“I can stand behind you if it comes to that,” Angela said. “I’d love to see the rest of the animals on board. Svenkars is what they’re called?” she asked, pronouncing the word slowly. “I saw the female the other day. She’s magnificent, isn’t she?” She looked to Treyjon as if for confirmation. “It’s amazing that humans are able to get them to work for them. They’re definitely apex predators. They must be. On Earth, we train dogs for hunting, and some of the breeds have more aggressive tendencies than others, but they’re still domesticated animals, and they’ve been bred to work well with us.”
“Nobody breeds svenkars,” Treyjon said. “People have tried, but the females won’t breed in captivity. Sometimes, you can capture a pup, and that does make it easier to train them to be around humans. That’s how I got Tank. I still wouldn’t sleep in a cabin with him if he wasn’t caged, but he’s more interested in pleasing me than the others. I mostly bribe and cajole Salt and Pepper.”
“You captured them as adults?” Angela asked. “How did you—”
Sagitta cleared his throat. “I have many duties to see to before we land. If you’re coming with me to feed them, Miss Angela, it needs to be now.”
“Oh, I can come?” She almost skipped after the captain.
Treyjon watched with some bemusement. Nobody ever skipped gaily after the captain. He was also surprised she wanted anything to do with the svenkars. After she met them up close, she probably wouldn’t.
“She may be disappointed when they don’t have the personalities of pointers or want to climb onto the couch with her,” Juanita said after they left.
“I don’t know about that.” Tala prodded the statistics display on the wall over Treyjon’s head. “She thinks those dogs with the squished noses that always sound like they’re hyperventilating are cute.”
“Bulldogs. Pugs. There are lots like that.”
“Yes. She likes them all.”
The conversation drifted on to other topics, and Treyjon found himself closing his eyes, the drugs still in his system suggesting sleep would be a good idea. He hoped the svenkars didn’t get around Sagitta to harm Angela. Treyjon should have objected to her going along. He was surprised the captain hadn’t. Treyjon would feel awful if she’d survived the slavers—twice—only to be mauled by one of his charges.
3
Angela followed Sagitta down a ladder well and through a long curving corridor. The uniformed men they passed nodded respectfully and saluted him. They gave Angela far more puzzled looks.
She was surprised he’d let her come along, almost as surprised as she had been to wake up in sickbay with Tala rather than back in the rec room with the rest of the women. At first, she’d thought she had been hurt, but she later learned the men had only thought she might be hurt because she’d gotten Treyjon’s blood all over her when she passed out.
Tala had gone to work, helping the medical robots work on Treyjon and some injured slavers, as soon as she’d woken from that knockout gas. Angela had stayed in sickbay, feeling useless until Juanita and Orion had come down. Then she’d still felt useless, but she’d had someone to talk to about it.
When the captain had arrived, she’d been certain he would have someone take her back to the rec room, but he’d only seemed concerned about his injured man. It pleased Angela to see that he cared about his people. He was even stiffer than Tala, so it was hard to get a read on him.
Sagitta looked back at her a couple of times as they walked, and she wondered if she should be saying anything. Making conversation. She wished she were walking with Treyjon because she would have liked to ask more about the svenkars.
“Are there desserts on your planet?” Angela asked, inspiration for a topic striking her.
“What?”
“Like chocolate. And donuts. And Twinkees. And Oreos.”
“Most of those words don’t translate.”
She grimaced. The rock alien, Korta, had said the same thing. “Which one did translate?”
“Donuts. We have various types of pastries made from flour, syrup crystals, and water. Though I don’t think the flours we have are the same as they had back on Gaia. Our ancestors made sure to bring their favorite grape seeds so they could make wine, but they didn’t think of grains. There are stories of bread that fluffed up when they baked it back on Gaia. Nothing fluffs in the oven on Dethocoles.”
