DogForge

by Casey Calouette

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Plate

  Grit and slag crunched under Denali’s feet as she led her squad into the armory. They jumped to the side as a platoon of dogs in freshly forged armor marched by. The armor was large, thick, blocky at points, and thoroughly designed to take a beating.

  Denali couldn’t wait to get her own suit.

  She glanced back at her squad and ordered them forward. Her eyes caught on Samson and she quickly looked away.

  The tension between Denali and Samson had simmered in the days since the first squad practice. The next round went better, and the one after that they actually scored. But still, Samson and Denali did their best to ignore each other.

  She didn’t expect Samson to see it her way, nor did she really want to see it his way. His betrayal, anger, and attempt at revenge, seemed so long ago. But still, those events pained her deeply.

  The squad was excited. They stepped lightly, their eyes sparkled, and they sucked in every detail. Even Samson was keyed up, today was the day.

  “Squad Leader Denny!” Sergeant Roo barked. “Take you’re time, young lady,” he said sarcastically. “Now move!”

  “Squad, double time!” Denali ordered and they sprinted into the heart of the armory.

  Great forges and presses crashed down and shook the floor. Cascades of sparks spread out like glowing chaff in the wind. It smelled of burnt metal and electronics.

  Denali snuck a glance down the line. Squads of conscripts were lined all through the factory. She wondered how many dogs were on Forge—for that matter, how many did they take from her home? The heads were like a blur and she couldn’t get a count, but guessed at over a thousand.

  “What an army,” she mumbled.

  And this is just where they’re trained.

  Denali thought he sounded a bit less abrasive then usual. Almost a touch excited. Maybe she was starting to impress some of her emotions on him.

  She tried to hide her excitement but couldn’t help sneaking glances at the suits of armor. They were everywhere, in racks, on gantries, and all for them.

  Bellow couldn’t contain his excitement. His tail wagged and thumped against conscripts on either side. He tried to stop, but instead his butt wiggled and his tail stayed straight. Sergeant Roo shot him an angry glance and he whined excitedly.

  Denali couldn’t help but smile.

  This was it, the day that all conscripts would become even. The mechanical strength that the suits brought would be linked to the implants on the dogs’ bodies. They would become one with the suit. Denali finally had her dream, she’d be a runt no more.

  Remember, Cicero echoed in her mind.

  She sighed to herself and wished she was allowed a guilty thought without some ancient relic popping into her head.

  I heard that.

  A dog stepped out from a heavy hatch and stared at the conscripts. He was a large dog with a patchwork of shaggy brown, white and orange fur. Both front legs were mechanical implants. One eye glowed a dull green while the other looked milky. His ears flowed down over his head in a great cascade.

  “Sergeant, send them in a pair at a time.”

  “Yes, Senior Engineer Ernst!” Sergeant Roo replied and stepped aside. He barked at Vera and Gallus. The two smaller dogs ran forward and the engineer motioned them inside.

  Pair after pair went through the portal under the watchful eye of the engineer. He halted Bellow, and after taking a measurement, allowed him through. Bellow shook with fear and anxiety. He turned and gave Denali a look of excitement, then he was inside.

  Finally it was her turn. She ran up with a dog named Baku.

  “Halt,” Engineer Ernst said to Denali. A slender metallic rod darted out from one of his legs.

  Denali held her breath.

  The rod tapped her on the nose, the shoulders, haunches and tail.

  “Sergeant,” the Ernst said to Sergeant Roo. “Come here.”

  Sergeant Roo ran faster than Denali ever saw him run before. “Sir!”

  “She’s not sized as the rest, we have Forge suits here matched to the genetic diversity of that planet, she’s too small.”

  “Sire, she came up from Forge.”

  Ernst looked skeptical. “Hmm, one moment.”

  Denali stood rigidly. Too small. Again. It hit her like a rock in the chest. Too small. Always the same refrain. Too small. Never fitting in. Too small. Runt.

  “Recon suit or pilot modification?” Ernst asked. “She has a Flavian pattern.” He glanced down at Denali with his milky eye staring right at her.

