"Von Neumann’s War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John, Taylor Travis S.)Chapter 16“They wanted to keep you in Washington,” Roger said as Shane settled into the chair in the hastily made conference room. The “core” of the Neighborhood Watch group was seated around the table, which was really a dining table, to debrief the two soldiers. “But we convinced them you’d be better utilized giving us the skinny directly.” “Thanks,” Shane said, sighing. “I really don’t want to be in D.C. when those things get here.” “I don’t know where I want to be,” Cady interjected. He’d gotten a new uniform and a new set of sergeant major’s insignia to go with it. “Maybe on a mountain somewhere in a log cabin with some wooden farming implements.” “What’s the word on England?” Shane asked, nodding at the sergeant major’s comment. “You made it out of England just in time,” Tom answered somberly. “They crossed the Channel when your flight was still in the air. All contact has been lost with the south of England and it’s spreading north. All of northern France, half of Germany, all of Belgium and the Netherlands are gone.” “Belgium, huh. I guess Rene will be staying with us for while,” Shane said. Cady nodded in agreement. “Who’s Rene?” Alan asked. “Long story, you’ll meet him sooner or later, but he was one of the two surviving pilots of the northern aerial assault. He and USAF Lieutenant Colonel Ridley were both part of the NATO-Euro Falcons. They were on the plane with us from London. They were really banged up. I told him they should come visit us when they were better.” “They had a rough go of it,” Cady added. “Go ahead and tell us what you saw,” Roger said, nodding at Shane and turning on a digital recorder. “Start from when you first saw the probes. When you’re done, we’ll get to the questions. We’ll send the recording out on the net so everybody can get a look at it. There’s not going to be any securing data from this point on; that decision has already been made. But you’re the only people we can find who got an accurate look at the probes and made it back to tell about it.” Shane related the story of the fallen Stryker battalion and the flight through the tunnel, shaking his head as he did. “I didn’t want to just run away,” he admitted. “But Colonel Schon made it pretty clear that that was my job.” “That’s what he was telling you,” Cady said, “when he drew you aside.” “Yeah,” Shane replied. “That’s what he was telling me.” “And he was right,” Roger said firmly. “There’s important stuff in what you just described.” “How long do you think it took those two to twin?” Tom asked. “It sounds like mitosis, just like a bacteria.” “I was thinking the same thing,” Shane admitted. “It was just like watching a cell divide. I wasn’t timing it but maybe thirty seconds, a minute. No more.” “How close did they get?” Tom asked, his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?” the sergeant major asked. “How far away were they from the metal when they… sucked it up?” Tom expanded. “Oh,” Shane said, frowning. “Not far. They got down to within a meter or so when they were ripping apart the Humvee. I… you know, I never saw them… pull from farther away than a meter or two.” “They were right above head height when they attacked me,” Cady said. “They seemed to stay down at that level most of the time when they were… searching, I guess.” “Two meters or so?” Tom said, nodding. “Interesting.” “You think the… what is going on with that?” Roger asked. “Tractor field?” “Something like that,” Tom said, nodding again. “Call it that for now. “Yeah, point,” Roger said, making a note. “And they were only going for formed metal?” Alan asked. “Yeah,” Cady said. “But they went for everything. I mean, they were ripping the dog tags off so fast people were getting their heads cut off.” “No dog tags,” Roger said, making a note. “Way beyond that,” Shane replied. “They ripped out everything. Wiring, torn-apart cars. And you should hear Lieutenant Colonel Ridley describe how they tore apart their F-16s.” “They really liked the armor on the tanks,” Cady pointed out. “Heavy metals,” Tom said, nodding. “Makes sense. Heavy metals are going to be universally in short supply due to the way they’re made.” “Well, all you need is a lot of heat, right?” Cady asked. “You sort of melt it and roll it out—” “He means how the atoms are made,” Roger said, smiling slightly. “Not how you form the metal. You know how atoms are made?” “No,” Shane admitted. “Does it matter?” “If they need heavy metals it might,” Roger admitted. “All atoms except hydrogen are formed by fusion. Two hydrogen nuclei fuse in a star to form a proton, a neutron, a positron, and a neutrino. This picks up another hydrogen nucleus running around and there you have it — helium. Our sun is currently in the proton-proton cycle. The lower weight stuff, up to iron, is formed just like that in other still fairly common regular stars that are in the CNO cycle. Uh, that is for carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. These CNO stars are more massive than our sun. Above iron, though, it takes a supernova. So, the heavier the metal, the less likely it is to be produced. Some of them are more likely, on a quantum level, than others as well. But it makes sense that if they have to use certain materials in their production, reproduction whatever, that they’d concentrate on heavy metals.” “They like it,” Shane said. “But they seem to go for “And that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Alan pointed out. “Ruby’s aluminum oxide. They were working with titanium oxide on the moon. Why use ores there and not here? I mean, there’s “They’ve got all this formed metal,” Tom said, shrugging. “Why bother? And there’s as much concentration of iron in soil as in blood. They might get around to strip mining iron out of the very soil in time, it sounds like they have the ability, but why bother? There’s more iron in a knife than in the human body. They fed on the damaged probe?” “Yeah,” Shane said, nodding. “And another one,” the sergeant major interjected. “I don’t know what happened with that. It was right after we were leaving the town. I don’t think you saw it, Major. There were two of them attacking another one. Happened so quick I didn’t bother to point it out and we were sort of hurrying at the time.” “Why?” Roger asked, a crease appearing between his eyes. “Well, we’d just gotten new shoes…” Cady said, his face sober as a judge. “No,” Roger