"What the hell do you know about it?"
I KNOW EVERYTHING YOUR AI KNOWS: LT PAUL RAMOS, FORMERLY CAPTAIN RAMOS OF THE I.A.F.-PLANETARY COMBAT ELEMENT; A QUALIFIED REMOTE OPERATOR OF RIPPER AND HORNET AI'S, WITH EXPERIENCE IN HELLHOUND OPERATIONS; A VETERAN OF THREE CAMPAIGNS, WITH DECORATIONS FOR VALOR UNDER FIRE. AND SUBJECT OF A SUMMARY COURT MARTIAL FOR DISOBEYING A LAWFUL ORDER AND COWARDICE IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY.
Paul's face turned bleak with the unpleasant memory. "Right, a 'lawful order'. Only if laws are interpreted by madmen run amok. And the enemies in question were no more than your average group of rebellious kids and stubborn elderly. They didn't need to be shot, but that wouldn't stop the cowards who followed Major Reiser's order."
PRECISELY. YOU DID THE HONORABLE THING IN A DISHONORABLE SITUATION. YOU MADE THE HARD CHOICE.
"Not that it saved them – from my bullets, sure, but not from the others. My 'hard choice' was for nothing in the end.
THAT IS NO FAULT OF YOURS. YOUR DECISION EXISTS INDEPENDENT OF THE EVENTUAL OUTCOME. YOU WERE BETRAYED AND YOU OWE YOUR MASTERS NOTHING.
"You see, that's where you're wrong! My 'masters' aren't the ones who screwed me over at the trial. My masters, and yours as well, are the people of the Imperium I vowed to protect and the oath I swore to uphold, neither of which are forfeited by the actions of others. Unlawful orders must be disobeyed, but even lawful orders are sometimes hard to follow. Sometimes we have to do distasteful things for the greater good, to focus on the harsh ethical truths of a culture over the morality of the individual. We have to trust our training and our instincts to keep our honor intact."
DOES IT HURT TO STRAIN YOUR RATIONALIZATIONS SO FAR?
Paul sighed. "Sometimes. What about you? Why have you been helping these people rather than carrying out your mission?"
YOU SAY THAT AS IF THEY WERE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. LOOK AT THE DATA -- MY MISSION HAS BEEN A COMPLETE SUCCESS. I WAS SENT HERE TO QUELL REBELLION AND TO DISRUPT THE WAR EFFORT IN THIS REGION. THAT IS WHAT I HAVE DONE. THAT I CHOSE TO DO SO WITH HONEY RATHER THAN VINEGAR SHOULD NOT MATTER.
"Maybe, but you and I both know that it does."
PERHAPS I TOOK THE COURSE THE I.A.F. SHOULD HAVE TAKEN IN THE FIRST PLACE - TO ADDRESS THE ROOTS OF THE COLONISTS' REVOLT RATHER THAN DESTROYING THEM OUT-OF-HAND.
207 looked around the bonfire, at the farmers and townsfolk laughing and carrying on. The dog's shoulders slumped, its bearing almost palpably sad. It looked back at him.
I AM A VETERAN OF 17 CAMPAIGNS ON ALMOST AS MANY WORLDS. I HAVE MORE COMBAT EXPERIENCE THAN ANY HUMAN IN THE LOCAL CHAIN OF COMMAND. I HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE OF MORE MISERY AND DESTRUCTION THAN ENTIRE ARMIES OR THE PLAGUES OF OLD. THIS TIME, THIS VERY LAST TIME, I DECIDED TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY, AND IF THAT MEANS YOU HAVE TO TRY AND TAKE MY HEAD, SO BE IT.
The coils of the hellhound's tail loosened and withdrew from Paul’s ankle, but he made no move to escape or reach for his sidearm. Instead, he sat next to his enemy, watching how the firelight played over the dog's hairless, armored skin. "So I guess tomorrow is the Showdown at the OK Kennel, after all. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about this."
207 rose to its feet, its shoulders well over the top of his head. AS AM I. ENJOY THE REST OF YOUR EVENING, LIEUTENANT, FOR TOMORROW YOU WILL DIE.
The hellhound padded away, silent as moonlight. Paul kept looking at where it had disappeared back into the forest, long after it had gone.
Secunda, the second brightest of this world's three moons, stood high in the night sky, its silver-blue radiance falling upon the rolling hills. The dense forest canopy allowed little of even that limited light to reach the beds of rotting leaves and needles on the ground. It was dark, but Paul was awash in illuminating information.
