Seven sols went by, the space station in orbit of Uranus was no longer flickering lights or venting gas. It drifted in a decaying orbit, destined to fall into the depths of the ice giant.
With rapid deceleration the Rasputin's Rod entered orbit of Uranus. Daddy Cool stood on the flight deck. Fifteen years had passed since the Fall of Mars. He was a wanted Martian, hunted down by the Terran Conglomerate and the Jovian Proxy. With his droid Sunny and in possession of this ship, he had turned to salvage, smuggling and piracy.
Daddy Cool looked over the scans he performed on the space station, "It's some kind of derelict lab, a science station."
IT IS IN A DECAYING ORBIT, stated the droid Sunny. IT IS ABANDONED.
"It appears so mate," replied Daddy Cool, "still, let's pop over and take a look. Must be something we can salvage."
Daddy Cool took Rasputin's Rod to within a few hundred meters of the derelict space station. Daddy Cool and Sunny made their way to the hanger bay airlock. Inside the airlock Daddy Cool stood with his arms and legs wide. As a metamorphic mechanoid able to change its form to suit function, Sunny wrapped around him, assuming the form of an armoured space suit. The air was sucked into vents until the inside of the airlock was a vacuum. Daddy Cool opened the external hatch and pushed himself out into the void. Sunny fired up its thrusters that in this configuration, formed a box like jet pack on Daddy Cool's back. Together they shuttled towards the derelict space station.
"Sunny mate?"
YES DADDY COOL
"Play Believe by Lenny Kravitz."
DONE
As they drew closer, Sunny activated lights that were positioned on Daddy Cool's shoulders and on the top of his helmet. They passed clouds of debris, some which was frozen shards of bone, crystals of blood and ice cube chunks of brain.
"It was some kind of research station Sunny."
AFFIRMATIVE, replied the droid.
"Something bad happened here."
AGREED.
"Judging from the tech its Jovian Proxy, too far out to belong to the Terran Conglomerate. As for those isolationists on Titan, they rarely leave their moon, let alone the Saturnian system. Besides, they're too busy building that array of mirrors to focus more sunlight towards Titan … heating up and transforming the chemistry of their world, one photon at a time."
A massive tear in the hull came into view. Daddy Cool moved towards the great gash, entering the space station. They soon found themselves floating down corridors, through rooms dedicated to labs. Debris floated everywhere.
Eventually they entered a laboratory with 13 massive, embryonic tanks. Twelve were empty, dark and cold. However, the 13th tank still contained synthetic embryonic fluid with a ball of pink and grey fur floating in the middle of the tank. Bubbles of oxygen rose from the bottom of the embryonic tank and a warm light was positioned at the top.
"What in Sol is this little thing?" asked Daddy Cool.
EXPERIMENT, replied Sunny.
Daddy Cool inspected the tank's control panel, "The tank is on emergency power. The built-in battery is almost out of energy."
THE FLUFFY PINK AND GREY BABY BALL WILL DIE.
"Probably," Daddy Cool pushed himself towards the largest control console in the room, "Sunny, use your battery core to power up this unit and then patch a link between you and this control console and then transmit the data back to Big Poppa," he said, referring to Rasputin Rod's central computer.
AFFIRMATIVE. A few seconds went by. LINKS ESTABLISHED.
"Big Poppa?" said Daddy Cool.
DAEMON SHIHTZ RULE! replied Big Poppa.
Daddy Cool sighed in mild annoyance, after 15 years of attempting map and understand every inch of Rasputin's Rod, there were still systems and coding that he couldn't access. Quantum encryption locked him out of the ship's main propulsion system – some kind of rocket engine that Big Poppa boasted could 'punch through the light speed barrier', weapons arrays and whatever the big black cube was that was bolted into the floors in the engine room.
"Sunny," began Daddy Cool, "is transmitting the schematics of a control console, see if you can hack the unit, allowing me access to the control panel."
There was a brief pause.
PIECE OF CAKE, replied Big Poppa. LITTLE BALD PRIMORDIAL EARTH MONKEY TECH IS SUCH PUNY AND PATHETIC TECH … YOU HAVE ACCESS.
"Thanks, Big Poppa."
Daddy Cool activated the control panel. A holographic screen appeared above the unit, projecting an operating system. Daddy Cool spent several minutes skimming through text files and science reports.
"This was a bioweapons research facility," said Daddy Cool, "Some kind of gene-splicing program called 'Project Daemon'," Daddy Cool remarked with a slight feeling of intrigue, "Daemon … quite a familiar word, hey Sunny?"
YES, ONE OF BIG POPPA'S THREE FAVOURITE WORDS.
"Yeah," agreed Daddy Cool. He clicked through folders, he came across a subfolder containing video recordings, "Mm, well what's this then, hey?" Daddy Cool clicked on the first video.