said with a sigh. “Why were they attacking it? Was it damaged?” “It didn’t look that way,” Cady replied, smiling at having gotten a yank in on the eggheads. “They were all three flying along, but they took it apart like a lobster.” “That’s odd,” Tom said, frowning. “That’s what I thought,” the sergeant major said, shrugging. “But they ate it.” “And they appear to be ignoring carbon,” Roger said, making a note on the sergeant major’s observation. “They need that for steel at least.” “It’s everywhere,” Tom said, shrugging. “And they don’t need much since they don’t appear to be using composites or plastics. They also appear to be ignoring silica. You mentioned broken windows scattered on the street.” “In the town where we got the shoes,” Shane said, nodding. “They didn’t really touch most of our gear. It was all screwed up, mind you. They’d even ripped open the MRE pouches, which kind of confused me until I remembered they had metal in them. But the plastic and cloth was all there.” “So how do we attack them?” Roger asked. “Sticks,” Cady said. “I’m getting me one of those staff things.” “Not a winning option, I fear,” Shane pointed out. “Bullets don’t work,” Cady said. “I think what was happening was they were just eating them out of the air. I don’t know how, bullets go damned fast.” “They intercepted the Mars probe at somewhere around fifteen kps,” Tom replied dryly. “That’s much faster than any bullet, Sergeant Major.” “You know, that is interesting because Ridley said that the Sidewinders were somewhat effective and that the probes didn’t pluck them out of the air as easy. He also said their guns were ineffective. Why would that be?” Gries asked. “Don’t know, we need to talk to him. But you know bullets don’t maneuver and missiles do… hmmm?” Tom pondered and rubbed his beard. “But they don’t go for plastics,” Alan said. “And they don’t appear to… see a threat to them. The sergeant major hit them with a stick. Rubber bullets?” “That’s an idea,” Roger said, making another note. “More.” “I was thinking about the sergeant major’s wallet…” Shane said, then paused uncertainly. “Go on,” Roger said, his eyes narrowing. “They picked it up,” Shane went on, his eyes unfocussed. “Because there was metal in it. And I remembered thinking I wished it was a bomb…” “They’d just rip out the detonator,” the sergeant major said. “They’re made of metal.” “But…” Shane said, still looking at the far wall. “What if you had say a slab of C-4 with a friction detonator in it. All plastic or whatever. Hell, a match with some gunpowder. Attach a sort of pin to it, something solid metal like the sergeant major’s wallet…” “They pick it up,” Alan said excitedly, “pull the pin for you and… BOOM!” “Okay, now we have a weapon,” Roger said, making another note. “An anti-probe… mine?” “Yeah, a mine,” Shane said, nodding. “You could throw them,” the sergeant major said. “Slingshots…” “Potato guns,” Alan said, grinning. “I’m not sure you’d want a lot of velocity on them.” “Proximity detonators,” Tom said. “If your tanks or whatever fired explosive rounds with proximity detonators, the probes would catch them in the air and blow up. You’d have to tinker with the timing, but…” “Good,” Roger said, making more notes. “This is good.” “Those super bullets,” Cady said. “You said they were made from ceramic, right?” “They can be made from metal,” Roger said. “But they’re usually ceramic.” “They won’t intercept those,” Cady pointed out. “Put a bit of metal in them and they might fly right into them,” Alan said. “They’d probably try to match velocity,” Tom pointed out. “Like they did with the probes. Our probes, that is.” “Be interesting to see them try,” Alan replied. “In atmosphere.” “Ah,” Tom said, nodding. “Good point. That’s probably why they couldn’t stop the Sidewinders.” “Directed energy weapons,” Shane said. “Lasers. They’re vulnerable. I don’t see why you couldn’t shoot them down with lasers.” “Technology hurdle there,” Roger said but made the note. “And we’re going to need “I wouldn’t like to try to keep a live one,” Cady said. “Dead… hit it with a stick. I’m telling you, we need a staff corps.” “We already have a staff corps,” Shane pointed out, grinning. “The Chairborne Rangers.” “But the other ones just eat it,” Alan pointed out. “Get around that when the time comes,” Roger said. “We need one for study.” “Capture one…” Shane said, his eyes narrowing. “You know what I was doing before you feather merchants roped me in, right?” “Looking at wild-eyed projects?” Cady asked. “And some of them were pretty wild,” Shane said, nodding. “There’s two I’m thinking of right now. One of them was Gecko-Man and the other was Coyote glue.” “Gecko-Man?” Tom asked, smiling. “Coyote glue?” “They were both pretty screwy,” Shane admitted. “Gecko-Man was synthetic gecko-feet skin. It sticks to just about anything. If you had gloves made of it you could climb right up a wall. You can stick it and then unstick it with a sort of rotational motion. Think super, stick-to-anything Velcro.” “I can see where you’re going with that,” Roger said, nodding. “Figure out a way to get them to stick it to them and attach it to something.” “Have to be a pretty strong something,” Tom pointed out. “I’m not sure what the energy budget of these things is but they can fly into and out of a gravity well. That means one hell of a lot of pull.” “I wonder how resistant to electricity they are?” Alan asked. “Get them to stick to a live wire?” “They’d just eat the wire,” Cady pointed out. “Coyote glue was really, “Like the Coyote gets his foot stuck and it pulls back?” Alan asked, grinning. “Tries to pull it off with his hand and gets the hand stuck?” “Just like that,” Shane said, smiling back with a nod. “It only starts to set when it hits air and it never really gets hard or dry. Just… stays sticky for a long time. They wanted to use it for a crowd control system. The current glue they use for that, if it gets over a person’s face they suffocate. They were pretty sure they could tinker Coyote glue so a person could pull it away from their face but not get entirely away. But I was thinking…” “Put out a trap with some of it,” Roger said, nodding. “They get stuck to it. Like flies on a spider web.” “Energy budget again,” Alan pointed out sourly, looking over at Tom. But Tom was clearly gone somewhere, with an abstracted expression on his face. “Yeah,” Roger argued. “But you can tinker that. Admix some high strength materials in it like Spectra 1000 