DogForge (21 page)

Samson opened his mouth again and snapped it shut. “Good luck,” he rasped and turned away.

Denali felt like there was more to say but didn’t know what. She remembered the words of the commander: she wasn’t likely to see him ever again.

She turned and walked into her future.

Denali trotted down the long halls and marveled at the construction. Great halls opened up into cavernous ceilings. She passed dogs, large and small, skinny and fat, armored and unaugmented. She passed bears, a snarling group of otters, and something she was sure was a cat, but never got a good enough look.

She kept an eye out for aliens, but saw none, she decided they were kept somewhere else. The dogs worked diligently and patiently. She saw nothing of the tribal mentality like back on Forge, only cooperation. It moved her a bit, but reminded her of how different it was.

In the midst of a low ceiling hall there was a great market and Denali trotted into the center and stared around. She gawked at cuts of meat.

“You! Hey!” an angry voice growled.

Denali turned and saw a dog that barely came to her waist. Its face was flat like it had met a door on the wrong side of the swing. It growled and paced and looked entirely angry.

“Got no ears on that suit? Can’t ya read? Gonna wake him up!”

“I’m, uh, I don’t—”

“Cut it out, Bif! Look at her, she’s just a pup,” a jowl faced dog spoke through thick lips. He stood next to a counter filled with packaged slabs of meat.

“Read the sign!” Big grumbled and trotted back to a stand filled with floral printed wool.

Denali squinted at the sign.
No Power Armor Permitted.
She turned around quickly and stood on edge of the market. She wondered who she’d wake up, and then saw him.

A skelebot stood like a statue on the edge of the hall. The wall almost swallowed him, like he was built into place. The great blue eyes were dead and quiet, but a hint of energy pulsed from the ribcage. Great claws hung at its side with a spear set against one foot. It watched, a silent sentinel.

At first she wanted to run, but saw everyone else going on like nothing was wrong. People even walked right next to it. A dog sat on one of its feet and spoke with another. A trophy maybe? She eyed it warily and decided not to trust it.

A yellow dog with short wiry hair trotted past Denali and gave her a curious glance.

Denali felt self-conscious about being in the suit and set off further towards her goal. She could hear Cicero chuckling in her head and felt even worse.

“Why don’t you help me? I didn’t know what a market was. You know everything, right?”

Then you won’t learn it yourself. You’ll expect me to think for you.

“Then why are you staying in my head?”

I can’t exactly leave, now can I?

Denali turned at the passage heading towards SubSection 12. The corridors narrowed. She passed fewer and fewer dogs.

“Then what will you do?”

When?

“Well, I won’t live forever, what if I die?”

Then I was blessed with a rather exciting end to my days. And I’m curious. I knew Caesar once. I have a hunch I know what’s going on here.

“
Tell me.”

No.

Denali gritted her teeth and stopped in front of compartment 11. The hatch was closed, there was no window. It said plainly on the outside
19th Recon Group
. She didn’t recall passing eighteen other Recon groups on her way through. For that matter she didn’t remember passing anything but storage areas and weapons lockers.

She raised a paw to push open the handle and stopped. Uh oh, she thought, what do I do? Do I walk in? Do I knock and wait? Her suit felt warm and she set her paw back down before picking it up again.

She looked up and down the hall and saw no one, finally she decided she’d just walk in. The hatch creaked open and Denali stepped in as crisply as she could manage.

The ceiling was low and sloped towards the back. It was filled with cases of equipment. An armor deconstructing bot idled in the corner. Curtains covered niches tucked into the wall. A single door, closed tightly, was set against the back wall. Half a dozen dogs lounged at a low table in the center of the room. They all turned and stared at Denali.

Denali stared back and felt that she’d walked into the wrong room. She clicked her paws together, snapped her head up, and opened her visor. The smell of roast caribou flooded in and she realized she hadn’t eaten in quite some time. “Trooper Denny Forge reporting!” she stammered out quickly.

The six dogs around the table turned away from their meal. A gray dog looked across the table and shook his head. A black and white dog with cybernetic legs stared, mouth wide, with caribou still inside.

“A Barbarian! Caesar’s nuts. I’m not sharing my table with a savage. A dirty savage, stupid things,” the gray faced dog spat his food out. He stood crisply and glared at Denali. “Barbarians!” he muttered and stormed off into a dark niche. The curtain slammed shut behind him.

