Automatic Reload: A Novel

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  And as I light up, I realize: other men would have been threatened by handing over total command. But Donnie’s either so confident in his abilities or so enamored of my work—or both—that it literally doesn’t occur to him to be jealous.

  “So,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “What would you have done if Trish had sent someone else? Or nobody? What would the plan have been then?”

  At first, I think Donnie is shrugging. But then I hear the whirrs as a total system check ripples across his arms, every one of his military-grade weaponries shifting as they verify full range of motion. His legs go next, flexing as they check their cornering speeds, my flash-protection dimming as his micron-accurate laserweb maps the cabin’s interior.

  He sends me the complete readout:

  All systems functional.

  “Violence doesn’t need a plan.”

  He thumbs the truck’s start button.

  We pull out into the line of trucks ready to hit the highway.

  * * *

  It’s a fifteen-minute ride to the docks, and I’m scanning the freighter trucks surrounding us as we cruise in computer-assisted formation past the decayed highway exit signs; nobody needs signs these days, not with constant GPS feeds to tell you where you are, but it’d cost money to take them down. They’ve become high-profile graffiti war zones instead, with artists getting into firefights over who gets to paint their elaborate murals over exit 13A.

  We’re quiet for different reasons. I’m scanning for any signs of combat situation number one (vehicle hijacking before delivery), fretting that only three of us—Donnie, me, and Kiva—have biological-response packages installed. (Which makes sad sense; getting a doctor to give you a license for auto-prescriptions is a helluva bureaucratic hoop.) If our enemy hits us on the way to the drop zone, then they know we’re in the cabins; the best time to do the swap would be when we’re surrounded by automated trucks and no witnesses.

  The most effective and surreptitious takedown, barring unknown technology—and anyone big enough to tangle with the IAC would have really unknown technology, but let’s not consider that—would be drugs designed to knock us unconscious.

  Without blood-stabilization packages to maintain their body chemistry within established parameters, Saladin, Defcon, and Marcy could go down in under thirty seconds.

  Not that their limbs would. I’ve ensured if any of us are rendered unconscious, our prosthetics will switch into automatic threat-detection and defense mode. But the idea of three killing machines running loose without human judgment makes me grind my teeth.

  Whereas Donnie drums his leg with his small-scale gripping hands, eager for the action. The bioreadouts show me how Kiva’s humming, how Saladin’s squeezing his cock, how Defcon keeps checking his ammo inventory.

  When the bullets fly, none of them want to miss a moment.

  Not that this precombat eagerness is unusual—I was in the military, for God’s sake—but the Drone Corps tended to be much more sedate. We weren’t in personal danger, and we had to train our cameras on the corpses for hours afterwards to monitor the zone. Sometimes we got to watch the mothers bring their kids to see the splatter we made of their daddies.

  There’s not a lot of people in the trucks headed towards the docks. But on the freeway’s far side, the side headed away from the docks, there are poor young couples starting their low-budget, cross-country vacation. While I know I’ve programmed our IFF routines to avoid firing on civilians, any firefight here will pile up the casualties.

  Which is why I breathe a sigh of relief when we pull into the docks.

  The Newark-Elizabeth Port never sleeps: trucks and cars wind their way into the great corrugated steel maze of shipping containers the ships bring. Most of the work’s automated nowadays, with cranes lifting containers off the boats and a complex priority-algorithm determining where the various intermodal freight-storage facilities will reside until someone can pick them up.

  (Not that I knew that before I started the trip here. I do a lot of research en route.)

  Yet as we ease into the automated traffic flow, I note the hundreds of people: hard-hatted maintenance workers ensuring the complex machinery never breaks down, union men to clean up the inevitable spills, inventory clerks who do surprise inspections to reduce theft, and even tattered travelers clustering in a predetermined safe zone, ready to pay to hitchhike to Iowa because it’s the cheapest way to see their families.

  “Switch packages,” I say. “Remove number one, install combat situation number two: dock shoot-out. My install is complete.”

