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28. A wild human
🕑 Added 2023-05-02 17:48:18 +0000 UTCWithin one of the many laboratories of Hell's Gate, Dr. Grace Augustine was analyzing fresh samples from a recent Avatar expedition where she collected fragments of the deepest root of quite a massive tree.
Her face was serious if fatigued, not letting any outward emotion if a bit of childlike curiosity and excitement as she increased the rendering of the microscope if the very advanced machine would be named by its function, at her right while sipping her favorite alcohol from her mug.
Life was excessively more stressful recently with Quaritch pushing her with her team to find a way to get the Omatikaya back in line and 'do something for the blue monkey to fuck away from the unobtanium', Selfridge on his side didn't help either, in fact it was him pushing it the most and it pissed her off on a fundamental level and hurt just as much. And it wasn't even her job.
She wanted peace or at the very least not straight-out hostility and was working toward this but she couldn't do much as she was banned from even approaching Hometree and approaching Na'vi of the Omatikaya would put her Avatar at risk.
The relationship with the clan and the RDA since the shooting two years ago at her school passed from very bad to catastrophically bad.
It was born of a conflict where a small group of young hunters, a part of them her student for years, of which one was the clan Olo'eyktan's eldest daughter were in discord with the RDA mining activities and recklessly decided to set a bulldozer on fire, giant machines made of several hundreds ton of metals with the sole purpose of terraforming everything in their path.
And it escalated into the school where this small group took refuge while she was in the middle of a class with a dozen Na'vi kids, then the SecOps arrived and the shooting happened.
Luckily she got all of the kids out before any of them got injured or worse, killed in the crossfire, but the group of young hunters wasn't so lucky and they all without exception were killed.
She lifted her head hearing the door opening behind her, as she was turning around and on her way to politely tell whoever entered to 'fuck off somewhere else then fuck some more' but stopped herself when Max an holotablet in hand walked in a deep frown on his face.
"One of the drones we deployed last week was shot down. Look at your tablet, Drone 5.", he announced the news that puzzled him while informing her to look at her holotablet, but she did as asked swiping a finger over the holographic skin a menu appeared, it showed seven 3D models of drones.
Of which five were greyed, completely lost or out of service, the first, second, and third destroyed by several thunderstorms, the fourth fried by a medusae, and the fifth taken down within the Swiss cheese that was the great plain expensive underground by a small group of stingbats.
It only made the two fully functional ones left glowing bright green and stood out.
But the ones taking her full focus weren't those two, number 5 was red constantly beeping showing it had taken critical damage but was still functional.
"Huh, another one shit, this soon after 3 was lost... And shot down you said…? By one of the local Na'vi clans, you mean? I knew it would have happened... Is that this?", she asked, stopping the rising frustration at the news, Max shook his head at this.
The great plain wasn't exploited or very much studied either for several reasons even if there was the presence of plenty of unobtanium below it from the various satellite scans of the moon geology.
The short answer for that was money, it wasn't profitable enough for the effort and resources required, simple as that.
The long answer was the sheer complexity to get it and for the same reason, they couldn't build a long-term habitable base suitable for a large population.
The geology of the great plain made it not worth exploiting compared to where the main base is currently established. The RDA couldn't change this aspect without a great amount of terraforming, which they didn't want to do, unlike the forest.
It's easier to turn to cinder a patch of trees than to stabilize an entire area worth an untold amount of matter on hundreds upon hundreds of hectares. And the forest had a higher concentration of unobtanium to begin with, anyway.
Adding to that the yearly medusae migration, the powerful thunderstorms, and swarms of stingbats that could put to shame the long-since extinct desert locust rendering flight very dangerous if next impossible at times.
Because of all of this, the autonomous scooting drones' lifespan was extremely short, a fact that was taken into consideration before they were deployed by a Samson in the great plain but one that brought great frustration each time one was reported missing/destroyed.
A valid reason was needed for her to have those drones as well, even if they are disposable, she was still a civilian even if a very high-placed one: the reason she gave was a scientific expedition done remotely via drones to map the plant life of the great plain during the rainy season.
And it was the truth, partially that is, she was greatly interested in this aspect, it was something that didn't happen on Earth anymore due to acidic and radioactive rain. And it must only have got worse since she left the planet.
As such she didn't, couldn't ask for more as it demanded direct authorization from Parker Selfridge as he was the highest ranked individual and had more power than her even in the Avatar program, to her great displeasure and chagrin.
He gave her eight and that was it, no more no less, not as much as she would have liked but at least she got something without resorting to other methods. She was still happy with this either way.
Those eight drones had the purpose of fine combing a 200-kilometer zone of the coordinate of the sighting, each had a predetermined path to cover a maximum amount of terrain where a human, as strange as he was, would likely be found by following four specific conditions.
A place to have a shelter such as in trees or caves, a steady supply of food, a water source, and a safe-ish area without too much activity from wildlife and Na'vi. It reduced the range to investigate drastically but it's still a considerable area to go through.