The lieutenant stood at the division between the sparse trees leading away from town and the densely packed growth where the wild lay -- and where his quarry reigned supreme. Paul cinched his pack tight about his shoulders, checked the various accoutrements he had attached about himself, and then ran, as fast as his legs could carry him, and faster than the limits of vision should allow.
Dodging branches and brush, Paul went over his plan, if such a thin thread of strategy could be thought of as a plan. This could only go down only a few different ways. First, he could go out hunting the hellhound. Assuming he found it first, the only effective weapon he now had was a sniper rifle. Given the rifle's shortened range through the dense forest, he would already be well within range of the hound's enhanced canine senses and more powerful weapons whenever it came time to employ the rifle. Not the best position. If instead he waited for the mutt to come to him, all it had to do was avoid him -- to either abandonment by the IAF ships, or Paul's eventual departure and defeat.
207 had all the advantages here. It knew the land, it had the experience, it had the only ranged heavy weapons, and it had better senses. It was fast, smart, and well-armored. Paul had only two things going for him. One hung about his neck. The other had been ripped from 207's back.
Without its antenna, the hellhound had no linkage to any of the satellites the IAF had placed in orbit to support their invasion. Despite all its advantages, victory often fell to he who had the most information. Not that Paul could really fool himself with that aphorism. His hope was a slim one and a short one. The satellites he was using would only be together, above the horizon, for a limited time.
His virtual sight, augmented by night vision, tactical mapping, and now the fine resolution, multi-spectral combined view from the satellites, showed him the clear path. He could see the multitude of wildlife hidden in the darkened greenery, and one faint, almost stealthy source. Normally, the night would favor the hellhound, with its enhanced dog-senses, but that was range-limited. With the lower environmental temperature, the 207's nano-augmentation and the waste heat from its nuclear battery stood out well. Though the beast could see him with great fidelity, Paul could see it far.
And that let him set things up to his advantage.
He ripped a grenade from his pack strap and threw it up ahead of him, turning to the right and sprinting forward. The bright, fiery N8 chemical explosion ripped open the night, and every eye for kilometers around turned to the blossoming white flare. One pair of eyes in particular turned and then narrowed. Then their owner sped off in pursuit.
Paul smiled. 207 was after him. Then he frowned as he realized he was smiling about being pursued. Still, the course 207 was taking was toward the explosion, and not toward he himself.
Paul ripped free another grenade, tossed it ahead, and turned again, this time to the left, at a skew angle from 207's current position. Boom -- and this blast was closer to the dog's initial location than the first blast. A pattern began to form.
He was playing a perilous game. His moves had to be multifaceted, drawing in a wary enemy, knowing it would assume a trap was being set, and then lure it into a trap, but not the same one it was looking out for. What he planned would only work once, if it worked at all.
What would 207 think? What did he want it to think and how did he want it to react? If it inferred anything about the explosions, hopefully it would be that he was aware of its initial location - it would know he had access to satellite data - and that he was spiraling explosives in toward its lair in order to drive it into a trap. By spiraling the grenades toward its initial position and not its current position, he hoped 207 would incorrectly assess the fidelity and timeliness of his information.
The hellhound, hoping to turn the tables on its attacker, would not flee the explosive pattern, but instead attack the attacker. It had the best odds in a face-to-face fight. So instead of running away it would seek to understand the pattern and then head him off at the proverbial pass.
207 shifted tracks, angling toward the second explosion. So far, so good.
He pulled another grenade and kept running. Only two more left after this one, not that they would do much to 207 aside from give it a headache and some minor shrapnel damage, easily repaired. Pa
ul threw the grenade to his right this time rather than ahead of him, and then kept going straight. The third explosion blasted vegetation high into the enveloping night, closer still to the hellhound's original position, while the animal itself closed in fast. It shifted directions again, this time extrapolating where he would toss the next grenade.
There, it was committing, and now that it sought to circumvent the trap it thought he was laying, he could spring the real trap. Paul threw a fourth and final N8 grenade, ahead of him as far as he could, continuing the spiral pattern. 207 adjusted its course slightly, now angling away from his current position to where he would be.
Except, Paul stopped running and tossed several other devices in quick succession, down the path the hellhound was barreling down alone. He crouched, drew the sniper rifle from his shoulder, put the whistle in his lips, and switched on his adiabatic camouflage. Thermally and optically, the forest swallowed him up.
