She entered a four way junction. It opened up and she sat upright, though her head scraped the dusty ceiling. Kell sniffed with his nose held high.
“If ya know the pipes, let them follow ya, then fight where you can move and they can’t.”
Denali licked her paws and tasted the grit in her mouth.
“Eek!” Kell yipped. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve no idea what’s in these places.”
She remembered the smell of feces and stopped licking.
“If ya got the place to yourself, learn the exits, and dart around. They’ll pop one shut, so you go to the next. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Kell grinned back. “You’ll see. Now come on!”
Denali squirmed behind Kell. Her joints tightened up into fiery knots. The pair moved farther and Kell moved faster. Soon he pulled away from Denali and she was left in the darkness. The silence of the passage was only broken by a distant clang, or the hum of a hidden fan. She sniffed deeply, but smells all stirred together.
She arrived at a junction and stared at the floor. Paw prints went both directions.
No hints this time.
“Hints?”
Remember, back in your trial? I recalled the floor plans.
“I wondered how you knew,” she mumbled. “So which way, genius?”
I have not the slightest clue.
The passage sloped down on one side while the other was level and wore a patina of dust. The air came in on the sloped tunnel, and exited out the level one. Denali walked to each, closed her eyes, and let the scents pass over her.
Trees.
She opened her eyes and sniffed once more. Trees, she was sure of it, the musky tang of bark and soil tickled the back of her nose. She thought of Forge, of spruces and pines, of rolling in the dirt and tunneling through the mounds of needles. That was her path.
Denali stretched and delved deeper down the sloped path. She studied the paw prints in the gray dimness of the tunnel. What looked like one, was actually three. One going forward, one going back, and another returning forward.
“Clever,” she muttered. Well, at least it’s the right path.
Dust, thick like a musty blanket, caked onto her arms and legs. The cool wetness chilled her stomach. The deeper she went, the worse it got, soon her fur was a mass of dust, moisture, and sticky dirt.
Her nose tickled with the scent of pine resin. She plunged deeper, her claws scratching against the slick metal. Every joint burned. The trees drove her on, she couldn’t wait to see them.
The slope delved farther down. Every push brought her closer, and with less effort. She moved faster down the tunnel, her paws squeaked as she braked. Her ears flapped in the breeze and she grinned in excitement.
A pinprick of a light sparkled in the distance. She squinted and kicked off faster. The wetness of the floor soaked her and she shivered. The pinprick grew into a white square that stung her eyes with a titanium brightness.
She slid faster, and no matter how hard she pressed her paws down she couldn’t stop. Panels flew by and made a thud-thud sound as she dropped from one to the next. The brightness was intense.
Slow down.
“I’m trying!” Denali barked. The grin disappeared and she tried to turn herself, but the mucky base gave her no traction.
Her eyes burned in the brightness. The tunnel slid away and she flew through air with a howl.
The space stretched out into the distance in pillars of green needles and bushy browns. A green-blue creek slashed through the center. The ceiling was pure white, like the sun laid down for a nap.
She dropped straight into a pool of warm, slightly steaming, water. The shock was intense and she thrashed to the surface. Her breath caught in her throat and she hacked up water and gobs of dust.
Kell backflipped on the shore and threw a rooster tail of water into the air. His face squished together with laughter. “I love that!”
Denali paddled to the edge and climbed out onto the earthy soil. Her toes squished in the mud. “What is this?”
Kell shook his fur. Droplets of water flew into the air. Denali tucked her head away from the spray.
“This,” he said as he spun around, “is part of the air treatment system.”
“It’s amazing,” she whispered. Her heart ached and she breathed in the scent of the trees.
“If you would have went the other way, you’d have fallen into a pit of shit,” Kell cackled.
The two loped through the low trees. Light filtered through and low grasses poked up everywhere through the rich soil. Old dogs, gray in the face with white noses, tended to the greenery.