  The HUD shows me Donnie swapping out his vehicle-hijacking response package for the dock–shoot-out response package, which is a complex one: it wires into Donnie’s (expensive) live-time satellite feeds that map out the docks every seventy seconds, then creates a customized threat-inventory of anything that moves.

  It takes him six seconds to finish the installation, importing terabytes of carefully programmed parameters designed to take every reasonable consideration into account. Then Saladin starts, as is proper procedure; the nightmare scenario would be a firefight breaking out while the six of us are reconfiguring our mission parameters. Saladin goes green, then Marcy, then—

  “What the fuck?” Kiva yells. “What the shit does ‘Malformed YAML in module Osprey colon colon TRPI colon colon oAuth’ mean?”

  Defcon sighs. “Jesus, Kiva, you fucked up your import settings again?”

  “I didn’t fuck them up! You wrote the XSLT transformation scripts!”

  “Hold on, hold on,” I say, my skin going cold. “You’re relying on someone else’s transformation scripts to provide reaction packages for your armory? You—”

  But I realize the broadcast isn’t going out to anyone, because Donnie’s cut off my audio connection, the first superuser action I’ve seen him take.

  “I’ve got it, Keeves,” he says, quietly logging into her system with what I realize with sick horror is root access.

  Nobody but the body attached to the prosthetics should have root access. Ever.

  “They set her up at the factory,” Donnie explains, troubleshooting the Osprey OS merge conflicts with an ease I envy. “She’s their showroom model, remember.”

  “Donnie.” My mouth is dry. “She doesn’t know how to import bog-standard response packages. That’s prosthetic armaments one-oh-one.”

  “Awww, Kiva doesn’t like to sweat the technical details,” Donnie mutters, clucking his tongue as he looks up obscure settings in the Osprey Threat Response Protocol Import documents. “That glorious little bitch just likes to kill. And Endolite-Ruger likes having her in a high-profile outfit where they can get footage of their platforms in flashy urban combat. They pay me a nice stipend to keep her on board—it’s a win-win-win situation.”

  I blink. “I didn’t know you cared about budgeting.”

  His manipulation-limbs shoot me galvanized fingerguns. “Keeps Mom happy.” He winks at me, a little Let’s keep this between us, okay? “All right, Kiva, you’re good to go. Now Defcon, you finish and let’s rock this town.”

  His confidence is like an undertow; I can’t fight it, not effectively. Though I do note with interest that he’s at least vaguely concerned with keeping his mother, the CTO of an advanced AI investment firm, appeased.

  We pull in. The massive cranes dwarf the trucks, engulfing us in darkness as impossibly large clamps haul shipping containers overhead.

  “Our secret signal is confirmed.” Donnie points his cigar at an approaching shipping container—a corrugated green steel box the size of an RV, lurching towards us. My research reminds me whatever’s in that is housed in a smart container—there’s dumb containers, boxes that keep nonperishable goods dry, and then varying levels of smart containers that have sensors and environment control. That can be as simple as keeping an even airflow so the bananas don’t go bad, all the way up to complex air-lock environments with hygrometers and temperature and humidity controls.

  Whate
ver the IAC is putting under our control has thick electrical cables.

  We go quiet as the container gets placed on the truck’s suspension, automated routines ensuring that the electricity flow isn’t interrupted in the transfer so the container’s end-state readouts remain within the contractually mandated parameters.

  There’s a metallic clack as the clamps are released and the truck rolls out to let the next shipment be placed on Kiva’s decoy truck.

  “Anyone else feel a little disappointed?” Donnie asks.

  I hate to admit it, but … I am disappointed.

  This is the mysterious secret package we’ve committed our lives to protecting? It should be limned with a glowing purple, or have an oily black substance leaking out the bottom.

  Instead, it looks like every other furniture shipment on the road. And though I’ve planned for a thousand different assaults, today’s endgame may be a quiet ride down to a temporary IAC facility, and never ever knowing what was in the container.

  I’ll get $3 million. But I’d spend the rest of my life curious about what the IAC was up to.

  “Don’t.” Donnie rests a hand on my shoulder. “Just … don’t.”

