O Bozhe! she said as she dropped back down from the bench and kicked out, knocking over one of the ammo boxes, For smart dogs, how stupid we were! It was awful. What you call a bloody bath. The camp was little more than huts with ill-equipped soldiers. Boys, most of them not much older than you. Our rotary cannon vests were designed by humans. They were built to work the way humans think a smart dog functions. The targeting and communication aren’t overly quick, or accurate. It took time…the killing took a long time.
“Oh Tera,” Ben said as he knelt in front of her and buried his fingers into her thick neck fur. “We’ve all done things in this shitty war we’re going to have a tough time living with,” he said as he looked at the pups, “I’ve had to kill. We all have.”
Tera looked at Ben with wide eyes, and then she looked at Spot and Smudge who nodded.
But you are just a boy. How can this be? Tera said.
“Like my brother said, it’s been a shitty war,” Kelcy said as she put an arm around her brother.
Tera nodded, and as she looked at the kids she said, Titov and I protested when we saw the conditions in the outpost. We didn’t believe Semion about the camp. He’s a madman and the loss of his daughter has turned him into something terrible. But we were not strong enough, and they have ways of ensuring loyalty. The only reason we weren’t killed on the spot was we were needed. He’d culled too many, and invested too much in those of us who are left.
Kelcy ran her fingers over the old wounds along Tera’s back and asked, “Katia’s dead?”
You didn’t know? Tera said, Yes, we saw the video. We weren’t supposed to. They only showed us the small pieces they wanted us to see but Titov and I snuck into the file room and watched the whole thing.
“A girl after our own hearts,” Ben said, “Eh pups?”
Spot shushed Ben with a wave and said, What did you see, Tera?
Tera turned to look at Smudge and said, We saw you and Harley’s cousin, Tian Tzeng. You were wheeling a human tied to a rolling bed. We saw you run into the room that held those two horribly disfigured human animals, and then we saw you run away.
Hey, be nice, Smudge said as she punched Ben on the shoulder, Those two disfigured human animals used to be Ben’s best friends.
Would you two stop? Spot said, Go on, Tera.
Tera stared at Smudge for a long moment before she said, We saw the doctor on the rolling bed struggle. We saw Harley shoot at you with his insane pistol as the fires were getting bigger. We saw Doctor Cori running away. Those two terrible things pounced from the doorway. Katia tried to fight. She was a skilled fighter but the things didn’t seem to feel pain and just kept coming, and biting, and clawing. She removed one of their limbs and still they attacked. Harley fired, and tried to run but they were too fast and caught him. Katia and the helpless man on the gurney were torn to pieces. The blood was everywhere. Harley eventually managed to unload his big gun into the animals. They went down, but not before he was badly mauled. Something exploded and more fire shot into the hallway. Semion pulled what was left of his daughter away and came back to get Harley. By that time the fires had reached him. He’s alive, but just barely. What remains is as obsessed about destroying you and your family as Semion.
Tera looked at the faces watching her and said, You can see how it was easy to think all of you were evil, Da?
They nodded, and looked at Smudge.
What’s with all the Smudge-judging tonight? Smudge said, I saved your bloody arses, remember? You’re all very freaking welcome.
“Of course you did,” Kelcy said, hugging her, “You did what you had to do. We all have.”
They all sat in silence for a while, with Kelcy rubbing Smudge’s ears and Tera’s thick neck fur.
Tera, tell us more about the accelerator compound, Spot said, How is it delivered?
Intra-carotid injection, Tera said, The effects are immediate and permanent as I said, but sometimes a booster is needed if we suffer wounds we can’t heal for ourselves.
“I was wondering why you were up and around so quickly,” Kelcy said, “I mean, I know I’m good but I’m not that good. So you heal super fast, just like Spot and Smudge?”
Da. Sorry, yes, we heal fast, Tera said, but I suspect not like these two. We have some command over our autonomous processes, but we overheard Semion and the doctor arguing about naturally-born accelerators having far more control. Tera looked at Smudge. The black dog had been massively muscled in the videos, and also when she first saw Smudge wearing Titov’s vest earlier, but Smudge had shrunk back down to about the same size as her brother. It appeared these pups had far more control than even Semion or the doctor realized.
