Drone

Drone

"So where's the freak?" Jay asked, sarcastic, laughing as he glided
into the lab module.
Donovan rolled his eyes and shook his head wearily. "He's been
confined to quarters...." A wary sound, "We're waiting for Olsten Corp
to run some tests."
Jay smaned, "You don't need tests." He brought up his knees against
his chest, executed a tight zero-G roll across the narrow width of the
module, came to a stop with his hands against a padded hull section.
"Man, you need a fucking gun. The thing is a freak. The thing should be
terminated before it tries to mate with Natalia."
Donovan looked up from the screen where he had been observing the
behavior of a culture of Chroococcidiopsis, a primitive type of
cyanobacterium, capable of surviving in a large variety of extreme
conditions. A perfect organism for Salo IV. He watched Jay push himself
down into a sitting position on the wall opposite him; Jay was their
pilot, young, muscular, arrogant and crude "They don't have
reproductive organs." He told Jay, matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, well, another reason why they're such freaks." A dark giggle,
then, "Mind, what a thing to watch eh?"
"What is?"
"Natalia and Kayman.... watching them going at it!" A smutty
smile.
"You're sick."
A woman's voice cut in, "Thank you, Don."
Natalia glided in, short-haired, long legged, beautiful. The cryogenic
engineer and medic for the small crew. Jay laughed loudly and lifted
his hands in a gesture that expressed he had been caught in the
act.
Natalia smiled at him with a cruel glint in her eyes. Then she said,
"Do we have a problem?"
"Yeah, the freak." Jay stated.
Donovan made a groaning sound, "God knows how long they'll take to
send in a replacement this time. When we lost Jenny we were sitting
around for what...., Christ, two weeks!"
Jay shrugged like he didn't care. "So we can go to sleep. Get Natalia
to earn her money." A nasty grin.