“I’m fine with flat pastries if they’re drenched in sugar. Your syrup crystals sound kind of promising.” Angela imagined Pop Tarts and almost started drooling on the spot. Her parents were into the self-sufficiency thing, with the whole farm being solar powered and there being chickens and a garden for a lot of the family’s food, so it had been rare for her mom to bring home something like Pop Tarts. But she’d had those and Oreos at her grandparents’ house as a kid, and she’d binged on them in college. After almost a week of nothing but meat and fat, she craved something else. Fruits and vegetables and sugar.
“There are all kinds of foods in the capital, Iolkos, where we’ll be landing,” Sagitta said, stopping in front of a door.
He removed his helmet from under his arm, held it in both hands, and considered it. “I suppose I can stun them if they attack me,” he muttered and stuck it back under his arm. He removed the weapon from the utility belt of his armor.
It was the most gun-like weapon Angela had seen from these people. For the most part, all of their handheld weapons seemed designed more like bows than rifles or handguns. Even the small ones looked like miniature crossbows. Of course, the laser-type bolts they shot were quite deadly.
“You had better stay out here until I check on them,” Sagitta said, waving at a sensor next to the door. “I’m not sure if they’re caged or roaming free in there.”
“All right.”
The door opened, and he walked into a dimly lit room. Growls and snarls started up, the noises so ferocious and hungry-sounding that any sane person would have fled in the opposite direction.
Angela peeked around the doorjamb.
Half of the big room was taken up by kennels, with bars much sturdier than chain-link. The hulking animals had room to prowl around in the spaces, and there was a gap between each one so they couldn’t reach each other if they stuck their snouts through the bars to snap. In the front half of the room, oversized exercise equipment occupied a lot of the deck. One machine looked like a big doggie treadmill. On the walls, wide leashes and collars hung, along with all manner of stuffed training dummies made from feathers, scales, or fur. Angela looked uneasily away from one that seemed to be a human scalp with dried skin still attached. That was disturbing as hell, but she reminded herself that Treyjon used the svenkars to track criminals. People. She was a little surprised that he apparently trained them to track animals too. Maybe because animals were so often smarter about masking their trails than humans.
Sagitta walked to a boxy appliance bolted to one wall, and the clamoring doubled in volume. Angela wasn’t surprised when he opened it to reveal a freezer. He pulled out thick steaks covered in ice crystals.
“Looks a lot like what you guys eat,” Angela said, her stomach still protesting all the meat she’d had to eat since coming aboard the ship. She accepted that steaks were fine for dogs—and svenkars—but thought humans were supposed to eat a lot more vegetables. And Oreos.
Seeing the svenkars safely in their kennels, Angela stepped into the room. The animals ignored her. They were fixated on that freezer.
Several jumped up, heads nearly brushing the ceiling as they placed huge, clawed paws on the bars of their kennels. Saliva flew from their sword-like fangs, and drool flowed from their snouts. Some of them snapped their jaws, looking like they wanted the steaks, but that they also wanted to tear Sagitta’s arm off for an appetizer.
There were four of them in all, two big black-and-gray ones, a whitish one—that must be Salt—and a slightly smaller all-black one. A female? She was the most ferocious of them all, thrusting her snout between the bars and snapping
and snarling.
Angela was fairly certain that was the one she had seen Treyjon take through the rec room to practice tracking. The svenkars must truly focus when on the trail of something. It—she—hadn’t snapped at any of the women in the room or even seemed to notice them. Seeing the creatures now, Angela couldn’t believe the female hadn’t raced around, trying to eat everyone in sight.
“We usually thaw our steaks,” Sagitta said, turning toward the creatures.
The snapping and growling intensified.
Sagitta moved a few steps closer and took one frozen steak in his right hand, turning it as if he meant to toss it between the bars like a Frisbee on a disc golf course.
“You shouldn’t reward that kind of behavior,” Angela said, more sternly than she intended.
