking out the window. “As a deputy secretary of defense, I know that I’m not supposed to be involved in something directly operational. But as Dr. Reynolds, would you mind if I overrode the general’s order temporarily to see if this works?

“Uh…” the colonel said then paused. “Go for it.”

“Going for it,” Roger said, smiling.

Four bots were in view through the door, hanging over the mountain. Roger pulled up the Megiddo program and tapped a key. All four started drifting downward until they impacted the ground. He tapped another key and they started to rise up.

“And now…” he continued, looking over the transmitter system. “Ah, power increase. That should cover most of the valley.”

* * *

“What the fuck?”

Soldiers had found that the machine gun worked just fine on the regular bots. He’d shot up most of the ones in range from his position but shooting the ones more than about five hundred meters away hadn’t done a damned thing. However, he took his finger off the machine gun as the probes started acting funny. First they drifted down to the ground, then up, then down and finally landed and stayed there.

“Okay, would somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on around here?”

* * *

Shane sat back down at his computer just as the power came back on. General Riggs appeared to be listening to his earbud for a second and then nodded and hit a key.

“Attention,” the general said through the room’s PA system. “Data Security has our systems back online. We don’t have access outside the base, yet, but they tell us that reports from lidar stations indicate that the probe waves headed for us have turned around. And the probes in our area now appear to be under our control due to Dr. Reynolds’ team.”

Instead of the earlier cheering he got a round of skeptical faces.

“Agreed,” he said to the unspoken majority opinion. “Colonel Guthrie, have your boys get out of the bunkers. Destroy every probe along the mountainside. Lasing, you have every probe that’s to the north and south, but use manual aiming and don’t shoot the colonel’s soldiers. Keep a few functional, but get them under wraps. Get with Major Gries to cover those protocols. I think we won. Let’s make sure that we hold onto that win.”

“Major Gries?” the general continued on the direct link.

“Sir?” Shane said. He’d almost taken off the headset and was already on his feet.

“I’m sorry to hear about your loss.”

Shane started to answer and then simply nodded, taking off the headset and shutting down his station.

Epilogue

“What are you doing, now, Richard?” Helena asked, setting down a reheated TV dinner by his computer.

“Fighting a war, my dear,” Horton replied, smiling. “Creating weapons of great subtlety and power. And updating some data I sent to Huntsville.”

“Dat’s good,” Helena replied, looking in incomprehension at the strings of ones and zeros sliding across the screen. “But you gotta eat. An army travels on its stomach.”

* * *