fishing line. Give it a good foundation, just a big ass concrete slab.” “It’s really elastic,” Shane pointed out. “Really, “Okay, we’ve got some good stuff here,” Roger said, nodding. “The probe mines—” “And potato guns,” Alan pointed out. “And… low velocity kinetic bombardment devices,” Roger said, writing carefully. “What’s the status on Gecko-Man materials?” “They’re going to need funding,” Shane said. “Fast and a lot. Hell, with all the money flying around they might have gotten it already.” “We’re up on that,” Roger said, nodding and making a note. “Spring traps,” Cady interjected. “Say again?” Roger asked. “The super Velcro,” the sergeant major said. “Think about, oh, I dunno, a ball of this gecko stuff. With some metal in the middle and some sort of plastic spring thing or a bungee cord. The metal releases the plastic spring. They pull it up, the spring goes off, they’re wrapped in super Velcro. I’m not sure what happens then…” “Bombs,” Shane said. “They’re tied to something. You name it.” “Spring traps,” Roger said, making a note. “Proximity fuses. Coyote glue.” “They’ve got some high falutin’ name for it,” Shane said. “But that’s what all the engineers called it.” “Ceramic scramjet rounds,” Roger said. “Directed energy weapons.” “Staffs,” Cady insisted. “Everybody gets a big stick.” “I’ve got a friend who’s into that SCA stuff,” Alan said. “I’ll get you a good one.” “Thanks.” “Spikes!” Tom said, excitedly. Roger and Alan just looked at him, used to the sudden apparent nonsequiturs, but Cady and Shane were clearly confused. “Volleyball?” Shane asked. “Like hit volleyballs at them really fast?” “No,” Tom said. “Although it’s a thought. Take some of your Coyote glue. Make a holder with a carbon fiber spike in it. Bait it with metal. Attach it to something strong, but not incredibly strong. Maybe put a capacitor on the spike. The probe grabs the bait, pulls away, can’t, pulls harder, the attachment breaks, the spike goes through the probe and it’s history. “I can see that,” Alan said. “We could get one to study that way, assuming we can keep the others off.” “Surround one of those traps with mines?” Cady asked. “Winner of the mine avoidance contest gets to be dissected?” “If it’s a small swarm that might work,” Shane said. “As tactics if not strategy.” “Okay, I’m gonna write up the notes and send it to the working group,” Roger said. “We’ll have to see what happens on communications when they get here. This is even going to screw Internet communications.” “Oh, that’s another thing,” Shane said. “They zero in on RF. Anything broadcasting gets eaten. Fast.” “Very important note,” Roger said. “Let’s take a break while I get this out and then we’ll come back and look at some of these ideas in more depth.” “You think any of this is gonna work?” Cady asked Shane as they filed out of the room. “It’d take a miracle.” “It’s gonna take a miracle,” Alan handed Roger the latest CASTFOREM models that had been tailored to Gries’s and Cady’s debriefing information. “Red consumes blue,” Roger read the printout and sighed as he tossed it onto his desk. “Yeah, it just took a little longer this time.” Alan made a Jetson’s car sound with his lips as he plopped onto Roger’s couch and lay back with his hands behind his head and his feet propped up. “What would you do, coach?” He glanced at his autographed picture of Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant on his office wall and muttered to himself. Alan smiled in response. “He’d probably call for a run right up the gut.” Roger grinned and nodded in agreement. “The problem with all these “What do you mean, Rog?” “Well, Gries and Cady were thinking tactically about how to kill one or a few of these things. We need to kill “Well, the ideas may only be a drop in the bucket or spit in the ocean, but it’s a start.” Alan shrugged as he continued jotting notes. “We can’t just sit around and do nothing.” “Sure, but according to my calculations here, which consider death and growth rates of the probes, we would need a million potato guns with thousands of rounds each to keep up. Looks like CASTFOREM agrees with me.” The temptation overwhelmed Roger and he decided to spin the little space shuttle gadget. He flicked it with his index finger and it went spinning. “So, we make that many. And I’ve already figured that out. We don’t use potato guns — well, maybe a few as larger grenade launchers. Instead we use paintball guns. Sarge and I’ve found three different manufacturers of them that can make canned air powered full auto systems that fire up to fifteen balls per second. The balls just have a liquid paint in them anyway so…” Alan paused and looked up from his PDA to see if Roger was paying attention. “So, we fill them with a high explosive. And here is the good part. I only had to come up with two very simple modifications to make them completely out of a carbon polymer material. No metal. And Sarge found one company — couple of enthusiasts really — that has a minigun that can fire nearly three hundred rounds per second!” “That’s good work, Alan. How long before we can get delivery on them?” Roger asked. “Two weeks for the first thousand rifles and first hundred thousand rounds. But we’re building up manufacturing capability at all the redoubts now that we know what we’re dealing with. We’ll have millions of rounds and hundreds of thousands of guns within a month and a half. The minigun needs more mods since it had more metal in it and the first twenty will be delivered in a month.” “Great, let’s hope we have that long. Triple the efforts on that if you can. But we still need a Hail Mary play or a hook-and-ladder kick-off return to use if we’re behind by a touchdown and only five seconds left on the clock.” Roger was subconsciously upset with the fact that there would be no more SEC Football and his game analogies and euphemisms were starting to surface as a symptom. Others had symptoms of the under-siege society in other ways. God only knew how Alice’s and John’s little girls were handling it. “Well, I’d say we’re a couple of touchdowns back and its time to pray for the onside kick,” Alan added to the analogy. “I’ve been thinking about what Shane said about them attacking the radios and the report of the AWACS going down and the probes hitting the Falcons when they went active. You know, they hit the probes around Mars and the Moon, which all had transmitters going. Sure we shielded the lunar probe good, but it was still radiating like