  I start to protest that I wasn’t thinking anything, but … yeah. I was thinking about sniffing at the readouts, seeing what I could scope out.

  “Let ’em do what they want.” He flexes his shoulder shotguns. “And they’ll let us do what we want.”

  I forgot: he’s hoping to not void his contract so he can get assigned to the thrill-’n’-kill missions the IAC is famed for, whereas I’m hoping to vanish before the IAC knows I’m here. Though that’s gotten trickier now that Donnie’s put me in charge of this mission; if they get future work, there’s a good chance they’ll mention what they learned from me today. They might even recommend me as an expert.

  Fuck.

  We pull out of the docks without incident, though I’m fuming; why didn’t I turn the assignment down? Why didn’t I let Donnie take the lead?

  Saving innocents will be what lets you sleep at night, Trish said. Which is great, except we won’t have any innocents. We’re halfway to the drop-off point and my presence hasn’t made a damn bit of difference because this is in fact a milk run to ensure Donnie can stay on his leash when the IAC needs it, and I just tipped my hand to a goddamned blackmail organization because I had to supervise these wet-eared hackers.

  There’s a muffled whump from the front of the truck, followed by a rhythmic flapping noise. I don’t need my HUD to tell me the front tire blew. Donnie chuckles.

  “Combat situation number three.” Donnie draws the words out, low like a wolf whistle, as the truck pulls over. “Yeah, buddy.”

  “Wait,” Kiva says, confused. “What’s number three again?”

  “Vehicle disablement followed by ambush,” I say, realizing I should be careful what I wish for.

  * * *

  The driver-AI adjusts for the blown tire, pulling over to wait for one of New Jersey’s roaming mechanicbots to arrive.

  I’m glad I’ve programmed in this contingency, because by default our truck would stop immediately, leaving us in an exposed position. Instead, it pulls over so far onto the shoulder that it bumps up against the sad-looking trees choking on fumes from the freeway. Kiva’s truck, the decoy truck, pulls in next to us, providing cover if anyone attacks from the road.

  I climb out of the cockpit, watching the incoming trucks even though I know my sensors are doing a much better job tracking them. If any heavy forces ambush us, it’ll most likely be from a vehicle turned into a combat carrier.

  This rush-hour fight could get bloody.

  I need to stay focused.

  I want to shout orders just to make myself feel better, but the HUD shows me everyone’s headed for their preassigned stations. Donnie positions his immense firepower by the roadside, where hopefully he can deflect any incoming suicide bombings. Saladin has hopped out to scan the woods for incoming hostiles. Marcy, Defcon, and Kiva are flanking the shipping container, each aligning their 120-degree protection zone so there’s no uncovered spaces.

  Me? As the ex–drone pilot, I’m tasked with linking into Donnie’s satellite feeds, my analyst modules scanning the last live-time reading for threats while I examine the blown tire.

  This isn’t FUBAR yet, I think, kneeling down to look at the torn rubber-and-steel weave. Six body-hackers milling around isn’t a hundred percent guaranteed to attract police attention. Even if they are, the cops are distant—people still think cops and freeways go together like cops and donuts, but that was back when humans drove the roads. Now that city AIs control traffic, crime and accidents on freeways are rare. These days the cops cluster in residential neighborhoods, monitoring the citizenry.

  I check the last sat-feed, which shows nothing unusual overhead—some flocks of birds flapping over the woods, the usual crisscross of bulletproofed delivery drones, but no inbound choppers. If anyone’s in the woods, they’re real hidden—but the woods make “real hidden” easy to achieve.

  I long for a remote drone to scope out living creatures in the woods, but those are the first things to go whenever serious combat breaks out; any body-hacker worth his salt has anti-drone countermeasures. Besides, if you don’t register your drone’s flight path in advance with the FAA then they shoot it down before slapping you with a massive fine. Donnie’s right to rely on the eye in the sky; it’s slower, but nothing blocks it.

  “Shouldn’t they have attacked by now?” Donnie asks, already sounding bored.

