Web of Extinction

by John Conroe

  “We just want contact with your friend,” he said.

  Astrid frowned at me. I mouthed Harper at her and she nodded, immediately understanding. Harper had said she had evidence on the true architects of Drone Night. She’d indicated I had met one of them. But so far, she hadn’t released all of her information, holding it back as protection of sorts.

  I pulled out my phone and held it up to Astrid, mouthing, “Should I?”

  She frowned and shook her head. Then she pointed at me and made a finger gun from her left hand, pointing it at her head. Oh. Shussman wanted me as a hostage to leverage Harper. And Astrid would make great leverage to force me to contact Harper.

  I turned and pointed at the edge of the water behind us. The dock dropped down to the water, which was currently almost a meter below the edge of the concrete. Maybe we could move along down there, unseen, and get back out to the city.

  Astrid’s head snapped around and she was suddenly pulling me back to the other corner of the container, then around it, farther from the water’s edge. She put her mouth up to my ear.

  “Team just rounded the corner at the end. We have to work our way toward the cranes.”

  The terminal was big, like many acres big, and with less than twenty people, Shussman was going to have to really spread them out to find us. Problem was we were now trapped between containers with searchers on either end of the container lineup.

  I turned and pointed up, at the top of the next container. It was a bit more than two and a half meters high. I made a stirrup with my hands and she stepped off the ground with a little jump, her foot in my hands, my arms lifting to boost her momentum. Her weight stayed on my hands for a second, then disappeared as she pulled herself up.

  I took three steps away from the container, turned and ran, jumping up to catch her outstretched hand, my other hand grabbing the metal edge. Then I too was up, crouching on top.

  We took a second to look carefully around. None of the searchers had moved far enough away to see the top of our container. Immediately we both went down over the other side, lowering ourselves till we could drop as quietly as possible. Then we repeated the process on the next container. That one was very closely parked to its neighbor, so we easily jumped the gap between them, and then the space to the one after that. But we had to repeat the drop and climb maneuver to clear the next space between containers. Suddenly we froze. Down on the ground, the hum of a motor was clear and getting louder. The driver of one of the SUVs was using his vehicle to speed the search.

  We turned and ran at the next container in a sudden burst of fear-activated adrenaline, both jumping for the top edge, both catching it and climbing up.

  My arms and legs were burning, but good old solid fear drove me on. Astrid never showed the slightest sign of faltering, so how could I?

  We crouched down on top of the metal container, as close to the water side as we could get without exposing ourselves to the team moving up that side. Out on the main tarmac, the first pair of operators appeared in our line of vision, each looking between the big stacks of containers in front of them. If they turned back to look at their boss, they would immediately see us atop our metal perch.

  There was nothing to do but get low and watch them to see if they turned back. Seconds ticked by but they were getting farther away and then, with the next few steps they took, they were behind the corner of a giant cube stack.

  “It’s pointless to hide, Ajaya. We will find you. Help isn’t coming. You must know that, right? Our people have ordered the police to stand down,” Shussman yelled.

  The sirens had stopped, which lent a little credence to his words, but still. Maybe his people had the juice at the top, but I know a little about cops. The ones that got shot had definitely called it in. I had a clear memory of at least one officer tapping her ear and speaking. The sirens might have gone silent, but the street cops would never accept an order to leave their fallen brothers and sisters to die. They were New Yorkers, stubborn and proud. Some of them were still coming.

  In hindsight, running diagonally across the terminal lot would have made the most sense. The cube stacks would have provided cover from view.

  Rising slowly and carefully, we looked around. The SUV had turned away from us, now moving alongside the cranes, rapidly covering the open space. Maybe the driver had the same realization that I just had—that the big stacks were the best option for fugitives. I just hoped he didn’t look in his rearview mirror and spot us atop our hiding places. I was about to jump to the next container when Astrid stopped me. She held a finger to her lips and cupped a hand behind her ear.

  Suddenly I heard the soft sound of a footstep, coming from just below us. The ground searchers had caught up.

  Landing on each container made noise, but the unloading operations of the docked ship had been loud enough to cover our jumps. In fact, the noise was getting louder as we got closer. Suddenly I understood what had bothered me before… there were no people involved with the crane or transport vehicles—they were all just operating themselves. It was still being done by AI—all automated.

  Part of me was pissed at the blatant disregard for human safety in our new reality. The other part was glad it was making the noise it was making. That part shoved the other one into a corner and told it to stay.