"No... I don't think so, watch N5's last second before going critical. This will explain better.", he said, trying to keep his calm, somewhat succeeding. If it was excitement or worry she couldn't tell.
Grace lifted a quizzical eyebrow at Max's words then she viewed it, her slow eyes widening fixed in disbelief at the footage of the drone getting shot down, that in itself wasn't why she reacted this way but the familiar sound of gunshot entering her ears was.
Instantly anger and confusion flooded her system as the immediate reason for this dreadfully familiar sound was that someone from the RDA sabotaging her but it vanished as soon as she rationalized it.
It made absolutely no sense for someone to do this, why shoot down a scouting drone of one of the science teams? There was no point and even if the military part and science part mostly didn't really like each other it was, to put it mildly, incredibly stupid.
Barring the fact it was nearly a thousand kilometers away from Hell's Gate and that she knew Selfridge, he wouldn't have done that and neither would Quaritch, he was a war veteran, 'a psychotic piece of trash' maybe but not some petty little boy. To sum it up, it wasn't the RDA's fault, something that sounded wrong.
"The upper camera on 5 at is still functiona-wait what was that.", Max interrupted himself mid-sentence sending the live feed of the drone to Grace's holotablet.
From the other side, a red four-winged creature landed on the branch above, a tetrapteron both scientists recognized. One visibly more muscular than any Grace ever saw, be it in video, photo, or in person via her Avatar, and she didn't miss to point that unusual aspect out.
The red tetrapteron then left the camera sight to fly all around. It confused both at first before they realized something it was… Studying the drone, strange but not unexpected, they were recorded by one of the xenobiologists as extremely intelligent and curious, similar to one of the last living members of the Corvidae.
Unlike the other members of their clade such as the stingbats famously known for flying straight at Hell's Gate electric barrier or the turret or the rotorblades of helicopters, all cases ending with dead alien bats. Funny or sad, when it's two or three but not when in swarms of thousands.
Another of such creatures arrived, landing atop the damaged rotorblade, this one with blue and purple accents over its body and just as muscular for their species as the last one.
"They aren't wild, wild animals don't look like this... They look trained,", Max stated the obvious before posing a question, "Are they some kind of Na'vi's pets?"
"Likely but that doesn't answer the fact the drone was shot down by some kind of firearm… Unless it's a Na'vi that did this and those two are his or her own.", she whispered the last part as such an act from a Na'vi was grave, contradictory to their core beliefs but there always were exceptions.
It made way more sense that some Na'vi got their hands on a firearm, and learned from seeing it used by humans how to use it than someone of the RDA having personally shot it down.
Still… the possibility of the one who shot it down was the one they were looking for was just as likely him having firearms wouldn't be the strangest of his characteristic, they didn't know anything about him outside of the sign he was a clearly genetically modified human. If human at all, the possibility of him being an unknown alien species while a silly idea at first glance was terrifying if it come to be the truth.
Every piece of evidence needed to be taken with a grain if not multiple grains of salt before she could even begin to draw conclusions.
The two tetrapterons flew all around, cawing as if communicating, at some point to her shock interlocking their queues, a shock that puzzled Max until she explained both were male. Then the two alien birds disappeared from the limited line of sight the camera gave.
Immediately Grace decided to send another drone to this location to have a better view of what was going on, she wasn't going to let this chance go while something that blatantly unusual just happened.
The closest scouting drone, N4, was ninety kilometers (~56 mi) away but it's a short distance for this machine and with the path chosen it would take 40 minutes top.
The blue and purple tetrapteron came back two minutes later, something akin to a glove of leather and plastic with long polished metallic and serrated claws fitted on its left talon.
'Is this… But no… Yet it. It's him, a trace… but how!?', Grace thought excitedly, hard pressed to make sense of what was unfolding, the strange gauntlet fitted on the bird's talon clearly forged of metal and an unknown polymer dashed the Na'vi hypothesis aside, a gun was already stretching and so the only remaining one was the Unknown Man they were looking for.
Max on his side was fully focused on the tetrapteron actions it tapped against the metal with the claw of its gauntleted talon against the drone, he remarked the separation of one of the metal claws was oddly similar to a metal saw, his mind slowed down to a crawl at that, not wanting to believe what the bird was trying to do until it did it, right in front of the camera as if taunting him.
The metallic cover leading to the drone's internal circuits on the top was cut open, and with it came an audible shriek of the cheap metal that made up the drone's armor being sawed off to be peeled open.
It was followed by the bird using this same talon but with extreme delicateness as it unplugged one cable at a time, each cable leading to one or multiple of the drone system to shut down until nothing remained.
"Grace, we lost it as well. The bird… Eviscerated and then disconnected it.", Max informed in disbelief, snapping the said woman back to reality but what he said didn't ruin her mood it did the opposite.
"It's him, Max. Those two are his, there is no other way around this I don't know how, why, when, or what... But it's him. It's the guy we are looking for and we must be close. Now we just need to manage to establish contact and hope he is friendly.", she suddenly spoke with certainty, saying out loud what her colleague thoughts too low.