  “Maybe it’s a legit blown tire,” Kiva says.

  “I wish.” The scan shows me the whiff of cordite still attached to a flap of tire tread. Someone scattered flattened smart caltrops in the road, each primed to detonate when it sensed our vehicle’s signature. “They knew we were coming.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Marcy asks, her bioreadouts spiking. “Who the fuck’s coming for us?”

  “Fuck that,” Kiva says, then asks the first smart question she’s asked all day: “Why aren’t they here yet?”

  Which is what worries me: what’s so big they need to move it into position? We’ve had more than enough time for Kiva, Marcy, and Defcon to assume a 360-degree defense.

  Which means either they fucked up the timing—unlikely—or whatever they’ll hit us with doesn’t care that we’re in the way.

  I scan the satellite update again, and nothing significant’s moved—the drones are on their authorized flight plans, I hear the squawk of birds cresting the—

  Scylla fires, a single shot, my sound-filters dampening the noise.

  One of the birds swooping over the treetops six hundred yards away explodes.

  “Dammit!” I yell, spooked. Fucking long-range false positives. You have to assume anything tossed in your direction is a threat—but occasionally a bird will dive for an insect in a way that, if it doesn’t change trajectory, could impact with you. And at the speed with which both birds and incoming projectiles move, you can’t take the chance of shooting a splattery Molotov cocktail when it’s two yards away. “Don’t tense up, it’s just—”

  Then two other armaments go off—Saladin detonates another bird into intestinal fireworks, then Donnie launches a microfusillade of bullets into the squawking flock whizzing over the treetops. Seven birds go up like a string of firecrackers, cawing in protest as they swirl in erratic loops around their fallen—

  “Dammit, Donnie!” I yell, my HUD noting the rapid descent of a drone I’d been monitoring as a potential threat. “You shot down a delivery drone!”

  Donnie squints, double-checking his combat logs. “I didn’t,” he protests. “My targeting routines were configured to exclude delivery drones.”

  But by then Defcon and Marcy’s guns are taking potshots at the bird-swarm roaring over the trees, and my auto-zoom on the fallen drone shows it’s intact but on fire, blue electricity sparking out of its engines as a dying bird thrashes in its propellers—

  —and the refr
eshed satellite image shows the bird-swarms converging onto our position, flying in from all sides—

  —and my analyst modules are auto-zooming bird images at me, showing the glint of metallic talons embedded in fast-moving organic bodies, noting how this bird isn’t native to the New Jersey area, cataloguing it as some unknown bird of prey except birds of prey don’t fly in flocks—

  “Incoming!” I scream, adjusting my IFF routines to handle a barrage of fast-moving aerial threats as our armaments blast birds from the sky.

  * * *

  “All right! Genetically altered aerial combat hawks!” Donnie fires so many rounds, the light strobes around us.

  I’m too busy tweaking our IFFs to react appropriately to this threat—my image-AIs are combing through blurry combat photos to capture what “a hawk” looks like so they can refine their capture routines, and I’m blinking at good hawk-images and shaking away bad ones to improve the target profile ASAP.

  That drone falling? That was luck. If a bird hadn’t panicked when Donnie fired, smashing into a stray drone and demonstrating how they can do—something—to machinery, we wouldn’t have deemed them threats until they’d swarmed us.

  The only reason we’re keeping hundreds of birds at bay is that we fired at twenty yards instead of five.

  I think of that old guy at customs, wanting grand tales about warfare’s majesty. Well, here’s the truth of war: sometimes, you survive for reasons that had dick-all to do with skill.

  Still, we’ve kept the flocks at a healthy distance even though the birds are doing their best to dive-bomb us, or maybe they’re trying to bomb the package—it’s hard to tell what they’re aiming for because we’re shooting them out of the sky before they get within twenty yards. The flock’s feathered arc is driven back as they impact our kill zone.

  Detonated birds are splattering on the ground around us. They sizzle when they hit.

  “What do these things do if they hit us?” Marcy asks.

  I shoot her an image of the downed drone, sparking with electricity. “Don’t find out.”