There was a storm coming in; terrestrial winds were already up to
thirty k.p.h. another two hours and it would be up to a terrifying six
hundred k.p.h. with chunks of frozen methane, ammonia and carbon
dioxide creating a powerfully destructive force.
Kayman knew the solo-lander, would not survive an encounter with the
storm at that ferocity. It placed a time limit on his duties
there.
He found it ironic that the storms were caused by their direct
intervention with the planet: it was an intermediate period, a volatile
waking-up of a dormant lump of rock in an otherwise desolate planetary
system. The storms were unavoidable in the engineered heating up of the
atmosphere. The end result would be sustainable anaerobic life in a
non-contained biosphere. Mother Nature, brought to new fields.
Two hours. The thermographics revealed the valve entrance to the
processing plant was buried under three metres of frozen debris. Kayman
had to make a decision: return to orbit or push on and hope to get
inside the processing plant before the storm took his shields
out.
Jay would curse him for returning. The storm had been projected to
last for five weeks. Their arrival was simply bad timing. Natalia could
put them to sleep for five weeks. It was no big deal. Jay did not
bother him so much as knowing how much Donovan missed his family back
on Earth, and the family missed him. Long space flights were a new
phenomenon. Kayman knew some families put themselves to sleep to match
the flight plan of the crew, but this was rarely practical. Earth
culture had not yet adapted to the changes thrust upon them.
Kayman had read the texts arguing for an against the use of planetary
engineering. Most of the arguments against were based on religious
beliefs, morality and the position of humanity within the scheme of
God.
Kayman did not believe in God. He could not believe in God.
He banked the solo-lander into a tight curve, spiraling down in a
steep descent toward the planet's surface. He would get it done. That's
why he was there. To take the risks. That was why they made him.
A bright light glared through the haze of tiny ice particles. Kayman
shifted his vision toward the direction of the North pole and saw the
source of the bright light low on the horizon: the Zubrin statite
mirror cluster, reflecting light from the nearest star down onto the
planet's frozen deposits of carbon dioxide.
Salo IV was a grade 1 biocompatible planet. It's unalterable physical
characteristics such as size, density, gravity, orbit, rotation rate,
incident starlight and its surveyed chemical resources were highly
consistent with life.
All that was required to reap the potential was time and effort.
Kayman had studied the characteristics of Salo IV. Before any
planetary engineering had begun, local temperatures at the site of the
processing plant averaged 60 degrees below zero Celsius. There was no
protective ozone layer to shield the planet from ultraviolet radiation
emitted by the star. There had also been a complete absence of organic
molecules. Any organisms which may have arrived on Salo IV from
meteorite impacts would have been freeze-dried, chemically degraded and
reduced to dust.
Engineering had begun on the planet six years earlier: progress had
been made. Kayman swung his head round to glance at the South side of
the processing plant.
Automated drilling platforms had constructed themselves above
pressurised aquifers across the vast plains where the processing plant
was situated. Substantial water reserves existed at a reasonable level
below the permafrost for exploitation. Even now a huge geyser of water
was in perpetual eruption 30 kilometres to the South, creating huge
glacial structures and the fine flurry of ice crystals that covered the
whole area.
Kayman disengaged the auto-pilot and brought the ion-thrusters on-line
for the final descent.
He brought the solo-lander down in a beacon-marked zone two hundred
metres from the valve entrance. He unclipped himself from the
web-harness and dropped down onto the icy surface; the lander remained
balanced on thin limbs that had extruded themselves from the thorax and
tightly folded wings , creating the appearance of some over-sized
insect.
Many people would say the same about him. He knew he had not been
designed to be aesthetically pleasing; Olsten had grown him for
functionality.
Kayman unfastened the survival pack and his operations bag, then began
to the trek to the valve-entrance. The processing plant was a colossal
sculpture of black metal rising up from the frozen plain, radiating a
visible heat haze through the steady release of gasses. He fixed his
vision on the structure, the light blazing down from the Zubrin mirror
array scintillating through the ice particles whipped up by the
quickening wind.
He had an ample air supply feeding from rechargeable pods mounted
within his exdermal bone lacing; regenerative sheaths of myelin,
flexible keratin, UV radiation and cosmic ray protective cell clusters
were few of the enhancements that protected his flesh from the harsh
extremes of deep space during solo-flights and Olsten had stated he was
durable for up to six hours continuous exposure to the environment of
Salo IV.
Mother Olsten, he mused, with his 87\% human brain.
A standard proximity scan picked up mechanical and organic materials
lying thirty metres from the valve entrance, buried two metres beneath
the frozen debris.
Kayman activated a sensory probe but he had already guessed the
source. The probe confirmed his suspicions: bone, residual muscle and
tissue combined with the sections of a typical solo-lander.
Jenny.
Natalia had explained the loss of Jenny on the ship's outbound visit
to Salo IV - a seal on the propulsion unit had torn apart on her
solo-lander during the heavy push for entering orbit. She must have
survived the crash and tried crawling back to the valve entrance with
parts of the lander.
He realised he had come to a standstill, motionless amidst the growing
fury of the storm. He considered his emotions. He found sadness unusual
but not unpleasant; sadness caused a reaction within him, stirred some
sort of human essence up so that it became tangible within him. So that
he felt human; as close as he could be.
He was supposed to log all emotions in his daily Com-V report but he
had discovered other much more satisfying ways to express his feelings.
Besides, he knew Jay, Donovan or Natalia never read the reports, or
anything sentient. It was all filtered through a machine: scored by
software for levels of deviancy. A machine. Deviancy.
Dull.
Where was the validation of his expression of beauty? His wonder at
life and all its diversity?
Kayman stumbled forward and kept moving, taken by surprise by the
intensity of his feelings. He opened up the operations bag and took out
a hand-held device: a manipulation field generator. He would use it to
clear away the frozen debris covering the valve entrance.

Donovan sat peering at a scan segment of Salo IV's atmosphere, set for
UV radiation between 200 and 300 nm, watching the C-CI bonds of CFC's
breaking up.
Natalia repelled herself from the ceiling of the lab module and glided
down to block his view, her arms outstretched, face only centimetres
from his.
"We have to talk." She said, cold.
Donovan blew out through puffed checks, flexed his brow, then nodded,
slowly. "Okay."
Natalia pushed herself away so that her top half flipped up above her
legs, then she used her arms against a padded hull section to push
herself back down beside him. "I've been doing some nosing..." Leading
to an accusation.
Donovan's jaw muscles began to work, "And?"
She tilted her head to one side, "And? And you've been editing
Kayman's Com-V reports."
Silence for a few seconds.
"Yes." Donovan said flatly.
Natalia waited for him to explain but when he said nothing more her
face flushed red and angry, "Do you have any idea how fucking crazy
that is?"
"Do you know what happens if we inform the company?" Donovan
retorted.
Natalia swung her head around in a slow arc as if struggling to
explain a simple problem to a child, but Donovan interrupted her before
she could reply, "They'll kill him."
She grimaced, wrinkling her nose, "He's a biomechanism. He's just a
product. Olsten made him, we bought him, and we bought the software to
make sure he does not become deviant. Jesus, Don, you have a
family."
"They will kill him." Donovan said again, grim.
"No they won't, they'll fix him, they'll take him through therapy and
repair..." She stopped, catching her words, "I mean we don't even know
if he is deviant, but you have to admit he is nothing like Jenny and he
has been acting strange."
Donovan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his
fingers. "Jenny shared some of the same traits, the same
developments..... maybe if she hadn't died she would have started
showing the same signs -"
He snapped his eyes open when Natalia prodded him, saying to him,
"Will you stop talking like they are human. They're more ape than
human." She paused, hostility in her eyes, "Is this about your family
Don? Are you trying to create a smooth no delays trip back home?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"We need to tell the company. We need to remove Kayman as a possible
risk."