Milky eyed dogs lay on the ground or slept in the sun. Some stumbled past, creaking like old machines. None paid them any mind.
“Who are they?” Denali asked.
“Live long enough and you end up here.”
A dirt caked tender robot loaded the corpse of a massive dog onto a wide wheeled cart. The other dogs looked on passively.
“The circle of life,” Kell muttered.
Denali sobered. The excitement of the groves drifted away and the reality came back in. This is where old dogs went to die, at least those that didn’t die serving Caesar. “Can’t you go home?”
“I can,” Kell said. “But you, or those who come from Forge, Hades, and those other horrible places... They can’t.”
Bred to fight, and never able to go home. Denali knew it to be true, but to see it, that struck home. Her life spread before her: war. With the possibility of dying peacefully in the garbage groves.
“Let’s go,” Kell said and loped off.
Denali took one last look at the dead dog and wondered when he was a hero, and if anyone remembered.
She trained in tunnels, in tubes, in tight spaces of stone and dirt. She raced through electrical chases, through water sopping drainage tubes, through cargo conduits and hallways. For a month she crawled through the nasty places.
Then when Kell was done with her, they sent her to Wiss.
Wiss taught Denali how to spin and fight when your elbows crammed against the wall. Wiss showed her how a fusion lance could pummel nearly anything. Mostly though, Wiss showed her how to run and bring the fight to others.
“The goal,” Wiss growled as she dodged a bite, “is to bring them to us.”
Denali paced and snapped in again. She rolled onto her side and kicked with her legs. Her body pushed under Wiss’s front legs but the wire haired brawler was already gone.
“The only time you fight is when you must,” Wiss said and slammed her massive chest down onto Denali.
Denali squirmed and tried to scoot away. Her back feet scratched against the metal floor and her front clawed at Wiss’s fur. Dots of light flashed and her breaths came in ragged gasps.
“Now,” Wiss said quietly, “is when you would fight.”
Denali thrashed a bit more but finally she relented and relaxed.
“I said fight!” Wiss barked and bit down on Denali’s hind leg.
Pain blossomed in Denali’s knotted leg. She howled and bit down on Wiss’s hind leg and clamped down her teeth like dull daggers. Wiss shifted, just a bit, and Denali snapped again.
“That’s a girl!” Wiss barked and rolled to the side. “Never give up.”
Denali sat up and winced in pain. A trickle of blood rolled down her coat. She looked up at Wiss in surprise.
“There’s no second chance in a fight this close. You fight, or you die.”
“What if I can’t bring the hostiles to you?”
Wiss shrugged. “Run when you can, fight when you must.”
The trickle of blood stopped and Denali followed for yet another exercise.
The two sparred in every conceivable place. They sparred in crowds, in the midst of machinery, and in the vacuum outside the ship. For weeks Denali ached, it was worse than when Kell trained her. Wiss wasn’t nearly as lazy as Kell.
“That’s i
t?” Denali asked. She sniffed the suit of power armor.
The suit hung on a maintenance rack. Panels on the hindquarters and front shoulders wore extra straps of reinforcing. The rest of the suit shone brightly, the original armor was removed and only the synthweave underlayment remained.
“You doubt my work?” Garlan growled. A set of mechanical actuators were clamped to his paws, they were what enabled him to manipulate the tiniest screw and lay down a delicate weld.
“No!” Denali said. “It just looks so, plain.”
Garlan tossed his chin higher. “I’ve modified suits for every member of this squad, and none, and I mean none have ever had a complaint about performance.”
Denali turned her head away from Garlan and tucked her tail against her body.
“You can maneuver better, see here?” Garlan snapped. “Look! I’m not going to wrestle you on the ground like some barbarian, it’s called logic.”
Denali looked where Garlan pointed. The armor panels sheared back with the synthweave dancing between the plates.