Smudge was pretty sure she understood Tera’s train of thought. She wagged, and then asked, So Semion keeps a supply of this serum on hand in case any of you are wounded? She looked at Spot and added, If we find that crazy fucker we find the serum.
Oh, you don’t need to find Semion, Tera said, You targets being in this work shop was just a bonus, the primary reason I came here was to find these…
She righted the ammo box she had kicked over and carefully slid a small hidden latch on one of its seams. The side of the case fell open and inside were ten plastic vials containing a pale, milky-blue liquid. Each vial had a spring loaded internal plunger attached to a covered needle. Tera described how the serum was delivered simply by twisting the vial to unlock it, jamming it against a neck artery, and pressing down. They were designed so an accelerated dog soldier could inject a fallen comrade, or even themselves with some careful maneuvering.
Kelcy slowly removed one of the serum vials and rolled it in her fingers. She looked at Ben and said, “Crazy fucker is right.”
They all nodded as they stared at the vial.
Kelcy took a handful and put them in her pocket. “I’ll get Dr. Lewis to take a look at this stuff when she gets up,“ she said, “and then we’ll call agent Comina, she’ll know what to do.” Kelcy turned to Tera and said, “You need one of these?”
Tera shook her head and said, Maybe later. It’ll knock me out for a few minutes so I’d prefer to wait.
“Okay,” Kelcy said, “but you should hydrate. I’m going to check on Christa and I’ll bring you some water. Are you ready to eat a little something?”
Smudge and Tera both nodded.
Kelcy smiled and patted Smudge as she left the shed.
Spot picked up one of the dog helmets from the workbench. He said, So Tera, what is it about this system that doesn’t work well? I noticed they used infrared for target identification which would be inherently slow, and limit them to two dimensions. Using the floating synthetic aperture system would make it much faster, and if we dot-spread data from the laser range finder we could build a three dimensional picture that would greatly increase its accuracy. What if we mapped the...”
For the next two hours Spot and Tera dove deep into the inadequacies of the weapons and language systems, and how to improve them. Spot uploaded their changes after each modification, and Ben and Smudge tested them. They noticed an immediate difference in Smudge’s target acquisition, and it got better with each iteration. The communication system also interpreted her yaps and barks quicker, and more accurately.
At some point Kelcy had walked back into the workshop. Tera and Spot ignored her announcement of fresh food and water as they were hunched over his tablet and deep in conversation. She set the bowls down and joined her brother who was wearing one of the helmets and staring off into space with his eyes darting back and forth. Ben put one of the helmets on her head and flicked down the yellow monocle as he spoke into his mic, “Yeah Smudge, I saw that…now see if it can follow those birds.” He quickly showed Kelcy how to use the thumb trigger to page through the various menu screens, and she found the video and data feed from Smudge’s helmet. She could see Smudge was standing on one of the paddock walls, and saw her targeting indicator was following a darting bird. Her yapping communication with Ben was also scrolling across the bo
ttom of the screen.
Kelcy watched them targeting the juvenile buffalos chasing each other around their herd for a while, and then she started to play with the other menus. There were screens that showed ammo count and fire accuracy percentage. One of the screens displayed Smudge’s vital signs and Kelcy assumed there must be health monitors built into her vest. It even displayed the time of her last bathroom break. There were tactical views showing their position relative to Smudge’s, and detailed maps of the compound, and of Theo’s ranch house.
When Kelcy reached the end of the menus she paged backwards. As she passed a previous screen she noticed several new icons moving along the bottom of her monocle that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier.
Kelcy said to Spot and Tera, “Sorry to interrupt, but can either of you Einsteins tell me what a row of flashing green helicopters means?”
Chapter 92
“I’ll wake up Dr. Lewis and we’ll get Christa ready to move,” Kelcy said as she tossed the helmet onto the bench and ran from the workshop, passing Smudge who had appeared in the doorway.
