Malefactor

by Robert Repino

  “I didn’t tell you to stop!” Falkirk said. O’Neill snapped to life and began typing.

  The ship lurched as Unoka accelerated toward Collins Hill. The familiar weightlessness expanded from Falkirk’s feet to the inside of his chest.

  “Please,” Ruiz said. “You know this could be a trap.”

  Falkirk remembered Ruiz’s stories of slaughter, of bodies clogging the very river they flew over, leaving a red cloud in the water that stretched for miles. Ruiz was the expert, but Falkirk had no choice but to ignore him. So he got closer to Ruiz until his breath made the human’s nose twitch.

  “I’ve given my orders,” he whispered. “Carry them out, Lieutenant Commander.”

  Only the animals in the room heard it. Bulan, Ignatius the cat, Hiram the raccoon. They turned briefly from their stations, then returned to their work, pretending they heard nothing.

  “I’ve seen what these people can do, Captain.”

  Falkirk saw in the man’s eyes a palpable terror, boiling inside of him. His voice spoke from the past, from the war that their generation would never escape.

  “Vesuvius,” Koster’s voice called out. “Vesuvius, we’re approaching the coordinates. We can’t see you.”

  Falkirk and Ruiz remained still.

  “Vesuvius!”

  At last, Ruiz backed away. Not out of acceptance, or even obedience. Out of fear. Ruiz was afraid of him because he was a dog. Falkirk could smell it.

  “We are in stealth mode, Koster,” Falkirk answered. “You won’t see us until we’re right on top of you.”

  “Sir, I’ve found them,” O’Neill said. She pointed to more dots moving across the landscape. Three of them ran out in front. The other three clustered tightly together, in the rear, staggering along, most likely carrying a wounded comrade. Falkirk tracked the fleeing soldiers while O’Neill called out the altitude. Six thousand. Five thousand. Four thousand. ETA, two minutes. Outside, the mountain expanded, spiked with dormant trees and painted white with snow. To anyone on the ground, the ship in stealth mode passed over like a mirage, a ripple in the purple sky.

  “Sir, I’m detecting movement on Collins Hill,” Parish said.

  “Confirmed,” O’Neill said.

  The display showed a dozen heat signatures, arrayed in a crescent shape. Snipers taking cover as the airship arrived.

  Opening fire would give away their location, rendering stealth mode useless. Someone directly below them could have been waiting for them to do that very thing.

  “This is a trap,” Ruiz said. “This is what they do.”

  But those couldn’t have been wolves on the mountain. They were too far across the border. No, those were dogs, most likely. Maybe a few huskies. More defectors from Sanctuary Union, putting in their lot with the Mudfoot.

  Falkirk turned to the map screen again. “All right. Are there any clearings nearby?”

  “No,” Ruiz said.

  “Any place where we can get low enough?”

  “Sir, we’ve lost these people. We can’t—”

  A bright flash burst in the sky, high above the ridge of the mountain. A second later, the thudding sound hit the window.

  “That came from Camp Echo,” O’Neill said. “They’re using the artillery.”

  “Can they see us?” someone shouted.

  Another explosion detonated, lighting up the smoke that lingered from the first one.

  “No,” Falkirk said. “They’re—”

  He did not need to say it. The dogs at Camp Echo intended to fire blindly until they hit something.

  “Vesuvius!” Koster screamed. “Vesuvius, do you copy? We are taking fire!”

  While Koster shouted, Ruiz motioned to Bulan to lower the volume. “We have to abort,” he muttered to Falkirk. “I will take over this ship, sir. I will throw you in the brig. Don’t make me do it.”

  Something slammed into the ship from behind, tilting the deck. Several of the crew tumbled from their chairs. Falkirk and Ruiz crashed into one another, landing on their knees. Sirens and klaxons blared. A string of red lights blinked. Those crew members who could reach their consoles shouted out the damage reports.

  “Starboard engine number two is out!”

  “The balloon is intact!”

  “Sir,” O’Neill said, “they can see us!”

  Falkirk pictured it: a ball of fire hovering over the forest. A perfect target.