Garlan glanced at Denali and nodded. “You can roll, move and escape faster than a normal suit. Don’t stand and fight, no matter how tough you think you are. Use your brains, not your brawn.”
Denali was sick of it. She’d been listening to Garlan for days snipe at her about her heritage. Every conversation pivoted on Denali’s upbringing and coarse stupidity. She dreaded the days she would spend with him.
“Why do you hate me?” Denali asked.
Garlan glared over his short snout at Denali. He turned away and slid on his techsleeve.
Denali stepped around and faced him again. “What did I do to you?”
The sleeve beeped and rows of lights danced on and off. Tool actuators crawled to life and stood ready.
“You,” Garlan whispered, “are the product of a millennia of violence. Your kind is bred for war, encouraged by war, in love with war.”
“But I—”
“You,” he sneered. “You are just like the rest, no learning, no culture, no art, just an urge to kill. It doesn’t matter where you were born, you were raised on Forge. Not to be a dog, but to be a killing machine.”
“But that’s not me!”
“How can you deny it? They cull you like cattle, they leave the most violent, the most dangerous, the most cunning, and take you, and all the other genetic failures, off the planet. Forge is a breeding world, that trial is just how they genetically screen you. They want the most violent to stay on the planet, they selectively breed for it. You are the pinnacle of violence, slavery and death.”
Denali turned away from Garlan. “That’s not me,” she whispered.
Garlan worked on the suit. He focused his attention on a synthweave joint, his techsleeve actuators stitching and sealing. “They dropped dogs from Hades and Forge onto my home world. Then, they left. Those dogs,” he looked up at Denali, “ravaged that world. They killed, maimed, destroyed, and that!” he stabbed his foot out, “was their duty!”
“I didn’t do those things, I didn’t even want to be here,” Denali pleaded. “I wanted to stay on that world, stay with my family. We’re not all like that. All I wanted was to go back, and have a family of my own.”
“You’ll never have a family,” Garlan said.
“Someday—”
“No. You’re sterile now, part of the implant procedure.”
Denali swallowed hard and looked down to the floor. Her heart slowed and a burning ache settled into her. The fight dropped away and she sat silently, lost in her thoughts. Thoughts of Barley and the puppies were almost too painful to think of.
Garlan stopped and set the tool down. His eyes snapped to Denali and then away. “I—” he exhaled, the anger gone. “I lost everything, I came here to try and keep that from ever happening to another planet.”
Denali looked up at Garlan through tear welled eyes. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said and ran into her curtain covered niche.
She lay in the darkness and cried, alone.
The following months brought more squad training and more lectures, but mostly, more knowledge. She sucked every bit of it up and learned her trade. By the end of the training she wasn’t an expert, or even a veteran, but good enough to handle herself.
In time she melded into the squad. She found her place, her role, where she stood in the pack hierarchy. She belonged. She felt at home with the pack. Her pack.
The squad finished eating after a day’s hard training. Captain Maya stretched out at the head of the table. The rest ate in silence. They creaked and groaned with every bite.
“Feeling sore, spaniel?” Captain Maya asked Garlan.
Garlan grunted and chewed. His eyes flickered and his head nodded.
Denali looked at Garlan, then back to Captain Maya. “What’s a spaniel?”
The dogs stopped eating and one by one turned to stare at Denali.
Denali stared back and felt like she’d asked the wrong question.
“You’re serious?” Kell barked. “Really?”
“I—” Denali stammered. She sighed and focused on her food.
“Don’t be ashamed, Denny,” Captain Maya said.
“They didn’t teach you about the different breeds?” Kane asked through a mouthful of meat.
Denali shook her head.
“Our species is canis lupus familiaris, but there are many different breeds. I’m a German Shepherd,” Captain Maya said.
“Chesapeake Bay Retriever,” Wiss said.
Kane chomped down a bite and said, “Sheepdog!”
“My mother is a terrier, but my father is a—” Kell said.
Kane interrupted him, “A mangy mutt.”