Get Sholto, I need her here, Spot said to Smudge, And then wake up Hamish and Tian.
Smudge bolted away towards the barracks and they heard her barking.
“How long?” Ben asked.
Tera was wearing one of the helmets and her eye moved and blinked rapidly behind the yellow eyepiece. She growled and whined and Ben found her comms feed so he could read her conversation.
Tera said, Their tactical feeds are locked, but that’s normal ops protocol. I’m scrolling through the video feeds but I can’t see out of the windows. Wait...Da, I have a pilot. They’re coming low. A river, a valley, but I don’t recognize the terrain. I can’t see the moon.
Ben was confused for a second by that last part but saw through the open workshop doors that the moon was low on the northern horizon. Smart damn dog, he thought, They’re not coming from the south. He wasn’t used to that kind of thinking from a dog other than his pups.
“Look at the cockpit’s console, can you get their position?” Ben asked as he grabbed one of the tactical vests from the work table and put it on.
Odna sekudna, wait one, Tera said, Yes, neg twenty-eight point two two, thirty-one point ninety-five. One hundred sixty knots.
One of Theo’s provincial policemen had heard the commotion and appeared at the workshop door. He was a young man and held his rifle nervously. He stared at the shepherd and the boy who were wearing matching helmets. He then noticed the black dog shaking a strangely deformed paw.
“Get on your radio,” Ben yelled at the man, “We’ve got inbound attack choppers!”
Spot signed and Ben added, “Twenty minutes, from the northeast.”
The man just stared, and gripped his rifle tighter.
Ben grabbed a screwdriver from the workbench, threw it at him, and yelled, “Move dammit!”
The guard turned and ran, and they heard him yelling into his radio.
What’s the mission objective? Spot asked Tera.
The primary objective was to find Harley’s cousin, Tian Tzeng, Tera said, They want him alive and unharmed.
And then? Spot asked.
Tera said, Secondary objective was to kill everyone else. Humans and dogs. Find and assassinate the four Hogan humans, both Walker humans, and especially both Hogan canines. Recover the two canine bodies and then incinerate the grounds.
Can you talk to the teams before they get here? Spot asked, Try to stop this?
Not for more than a second, Tera said, When being observed remotely a small icon shows up on our display. We pretty much just ignore it as someone’s almost always watching your feed, but as soon as we go mic active Semion would notice and cut us off from his central control console. I’d never get heard, and I’m not sure it would do much good even if I was.
Smudge and Sholto raced into the workshop and slid to a stop. Smudge facilitated a quick butt-sniff introduction between the big shepherds.
The boerboels and Seamus are over at the ranch house, Smudge said to Spot, Do you want them here, or have them stay put?
I want them here, Spot said, Tell them to take the south watering hole path. He put down his tablet and caught his sister’s eye. He said, Smudge, make it clear they have to hurry. And then get back here, I need you to get a fix on Fenn.
Smudge nodded as she ran from the workshop and a moment later they could hear her barking from the edge of the paddocks. She was facing the ranch and letting her huge barks fly. They boomed out over the small valley and past the watering hole, scattering the herd of Cape buffalo before echoing back from the ridge below the ranch house.
A few seconds later Rook and Vuur responded from across the valley, their barks were just barely audible to Spot in the workshop.
Spot removed one of the vials from the side of the ammo case and turned to Sholto.
My old friend, Spot said as she rubbed the decorated war hero under her graying chin, I need to ask you a very important question.
Chapter 93
Dan backed one of the Range Rovers up to the ranch house. Theo waved him back, and then yelled for him to stop as the rear bumper bounced off the archway supporting the low porch roof. The truck shuttered to a stop as stucco cracked and fell to the gravel.
“That’s good,” Theo said, shaking his head.
“Sorry,” Dan said as he leapt from the driver’s seat.
Five of the open-top trucks formed a tight ring around the front entrance of the house, and armed men stood behind them.
Hamish’s voice crackled over Theo’s radio as he and Dan walked into the house, “You lot ready over there?” Hamish asked.