a bastard out the back lobe of the antenna. Hmmm… what if they weren’t taking out our eyes but were just hungry for radio?” “Maybe, but that might just be a good way to accomplish knocking out our eyes.” Alan pondered the radio emissions point for a second. “So, where are you going with this?” “What if we took a nuke or some other BMF explosive and attached it to a huge radar transmitter? Or several distributed radars with a bomb each? We wouldn’t kill them all but we might could contain their movements and reduce their numbers. Gries was telling me something about a so-called “Killing field, yeah, I see. Well, if they rebuild themselves with nanotechnology, blowing them up might be a bad idea,” Alan replied. “Would it really? Wouldn’t the fireball vaporize most of the material or carbonize it? I’m asking here, I don’t know.” “Well, you know what the Martian Manhunter said in that episode of “But what if they don’t use nanotech to replicate?” “Okay, I’ll bite. But if they don’t use nanomachines what do they use?” Alan shrugged. “Tom was right a long time ago. We should’ve nuked Mars when we lost the first probe.” “We need some of these things to study.” “Mr. Sergeant Cady,” Tina tugged sheepishly at the back of the large intimidating black man’s shirt. “You walk fast.” “Hello, Tina. And it’s Sergeant Major Cady. Just call me Top, like everybody else. That’s really what a first sergeant is supposed to be called, not a sergeant major, but my troops are used to it. What can I do for you?” “See I told ya, Dingbat.” Charlotte punched her on the arm. “Charlotte,” Cady nodded at the other teenager, amused. “Well, uh, Charlotte and I have been hearing all of you guys talk about these metal-eating alien robots. Is it true?” Tina asked. “Well, I’m not supposed to talk about it, but don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. You should talk to your mom and see what she will tell you.” “Well, I would but her and Dr. Fisher, you know Charlotte’s dad,” she nodded at Charlotte. “Well, they flew off to somewhere to build a new rocket or something. They won’t be back for a few days and, well, we’re worried about something.” “Oh, who is watching y’all girls?” Cady was surprised. “Oh my God, Top. We’re both fourteen years old, and surrounded by the Army, what could happen to us?” Tina held her hands in the air palms up and cocked her head sideways. “Right, uh okay,” Cady said, trying not to think about various songs he’d sung over the years. The answer was: a lot. “There are alien robots in Europe, on the Moon, and Mars and the other planets in the solar system as far as we know and they eat metal. Good enough for you? Nothing to worry about; we’re all working hard to find a way to stop them. I need to get back at it.” “Uh, we were afraid of that.” Tina smiled big at Cady and Charlotte pointed at her braces. “Metal like this, perhaps?” Charlotte said as she pointed. “Jesus Christ!” Cady realized her concern. Some of the horrible images from his and the major’s trip to Paris of soldiers being decapitated flashed in his mind. What if a bot got close enough to pull the metal out of this poor kid’s mouth? If the damn thing pulled the metal straight out of her mouth she would likely lose some teeth and have her lips, and tongue ripped to shreds. And what if she was facing the wrong way when the bots pulled the braces free? Cady had seen the damned alien things pull rebar right out of concrete; braces through a little girl’s head would be nothing for them. And as far as he could tell, the goddamned machines would care less. Then it dawned on him, “Come with me, girls.” Cady about faced and headed back down the hall toward the major’s office. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered again careful not to add further expletives in front of the teenagers. “Roger, the sergeant major and I need a minute with you.” Major Gries pecked on Dr. Reynolds’ door and peeked in around the door frame. “Can it wait, Shane? Ronny is breathing down my neck for a progress report to go to the President this afternoon.” He looked over his laptop at the major. It had been some time since Roger had gotten plenty of sleep and he suspected it would remain that way for, well, years. He felt haggard and hated putting off his more real duties of interacting with the people working for him, but he was conflicted by the fact that he also wasn’t going to turn in a half-assed report that was going all the way to the President. “Uh, actually, I think this ought to be in your report.” The major stepped fully into the doorframe and leaned his shoulder against it. “Okay, what is it?” “Sergeant Major,” Gries turned away from Roger. “Yes sir!” “Bring in exhibit A, please.” Gries half grinned but only at the theatrics. The thought of kids around the world having had their faces destroyed by these alien things really pissed him off. Though he and Cady had only seen the aliens attacking military and only caught their interaction with a few civilians, he knew that countless kids with braces and other medical metal implants must have been tortured and killed by the damned mindless alien robots. “Exhibit A present yourself in front of Dr. Reynolds’ desk, please.” Cady winked at Tina, who marched and stood at attention in front of Roger’s desk. “What’s up? Hi Tina.” He leaned back in his chair, amused at the parading teenager. “Hi,” she whispered while still at attention. “Miss Pike, please smile real big for Dr. Reynolds,” Cady instructed her. “Roger that, Top!” She grinned as big as she could at Reynolds. Roger looked her up and down for a moment still sidetracked by the report he was working on for Ronny, but then it hit him like a ton of bricks. The report that Gries and Cady had given him upon their return from the initial attack in Paris came foremost to his mind. “Awww shit! I hadn’t even thought of that.” “Mr. President as far as we can tell, most of the major cities have been evacuated to redoubts and refugee centers in the Midwest plains and in the large expansive areas that have no major infrastructure and are near lakes and rivers and other water sources. All refugee centers were built with wood, plastic, and other synthetic material construction and all personal vehicles were moved to locations at least five miles from those encampments.” The President’s national security advisor Vicki Johnson continued through the President’s Daily Brief or the PDB. “Are they living with no power or other things