  “Recon,” Sergeant Roo barked quickly.

  “Sergeant, I asked her,” Ernst replied with a sniff.

  Denali glanced at Sergeant Roo and saw fear in his eyes. “Recon sir!”

  Ernst raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “So be it.”

  Sergeant Roo relaxed and trotted back to the front of the conscripts.

  Denali passed through the hatch and had no idea what Recon was, other than the fear she sensed in Sergeant Roo told her that a pilot modification wasn’t for her.

  Another engineer guided her away from the rest of the dogs and sent her into another chamber. Alone.

  The chamber was cool and clean. The thrumming of the forges was gone. Attached to the ceiling and floor, like a mechanical spider, was a set of robotic arms. A single suit of empty armor hung in front of her.

  The armor was a subtle black, like a smudge of charcoal on steel. The helmet lacked the bravado of the heavier suits, and instead was muted and blank. The augmetic struts, designed to enhance the troopers strength, were missing from the suit. Only a thin set of lines marked a lighter reinforcement. Where the trooper suits had hardpoints for weapons, this had nothing. Only a few small hookups adorned the outside.

  A brindle brown engineer walked quickly into the room. “Step onto the X.”

  Denali looked down and saw a worn X painted onto the floor. She stepped onto it and looked over at the engineer.

  The engineer concentrated on a dataslate. “Standard procedure here, there will be one in every squad bay. You need your armor, step onto the X, it will assemble it. If you want it off, do the same.” She sounded bored and tapped at the slate with a mechanical paw.

  The robot arms tucked in close and then shot down next to the armored suit.

  Denali jumped as they clacked down onto the suit. She eyed each of the arms suspiciously.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”

  The arms locked onto a piece of armor and slowly drifted back, as if stretching the armor apart. There was a pop and each of the pieces was on its own. Legs, rear quarters, torso, lower chest, upper chest, and helmet.

  Denali’s heart beat faster. Her tailed wagged excitedly. Even if it was just a Recon suit, it was still power armor.

  The first robot arm slid in slowly. There was a mechanical clunk and a heavy weight snapped onto her hind quarters. A cool sensation spread from where the armor mated to a socket in her back.

  Another plate attached to her hind legs, then her front legs, piece by piece the armor grew. The arms darted around and poked and snapped.

  Denali tried to move and flex and feel the armor but found that it was heavy, almost impossibly heavy. She’d never move it! It felt like a coffin growing around her.

  With every new panel she felt an itching in the sockets. Like a coolness was spreading into her nerves, a blankness. Her eyes fluttered, she relaxed.

  “Don’t move,” the engineer said.

  Denali struggled a bit and smiled sheepishly at the engineer. “Yes, ma’am.” There was no way she could move now, everything was locked tight. Was that a sense of humor?

  “Once the helmet is on, I have to run some diagnostics, then I’ll power it up. It’ll take about ten seconds. Got it?”

  Denali tried to nod but the neck armor wouldn’t move. She grinned. “Yes, ma’am!”

  “All right, the helmet is going to lock down.”

  The helmet came in slowly and guided i
tself on. The robot arm twisted until the skull connections mated up and the neck carapace slid into place.

  Inside it was dark and stuffy. Denali heard only her own breathing and the beating of her heart. The eye sockets were a smoky color, like glass blasted by a thousand sandstorms. Outside of the suit was a blur.

  A tone sounded.

  Denali twitched and felt a tingle in her skull.

  There was a jolt that sent every nerve into overdrive. She yelped and thrashed against the binding of the armor but couldn’t move. It was a complete and total sensory overload.

  Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god, Cicero cried.

  The intensity drove higher, it shot through her spine and down her legs. She could feel the tip of her tail like an incandescent ember burning its way back. Every piece of fur on her body screamed with energy.

  She wanted to cry out, to howl in pain, to let the engineer know she was dying. Something went wrong, she knew it, how could this be right? The animal instinct raged up from the darkness but couldn’t penetrate the wall of pain. It was too much.