A small dog, nearly as small as the market tender, ran from the table and halted in front of Denali. “Stand at attention!” he barked.

Denali clicked her armored feet together tighter.

“You call this a suit? Sweet tits of Caesar, look at the dirt. Kane, do you see the dirt?”

“I see the dirt,” a black dog agreed in a deep bass voice.

“You come in here, with your dirt, and your fancy words, and your barbarianism and expect to be recon? My recon?” the little dog huffed, and puffed and strutted back and forth. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head and at the final word he turned his head sideways. “Hmm? Hmm?”

Denali didn’t know what to say. She tried to form a response but nothing would come. “I just came up from the planet—”

“And?”

“—I, I mean we, ran into trouble—”

“Trouble? Mhm?”

“—I mean contact with the hostiles and then we—”

“You what?”

Denali stammered again.

“Enough!” the little dog barked and stomped a few steps away. He spun around and growled.

Laughter burst out from the table and those still seated rolled onto the floor and cackled. The little dog stomped his feet and howled in frustration. “Come on! All you guys had to do was stay quiet. That’s it!”

Denali realized she’d been had. A grin spread across her face.

“C’mon in, Denny Forge,” Kane mumbled through a mouthful of meat. “That titan of comedy is Kell.”

Kell gave Denali a wink and jumped up onto a large round cushion. He nudged a dirty brown stuffed bear and tucked it into place. “Hey! It means I’m not the rat anymore!”

Denali walked closer, but still kept her distance. It was a new pack, a new structure, a new place. She couldn’t just barge in and sit down.

“Come, come!” Kane said. He stood and stretched his plump legs. His implant sockets were almost hidden beneath shaggy brown fur. He looked well fed, and ate like he was still hungry. “I’m Kane Sunset, demolitions.”

Denali came closer and stood at the edge of the table. The caribou tickled her nose and her stomach rumbled.

Kane plopped back down and nudged a female with short wavy brown hair. “This here is the most bullheaded brawler you ever did meet. Say hi, Wiss.”

“Hi, Wiss,” she said through a mouth of meat. Her soft brown eyes smiled at Denali.

“And that upstanding gentleman is Til, he’s our integrated systems expert.”

“Heyo!” Til said. He was jet black with pointy triangular ears. Long wispy fur hung from his chest and stomach. “I get into things that Kane can’t blow up.”

“No such thing!” Kane bellowed.

Denali glanced at a white haired dog, thick in the face, that looked down at the table and ate quietly. Her fur was cut and pocked with scars. One of her rear legs was an implant, and her tail was mostly gone. She looked sober and somber.

Kane saw the look. “That snow tinted beauty is Belle D’Lisle, our sniper.” He leaned close to Denali and whispered, “You can call her your guardian angel.”

“Sniper? But the shields?” Denali knew almost all combatants wore energy shields and that rendered projectiles useless.

Belle looked up shyly from the table. “It’s not a kinetic, I use a shoulder mounted fusion lance.”

“Like the starships use, but smaller,” Kane added.

“It torches things,” Belle said.

“Things, aliens, naughty dogs, poker players, even the occasional mech,” Kane rattled.

“Oh, Kane,” Belle said and turned away with a bashful smile on her face.

“You met Garlan, our drone expert,” Kane sighed. “He’s not a bad dog, just well, he tends to judge people.”

“Yes. Yes I do,” Garlan growled from behind a curtain.

Kane whispered to Denali, “His world was once a free planet, and Caesar dropped dogs from Forge, Hades, Styx, and Frost to pacify the population.”

Denali glanced at the curtain and then back to Kane. A free world? She’d never thought of anything beyond Forge, or even the starship. But to know there was an alternative...

She could picture what dogs like Samus or Munin would do to other dogs if ordered to kill. Terror. She shuddered at the thought. A part of her felt ashamed that she’d be lumped together with others like that.

“And now you, my dear Denny Forge, are the new rat.” Kane settled himself in and sprawled his legs under the table.

“Rat?”

“Rat,” Kell barked back. “I’ll train ya right, darling. Have no fear.”

“Kell made an exceptional rat.”

