by John Ringo
“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. What would they have done? he wondered as he considered the names on the mug.
“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 orbit
s 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 entertainment.
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.
“Nyet, it’s too dark down dere right now. I tink I’ll drive back up to the cabin and make some dinner. You vant?”
“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 creative funding source — maybe later. So he decided on a mass spectrometer. Then it was a well-equipped chemistry lab, including stills, condensers, centrifuge, and such. And so on. Richard just could not force himself to sacrifice a piece of scientific equipment because he didn’t like the long walk down the shaft. After all, he could only generate so many credit card numbers a month without getting caught. And he didn’t want to get his proverbial red wagon fixed.
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.