that metals enable?” President Colby asked. “No, sir. There are areas set up outside each encampment that are several hundred feet below the ground. Hopefully, the bots will not find the underground locations before we can figure out a way to beat them back. The Neighborhood Watch group also believes that the cities will be enough bait for them to keep them busy for a little while. All of these underground locations have modern facilities, wireless and wired Internet, ice machines, laundries, hospitals, and so on. The problem is that the number of refugees at each camp far exceeds the amenities and capabilities within each of the underground facilities. So a rationing and sharing protocol has been put in place.” “That’s right, Mr. President,” General Mitchell agreed with the NSA. “We have implemented the largest evacuation and survival center in distributed locations across the country and the U.S. territories in the history of mankind. It has taxed every service, civilian, and military, beyond their limits, but we believe we can survive a full occupation for an extended period of time.” “Are all of the people out of the cities and in either the redoubts and refugee camps… refugee camps, God Almighty I hate that term.” The President sipped at the coffee mug before him. He paused and looked at it. It had been his favorite mug: he’d kept it on his desk in the Oval Office. The mug had a picture of the White House on it and the official seal of the President of the United States of America etched in it. Across the presidential seal was etched the autograph of all four of the currently living former presidents. He couldn’t stand the fact that the White House — the entire country — would be occupied by an outside threat during his watch. “Well sir, many are. Those that didn’t go to the official centers decided to chance it on their own and fend for themselves. Some stayed behind in the cities. Some have become nomadic, and some have moved to the various desolate and unpopulated regions of the country. Dr. Reynolds calls them Farnham’s Freeholders for some reason. He has also created some models that have tried to estimate their numbers. He guesses between five and fifty million citizens are Freeholders.” Vicki closed her notebook, which usually signaled the President that the PDB was coming to an end. “Is that all?” President Colby looked around the War Room at his advisors. “No sir, there is one more thing. Dr. Guerrero and Dr. Reynolds have brought to our attention—” Vicki crossed her hands over her notebook in front of her and sighed. “There are estimated some seventy-five million people in the United States under eighteen. At any given time about a third to a half of those have orthodontic braces of some sort. Add in Americans older than that with orthodontic braces and then those with some sort of surgical metal implant, we end up with between fifty and a hundred million Americans that have metal physically attached to them somehow…” She paused to see if the president was catching on. He was. “God Almighty! We’ve got to get those damned things off every single one of those kids before those damned alien machines get here! Oh Christ, how many kids must’ve been killed or maimed in Europe?” The President put his face in his hands and began to weep. Then he wiped his eyes, stood, and pounded his right fist into his left hand, “Vicki, you do whatever it takes to take care of this. This takes first priority over everything we’re doing. If we can’t protect our children, then Goddamnit what use are we!” “Roger, the President wants to know what is happening worldwide. Our over-the-horizon radar doesn’t seem like a good idea. All aerial missions we’ve sent have been completely lost. The only real recon we’ve received is from Major Gries, Sergeant Major Cady, and the two pilots who survived the disaster in France. Oh, we’ve put together reports from the many survivors but a lot of those accounts are jumbled and don’t really include much useful intel beyond what we got from Major Gries.” Ronny sat in his makeshift headquarters office at the Huntsville redoubt. The accommodations were about the same as the office he had had in Virginia before the major cities were evacuated. Instead of moving him to the CIA redoubt in Langley, the President had ordered him to stay with his Neighborhood Watch team that had served so well to this point. “I understand that, Ronny. I’ve got the guys working on just how in the hell to get aerial or space recon without metal and radio. That’s not an easy task, mind you.” Roger squirmed in the leather guest chair making it squeak as he did. “Could we build a nonmetal refractive telescope and nonmetal film camera?” Ronny asked. “Sure, we could even build the camera with a clever plastic spring-wound timing system. The optics on the telescope would be heavy, though. Most of the glasses would only work worth a damn in the visible spectrum. Infrared would be possible with some glasses and the right film. The wavefront error would be horrible without being able to put a deformable mirror or tip-tilt corrector in there to take out atmospheric distortion.” Roger thought out loud while removing his ball cap and rubbing his fingers through his hair. “Yes, yes, Roger. But could you do it? Fuzzy images would be better than none.” Ronny rested his elbows on his big metal desk as he steepled his fingers together and leaned his chin on them. He laughed to himself at the thought of all the metal inside the redoubt. In the wiring, the computers, the monitors, the structure, and even the furniture. He considered that ironic or crazy; old construction habits must be hard for the corps of engineers to break. But at the same time he knew that if the redoubt fell a metal or a plastic desk would make no difference. “Sure we could. How do we get it up and back is the question.” “Perhaps we should learn from history, heh?” Ronny smiled. “What do you mean?” “KH-1 through KH-7 ring a bell?” “KH-1 through 7,” Roger mouthed. “Hmm, KH is Keyhole, oh, sure the Corona project, but… heh.” Roger knew exactly where Ronny was going with the comment. Corona was the first spy satellite program. It was a little satellite that was launched into a decaying low Earth orbit. The little satellite had a camera in it that snapped a bunch of pictures on a timer and then it fell back to Earth. The camera box was caught by a big net that was pulled behind an aircraft. Roger knew that aircraft were out of the