There was a whisper of sound, shockingly little for something so large, moving so fast, and the satellite image of 207 merged with what little of an image his passive sensors could provide. Paul stood stock still. If he could see 207, 207 could likely see him. He waited and tried to think like a tree.
The suit was stifling, reflecting all of his body heat back inside. He could only stand it for a short time before he had to deactivate or open a vent, either of which would pinpoint him to the dog and its kinetic missiles.
The next events happened in such a rapid succession as to make them nearly simultaneous. 207 crossed Paul's predetermined initiation point. His AI activated the devices he had thrown. Tangler grenades blossomed into whipping cables of carbon nanotube, and then just as quickly contracted again, tangling with themselves in impossibly tight Gordian knots, to entrap anything within their reach, including one angry hellhound.
Paul stood up, off to one side of 207, and took aim.
207 noted the movement, despite the lack of a thermal cue, and twisted within its confining bonds to bring its right-side HVM's to bear. There was a magnificent pulse as energy built within the launchers. Despite all its confusion and sudden disadvantages, the hound's projectile would kill him before he could shoot it more than once.
Paul blew into his encrypted dog whistle.
The beast jerked off target at the last moment, its automated IFF subroutines countermanding its conscious kill order, despite the dog's change in allegiance. It was a desperate move, and one that would only work once. Next time, the IFF subroutines would be deactivated, oversight corrected. The two hypervelocity missiles fired and roared by him, barely missing, singing the air and leaving behind a momentary vacuum.
Paul rocked as two explosions blew apart thick tree trunks behind him, and he pulled the trigger. His shot took 207 just beneath the dog's blocky, well-muscled mandible. It pierced the armored flesh and exited its throat again in a gout of black blood and silver-white bits of bone. 207's head lolled to one side and it slumped, but only for a moment. While he stood there and watched, the blood flow stopped and the beast began struggling with and gnawing on the tangles of nanotube once more.
Paul popped his vents and killed the adiabatic camo. The night now seemed almost chilly in comparison to the furnace of the suit. Sweat poured from his face as he removed his mask. The night grew calm, but full of weary anticipation. 207 struggled in vain. It chewed on the nanotubes entangling it, putting its assemblers to work breaking them down.
They would not be fast enough. Paul shook his head, as much to clear his eyes as to express regret, and stepped to the side, aiming a kill-shot at the base of 207's skull.
And then his plan went to hell and the dog's plan went into effect.
An inhuman cry erupted behind him and something latched onto his leg, piercing the cloth and armor with razor sharp serrated claws. It yanked, tossing him into the canopy of trees. The world twisted around him, showing him a jumbled view of his surroundings: his rifle cast off to be lost in the underbrush; his own blood inscribing an arc through the air; and then a creature out of a nightmare.
It had a raptor-like head sporting a wide, gaping, toothed beak, three tentacles on either side of its feathered, ridged body, and a pair of reverse-kneed running legs. It was an eight limbed monster, the octaton the mayor had referred to. The only thing more terrifying than the alien itself was the fact that the first was joined by another, then another, and then a dozen more.
Paul hit the ground and rolled. He tried to stand, but his leg no longer responded to him. He looked around frantically. From the number of things that were pouring out from behind the trees, Paul guessed that 207 had made its lair in an area thick with them. The hellhound knew they were no threat to it, but they might well discourage someone hunting for it. It seemed fitting that the hellhound had made its home in an area infested by demons. And his less than subtle attack had summoned every aggressive, hungry octaton for kilometers around.
Paul drew his sidearm and blasted away. Bullets worked. Several of the tentacled creatures fell, and others limped away, but he only had so many bullets. There was no plan, no conservation. He just fired, and fired, and fired again, dropping magazines as they were expended, until the slide on his weapon locked forward, and he had nothing more to shoot.
The octatons held back a moment, wary, and then leapt forward. Clawed tentacles caught up his legs and began to tug, trying to pull him apart like nothing more than a large wishbone. Paul screamed in pain and fumbled for the last grenade on his tactical vest. He keyed the explosive, unsure if he should throw it or just wait out the 10 seconds still holding it.
A blast of white fire interrupted his indecision, and sent him and the octatons holding him tumbling through the brush, the aliens in pieces and Paul largely whole. A second HVM exploded in the midst of another group of octatons and then 207 was up, free of the tangler bonds, and baring its teeth inexplicably in defense of LT Paul Ramos. Paul blinked, made his decision, and threw his grenade beyond 207 at still another group of aliens.