  We lay down on the container and Astrid cautiously peered over the edge. Without looking back at me, she held up one finger, her head moving slightly as she tracked the gunman’s progress. Then her hand moved to point ahead, telling me he was looking toward the end of the docks… away from us.

  I rose silently and holstered my pistol. Going armed covertly had only allowed me to bring the pistol, as opposed to my kukri. I couldn’t successfully conceal both. But I still had my dad’s Kershaw folding knife, given to me by Kayla when she returned my pistol and the big knife. This folder had a blade about nine centimeters long. Not what I’d prefer, but better than nothing.

  Moving forward, I peered over the edge of the box. The searcher was two meters from the corner of our container, facing the next cube. It was now or never; his next step would take him too far away. I leapt instantly, not thinking about what I was doing until I was already in the air.

  I had never shot a human before today. And I’ve never gone for a knife kill in my life. But it had been part of my training, something my dad insisted that I know even if I said I never wanted to hunt or hurt another human. “Sometimes the matter is not up to you, Ajaya. Not if you want your friends and family to live. Not if you want to live yourself. So you must know these things,” he had said, making me repeat whatever drill I had been doing before I stopped to protest.

  Now I found myself in mid-air, flying toward a man I didn’t know. I fully expected him to turn, to sense my flight from above, and then to turn, step aside, or simply shoot me, but he didn’t do any of those things. He never knew I was there, not until it was way too late.

  I came down with my hand on his left shoulder, my right hand jabbing the blade into his neck, right at the base of his skull, my almost vertical body hitting him in the back.

  I felt the blade break, the old, many times sharpened blade surrendering to the stress of hitting hard vertebrae. But it was already done, the momentum of my leap powering the metal deep into his spine, his death already assured even as the thinned metal snapped.

  He piled up on the ground, partially breaking my fall, partially not. My feet came down on either side of him but my left leg buckled. I felt a sharp pain in my left knee as it hit the pavement, but my focus was entirely on the M-43 carbine the dead man still held in his hands. I had to yank and pull on him to get it free, wrestling against his sudden dead weight to get it in my hands before one of his partners came around the nearest corner and caught me.

  The gun was almost out and free when a shadow fell across the nearest space between the containers. I looked up to see a muzzle rising into my face, no way for me to win this race.

  Then three fast shots rang out, ech
oing loudly across the terminal, the man falling away, red spots blooming suddenly on his face and neck. Astrid was crouched on the container top, little pistol braced in two hands, muzzle still smoking.

  “Get down here,” I said, breaking her out of her freeze just as shots rang out in response. She dropped off the container, landing awkwardly near my side.

  Across the pavement, I could see the SUV screeching to a stop, its driver now reversing into a fast rum runner’s turn. Hyperfast bullets spanged off the metal containers around us, some of them driving right through the thick steel walls.

  Without thought, I popped off return bursts, feathering the firing button of the e-mag carbine. The M-43 is a shorter version of the M-45 rifle, both of them carrying two hundred 6mm steel projectiles in each magazine. The digital counter on my weapon had read full of both steel ball bearing ammo and electric charge.

  Astrid used my cover fire to bear crawl to the man she had killed, pulling his own M-43 away before crawling back to my position. Only one guy was shooting at us, the rest still dispersed among the big cubical stacks of shipping containers. That was good for the moment, especially as my return fire clipped his leg, spinning him around, blood spraying across the asphalt.

  Astrid gave me a look of disbelief.

  “What?” I asked. It was actually a damned good shot. She just shook her head, turning to look out across the terminal. Then, without a word or a gesture, we both popped up and fired a burst at the now oncoming SUV.

  Pistol rounds might not have done us much good, but twenty hypersonic steel balls will wreck the shit out of even America’s finest big cars. The car swerved and slammed into the path of an automated reach stacker that was carrying a six-meter container by itself.

  The impact somehow broke the hold of the reach stacker’s clamp, the container coming down on the hood and windshield of the car, ending its run.

  “What the hell do I pay you idiots for?” Shussman screamed from somewhere out in the stacks.

  Figures appeared at the corners of the containers and spherical bullets screamed our way, ripping into our cover.

  “We got a problem here,” I said.

  “Ya think? We’re pinned into this corner.”

  “We need a way off this pier. Someone’s going to get the high ground on one of those really big stacks and then we’re toast. You see anything?” I asked, switching to single shot and firing back at one of our attackers.