question, but parachutes or something similar might work. “I thought you would get it.” Ronny laughed. “How do we get it up and back?” “A rocket with completely composite components and mechanically driven guidance systems with no metal, no radios. The satellite takes a couple orbits worth of photos and plummets back to Earth. We use an air pressure gauge to release a chute with all-composite parts and then we just go pick up the film canister.” Roger started running the idea through the design process in his head. The last two missions had made him very sharp with the process and he was already thinking about the mission components. “Can we do it?” Ronny asked. “We can do it. I better get to work.” Roger ran out of Ronny’s office, looking for Tom Powell and John Fisher. “Good lad.” Ronny leaned back in his chair and sighed. Dr. Richard Horton rummaged through the antechamber of the old copper mine looking for his RJ-45 connector crimping tool. He had sworn that he had set it on top of the spool of Category-5 Ethernet wire that he had brought with them. “Is dis vat you are looking for?” Helena asked holding up a coaxial cable crimping tool. Richard paused for a second to take in her sexy thick Russian accent before responding to his very young and very beautiful wife. He had found her a year before on RussianWives.com. It had only cost him sixty-three hundred dollars and a plane ticket to pick Helena Terechenkova from the catalogue and fly her to the States. Getting a lawyer to straighten out the paperwork had taken another two thousand. After staying with Richard Horton for three weeks, Helena decided that he would do and married him. That translated into: living with Dr. Horton was less of a hell than living under the oppressive thumb of the drug lords in the bad part of St. Petersburg. Richard could care less why she stayed; just that she stayed and married him was enough to satisfy him. The occasional treat of sex with Helena made it more than satisfying, at least for him. From Helena’s standpoint, the sex was worth getting out of Russia — but just barely. She knew that Richard Horton meant nobody any harm and that he was a nice person, but besides that he was a crazy conspiracy nut, which meant that they moved around, used assumed names often, and lived in the oddest places. Helena tried to tell herself that his paranoia was just Entertaining or not, he eventually got on her damn nerves. Had aliens not come to take over the world, she would have probably left him. But for now he seemed like her best bet for survival. Who knew, he might even eventually grow on her. That part was unlikely, but Helena was a survivor and she was going to make the best out of the situation — no matter what. “Sorry, dear. That’s for crimping connectors onto television cable. We’re looking for the crimping tool for putting one of these onto this.” He held up an RJ-45 Ethernet connector and the frayed end of a piece of Ethernet cable. “Oh, dat one, yes I seen it over dere,” Helena pointed to the tool box sitting on the tailgate of the pickup truck parked in the entrance to the mine. Richard walked over to the truck, stumbling over several other packs and boxes on the way, and stopped to kiss Helena on the cheek. Helena smiled and squirmed a bit from the roughness of Richard’s long, unruly, graying beard. “You should shave dat ting.” Richard ignored her and made his way through the tools in the truck until he found what he had been searching for. The little blue crimping tool was there and finally he could get back to running the network on his equipment. Just in case he needed another tool once he got down to the bottom of the mine shaft he slung the little backpack shaped toolbox over his shoulder and snapped the restraining strap around his waist. “I’m going back down, you coming?” Richard grabbed the hundred-foot spool of Ethernet wire. “ “Maybe in a few hours. I’ve got a lot to do today.” “I still don’t see vhy you don’t go vireless.” She brushed her long black bangs off her soiled forehead. “I vill go down… go into the cave… when you get finished.” “Suit yourself, but wireless would probably not be a good idea,” he said. “Why is dat?” “The alien probes use it.” Richard shrugged and started the long winding half-mile trek to the bottom of the mine. Although he had already been working on the mine for months, it was just now becoming a true shelter with real necessities of life. He had lined all the shafts with touch-on battery operated lights — the kind you could buy at the hardware store for a few dollars each. He had placed them about every fifty feet or so and had strung low-voltage rope lights between them to mark the walking path. He followed the path deeper into the mine for another quarter mile or so before he had to stop and shift the weight of the spool of cable to the other arm. He started rolling off his list of things to do out loud to himself. “Okay, let’s see, first I need to connect the waterwheel to the torque control circuit and the optical encoders to the laptop. Then I can control the gearing mechanism electronically.” He adjusted his headlamp with his right hand and nearly dropped the cable spool on his foot. “Shit!” He caught the spool just in time. Several times in the past he had considered buying an electric four-wheeled vehicle to carry equipment up and down the shaft to the shelter, but it was either the four-wheeler or a spectrum analyzer. Then it was either a four-wheeler or a computer-controlled waterwheel — batteries or gas-powered generators just weren’t going to do. It was unlikely that the waterwheel would put out enough power continuously for him to operate the equipment and life-supporting things he needed, but it was his best shot. Then it was either the four-wheeler or digital microscope setup. Then it was the four-wheeler or a very fast digital oscilloscope card. Then it was the four-wheeler or the Bell jar and vacuum pump. Then he started entertaining the idea of putting together an electron microscope down there, but that would be heavy and he’d probably need the four-wheeler just to haul it down there. The electron microscope would be too expensive just then and would require a more But at the same time he wished he had his little red wagon with him. What he had been doing was pulling a beefed up heavy duty RadioFlyer filled with the stuff up and down the mine shaft. But he had forgotten and left it at the bottom of the shaft on the last trip