  The ship rolled again, leveling out. Falkirk caught Ruiz staring at him. The man’s hand stiffened into a claw over his sidearm.

  “Vesuvius!” Koster screamed. “Vesuvius!”

  “Pull us up, Unoka,” Falkirk said.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Falkirk stood. He refused to look at Ruiz. Instead, he pointed at Bulan. She pursed her lips, knowing full well what he needed to say.

  “Dr. Koster,” he said. “We have to return to our cruising altitude.”

  No response. Only the wind.

  “Dr. Koster—”

  Falkirk swore that he could hear footsteps for a moment. The audio cut off abruptly. The bridge fell silent.

  “Full damage assessment, as soon as you can get it,” Falkirk said.

  He sat in his chair. Behind him, the crew called out the altitude and the coordinates. They relayed information from engineering. They carried on.

  Falkirk slumped into the seat and stared out the window. Beside him, the tablet screen lit up with the news feed. The al-Rihla remained at the top of the list. Falkirk switched it off.

  PART II

  HELL

  Chapter 6

  A Beautiful Secret

  The wolves arrived at the crater as dawn broke and the shadows stretched from the trees like giant fingers digging into the snow. The Cadejo dogs got there first. Dozens of them, with more on the way, so they said. On all fours—most likely for the first time since joining the Mudfoot—they swirled around the ship’s engine, celebrating this latest victory in the uprising against Hosanna. Marching shoulder to shoulder, the dogs moved clockwise around the charred debris, howling their lungs out in a poor imitation of the wolves.

  At the center of the whirlpool of tails and fur was the engine, resembling a granite boulder. Only one of its three blades remained attached. The metal was frayed at its base, showing where it had been sheared from its moorings.

  Mercy watched from the main gate of Camp Echo. Beside her, Urna trembled at the sight. The rest of Mercy’s inner circle stood in silence nearby. The siblings Mag and Quick. Carsa, the older female, scarred and gray. Creek, the orphan with the broken tail. They each placed a paw on Mercy, escorting her toward the crowd without discouraging the revelry. Creek extended a protective arm over Mercy’s pregnant belly to keep the excited dogs away.

  The Mudfoot had never before seen an object like this engine. Its hulking presence proved how worthless a campfire story could be. No one in her pack possessed the words to describe this massive machine that fell from the clouds.

  Mercy’s arrival sent the dogs into a frenzy. A strange chant began, with a word that Mercy did not recognize. “Zag-ga! Zag-ga! Zag-ga!” Several other dogs tried to quiet the loudest, to no avail.

  “What this is?” Mercy asked.

  “Zagga,” Carsa said. “A game. To celebrate.”

  Though the largest dogs shouted the loudest, the ringleader was a terrier named Wicket, who did not expect to play himself, being too small. Nevertheless, he would oversee the gambling that always accompanied the game. With no money to bet, the spectators could wager the stolen booty from Camp Echo, from binoculars to clothes to helmets. After the bets were placed, the dogs ignited fire pits at the perimeter of the playing field, where they barbecued the remains of their fallen enemy. After weeks of skulking through the hills, staging secret attacks, they could at last celebrate in the open.

  Everyone tur
ned to Mercy to make a decision. They cleared a path to the engine and then dropped to their front paws in deference, their snouts on the ground. Some of them whimpered. A few others prayed. One of them, a younger mutt, stole a quick sniff of Mercy’s tail. None of them smelled right to her. They carried the scent of metal and mortar, plastic and soap. What little they knew of the wolves came from human propaganda. Many of them had painted their faces red, yellow, bright green—a privilege that was typically reserved for the elite marauders of certain clans. Still, these dogs knew what the Sanctuary Union had done to the Mudfoot. They were Mercy’s brothers and sisters now, even if they still thought of themselves as her children.