Sagitta paused to look at her, his eyebrows arching. “If I get close, they’ll chomp on my arm and get the steak that way. My armor is rated to withstand more than five thousand psi, so my arm should survive the encounter, but teaching them they get a steak when they bite a man doesn’t sound like a positive training technique, either.”
“I’ll do it.” Angela walked in and held her hand out.
Sagitta’s eyebrows climbed even higher.
Was she being foolish? These weren’t dogs. They might be four-legged with the heads and snouts and pointed ears in roughly the same spot, but that was where the similarities ended. They were more than twice as large as even a wolfhound or St. Bernard, and the way their powerful muscles rippled under their leathery skin reminded her far more of a tiger than a canine. But when she’d seen Treyjon teaching that one to track, it had been so similar to the way her neighbor trained his pointers. Didn’t that mean these animals had similar motivations to dogs?
Wordlessly, Sagitta placed the steak in her hand.
It was like holding a giant ice cube, and she almost dropped it. Talk about freezer burn.
Angela pulled her sleeve down over her hand and approached the kennel on the end, careful to place herself out of the reach of the svenkar inside and the one next door. Both lunged at her, jaws snapping. If the bars hadn’t been there, she would have wet herself—as she fled out the door—but those were very sturdy bars, and she trusted they wouldn’t warp or break.
She held the steak above her head, just out of the animal’s reach. “Sit,” she said in an authoritative tone, though she had no idea if the animal had been taught such a command. Even if it had, it wouldn’t have been in English, and she doubted the svenkars had translation chips embedded in their ears.
Still, it was possible to train dogs without any verbal commands at all. She used the same body language and gestures she did when she tried to teach a dog to sit. Reward just out of reach of the nose and raising it up to prompt the hindquarters to go down…
The svenkar jumped up, snapping at the steak and thrusting a leg between the bars, claws slashing toward her face.
Angela had measured her distance carefully and thought she was out of reach, but a hand on her shoulder tugged her back. Perforce, it tugged the steak back as well.
The svenkar whined and sat down in defeat.
“Yes,” Angela said and promptly tossed the steak sideways between the bars.
If the svenkar was surprised, he didn’t take the time to show it. He snapped his meal out of the air and turned to the back of his kennel to lie on something similar to an orthopedic dog bed. On the way, he held his head up high, and pranced, glancing at the other creatures. Just like a dog that was proud that it had a bone and the others didn’t.
“Huh,” Sagitta muttered and released her.
She sensed him staying close behind her, to yank her back again if need be, but he didn’t otherwise interfere as she moved to the next cage. She repeated the gestures and the commands, drawing away the steak and stepping back if the svenkar lunged at it—or her. This one wasn’t as quick to try sitting. Granted, the first had been an accidental sit, but she was sure she could make the behavior automatic with more feeding sessions. She wondered if Treyjon did anything like this before he fed the animals. Surely, he knew more about working with them than the captain.
When the svenkar didn’t sit for her, she moved on to the next cage. That caused the male she’d left to escalate in agitation, flinging himself at the bars and snapping at the air between them.
“Tantrums won’t get you any steaks,” Angela told him sternly.
With the third one, it was also hard to get the desired behavior, and she could sense the captain pacing behind her. He called some people on his logostec and started relaying orders related to the landing. Angela feared he would force her to toss in the remaining steaks and leave.
The third one finally sat, and she tossed the steak between the bars. The female and the remaining male watched all of this intently, puddles of drool forming on the deck under their snouts.
Angela went back to the other male, tried a few more times, and he finally sat. It was a brief lowering of the haunches, but one had to be satisfied with small signs of progress.
When she walked to the female’s kennel, the svenkar promptly sat down and stared her expectantly in the eyes.
“Good girl,” Angela crooned, tossing her the steak.
Had someone taught the female that before? Or were these creatures more able to learn from the experiences of their comrades than dogs were? Either way, Angela had a feeling this might be the brightest one of the pack.