down. He continued to wrestle with the idea of buying that four-wheeler. “The uninterruptible power sources are already connected to the generator, but the UPS diagnostic is Ethernet and goes from there to the hub.” He continued talking his plan out loud to himself. “Right. Then it goes from each of the computers and the printer to the hub. Let’s see, there’re three computers, a printer, and the scanner, oh and the eight different Internet wires from the river…” He ticked off the list. Richard had searched for a month to find the most secluded and deep underground Internet service providers in the area that ran close to the river that wound through the mountains. He found one switching hub from the phone network at the edge of the town just below the mountain. He found a server that was operated from a small service provider a few miles up river on the other side of the mountain. He found two different cable/Internet companies that had brought high speed wireless up the mountain along with digital cable. One connection he hacked into ran beneath a power line that ran across the mountain ridge on the other side of the valley. Two ran from Park Ranger stations at either end of the river on each side of the mountain. His final and perhaps most robust connection was to an abandoned SCADA network running the old railroad system that wound through the mountains. Richard expected it to be the most likely system to survive. SCADA, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, weren’t actually full control systems or Internet connections. Instead SCADA systems were typically designed for use on the supervisory level. Fortunately, most supervisors would rather use Internet connectivity and simple browsers to supervise such systems. It was just easier for them. Richard knew that the good thing about SCADA control systems was that they were basically all software that had been overlaid on top of a networked hardware system. SCADA was a fairly common and commercial approach that used COTS devices that could be interfaced and programmed easily. Their robustness and versatility had made them quite popular as the programmable logic control system of choice since early 2000. Not only were they used for railroads and factories, SCADA systems were ideally suited for any large manufacturing facility that had thousands of input/output interface requirements, such as car manufacturing plants, nuclear plants, power generation and transfer plants, and even some airport systems. Unfortunately, the only one that came near the Appalachian Mountain chain that Richard could find was the railroad system. It was easy enough to hack into since there was little need for network security from bears and raccoons. Most of the older SCADA systems ran on DOS, VMS and UNIX; this one used UNIX. Richard spoke UNIX just fine. So he hacked in and got connected and then only had to drag a line back to the river, then through an access shaft to the mine. The portion running up to the access shaft was pure optical cable, so the bots should leave it alone. Thus Richard had eight different routes to gain Internet connectivity. Once he had identified his closest Internet service provider locations, he either set up accounts or hacked into the cables. Mostly he hacked into the systems by splitting the cables at junction boxes. Where he could get line of sight he set up lasercom relay systems to the river and then he dropped cable downriver to the mine. This all sounded simple, but it actually involved several months of very tedious and sometimes clandestine work. He also found that he had to run power cables up to the edge of the river to power the lasercom systems. Fortunately, he only ended up using three different lasercom routes and was able to drop cable all the way from the other six connections. Bandwidth was his big problem. He knew the long drops would only supply low bandwidth connections. He hoped to mitigate that with a couple of different approaches. The first was to multiplex the eight different connections, thus effectively increasing his bandwidth by sending IP packets out sequentially on dynamic IP addresses. This would help some. The other way he planned to increase his bandwidth was by placing a big amplifier at each end of the connections. Under normal circumstances the companies would have eventually found the hacks, but nothing about nowadays was normal. Richard was planning on the companies basically dropping out of customer service and such matters altogether. So looking for hacks would be low on their lists of things to do. And if they did find them all, which he doubted, he would fall back on bursting transmissions through the amateur radio repeater networks. But there was still something nagging him about that. Thinking about the repeater networks made him subconsciously look at the rope light to make sure the coaxial cable from the radio transceiver antenna was still running along beside it. It was. As a last ditch effort he could use the amateur radio network to com-municate and connect to the world. But he was not even going to turn that system on if he didn’t have to. Radio… he still wasn’t sure, but there was something about radio that made him nervous. Radio and telecom seemed to be the first thing to go at Mars, the Moon, around the planet. Was there something about radio? Most all telecommunications that were left on the globe now were over the Internet. There were occasional burst transmissions of radio sent from Australia, South America, parts of Africa, and still here in the United States, but they were limited. As soon as he got set up, he was going to do a full analysis on the RF spectrum and see if he could figure that out. He continued to talk himself through his things to do and after about eight minutes of walking he finally made it to the entranceway to the shelter. He shined his light up and down the walls of the mine shaft at the doorway he had built. He was quite pleased with his handiwork. He was somewhat displeased with the empty red wagon parked beside the doorway. Richard punched in the code on the cipher lock and pushed the door open. He tapped the battery-operated light by the door and illuminated the front room of his shelter. The front room was nothing more than a section of the mine shaft about fifty feet long. There were three other shafts on the right side of the main section and one on the left. Between the shaft entrances on the right were plastic garage