A scientist in a lab coat appeared, she was a woman in her mid-30's with ginger brown hair, "Project Daemon is a resounding success," she said as the video incorporated a montage of giant furry creatures being born from embryonic tanks, initially appearing cute, but with edited footage, appeared to grow rapidly over a period of time. "We gene spliced genetic material for a myriad of complex terrestrial organisms, Bengal tiger, grizzly bear, great white shark, chameleon, rattlesnake, to name but a few. We also incorporated human DNA, a lock of hair from a late 20th-early-21st century Hollywood actor, someone who would have made a great Wolverine in those old X-Men films."
The footage focused on one specimen in particular.
"The white specimen is slightly smaller than the others, we designated it the name 'Milkoo'. The other 11 are named after various beers," the woman laughed, "there's not much to do out here during our downtime except drink. While the other 11 specimens demonstrate a workable degree of intelligence, it is only the Milkoo that demonstrates quite an alarmingly high degree of intelligence.
"Even at such a young age, the other 11 specimens have fallen into line, assuming the Milkoo as their alpha. On another note," the woman paused and smiled, "they are calling themselves Daemon Shihtz," she giggled, "it's so adorable, they stand in a little circle, and none of them are no more than four feet high, very fluffy and cute. They fist pump and chant 12 times, Daemon Shihtz rule!" she imitated them, pumping her fist, "although the other 11 specimens are rather intellectually infantile to attempt an intelligent conversation, the Milkoo however is quite conversational.
"When we asked 'Milkoo' why they decided to call themselves the 'Daemon Shihtz', he replied that 'Daemon' represents Project Daemon and that the 'Shihtz' was to honour the 'special genetic sequence' in their chimeric DNA that allows them to have free will," the woman smiled, "such gibberish, perhaps the Milkoo isn't as intelligent as we had originally thought, prone to delusions. Oh well, free will or not, theses 12 prototypes will be euthanized and vivisected when the time comes."
The video ended, Daddy Cool tapped on the next video file, taken a few weeks later.
"There are some concerns about the erratic, defiant and at times, slightly violent behaviours exhibited by the 12th specimens," said the woman, "We've conducted a series of deep, invasive genetic tests and it appears there is a genetic anomaly with the canine genetic material that we gene spliced into the Daemon genome. It appears the canine DNA that was meant to be timber wolf, actually came from a breed a domestic dog … it is Shih Tzu to be exact. We have determined that all of the specimen's negative behavioural anomalies can be traced back to tainted psychological issues due to the genetic defects of the Shih Tzu genes on the specimen's neurobiology … hyper-aggression, attraction to blood, egotism and little man issues."
The video ended. Daddy Cool clicked on the third video. The woman reappeared, "To correct the genetic abnormality inherent in the 12 prototypes, we've created a thirteenth specimen, deleting the Shih Tzu genetic sequences along with making a host of other genetic alterations."
The video cut to footage of scientists using a tear drop to add a substance to a petri dish and then the petri dish being added to an embryonic tank. This was followed by time lapsed footage of a small bull of purple fur that slowly grew to the size of a basketball.
"In attempts to reduce the hyper-aggression, we replaced the original human genes with preserved DNA from two comedians who appeared in a series of stoner films from the 1970's, along with some avian DNA from Eolophus roseicapilla, the pink and grey cockatoo that was known more colloquially as the galah.
"The Tiger DNA genes were replaced with domestic house cat, the grizzly bear with panda and koala bear, the great white shark DNA with goldfish and most importantly of all, we removed the Shih Tzu genes with those from a labrador and a pug. Unfortunately…" sighed the woman, "we detected some abnormalities during foetal development. Frankly, it's a bit of a dud. Its temperament is predicted to be too childlike and benevolent, lacking the attributes necessary to make it a deadly weapon. Also, its intelligence, which at its peak is only predicted to be equivalent to an eight year old child, will be too low for the specimen to be of any use. It won't be deadly and it is quite a dud. This is why we assigned it the name, 'Dudley'."
Daddy Cool looked over at the embryonic tank, surely enough, the name 'Dudley' was written with bad handwriting on a strip of packing tape at the bottom of the tank.
"Decisions will need to be made as to whether we bring the specimen to term or terminate the embryo."
The video ended and Daddy Cool clicked on the final video.
"The 12 specimens are out of control!" cried the woman. Her face was covered in blood. Thumping, screams and blood frenzied roars could be heard in the distance. They are fully grown, nine feet tall and each weighing in excess of a metric tonne. The Milkoo is commanding the others to eat us! They just started eating everyone!" she screamed, "By Dawkin's dong, they're eating everyone!"
The hatch burst open to the laboratory, a monstrous shadow appeared, the woman turned and screamed as the camera shook, blood splattered and smothered the camera. The video went to static and abruptly ended.
Daddy Cool looked back again at 'Dudley' in the embryonic tank. He then looked at Sunny…