Preservation (A DRMR Short Story) Read online

  Contents

  Praise for...

  Other Works

  About Preservation

  Copyright

  Stay Updated

  Preservation: A DRMR Short Story

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  A Note To Readers

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About Convergence

  Chapter 1

  Praise for Convergence

  (DRMR Series, Book 1)

  An Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Quarter-Finalist

  "From the opening page of Convergence I was hooked. The dystopian world building is well done and the descriptions are vivid. The technology is imaginary and different...great characters and plenty of suspense/action." - Nicholas Sansbury Smith, author of Extinction Horizon and the Orbs series

  "Convergence is fast-paced, full of action and a thrilling ride from start to finish. There is violence, depth of feeling, explosions, car chases and tenderness. The book has everything and is perfect for those who like their SciFi gritty, edgy and realistic." – J.S. Collyer, author of Zero

  "[A] smart splice of espionage and science fiction. ... frighteningly realistic. Well-drawn characters, excellent pacing, and constant surprises make this a great cautionary tale about technology and its abuses." - Publisher's Weekly

  "A cyberpunk thrillride through a future America under Chinese rule. The conflict between the humanity of the main character, Jonah, and the things he has had to do to survive in this harsh new world makes 'Convergence' an absolute pleasure to read." – SciFi365.net

  Praise for Emergence

  (DRMR Series, Book 2)

  "Hicks writes like Philip K Dick and Robert Crais combined, making for clean, exciting prose. He focuses on the story and never lets go." - Lucas Bale, author of the award-winning Beyond The Wall series

  "It has all the gritty Cyberpunk of the first book plus a more fully-realized world in which to immerse yourself. Excellent." - SciFi365.net

  "Excellent, fast-paced thriller with fantastic world building. Mesa is a troubled yet strong heroine that captivates you from the first page." - E.E. Giorgi, author of Chimeras

  Praise for Revolver

  "REVOLVER is one of those stories that, once I got over the initial shock of the subject matter and the sheer vulgarity of the content, I immediately had to listen to it a second time. ... with all the political turmoil, particularly the attitudes against women, that the world is being exposed to right now. I think this makes REVOLVER all the more terrifyingly plausible." - Audiobook Reviewer

  "REVOLVER is a perfect short story/novella to read right now. The political extremists are gaining more and more power and they aren't easily ignored anymore. REVOLVER tells the story of what would happen if we let this extremism go too far. And wow was it good. ... REVOLVER is a big "what if" book that will leave you feeling raw and full of emotion." - Brian's Book Blog

  "[A] truly gut twisting, heart wrenching, sphincter squeezing tale of loss and abandonment that stuck with me long after the last page." - Anthony Vicino, author of Time Heist

  Also by Michael Patrick Hicks

  DRMR Series

  Convergence (Book One)

  Emergence (Book Two)

  Preservation (A DRMR Short Story)

  Extinction Cycle: From The Ashes (Kindle Worlds Novella)

  Mass Hysteria

  Short Stories

  Consumption

  Revolver

  Let Go

  Black Site

  About Preservation

  Memories are the most dangerous beast.

  Kari Akagi is ex-British Special Forces, augmented by her government to be the prime soldier. In the wake of a devastating attack that cost her her legs, she has a new mission – protecting South Africa's endangered species as a ranger for the Kruger National Park game reserve.

  The number of animals within the reserve is rapidly dwindling as poachers mercilessly slaughter them for black market trade. Somebody is paying and equipping the poachers, and after her unit comes under assault, Akagi is determined to end this impossible war.

  All she needs to do is capture one of the a poachers alive, hack into his brain, and find out who hired him. A lifetime of fighting, though, has taught Akagi that things are rarely ever that simple...

  Preservation is a stand-alone short story set in the world of the DRMR series.

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael Patrick Hicks

  Preservation was originally published in 'The Cyborg Chronicles' (2015), part of 'The Future Chronicles' series produced by Samuel Peralta.

  [email protected]

  http://www.michaelpatrickhicks.com

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  Edited by Crystal Watanabe

  http://www.pikkoshouse.com/

  Cover design by Christian Bentulan

  http://coversbychristian.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To stay up to date on Michael's latest releases, and receive advanced reader copies of his work, join his newsletter, memFeed: http://bit.ly/1H8slIg

  Website: http://michaelpatrickhicks.com

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  PRESERVATION

  A DRMR SHORT STORY

  Michael Patrick Hicks

  Author's Note

  The impetus behind Preservation came from several different sources, primarily my own fascination and affection for gentle giants like the rhinoceros. Over the last few years, I've been loosely following the work of VETPAW, Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife, which employs military veterans to help train and support Africa's anti-poaching rangers. Poaching, unfortunately, is big business, with the black market price of rhino horns exceeding the value of gold and even cocaine. As a result of these killing sprees by poaching syndicates, a research paper published in the March 2013 volume of the journal Science estimates that Africa's remaining rhino population will be extinct within 20 years.