“All’s lekker here, bru,” Theo said, “We’ll keep them safe. You keep your big jock head down and let my boys do their jobs now.”
“Aye,” Hamish said, “Watch your own dumb brown dome over there.”
The radio clicked off and Theo nodded to Aila and Faith. They had returned to the kitchen after clicking off all of the lights in the ranch house. Mimi joined them after having done the same at the boma.
From across the valley Hamish and Musa watched the ranch house go dark from one end to the other. The men turned and slung their assault rifles over their shoulders as they walked across the brightly lit parking area. They hoped to draw Semion to the security compound.
Trucks were parked in a tight row in front of the ranger’s station and the clinic. Musa waved up to Pili and the young man cut the lights on the second floor of the building where there were armed men in each window and on the roof.
Musa stopped to check with the men stationed outside the clinic while Hamish went inside. Kelcy and Dr. Lewis were hanging a few of the extra bullet proof vests over the treatment room’s shuttered windows.
“Listen ladies,” Hamish said, “if things get hairy fall back into the paddocks, and then run to the tented camp as a last resort.”
He handed Kelcy a Glock pistol and gave her a hug. He read the teens face and said, “Nikki and Theo will keep your parents and your Mimi safe. Don’t bloody leave this room to treat any wounded until you hear me or Musa announce the camp is secure, you got me?”
Kelcy nodded, and shoved Hamish back through the door after giving him a quick hug.
He ducked under the low thatched roof and met Musa in the middle of the parking area. The huge ranger said, “We’re as ready as we’re going to be.”
Hamish turned and looked up at the ridge behind the clinic. He clicked the talk button of his radio and said, “Warrant officer Boucher, you still awake up there or did that hickey on your neck pop open?”
Christa’s voice crackled through his radio’s speaker, “Roger that, fifty cal is hot. I want you to listen to Theo and keep your big head hidden down there. I’m not kidding Hamish, no bullshit, eh?”
Hamish heard the weakness in her voice. He fought the urge to order his partner’s arse back to the clinic but he needed her up on that ridge, and she wouldn’t listen to him anyway. “
Aye,” he said.
Ben and Spot walked out of the workshop to stand by Hamish and the big head ranger.
Spot wore his Kevlar security dog vest and it still had the winter camo side panels from Quebec. Ben was wearing the tactical helmet and vest, and carried one of the chopper’s smooth bullpup assault rifles.
“You look ridiculous lad.” Hamish said with the best smile he could muster.
“Unc,” Ben said, “there’s something you need—”
Hamish held up a hand to cut him off as Tian jogged across the gravel lot and joined them. “Sorry Musa,” Tian said, “I compromised one of your orders. I left them in the cell, but I gave them a knife.”
Musa scowled down at the muscular Chinese man, but said nothing.
Hamish turned to Ben and said, “I want you up there with Christa and Sholto. Speaking of old fleabags, where is that dog? She’s late for Sholto’s last fucking gunfight. Take the spotter’s scope and Lissa’s rifle.” He looked down at Spot and said, “Keep an eye on the lad, Spotty. And where’s that bulky sister of yours?”
Ben said quickly, “Cu Sith is heading to the ranch, Unc, there’s something you really need to see.”
Hamish looked at his watch and said, “You got three minutes boy.”
Spot barked, and five big police dogs ran from the workshop.
Hamish noticed all of them were wearing tactical helmets and hard-sided vests.
Chapter 94
The old truck carcass the elephants used as a play thing erupted in a shower of sparks. Pieces flew off as five pairs of bullet streams tore into the metal and drew crisscrossing lines down the truck’s sides. As quickly as it had started all of the firing stopped. One of the doors swung open with a loud creak, and then dropped to the gravel.
All of the streams started again in one concentrated barrage, sending the heavy door tumbling across the gravel. The door flipped into the air and the coordinated fire followed it and cut it to ribbons. The shooting stopped at the exact same instant again, and the remains of the shredded door thudded to the gravel.
Let Slip the Pups of War: Spot and Smudge - Book Three Page 43