  “Yeah. Yeah I do. Hold them here. I’ll be right back,” she said, slithering backward before moving into a crouch. I heard her footsteps racing away and suddenly felt really alone. Buckle down, Gurung. Give her the cover she needs, I thought to myself, an image of Dad looking down from the heavens popping into my head.

  I rolled fast to my left, getting fully behind the end of a container. It gave me almost the full length of the steel box as protection, as did the one next to me. Only if they lined right up with the narrow corridor between boxes could they fire directly at me. At least until they got people back to the edge of the dock where we had first entered the stacks. Then they could shoot straight up the edge of the water till they peppered me with rounds.

  Behind me, back out on the corner of the pier, I heard an electric motor wake up, then the whine of hydraulics. I couldn’t look around because two more shooters started to direct fire my way. They couldn’t get a direct line on me but were attempting to ricochet rounds between the containers. Most just punched right into the steel but some actually did bounce back and forth, greatly slowed by the impact but still moving fast enough to kill.

  The rumble of heavy tires came from Astrid’s last position and I finally turned to see what was approaching.

  At first, all I could see was battered white metal and thick, stubby rubber tires. Then I realized it was a piece of construction equipment, an older model electric, manually driven reach stacker. The lift arm coming over the back of it was equipped with a big wide container clamp, currently dangling empty in front of Astrid’s operator’s cage. Because she was still coming in line with the container I was covering behind, none of the shooters had been able to engage her yet. I goggled at the sight of her for a few seconds, then realized that whatever her plan, I needed to be ready.

  My knife victim’s body was still lying nearby, absorbing the occasional bouncing e-mag round. By extending my rifle, I was able to hook the front sight in the man’s jacket, then awkwardly drag him to me. His pockets yielded a spare two-hundred-round magazine with an attached battery pack. They also offered up a real bonus, a handheld radio like the cops used to use.

  I pocketed the magazine, plugged the earpiece of the radio into my right ear, and clipped the little radio unit to my belt. By the time I got all that done, Astrid was right there in her clunky vehicle.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked, climbing onto the sidestep of her ride.

  She pointed at the ship being unloaded.

  “You can drive that? Is it even fast enough?”

  “No, look at the back of it. There’s a ship’s tender suspended on the rear port side. If we can get on the ship and drop that thing into the water, I can get us away.”

  I looked where she was pointing and sure enough, there was a squat little burnt-orange completely enclosed boat, angled on a ski slope ramp at the left rear of the boat. Combination life raft and tender. I had zero doubt she could drive it, but getting there was another question. I also didn’t know if the thing could go fast enough to evade Shussman’s shooters.

  “Ah, not to burst your bubble, but this thing has no protection. They’re going to light us up broadside as soon as we get out there,” I protested.

  “I have a plan,” she said, clamp coming down on the container I was hiding behind. Suddenly the hydraulics whined and the whole huge heavy metal box lifted up ten centimeters off the ground. She spun the container around so that it was angled toward our attackers, almost like a plow blade.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “This,” she said, shoving me off the step and then tying her belt around the steering wheel to lock it in place. She opened her driver’s door and jammed the forward drive control with a pen from her pocket and jumped out.

  The reach stacker lurched forward and she grabbed my hand, pulling me up till we were even with the angled side of the container, running to keep it between us and them.

  Chapter 28

  The container immediately absorbed about a hundred rounds. Shussman started yelling but the metal-on-metal sounds of the e-mag fire drowned out his words.

  Then the firing stopped and I could hear him. “—need him alive, you idiots.”

  Like I thought. Hostage. Wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good; Harper would still release her information, probably sooner if he tried this, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  We were not quite halfway to the ship.

  “—Michaels, get your ass around to the front of the forward gantry till you have a direct line on them,” a female voice said in the radio in my ear.

  “Affirmative,” came the reply.

  “Shoot the damned machine!” Shussman yelled, finding his own flaw in Astrid’s plan.

  Instantly, hundreds of metal balls started to smash into our faithful reach stacker, blasting metal bits everywhere. The damned thing kept going far longer than I would have guessed, but it finally slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether with still thirty or so meters till we could get cover among the steel supports of the closest automated gantry crane.

  We huddled behind the end of our swinging container, both looking for an out.

  “You might as well give up, Mr. Gurung. You put up a hell of a struggle, but you are soon to be outflanked. I admit that I need you, but I don’t, sadly, need your pretty friend. If you don’t give up now, I’ll have my sharpshooters kill her as soon as they have a shot.”