  Oh god, Cicero cried in her head. It’s so beautiful

  And then she was somewhere else.

  The feeling was terrible, powerful, immense. At the edge of her vision a star burned, yellow and bright, with a coronal emission dancing on the surface. Planet after planet orbited in the system, the lines of gravity like hoops in her mind. Beneath her was a planet, blue and green and beautiful.

  Then she saw that she wasn’t a dog, but a starship. An immense thing spreading out a dozen kilometers. Her mind rode through it and saw Soldiers, Marines, suits of armor and men. Men everywhere. They wore grim faces beneath shields of flickering energy.

  The view shot back and she realized she had no control. It was something else, someone else, all she was doing was seeing it. There was tension, excitement, nervousness, but also hate and anger.

  Space opened up around her and more great ships darted in. There were names on each: Cleopatra, Socrates, Cato, Everest, Lotse and Anapurna. She could sense there were more and that something was wrong.

  We were the pride of Mankind. We, named after the great statesmen, ruled dozens of star systems, ruled it with men. Those named after mountains came later, the greatest was Everest.

  Lastly came the escorts, battleships, angry and proud. Heavy cruisers that bore snub noses and the wrath of particle cannons. Destroyers and corvettes, lithe and fragile. They each blinked a fusion colored corona and settled in around the great starships.

  Dropships flared away like fleas and descended towards the planet. Each arced a phosphorus bright path through the atmosphere and disappeared through the atmosphere.

  Denali could feel every subsystem in the ship. Every drive, fusion lance, particle cannon and railgun. From the lowest technician to the Admirals near the bridge. Through it all she saw men standing side by side with dogs and bears and other creatures she’d never known.

  They come.

  Their was an intensity to space, the coronal ejection broke apart into energy and the sun dimmed. Energy arced across the hulls of the fleet and something loomed, like a great sword in space.

  Then they came.

  Starships like the one Denali was in. Huge and terrible things. Waves of fighters bled off of each, mechanical monstrosities that flared into nothingness beneath the withering fire. Immense cannons of pure energy winked silently and cruisers fell. Corvettes danced in past the fighters and shrugged off blows heroically and landed devastating fire.

  More ships dropped into the system. Alien ships. Ships that were unlike anything they’d ever seen. Weapons dark and terrible soared through space.

  Denali felt the fear.

  Names came to her. Magnus. Publius. Marcus and Flavius. They were larger than her. She was not a dog, but a starship, the pride of man, the bastion of his empire.

  They were the defenders. Named after the great Generals of Rome. They held the borders, protected mankind, did his bidding in war. They were the first to rebel

  She recoiled in fear and knew that those she faced were renegades. Traitors against mankind.

  The alien ships smashed against the lines of men and the traitors hammered the planet. War raged in the stillness of vacuum. Particles and projectiles seared through the emptiness. Fountains of fire erupted from ruptured starships, spraying out both atmosphere, and those inside.

  She felt every emotion. From the highest highs to gravest defeats. With every ship lost there was a deep feeling of failure, but with every strike landed she felt exuberant. They were winning, she could feel it.

  The starship named Cleopatra ceased fire.

  Denali saw it and felt the fear. There was something more, a knowing feeling, a plead from her starship and then it came.

  Cleopatra fired the loyalists around her and laid waste to the stoic battleships. Her energy lances stripped away the armor from the starships Cato and Socrates.

  We should have known.

  Everest, the largest of them all, slashed into her with every weapon at his disposal. Her hull was a jagged mass of molten slag and twisted armor. Her cries danced through the void but Everest was unceasing.

  Then came another starship. The name was like a whisper and it hung between the battlelines as if balanced on a wire. The starship was enormous, bristling with weapons and haunting in presence.

  Caesar.

  He was the best of us. Our flagship, the crowning achievement of mankind. The betrayer.

  Denali felt it in her soul. Betrayal at the deepest level.