  This is a real shame for the world, and it's a story that needs to be told. Ideas began percolating sometime back, but I wasn't quite sure how to tell this story initially. When Samuel Peralta invited me to contribute to his anthology, The Cyborg Chronicles, I felt that the story of rangers versus poachers was an element ripe for exploration within this technological realm.

  We're inching ever closer to making cyborgs a reality. The cybernetic augmentations that helped inform Kari Akagi are based on sound scientific principles that become more and more true in an applied sense every day. DARPA has long been at work developing mind-controlled prosthetics for wounded veterans. Even Akagi's hydration implants and hydrating candies are rooted in conceptual reality, and are based off a hydrolemic system proposed by the Japanese design studio Takram. The DRMR technology that allow
s her to relive the memories of a captured poacher also takes its cue from DARPA research focused on the brain and the REMIND project.

  The big question of any cyborg story is how much of the body we can replace with mechanical parts and still be human at our core. Akagi is very much a cyborg, but she's also very, very human. She's flawed and emotional and combative, but she also has a great deal of care for the animals she has charged herself with protecting. She sees a problem and does her best to try and resolve it. Under all the technological artifice, there beats a very human heart, guided by a very human conscious and a particular skill set.

  Although this short story, Preservation, is strictly a stand-alone tale, I write more about the DRMR technology in my novels Convergence and Emergence. If you're interested in learning more about these works, as well as forthcoming titles, you can subscribe to my newsletter and visit my website. There, you'll find links to my social media platforms where you can connect and drop me a line. I also run a Book of the Month styled Patreon account where, for as little as $1 per month, supporters get access to my body of work. I'd love to hear from you, and thank you very much for reading.

  CHAPTER ONE

  KARI AKAGI SAT in the crook of a massive baobab tree, a rifle in her lap, roughly twenty meters above the low-lying plains of the Kruger National Park.

  From her perch she could see the Olifants River, which divided the southern and northern regions of Kruger. The north was elephant country, and she watched as a herd bathed in the shallow depths and grazed along its banks.

  There was a simple joy in watching the massive creatures live their lives, in seeing the young ones play.

  Their life expectancy was too short for her liking, but the luckiest among them could live for fifty years or more. If the poachers didn't get to them first.

  Her morning had started with news of another rhino killing. The reserve had less than one hundred left, and there was a countdown hanging over the heads of the survivors. Each one dead drove the black market prices of their ever-scarcer horns higher and higher into the millions.

  The news had woken her like a kick to the gut, and she'd wanted to rage at the rangers and volunteers who had fucked up and let this happen. Unfair, certainly, but her anger was palpable. Instead, she retreated and cut off her commNet, fuming.

  She zoomed in on the Olifants, increasing the resolution of her blink-powered retinal upgrades and recorded the lackadaisical scene playing out below. This was a memory she wanted to keep.

  Standing to stretch her torso, she set the rifle aside and raised her arms above her head, holding the pose for several deep breaths. Then she bent at the waist, stretching her spine, shoulders, and the muscles of her one remaining thigh, the flex deep enough that she was able to touch the two long blades that had replaced both feet.

  Her legs had been lost to an IED years ago. Her left leg, from the hip down, was a mechanized limb replacement system. Both high-grade prosthetics were equipped with hundreds of ultra-fast quantum-load microprocessors, hydraulics, rotors, flexions, actuators, and sensors. A neuronal interface allowed her to control each limb as if it were the real thing, and the built-in multi-directional response coordinators allowed her to move with ease and grace in virtually any environment.

  With her chin practically touching the tough Kevlar shell of the artificial knee joint, she could feel the absorbed heat boiling off the deep blue fabric.

  Although she was warm and hadn't eaten real food in several days, she had little concern for dehydration or starvation. The military had seen to her well-being both before and after her mandatory four tours in Afghanistan and Syria. Keeping her in-country in such harsh climates that ranged from desert tundra to colder mountain terrain had required significant modifications to her meat suit.