“Hey!” Kell snarled and snatched a cut of meat off Kane’s plate.
“Mutt?” Denali said.
“A mixed breed, lots of different kinds of dogs,” Kane said.
“Belgian Sheepdog,” Til added with a nod.
“Speak up, Belle!” Kane said.
Belle looked up to Denali then away. “Great Pyrenees.”
“And great she is!” Kane said with a laugh. “And Garlan is an English Springer Spaniel.”
“And you are what’s called a Labrador Retriever,” Captain Maya said.
“A Labrador Retriever,” Denale repeated. “What’s a Labrador?”
“A place on Earth, most of our names come from where the breed came from,” Captain Maya said.
“What about the dogs on Forge?” Denali asked.
“Mastiff, Pit Bull, and a touch of wolf,” Captain Maya said.
Denali remembered what Garlan said, that they selected dogs for certain traits. Violence, cunning, cruelty, but that wasn’t the people she knew, not all of them.
“We were bred by man for certain traits, we all excel in certain areas. The dogs on the forge worlds are chosen to be fighters, that’s not something man bred for. Even the ones he used to fight were still friendly with men.”
“Caesar is breeding out the man connection,” Garlan said.
To kill men. Denali knew that’s what it was. She could see Samus or Munin killing anyone. One part of her felt a connection with men, but another wondered why she should care. She looked down and said nothing more.
The mood soured and the squad finished in silence.
Denali realized that they weren’t free, would never be free. She stepped into her niche and slept a restless sleep.
“Everyone,” Captain Maya barked. “Briefing, shake a leg!”
The Recon squad erupted from the niches and came to a relaxed attention around the low table in the center of the room. Behind them suits of armor hung and watched as if interested.
Denali felt the excitement in the room. Kell’s stubby tail wobbled excitedly, Wiss’s teeth poked out of her lips, and Garlan looked even stiffer than usual.
The days after the encounter with Garlan were hard on Denali. She never knew what the future would hold, but one thing that she always saw were pups of her own. Now that w
as gone, and a part of her cut loose. There was a void inside of her, and the emotions hadn’t settled yet.
Captain Maya walked slowly around the table. “We’re going back to Labyrinth.”
Grumbles, growls, and whines erupted from the table.
“It’s just a raid, I think Caesar still has a nose bleed from that one,” Captain Maya said through the grumbles.
The dogs settled. Their eyes followed Captain Maya as she paced around the table. She seemed at a loss for words.
“It wasn’t easy last time,” Captain Maya said. She stopped in front of a white wall and keyed up a screen with her paw.
“Captain, a history lesson for Denny-girl?” Kane asked.
“Go for it, Kane,” Captain Maya responded and sat back.
Kane licked his fuzzy lips and smiled at Denali. “We hit Labyrinth a few years back, tried to reclaim it.”
“It was a human colony once,” Til added.
“Long time ago, long long,” Kane said.
Must have been after the fall.
Denali perked her ears up.
“The aliens who have it are the Kadas. We brawl on occasion, they like to test our borders, we like to test theirs. So we tried to secure the planet.”
“It didn’t go well,” Belle mumbled.
Kane nodded. “Recon was a few members heavier then. We picked up Kell after that.”
Kell nodded to Denali.
“The Kadas are cybernetic insectoids. Smaller than us, fast, but rather fragile. But what they lack in size, they make up for in numbers.”
Denali’s stomach tightened a bit and she pictured spiders with metal legs.
“We’ll brief you on tactics later,” Captain Maya added.
“So why we goin’ back, Cap?” Kane asked with a wry smile.
Captain Maya stood and the screen flickered to life. “Caesar wants something.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Strike
“From that dump?” Til asked.
Captain Maya shrugged and looked over at the screen.
The orbital view showed a massive city-industrial complex that covered half of a continent. The remaining half glittered from orbit, like glassy black slag.
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