storage shelves with every inch of space filled judiciously with plastic storage bins, cardboard boxes with various item titles handwritten on the side in marker, and various other hardware and supplies. On the left side of the main tunnel were more shelves and some folding tables. On the folding tables were a coffee maker, a microwave, a hotplate, a blender, and a toaster oven. There were folding chairs placed in front of the tables. Near the entrance to the left-side shaft was also a large plastic shop sink. There was a plastic gallon container with a pump dispenser top marked “antibacterial soap” sitting on a shelf beside the sink. Two one-inch pieces of PVC pipe ran up the mine wall behind the sink and turned down the left-side wall of the entranceway to the shaft on that side of the main room. Alongside where those pipes entered the shaft were several other one-inch PVC pipes that came out of the entranceway and ran across the top of the shaft and over to the other side entrances. A green garden hose ran out of the bottom of the sink, then along the bottom side of the shaft and out the left side. There were several other garden hoses meeting at that left-side entranceway. On the other side of the shaft entrance — the one on the left side of the main chamber — were several bundles of Cat-5 cable and several very thick high amperage electrical power cables running along the corner of the wall. Richard tapped another couple of battery powered lights and followed the left shaft. About twenty feet down the shaft the sound of running water became overwhelming. Richard continued to tap lights on the wall of the shaft. He had placed them much more densely in this tunnel. Under most of the lights were more folding tables with various pieces of equipment stowed in boxes. There were also a few large plastic bins stacked on top of each other. On the left side of the shaft, about half the way down it, a PVC pipe ran into a sixty-gallon water heater. The inflow pipe to the water heater continued down the hall with the rest of the pipes. There was also a five-shelf plastic garage storage rack on the right side of the shaft with router and switching hardware. They were not powered presently. Eight coaxial cables came in to the hardware from further down the shaft. Several Cat-5 cables were connected to a bank of hubs. The Ethernet cables then ran back out toward the way he had come in. Finally, he reached the end of the shaft at an old rusty metal pier and ladder. The PVC pipes all connected into a string of tees that were converted to two-inch PVC that was then converted again three different times until it was finally an eight inch pipe that ran upward alongside the ladder. The large pipe was zip-tied to the ladder. The bundle of coaxial cables wound around the pipe and upward. He stepped out on the pier and shined his light across the large underground chamber. The chamber had to be at least thirty feet across in any direction and at the bottom, which was another twenty feet below him, was a small freshwater pond that was several feet deep in the middle. He knew because he had surveyed it several times with snorkeling gear. In the light there was a flash of silver as the small trout he’d stocked reacted to his presence. People meant food to the little trout. When they were larger, the reverse would be true. The rushing water was very loud in the pond chamber because a small underground stream flowed from thirty or more feet above over a falls into the pond on the left side. The stream flowed from left to right and went out somewhere under the rocks on the far end of the pond. There was very cold spray that misted the area near the ladder and pier. The cool mist and the rushing water sound were quite tranquil and sometimes Richard would just sit in the folding chair on the pier for hours and relax. But today, he had a lot of work to do. He climbed the ladder to the metal pier above him where his waterwheel and generator assembly sat. The main eight-inch PVC water line and the coaxial cable bundle ran up to the edge of the falls to the bottom of a large galvanized metal hundred-gallon animal trough. The Internet cables split off and disappeared into the water. The trough was positioned in such a way that part of the falls fell into it and it was full and overflowing. This is how he ran water through the mine. The waterwheel was positioned in the middle of the falls and the axle, slip-ring connectors, and control circuitry wires ran out along the periphery of the axle to the power conversion unit sitting on the pier. Richard tapped the lights on that pier level and set about running the Ethernet wires. In the dim lighting it was tedious work. After a few hours Richard had the waterwheel spinning free and the clutch being controlled by a laptop in the main chamber. He activated the system and a rechargeable battery powered gearbox slipped the main drive of the waterwheel into gear. Richard watched the UPS units against the wall of the main chamber eagerly. After a few seconds the little green lights on the front of the boxes kicked on and then the chamber lit up. The fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling of the chamber hummed to life and Richard could hear the refrigerator compressor kick on. The microwave beeped and a video tape ejected itself from the VCR that was set up in the end of the main room where Helena had established a “living room.” There was an inflatable couch and chairs set, a small folding coffee table, and a small entertainment stand. The entertainment stand housed a stereo, a VCR, a DVD player, a Playstation2 and a nineteen-inch color television. All of which came on and were blinking A few more hours of connecting systems and checking Internet and file-sharing protocols and he was too tired to think straight. Then he looked at his watch and realized it was pushing eleven PM. “Oh God,” he said looking at his watch. “I better hurry or I’ll miss it.” “Hurry up, Charlotte or you’re going to miss it!” Tina said loudly in Charlotte’s ear as she looked over her shoulder at the computer monitor. “Dingbat, the show lasts four hours. We’re not gonna miss it.” Charlotte giggled and shook her head. “There we go.” The speakers chimed on and the RealPlayer software finished setting itself up. “I know that, geek-brain. But I like how it comes on. I hate missing that part.” Tina punched her friend on the shoulder. “Okay then, shhhh. Here it is.” Ret Ball: |
||
|