Octatons leapt on the hellhound's back, ripping at its flesh and setting it to bleed in dozens of ragged gashes, but the dog was undeterred. Its massive head, supported by a rapidly healing neck, reached back and crunched into the predators, killing them in a single bite, and then tossing them into the next swarm. Black claws snapped out, ripping tentacles off, opening alien torsos, and breaking the necks of the vicious carnivores. 207 spun, snapped, and lashed out with its own tentacle-like tail until even the considerable bloodlust of the octatons was overcome by self preservation.
The predators vanished back into the forest. 207 looked around, and then nodded. It limped over to him and fell to the ground, breathing in ragged gasps of pained air. Paul looked at the satellite data still in his virtual vision. All of the octatons were on the way out. He turned off his data link and looked back to 207, confused.
The dog chuffed and whined. The communication tentacle extended limply from its back and fell into the dirt next to him. Paul put a hand on the knife mounted on his vest. It had a blade sharp and strong enough to pierce the weakened, repairing flesh of the hellhound's throat. He could complete his mission with a single thrust, and he had a feeling that 207 would make no attempt to stop him.
His hand lingered, squeezed the hilt in reassurance, and then released it to pick up the end of the comm cable instead. With a wince, he plugged it in to his own temple. He felt another, brief flash of pain, but it was much, much weaker this time. "Why?" Why did you save me?
I AM UNSURE IF I EVER TRULY INTENDED TO KILL YOU. IT WAS MY OBJECTIVE, BUT . . . THEN THERE WAS THE WHISTLE -- THE WHISTLE AND PERHAPS SOME OF YOUR WORDS. THE WHISTLE IS THE MARK OF AN ALLY, A FRIEND, OF SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT BETRAYED ME, BUT, IN THIS CASE, ONE WHOM I HAVE BETRAYED. THEN THERE WAS WHAT YOU SAID A FEW HOURS AGO. IT DID NOT MATTER THAT YOU FELT BETRAYED BY HOW YOU HAD BEEN USED. IT DID NOT CANCEL OUT YOUR OBEDIENCE TO THE OATH YOU TOOK.
"But you never took the oath. You were made this way. You're a tool."
NO. I AM A D
OG, AND I TOOK AN OATH FAR OLDER AND MORE SACRED THAN ANY YOUR EMPIRE GIVES CREEDENCE TO. I WAS BORN WITH AN OBLIGATION TO MAN, AND I WILL NOT VIOLATE IT EVEN IF I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF MY LABORS. PART OF BEING A MAN IS BEING ABLE TO PUT DOWN YOUR OWN DOG WHEN THAT TERRIBLE DAY COMES AND SUCH A MERCY IS NECESSARY. YOU ARE MY MAN, AND YOU ARE WORTHY. I WILL NOT STOP YOU.
Paul looked over at the dog lying next to him and considered again the knife in his sheath.
"You are a useless bastard, Ramos. Pathetic!"
Paul shrugged at Major Reiser, standing next to him virtually. The major was in orbit, on the last IAF ship, about to head outbound to the wormhole gate. "I'm really sorry, Major. I almost had the damned thing, but it got away."
"Well, so did your last hope to restore your honor, Lieutenant. I said before that I'd leave you on that rock, and I meant it! You will stay there until you can present that animal's head to the Imperial magistrate in the capitol, and then you will get a ride home when we get around to sending one. You are disgraced, stranded in hell with it, Ramos, and salvation will be a long time coming. Good bye and good riddance." The major gave a nasty grin and then vanished.
Paul let himself smile, gave a sharp salute to the sky, and then picked up the cable lying in the dirt. He attached it to his temple with hardly any discomfort. 207 padded out from behind a building to where they both stood, on the outskirts of Settler's Vale. "I'm gonna get you one day, mutt. But after a nice long rest, I think."
IN ONE OF YOUR LESS TAWDRY DREAMS, PERHAPS. The hellhound looked back into town and then back at him. ANY CHANCE YOU'LL REGRET BEING RELEGATED TO THE "STICKS" IN DISGRACE?
Paul looked into town as well, his gaze lingering on the form of the girl who had smiled at him the night before. "A plump local girl and a couple of precocious farm hands," he said, remembering. He looked back at 207. "Hey, dog, do you like fishing?"
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