The CFC's were one of the numerous gasses being churned out by the
processing plant. Mixed with a cocktail of perfluorocarbons they
created a greenhouse effect, warming the atmosphere to release the vast
quantities of carbon dioxide trapped within the planet's regolith. The
thickening carbon dioxide atmosphere produced positive feedback,
increasing the temperature further. Eventually, planetary modifications
would activate the hydrosphere and create the Precambrian-like
conditions necessary for the introduction of extremophiles, hardy
bacteria capable or surviving such a harsh new home as Salo IV.
Inside the processing plant, the atmosphere was maintained at Earth
constant. Every walkway was formed of black metal, mesh and bleak low
energy lighting. Kayman had checked the core-integrity and ran an
inventory of malfunctioning units that were off-line to the remote
diagnostics, ready for the next crew's mission. With a 200 billion
dollar piece of machinery and associated complexity, things could and
often did go wrong.
There had been no critical system failures.
Kayman had a forty-seven minute window to return to the solo-lander
and blast himself into orbit. Yet there was one place he had to visit.
It was not part of his schedule and time was running out, but he longed
to see it. The Tropic Dome.
He had never been to Earth, had never sunk his feet into soft, rich,
organic soil.
Mother Nature. Kayman considered the concept encapsulated by those two
words. Mankind's great push from their foetal cradle, the Earth, out
into the distant voids had occurred less than thirty years after the
second millennium. The acceleration of computer, molecular and
bio-technologies brought about a sort of escape velocity; radical
changes took place, five thousand years of social, political and
economic history was turned on its head.
Kayman marvelled that the human race had actually managed to survive
the upheaval.
He understood the concept of Mother Nature from his reading, and he
knew why broad populations of Mankind clung onto the concept as the
seat of their origin. He could also empathise with those who saw Mother
Nature as limited in any environment beyond the regenerated paradise of
Earth. Yet, looking at Earth before the regeneration, did Mother Nature
fail, as the biosphere began to collapse, or did Mankind simply come
close to killing her?
Humans were now emulating the functionality of Nature with atom
assemblers and synthetic proteins. They were making machines from
organic matter, they were making organisms with non-organic
components.
Kayman was reminded of that every time he looked in a mirror.
He reached the sealed entrance to the Tropic Dome, punched in the
access code, stepped back as the heavy black metal doors roared open
sliding into the wall on hidden tracks.
A sterile chamber, the same design as the airlock on board Jay's ship.
He stepped inside and initiated the transfer between atmospheres. The
stale filter scrubbed air from the processing plant was drained with an
audible hiss, and replaced with..... Kayman staggered forward to steady
himself as a scented breeze of air rushed over him. He had never tasted
such a fresh, beautiful, wonderfully subtle yet gripping smell of,
Life.
The inner doors parted and revealed to him the secret of his fantasy,
the ancient womb of Humanity, a place where Mother Nature had been
allowed to reign: unrestrained, inviolate, vibrant, flourishing with
the ravenous hunger to create more life. Flora and fauna, flowers and
colours beyond simple description, entwined the spaces between the
young trees that had taken root within the floor of rich brown soil. A
deep orange light sloped in from an artificially projected sunset, the
inverted bowl sky visibly darkening with translucent turquoise,
aquamarine and crimson bands.
Kayman let the operations bag drop to the floor. He removed his boots
and walked barefoot into Eden, soft soil squeezing up between the
hardened flesh of his toes.
The Tropic Dome was a self-sustaining bio-sphere, capable of
sustaining human life. Although the purpose of the dome was not to
support humans but to act as a farm for future ecology projects. The
size of the dome was stupefying. Its curved walls swept far away on
both sides, he guessed the diameter to be over a kilometre, the ceiling
perhaps three hundred metres high.
His enhanced senses picked up movements, numerous, small, organised
organisms. Insects. Tiny insects.
There were structured pathways, clearings, kept free by the gardening
droids he knew had been installed within the dome.
A broad smile curved Kayman's lips. A feeling of euphoria swelled up
from his stomach and surged through and out of him like a supernova. He
could not believe the incredible barrage of sensations. For a few
minutes he forgot all about the solo-lander and the five week storm
bearing down on his location, lost within a drunken ramble of
experiences as he literally sprinted along the crude pathways. A waxing
Moon hovered up from the horizon.
Then came the discovery.
It was in a broad, narrow clearing, beside a brook where freshwater
bubbled around pebbles and splashed across stones. There were
arrangements of sticks, whittled and shaped with delicate designs;
dried and pressed flowers, bonded to the surface of rocks; shapes
moulded out of soil and river sediment, everything arranged in manner
that suggested presentation. The person who had created these things
had been proud of them.
A slab of plastic rested against a stone: a notepad. Kayman walked
over and picked it up; the casing was still warm from the day's
artificial sun. He thumbed the power stud and the screen flicked on,
bright and dazzling in the near dark. He read the last words to be
written and felt the burn of emotion within his throat. He began to
cry.
Jenny. Another genetically grown being, like him, searching for an
answer. The notepad had been her journal, one not submitted to the
Com-V report process. Her final entry had ended with, 'Where was the
hidden woman in the fabric of substance?' Jenny had discovered the
wonder of organic life and had craved to belong to that clan.
She had been reluctant to return to the ship.
Kayman hurriedly closed down the notepad and carried it with him. Time
was running out; he would be lucky not to suffer a similar fate as
Jenny, trying to blast away.

