Drone

The humpback whales had arrived last December in Hawaii to calve and now the pods had just begun leaving for the three-thousand-mile return trip to the Gulf of Alaska. Thanks to Pearce Systems’ funding, Yamada had spent the last three years developing an autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to swim along with the humpbacks without disturbing them. Yamada had spent the last twenty-five years recording the migratory habits, social relationships, and communication patterns of the giant mammals, but no one had been able to travel with them for an extended period of time, owing in part to the extreme distances and water conditions. Some humpback pods were known to travel up to sixteen thousand miles in their annual migratory loops.

Yamada was on the verge of a revolution in whale research, thanks to Pearce Systems’ support. By translating his hard-won migration data into an artificial intelligence program, he hoped to be able to insert into a whale pod a torpedo-shaped UUV equipped with radar, cameras, extension arms, and other devices needed to monitor the humpbacks in the wild. In order to accomplish this feat, the UUV had to be stealthy, self-powering, able to receive and send data signals to the control base, and perform a dozen other monitoring functions, all without disturbing the whales or disrupting their migratory patterns. Yamada also didn’t want his UUV to invoke the fearsome wrath of an angry thirty-five-ton adult, which could crush the UUV and scatter its priceless components on the bottom of the ocean floor with one mighty swipe of its massive fluke.

Yamada’s UUV was still under development, but it was far enough along that he wanted to try a short run with one of the pods. The UUV was already in position, but the AI program was still buggy. The best he could hope for was a remote-control test run of a couple hundred miles by following the underwater drone in a surface vessel like the 350 Outrage.

Yamada pointed at a stack of yellow storm-proof camera cases and told one of his grad students, “Don’t forget the Pelicans, please.” He felt his smartphone vibrate in his shorts pocket. It was Pearce’s ring tone.

“Troy! Howzit, brah?” Yamada asked. Born in Japan in 1960, he had migrated like his beloved humpbacks to Hawaii with his family when he was a teenager and had gone completely native. He was fluent in three human languages—Japanese, English, and pidgin—and he was an avid collector of whale songs.

“I was going to ask you the same thing, Kenji. Ready to launch today?” Pearce was aware of the AI bugs but wasn’t concerned. He knew Yamada and his team were close to solving them.

“On our way out the door. Wish us luck.”

“One more thing. I’ve scheduled the BP demo for September. I’ll need you and your team out in Galveston by August fifteenth at the latest. Will that be a problem?”

“Ah, brah. Serious?” Yamada whined. “Texas? How about Cali?” Yamada had earned his doctorate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

“Sorry, ‘brah.’ Gotta go where the customers are. You’ll be back before December.”

Yamada cringed. “Meh. Humpbacks are my customers.”

“I’m after greenbacks. The Brits have ’em in spades. That UUV you’re building is perfectly designed to run automated repair and maintenance routes on ocean-floor pipelines all over the world. We sign this BP contract, you’ll have more money for your whales than you’ll know what to do with.”

“And the rest of our deal?” Yamada asked. The hippie scientist agreed to join Pearce Systems and allow Pearce to fund his whale research operations so long as his UUV was never deployed for military purposes. Pearce was happy to comply. Like he told Yamada when he first met him, he really liked whales, too. Especially if you cook them just right. Fortunately for Pearce, Kenji had a sense of humor—and a busted bank account.

“Still the deal. Scout’s honor.”

“K, brah. See you in Texas. We talk logistics later. Gotta run.”

“Good luck, Kenji. I’m excited for you. Keep me posted.”

13

Highway 24, Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico

The small convoy of Renault Sherpa 2s climbed the winding snake of asphalt known as Highway 24. It curved its way through the rugged, pine-covered mountains of eastern Sinaloa, not far from the bordering state of Durango. The road wasn’t heavily traveled. The only traffic was the occasional pickup or eighteen-wheeler hauling farm goods down the mountain from one of the ranchitas farther up.