“Time to go,” Sagitta said.
Angela wondered if he would let her stay if she asked. Treyjon might like it if someone babysat his pups, as he called them.
The female finished her meal quickly and returned to the bars. She thrust her snout through, dark eyes staring at Angela. They weren’t exactly imploring, not like a dog hoping to be petted. Assessing, that was the word for that look.
Angela gazed back at the animal. Dogs didn’t usually challenge people like this, but she did not back away. She kept her posture straight and commanding.
The svenkar sniffed the air, or maybe sniffed her, then whined. A dog doing something like that would probably want attention. Did these animals ever want to be petted? Or have their ears scratched? It was hard to imagine that.
Angela stepped forward, watching those dark eyes. The female kept gazing at her, though it wasn’t a belligerent gaze. The svenkar lifted her snout enough to expose her throat and chin. It wasn’t quite the same as a dog rolling onto its back to expose its belly, but Angela thought it might pass for a submissive—or at least friendly—gesture from the fierce predators.
She stepped closer yet again, and Sagitta ended his call to come up behind her, lifting a hand, probably to grab her shoulder and yank her back.
The female lunged at the bars and snapped. Not at Angela but at Sagitta.
He didn’t step back, but he did lower his arm. The female settled, then looked back to Angela, lifting her snout again. Angela reached out, careful not to show fear and trying not to think about what she would do if the animal bit her. Could nanobots sew hands back on?
She scratched under the svenkar’s jaw. The animal let her, even lifting her snout higher to make it easier.
“Do you know their names?” Angela asked, not taking her eyes from the animal. The female might change her mind quickly and snap. Angela couldn’t help but feel she was stroking a shark under the jaw.
“The males are Tank, Salt, and Pepper,” Sagitta said, pointing at the appropriate kennels. “I don’t know if Treyjon has chosen a name for the female yet.”
“I’m going to call you Lulu then,” Angela told the female.
The svenkar didn’t do anything like wagging her ropy tail in acknowledgment, but she seemed amenable.
After a few more scratches, Lulu lowered her head, turned, and walked to her bed. The males had already settled down.
“I guess that’s the end of dinner,” Angela said, stepping back and turning away.
“Yes.” Sagitta gave her a hard-to-read look as they walked out of
the room.
“Do you think Treyjon will let me feed them again?” Angela was excited by how quickly the female had made an overture of friendship, and she hoped to get a chance to get to know her more.
“If my headquarters commands me to take you all home, then yes. But it’s possible the government will send you on a civilian transport, unless they think more slavers have gotten the word about Gaia and are lurking around your wormhole.”
“Oh,” Angela said, feeling unexpectedly disappointed, both because she wanted to try more sessions with the svenkars and because she wouldn’t mind talking more to Treyjon about the creatures.
4
Treyjon walked into the cargo hold in the belly of the Falcon 8, swinging his arms experimentally and prodding his chest to make sure nothing hurt too much. The ship’s AI had proclaimed him fully healed and ready to leave sickbay. The Gaian doctor, Tala, had frowned at him and suggested a week’s bed rest. He did still feel tired, stiff, and sore, but he didn’t want to miss a chance to walk outside and feel the sun on his face. Dethocoles, with its millions of people in the capital, wasn’t anything like his home world, but it was still a chance to spread his arms and breathe air that hadn’t been recirculated through a ship’s filtration system.
An auto forklift trundled up the cargo ramp, bringing a stack of crates aboard the ship under the watchful eye of Ensign Bystrom. Supplies for the next mission, no doubt. The slaves had depleted the food stores, and nobody had been feasting the last few days, not even the officers. Treyjon wondered if Sagitta knew yet where they would be going next. Had he reported into Headquarters and spoken with the government representatives? The ship had landed more than five hours ago, while Treyjon had been sleeping, so he had no idea what had been going on.
Treyjon: Star Guardians, Book 2 Page 4