"Why the fuck don't they just drag some asteroids off course and slam
them into the planet?" Jay complained, watching Donovan manipulating
cultures of bacteria. "That would get things warm in no time."
Donovan answered without looking at him, his attention fixed upon the
Matteia cyanobacterium, soon to be a key player in the biogeochemical
carbon cycle on Salo IV, liberating carbon dioxide from the carbonate
rock abundant within Salo IV's surface.
"You're probably the kind of person who suggested detonating nuclear
warheads in the early days of planned terraforming projects."
Jay made a dismissive sound, glanced around the lab module.
Donovan grunted to himself, an indication of victory in the argument.
He added, in a conversational tone, "Besides, you would have to find
asteroidal sized objects with a high ammonia content, and you would
have to keep finding them, and keep hitting the planet with them over
an enormous span of years, and, as each object would hit the planet
with an energy yield equal to about seventy thousand, one megaton
hydrogen bombs, you would have to question the continuation of such a
ridiculous idea."
Jay was looking decidedly annoyed, "Yeah, yeah, okay, enough with
science. Jeez." He shifted his position on the stool, a strap across
his thighs preventing him from drifting away. He changed the subject,
"That fucking freak was out of order going into the Tropic Dome."
"Uh-hu."
Jay leaned forward, as if to get his point across more effectively,
"It is an unacceptable risk, delaying the re-launch time to visit some
freaking garden. I mean what was it doing? What was it doing in there?
The dome isn't even meant to be entered, it could have infected the
place!"
Donovan rubbed at the stubble on his jaw, his eyes never once shifting
from the culture, "Well, Jenny used to spend time in there."
"Jenny didn't have six hundred k-p-h munter of a storm charging across
the planet toward her."
"No." Donovan conceded, then added dryly, "But her solo-lander had
been badly serviced, don't you think?"
Jay went quiet with an implosion of shock and rage; his words came out
slow and venomous, "Man, don't even fucking consider making that
accusation."

Kayman used the most minimal burst of thrust to edge the solo-lander
into the ship's docking bay. In the bright arc lamps he could see the
damage done to the lander's frame by the numerous high-speed impacts
taken in the storm. He was lucky the membranous wing structures had not
been ripped apart. He had been foolish to risk it, he knew that; yet,
at the same time, he was elated by the experience he had just had. His
one hope now was that he would be able to join the next ship and crew
to travel out to Salo IV. Donovan would help him, perhaps even Natalia,
he was sure of it.
An articulated machine arm lifted the solo-lander up from the bay
floor and soundlessly swung it away, carrying it across the maintenance
station. Kayman deactivated his internal breathing supply as pressure
and atmosphere flooded into the bay. He picked up the operations bag,
containing samples and a few souvenirs. His senses picked up movement
in the observation window. Natalia and Jay were watching him. He waved.
Natalia smiled and waved back; Jay just looked angry.