  Akagi's innards had been replaced with artificial organs to regulate her body's water loss, and nasal cavity inserts and heat exchangers implanted atop her jugular veins and neck arteries inhibited water loss that occurred through exhalation and perspiration. There were even filter systems installed in her bladder and large intestine to capture, concentrate, and store any water lost through digestive waste. In her rucksack was a three-month supply of hard-shelled, egg-shaped candies. Each one contained a liquid center and provided her with her daily requirement of nutrients and calories.

  While the military had designed her to be an optimized soldier, she had found a more satisfying niche working as a wildlife ranger. The truth of it was, she had merely traded one war for another, exchanging a cause for a cause. Her cause, nowadays, just happened to have four legs and tusks or horns.

  Rising from the stretch, she again lifted both arms over her head and pulled her torso first to the left, then the right, stretching her oblique abdominals.

  Her body felt looser, her mind more composed. Until the ping hit her commNet with an urgent alert and a geotag.

  Another kill.

  She felt her cheeks warm in anger, then quickly cool as her implants triggered a temperature regulation control and systolic dampener. The physical stressors were muted, but they didn't do shit for her emotional state and only made her feel that much more pissed off.

  "Has anyone heard from Gerhardt?" Command asked.

  "Negative," she said. "What was his last status?"

  "He checked in for morning debriefing, but no updates since."

  "Roger that, Command."

  Another kill, and now a missing ranger. She swore softly to herself, unsettled.

  Clambering down a ladder the park rangers had installed more than half a century ago, the dual-bladed system that comprised her feet hit the soft grass below. She broke out into a run, maintaining an easy pace to the latest kill site, roughly forty-five minutes away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AKAGI KNELT BEFORE the butchered rhino, resting her hand against its still flank and closing her eyes for a moment of quiet respect.

  The massive herbivore's face had been brutally hacked apart, probably by an axe. The horns were missing, naturally. Dried blood stained the earth around the creature.

  She cursed the lack of resources and the bribed politicians who abetted in this gruesome horror. The reserve covered more than eight thousand square miles of land, and it was impossible for the small squad to cover all of it efficiently. In a fit of twisted logic, the politicians argued that the reduced population of near-extinct animals meant there was little need for increased funding and the hiring of more rangers. The reservation's budget was slashed and burned, leaving little more than twenty active field rangers to patrol twenty-two sections of the park.

  Their duties had been eased slightly with the deployment of reconnaissance drones, but it hadn't taken long for the poachers and the syndicates they worked for to grow aware of the extra surveillance. One by one, the five drones were shot out of the sky and the budget for replacements dried up.

  Poaching was ludicrously profitable, and the wealthy higher-ups in the syndicates spent good money buying South African politicians and influence within the leadership of preservation agencies. Once upon a time, the reservation had implanted the rhinos and their horns with tracking chips to make life more difficult for the syndicates. As a result, the syndicates went on a spending spree to develop a smear campaign through third-party agencies about how the tracking chips made life more difficult for the animals, and how the reservation was mutilating rhino horns, destroying the vital essence of the rhinoceros. All it took were a few dozen parliamentary members in the syndicates' pockets to undo all the good the rangers were attempting. Even the rangers and veterinarians on staff were lulled by the big money the syndicates offered. Akagi herself had arrested one of the drone operators, who was tracking the preserve's animals for poachers, who were being supplied high-grade tranquilizers by one of the park's veterinarians.

  More than six thousand miles away from Syria and she still found herself on the losing side of another desperate warzone, surrounded by corruption, turncoats, and failed leadership. She couldn't help but
laugh to herself as the bitter resentment bubbled over.

  Her partner, Okey Ekwensi, stood nearby with his canine companion, Dashi. The black-and-tan German shepherd panted lightly as he watched her movements.

  Circling around the fallen rhino, she saw the mess of clumsy footprints from both animal and man. The rhino's cloven hooves left a large, rounded mark that looked somewhat like a bubbly W. There were five distinct boot treads as well.

  Blood spatter along the ground led to the brush, where the trap had been sprung. The blood line along the ground left a clear trail, and she spotted red in the grass. Her mind's eye pictured, too clearly, the team of poachers surrounding the rhino and hacking at its flanks with their axes. Gore flew off the blades as they tore their weapons free from the animal's hide, raising them for another strong swing.

  The rhino had tried to run, but the men -- they were almost always men -- had gone for the legs, severing its Achilles tendons. The rhino then collapsed, immobilized in the trampled dirt, where its face was hacked apart and dismembered.

  "This is number eight-six for the year," she said.

  "And it's only March," Okey said, nodding. He spoke softly, his black skin shiny from the layer of sweat covering him and plastering his fatigue shirt to his chest.