  Walking on two legs, Mercy pictured herself as Wex, pompously marching about his subjects, daring them to question his rituals. Slipping into that role proved so easy that it frightened her. It certainly frightened Urna, who still spoke of Wex as if he’d survived and lurked in the forest, ready to punish them all. Meanwhile, the newest members of the Mudfoot rebellion promised to keep to the “old ways” that the clan preserved—even if Mercy violated them herself when it suited her, and even if she worked with humans. Strangely, doing so made her stronger with these people. How quickly the wolves forgot the bonds of species when given a chance to finally break free of their fate. Wex understood this aspect of power, this marriage of despair, wishful thinking, and tribalism. If she wanted to survive, Mercy needed to master it herself.

  “Play your game,” she said.

  “Mercy!” one of the older dogs yelled, his mouth filled with rotting teeth. “Mercy the Skypiercer!” A shout arose, then a long discordant howl.

  “Mercy, the Champion of Camp Echo!”

  “Mercy the Merciful!”

  “Mercy the Merciless!”

  These defectors from Hosanna had traveled so far, left behind their lives as pets. They served the Mudfoot well, sealing off the escape routes and seizing a vital enemy stronghold. Let them have a brief moment of joy before the wilderness forced them to adapt or die.

  And besides, she thought, once they found out they came all this way to serve a barren matriarch, a pack without a future, none of this would matter anyway.

  As the dogs prepared, Carsa explained to her the history of zagga, what little she knew. A year earlier, Hosanna banned the game, declaring it too dangerous. While the former pets supported the ban, the pothounds and half-wilds regarded it as yet another attack on their ways. As a result, spontaneous games broke out in parking lots, in fields, anywhere with open space.

  The fallen engine served as the central point on the playing field, known as the pivot. From there, the dogs placed markers to indicate the halos, the three concentric circles spreading outward from the center. The most important piece was the femur. Mercy asked Carsa what that meant. “It really is a femur,” Carsa said. “A leg bone.” With so many dead bodies at nearby Camp Echo, she did not need to ask where they got it.

  The game started with the strongest dogs, maybe fifteen or so, circling the engine on all fours, howling. The femur leaned against the propeller, still pink and slick from its recent extraction. After three revolutions around the pivot, the dogs charged for the bone, their paws kicking away the dirt and snow. Briefly, the femur lifted over the scrum, then disappeared. Whoever grabbed it lay at the bottom of the pile, trampled.

  Mag whispered something to the other wolves. Creek nodded. Mercy could tell that they did not approve. This game seemed like a waste of energy. And yet the dog spectators roared each time the femur changed possession.

  The scrum shifted like a gibbering, shambling monster leaving drunken tracks in the snow. Until, at last, one of the dogs shot from the crowd and dashed along the widest halo. The dogs scattered. Some gave chase, while the others went in the other direction, hoping to cut off the runner’s escape. The carrier, a brown shepherd with huge pointy ears, pulled away from the pack, only to find more standing in his way. Once a player had possession, the goal was to complete a full revolution around the pivot. The first player to circle the pivot ten times would win the round, and the two inner halos—the center of the violence—were worth double and triple score. This shepherd took the second halo, where he collided with his opponents. A vicious crack sent one of the defenders skidding through the snow. The dog kept going, his teeth digging into the bone. He had so much momentum that his opponents could only nip at him as he charged by. By the time he reached a score of ten, he had a set of bloody gashes cut into his ribs. His footprints left a crimson trail behind him, and his nose glistened red.

  The victor trotted over to Mercy. Carsa and Creek immediately rose to their hind legs to shield her. Ignoring them, the dog dropped the bone, a gift for the new leader. And the chanting began again.

  Mercy the Merciful.

  No peace! No peace! No peace!

  Mercy felt Urna’s warmth beside her. “Please, stop this,” Urna said, her timid voice cracking. The words made sense when strung together, and yet Mercy knew she could not heed them. Not with this horde of followers preparing to kill for her.

  While Wicket collected his winnings, the Cadejo dogs prepared for another round. Urna relaxed a little, but Mercy could still sense her unease. Urna hardly blinked, and her breathing would not slow down. Mercy had to accept that she could not fix her sister. She could not make Urna realize that she was no longer the omega, and never needed to act like one again.