"Man, that freak could tear through the bulkheads and the hull with all
that muscle and bone on it." Jay murmured, watching Kayman moving
through the docking bay.
Natalia was silent for a moment, then said, "Listen, I have to tell
you something."
Jay grinned, and turned to face her, "You're having my child from
frigging yourself off for so many months we me in your mind?"
She jabbed him in the stomach with a row of rigid fingers, "Behave.
No, this is serious."
"Okay."
"Don's been editing Kayman's Com-V reports."
"What?" Jay was livid, "That fucking&;#8230;&;#8230;"
Natalia added, "I've told him we have to tell the company."
"That fucking&;#8230;. Man, I&;#8230;. I don't fucking believe
it. What a prick. What a&;#8230;.. He is so out of order!" Jay's
features twisted and buckled as his face went red. "What did Don say?"
Dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
Natalia didn't look happy, "He's against the idea."
"Prick. We're all at risk. When did he tell you?"
"He didn't, I found out. Just a while ago."
"Was the conversation recorded?" Jay asked.
"Don didn't activate privacy. He seems quite relaxed about it." She
said.
"What are you going to do?"
Natalia hesitated, "Do, do you think Kayman should be
terminated?"
"Kayman is a freak. It's deviant."

His berth was a lot smaller than the human crew but it was still large
enough to display the art he made when he found interesting materials.
Kayman opened up the operations bag and pulled out Jenny's notepad. He
slipped it under his pillow for later. Then he took out some of the
pebbles from the Dome and placed them carefully in a neat line on the
small shelf above his pallet. Finally, he lifted out a single white
orchid, it's scent buzzing against his olfactory, it's petals like the
purest substance against the wrinkled, callused palms of his
hands.
"Kayman." It was Natalia's voice on the ship's com-link.
He smiled, excitement creeping into his face. "Nat!" He greeted, "I
have something for you! Something beautiful."
"That's nice, Kayman." Her voice sounded strange. "But it will have to
wait. You're to be confined to quarters for now. Okay?"
Kayman's smile drained from his face like oil from a broken machine.
His reply lacked all emotion. "Yes."
The com-link went dead. He looked at the flower in his hand, stared
with fascination as his toughened fingers curled in toward his palm and
crushed the flower into pulp.

"There has never been a case of a drone harming a human." Donovan
stated his case to Natalia, both of them strapped into chairs in the
lab module. Jay was preparing the ship to leave Salo IV's orbit.
"That's because their profiles have been so well monitored!" Natalia
retorted sharply, "That's why we have Com-V! But you're screwing with
the data! Who knows what could happen!"
Donovan lifted his hands in defence, "God, Nat, please, calm down,
stop acting so&;#8230;.."
"What?"
"So hysterical over this."
Natalia slumped back and took a deep breath. After a pause she said,
"Don, are you going to protest about us keeping Kayman locked up? At
least until we get Olsten in to run some tests."
Donovan sighed and rubbed at the stubble on his chin, "No, look, er,
I'm not out here for a rough ride. You know that! It's just&;#8230;.
Look, are you going to recommend that Kayman is terminated?"
"Yes." Her answer blunt, "Are you going to argue about that?"
Donovan grimaced, "I just want to get back to my family."
"Are you going to argue?"
"No." His decision came swiftly. "No. Shit-"
Kayman paused the recording, rewound, resumed.
Donovan sighed and rubbed at the stubble on his chin, "No, look, er,
I'm not out here for a rough ride. You know that! It's just&;#8230;.
Look, are you going to recommend that Kayman is terminated?"
"Yes." Her answer blunt, "Are you going to argue about that?"
Donovan grimaced, "I just want to get back to my family."
"Are you going to argue?"
"No."
Kayman paused the recording, and recalled the feelings of betrayal he
had experienced when he first watched the footage. How he had truly
believed Donovan had been on his side.
He resumed the recording.
"No. Shit." Donovan breathed out heavily, "Shit, that's going to be at
least two weeks waiting around."
Kayman stepped away from the lab-module console, wiping the blood from
his palms onto the end of a roll of towelling. Fine streams of blood
droplets drifted through the open space of the lab; the bodies of
Natalia and Donovan floating limply, still strapped into the chairs,
their skulls smashed in by several powerful blows from Kayman's bare
hands.
He pushed himself up into an interconnecting corridor; blood droplets
colliding and running across his exdermal bone lacing.
Jay was up in the cockpit, his chest torn open with multiple impacts
from a serrated titanium hand pick. Kayman had killed him first.
Jenny's notepad had provided an interface for the ship's computer.
Kayman had been curious to know why he had been confined. The answer
had come from watching the ship's recordings for the period he had been
down on the surface of Salo IV.
The company had no indication of his doctored Com-V reports. It would
take them more than five weeks to send out a rescue party to
investigate the loss of contact. Five weeks of silence. By then the
storm would have passed. He would destroy the ship and all evidence of
what had taken place. He doubted the rescue party would let him remain
in the Tropic Dome, but then, who knew how long it would be before they
even came down there?
A little bit of paradise was better than non at all.

END