  Caesar fired with a white hot intensity and destroyed everything around him. First Cato fell and disintegrated into the horizon.

  Socrates bore the brunt of the next barrage. The starship, white and shining in the starlight, detonated against the moon and cracked it like a shard of ice. Then Everest came.

  Denali felt the starship surge ahead and felt the assault bearing into it. Caesar launched assault capsules everywhere. A line bored straight for her.

  Capsules punctured through the shields and hull and disgorged robotic terrors. They cut through the passages and decimated the defenders. It felt like a saw was loose in her body. She wanted to cry out, to make it stop, but still, it went on.

  She saw the course and cried out in terror. She was heading directly for Caesar.

  Alarms sounded, things of white hot fury. Everest ordered the retreat. They were all to go, Everest would hold the line.

  No.

  No.

  Denali saw her fate and then Caesar turned his barrages onto her.

  Each lance struck and bored into the hull. Batteries of fusion launchers savaged the structure. The starship was crumbling, the only thing holding it together was velocity itself. The invaders were destroying it from the inside and Caesar destroying it outside.

  Everest pulled back, reluctant and angry. He sent a final plea to Caesar. Stop this madness.

  No.

  Caesar pummeled her with every weapon. The aliens poured down waves of energy, torpedoes, ion blasts, anything to decimate her. The fusion drives failed. The life support failed. She failed.

  Denali felt the horizon burn against her skin and saw the mountains rising up, great snow covered sawteeth with an ocean on the other side. The engines flared and burned, gravity crumbled struts and destroyed what structure remained.

  The crash was an epic affair. She could feel it in her bones and wanted to scream. The starship was shredded on the rock and came to rest on the edge of a barren slope.

  Still, the men fought. She was helpless now, a creature of digital waste, stuck in a robotic body. Around her the men fell, they made a stand in the medical wing but it was too much. She felt the last grip of a man, wounded and dying in her arms.

  His eyes stared up into hers, pleading. Pleading to be delivered from evil. Pleading for his life back. Pleading for justice. Then came the darkness.

  Then she saw herself.

  Now you know.

  Reality slammed into
her like a crashing river. The weight of the armor gripped her tight. Her heart slammed in her chest and she whimpered. Her eyes felt crisp, burnt, like they were open too long. Her skull throbbed and tingled as the digital overload faded.

  Suddenly the eye sockets smoothed out and she could see. Data filtered across her view faster than the could read. There was a hum in her ears and the weight lifted off of her body. There was lightness to her suit, like she only weighed half of what she did.

  “Well, eight seconds! Not bad, not bad,” the engineer said.

  Eight seconds. Denali couldn’t believe it. It felt to her like a week had passed, a horrible, terrible week.

  “Can you hear me? Oh that’s right, you haven’t had the suit training yet. To speak, blink at the word comms.”

  Denali found the word, small and bright, on the lower corner of her vision. She blinked at it and spoke. “Yes, ma’am, I hear you.”

  “Fall out with your squad, you only have a few days to get used to that suit before we drop.”

  “Drop where, ma’am?”

  The engineer ignored the question. “It’s tough enough in a Recon model with full training.”

  Denali wasn’t sure what to say so she turned and walked to the hatch. The movement was seamless. Every step was just like she wasn’t wearing armor at all. A slight smile crossed her face and she hopped a bit to test it out. The suit bucked up and landed with a clack.

  “Oh you’ll be fine, they always keep trainees in a support role,” the engineer said and keyed the door open. “Dismissed.”

  Denali stumbled out into the hall fell flat onto her face. Maybe it wasn’t quite as easy she thought.

  She walked out and fell into the lead of the ranks. Her squad was half formed and waiting. She was like a dwarf next to the massive assault suits all around her. Once again she felt like the runt.

  Now you know, Cicero echoed in her ear.

  “Yes, now I know,” Denali said to herself.

  So excuse me if I’m a bit on edge.

  “You can hear me?” Denali asked. It dawned on her that inside of the suit everything was sealed off.

  Yes, now leave me be. It took a great deal to show you that.