  Meanwhile, the spectators passed around their liquor and sang shanties from the war. They toasted Mercy and the battles to come. While the zagga matches continued, a few of them drifted into the woods to fuck. Some of them must have walked for miles through the cold to get here, following nothing but rumors and hope. For years, they had harbored a dread in their hearts that their former masters would turn on them now that the Colony had fallen. Even if they died tomorrow, this would all be worth it.

  A great cry rose up as another troop of haggard dogs arrived at the camp, the third in as many days. The refugees from Hosanna appeared the same to Mercy: short snout, slightly floppy ears. The females showed off their swollen nipples as a badge of honor to prove how many pups they’d bred. The males often had missing eyes, broken tails, torn ears.

  The wolves led the new recruits to Mercy. Only six this time, a family. But more were coming. Always more. As usual, Mercy’s closest wolves closed ranks around her in case Hosanna had sent an assassin. The newly arrived dogs groveled on all fours. The lead male went first, prostrating himself, rolling over to expose his belly. His mate and cousins followed suit. Mercy sniffed them, rubbing her fur against theirs. She let the pup nip at her tail until the mother told the child to stop. No wasteful words spoken, no preening. Just the solidarity bred into their kind through years of surviving the cold, ever since the First Winter.

  The male dog introduced himself as Pike, and his mate as Fiona. He said that they came to see the wolf who ruled over humans. The great queen who dared to—

  “I am no queen,” Mercy said.

  Chastened, Pike glanced at Fiona. Before he could apologize, the zagga pit suddenly halted. A silence spread from the center of the ring. Augur and his humans had returned from their scouting mission. The other wolves gave them space as they entered. Though no one would admit it, Augur and his comrades frightened them. At first, it was for their ability to live in the wild. But now it was because they had been right about everything—about the battles, about the uprising. The wolves may have worshipped the future, but when a human handed it to them, their first instinct was to run.

  Mercy cut the meeting short. “You welcome here,” she told Pike. “Rest now. Hard days ahead.”

  She left them and headed for Augur. Behind her, she heard Carsa scolding the new dogs for the queen remark. “She is not your, your . . . your Ar-chon!”

  When Mercy got close enough to Augur, she rose to her hind legs. The human stopped.

  “I’ve found it,” he said. “We lea
ve in the morning.”

  Mercy gestured to the people surrounding them. The pack had never supported so many, and now it had become an army. “We can still stop this,” she said, a line she had rehearsed many times while waiting for him to return.

  “You saw what we did last night,” he said. “You know I’m telling the truth. There’s no going back.”

  “They know,” she said, holding her hands over her belly. “They must know. I am taking my sister. We must run. No other way.”

  If Augur really considered himself a kind of half-wolf, then he knew the trouble she courted by taking a child and claiming it as her own. While adoption was a common practice, claiming a blood line when none existed violated both spoken codes and their own deeply ingrained instincts. Someone would find out eventually, if they did not know already.

  “And then what?” Augur said. “By then we will have kept our promises. We will have saved both our peoples. And they will choose to believe rather than admit they were wrong.”

  Mercy noticed Creek edging closer. Mercy bared her teeth, and the young one rejoined the others.

  “Tomorrow,” Augur said, “when we find what we’re looking for, all your questions will be answered.”

  A trio of dogs began pounding on a drum they had constructed out of a hollow log. A strange dance began with more howling and yipping. One of the male wolves tried to get Urna to dance with him. But she would not budge, choosing instead to stay close to her sister.

  Mercy realized she could live with disappointing these people—these defectors and exiles. But when Urna discovered the truth, it would rip Mercy’s heart out. That left her little choice but to follow this human further into some new Damnable, something far beyond her control.

  Dawn broke over the hills. The stink of alcohol, rotting bones, and shit hung over Camp Echo. Many of the wolves woke from the spots in the camp where they passed out. Most of them formed a circle around the remnants of the bonfire, the warmth of their bodies melting a divot in the snow. One of the wolves—a loner banished from a neighboring pack—lay slumped over the latrine. A few of the groggy ones snorted as they awakened, some of them clearly unsure of how they got there. In another hour, the sun would rise over the spiked walls of the fort, waking the remaining stragglers, a bright reminder of the hard days that awaited them.