Denali wasn’t sure whether to smile or scowl. She had no idea what a rat was.

“Best rat I’ve ever seen,” Til said. “I bet he’ll get fat now. Fat and slow.”

“Hey!” Kell barked back.

“Big shoes to fill,” Wiss added with a laugh. “Big shoes, little dogs, get it?”

Kane blinked at her and shook his head.

“What’s a rat?” Denali asked.

“Tunnel rat,” Kane said. He snapped up another strip of meat. “Now,” he said while he chewed, “sometimes we need to know what’s inside and I can’t blow it up, Garlan can’t send in a drone, Belle can’t shoot it, Wiss can’t beat it, and Til can’t hack it. So you go in.”

“What do I do when I go in?” Denali asked. Her stomach tightened.

Kane tore another chunk. “Whatever it takes.”

“Who the hell is in my room?” a gruff voice said.

Denali snapped her visor shut, spun around, and clacked her paws together. Whoever spoke, spoke with authority.

A brown and black bodied dog stood with her chin held high. Her ears were pointed up, alert, and pointing right at Denali. Her fur was short, crisp, and flowed down her body in a mix of brown and black. She stepped in closer and studied Denali’s suit. “Ursa citation,” she said to herself.

Denali blinked hard. Her heart raced, a tightness gripped her body, and every implant point burned. Memories emerged that Denali had pushed away. Memories of the implants. Before her was the dog who locked her into the implant cage.

She focused her eyes on the dog’s face and saw the gray around the nose. Tremors shook her and she was thankful that the suit hid it.

“What’s your name?”

Denali tried to speak but barely managed to croak, “Denny.”

“Denny what?” the dog snapped back.

“Denny Forge.”

The dog raised its head up and narrowed its eyes.

Kane cleared his throat. “Denny, this is—”

“Captain Maya.”

Kane finished, “Lead of the 19th Recon group.”

Maya walked up to Denali and looked down at the armored faceplate. “Unsuit and come into my office.”

“Over there,” Kane said, and pointed to an array of robotic arms.

Denali ran across the room and stepped onto the X beneath the waiting arms of the deconstructor. Captain Maya left the room and the door closed behind her.

The robots plucked away the armored panels and gently laid them into a holding rack. Denali felt the cool air against her fur and closed her eyes while the robots finished. She tried to compose herself, the armor offered her more than just physical protection, but emotional as well.

The moment the robots finished Denali darted towards the closed door. She knocked her metallic leg against the door and waited.

“Enter.”

Denali pushed the door open.

A crystal glass window occupied the rear wall, a dull light glowed through the frosted glass. The room felt close, not quite tight, but cozy. Red cloth drooped from the ceiling, steel piping poked through in the gaps. Captain Maya sat on a round rug at the edge of a low slate table.

Denali loped in and stood on the edge of the rug. She locked her eyes straight ahead and focused them into nothing. “Denny Forge reporting as ordered!”

Maya tapped her console and looked up at Denali. The door closed with a hiss. The ventilation system hummed gently.

“Denali,” Maya said slowly, forming each syllable. “Denali.”

Denali’s heart pounded. She had a sudden urge to hang her tongue out and pant. The room was warm, too warm, and the terrible violence of the implant procedure was so close in her mind.

“I’m sorry,” Maya said.

Denali’s knees nearly collapsed. She stared at Captain Maya. Her heart rate slowed down to a more regular pace.

“Sit.” Maya nodded to the rug.

“Yes, ma’am,” Denali mumbled. She sat and felt numb.

Maya took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose. “Forge is a brutal planet. The implant equipment was designed with dogs in the same genetic pattern. You are not in that same genetic pool.”

Denali’s eyes darted back and forth. The tales of her birth, or arrival, came back to her. Was it true then? She really did come from the stars.

Maya looked down and couldn’t meet Denali’s gaze. “You’re smaller, the scans showed a Flavian gene pattern. I had to go forward with the operation, otherwise the engineers would have biomassed your body.”

She looked down to the carpeted floor. Flavian, she kept hearing the name. Something was familiar about it.

“Two years ago there was a human incursion.”

What? What?

Maya sighed deeply and rested her head against the wall. “Mistakes were made.”

Denali’s heart fluttered. She couldn’t speak or even move. Cicero clamored up and demanded more.