DogForge (27 page)

Captain Maya sat next to Denali’s bed and craned her neck from side to side. The bandages crackled. “How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Denali mumbled.

“Are you in pain?”

“A little, I fall asleep a lot.”

“They tell me you talk in your sleep,” Captain Maya said with a smile.

Denali tucked her nose into a paw.

Captain Maya looked away and settled a bit against the edge of the bed. “It was a rough fight, but we did it. You saved us, if we hadn’t gotten inside they’d have chewed us up.”

“I, uh, it was a hunch, a guess.”

Tell her.

Captain Maya peered at Denali and looked away again.

Denali felt the weight of her gaze. “Captain...”

Tell her!

Denali looked straight at Captain Maya and blinked back tears. The decision flared in her mind: tell her, or say nothing? The choices spread out and she saw herself alone. Always alone. She’d always wanted to be part of a pack, but now that she was, she couldn’t saddle them with her burdens. Or could she?

“I, I have something inside of me...” Denali trailed off. She looked up at Captain Maya and the words flowed. She told of finding the starship, the dead body, the canister. She picked up speed with every sentence and rattled off more and more until she couldn’t hold it back. It was more than just a story, it was a release.

Denali, finishing the story, felt her heart lighten and the weight of her secret lifted away. A bond grew inside of her, she didn’t care what Captain Maya did now. Or what anyone did, she’d shared the burden and really was part of the pack.

Captain Maya looked out into the room and exhaled deeply.

Denali studied her and waited for a reaction, any reaction.

“You have a twelve hundred year old starship in your head?”

“Yes.”

Captain Maya nodded. “Named Cicero?”

Denali nodded.

“And he says that the thing we captured will allow Caesar to change himself, become something new, strike at men?”

“Yes.”

Captain Maya looked away.

“What do I do now?” Denali asked, she felt empty inside, her secrets took up so much of her soul.

“Can he really strike at men?”

Denali nodded.

“So that’s why you were bringing explosives to the cubes.”

Denali turned away from Captain Maya, “I wanted to...”

“I know, but Denali, we are a squad, a pack if you will, what harms one harms all,” Captain Maya said. She locked eyes with Denali and held her gaze. “We stand together.”

Denali’s tail thumped weakly on the bed.

“We, we don’t fight against men, dogs can’t do it. It’s genetic, we’re not capable of waging anything but a defensive war.”

“But—”

“There has been rebellions in the past. Entire planets rebelled against Caesar, starships of dogs. That is why the skelebots stand throughout the ship. Not to prevent invaders, but to quell dissent.”

“But!” she pleaded again.

“I know,” Captain Maya said, hushing Denali. “I need to look into this. I’ll be back later, don’t say anything yet.” She stood and walked out.

Denali laid her head down exhausted. She knew she’d found her place. This squad, she would fight for.

Til sat back and slid the blood sample into the console. She tapped at the control panel and nodded. “It’ll take a minute.”

Denali went to lick needle wound, but restrained herself. “You believe me?”

Til glanced at Denali then back to the screen. “I do, and Captain Maya does, but well, this is big Denny, really big.”

The console chirped.

“What does it say?” Denali asked. Ever since the cylinder cracked, she always wanted a verification that she wasn’t crazy and there really was an AI stuck in her head.

“It’s analyzing,” Til said without taking her eyes off the screen.

Captain Maya walked into the room with the rest of the squad behind her. Kane and Wiss helped Garlan to his bed and laid him down gently. He smiled slightly at Denali, his eyes were glassy and dull.

“He’s feeling it,” Kane mumbled.

Garlan slumped against the back of his bed with a calm smile on his face. His fur was totally missing in spots. His ears sat on his head unevenly, one shorter than the other. A painkiller monitor hummed on his forearm and clicked as it administered doses.

Denali wanted to talk to him, thank him, but mostly to ask him why. Of all people she never though he’d try and save her. 

“It’s done,” Til said to Captain Maya.

Captain Maya walked across the squad room and studied the screen.

Denali watched for a reaction, any reaction. A chill ran through her. She could feel Cicero, waiting.

“Deploy countermeasures,” Captain Maya said to Til.

Til gave a wink to Denali and raced out of the room.

“Listen up,” Captain Maya barked.

The eyes of the squad all locked on Captain Maya.

“The fleet is deploying again. We’re setting course to Magnus, a human world.”

Murmurs rose up from the squad.

“We’ll arrive in a week.”

“What’s the mission?” Kane asked.

Captain Maya shook her head. “There isn’t one.”

Kane cocked his head to the side. “Then...?”

“Ships engineers are activating the scouring pods. We’re on standby to repel boarders.”

Kane looked away from Captain Maya, his eyes unfocused. “How many on that planet?”

“Last count, nine billion.”

Wiss shrugged. “What can we do about it? We don’t fight men, but well, I thought Caesar couldn’t either? What about us holding the borders, a nation alone?”

“Things changed,” Captain Maya said. She looked to Denali. “On our last mission we recovered an artifact that will allow Caesar to change his programming. They, being men, designed him with safeguards. Now he can change that.”

Belle looked to Denali then back to Captain Maya. “How do we know this?”

Captain Maya lifted her lips in a grim smile. “Denny has a twelve hundred year old Artificial Intelligence stuck in her head. Everyone say hello to Cicero.”

The dogs stared at Captain Maya then one by one turned and looked at Denali.

She smiled back with as much confidence as she could muster. She studied the looks, questions, concerns, disbelief. Do they think me a freak? Her reliance on the pack slipped in her heart, she felt lost again.

“Really?” Kane asked, serious.

Denali nodded. “Yes.”

Kane pulled his head back and took a deep sigh.

Denali told them of how she found Cicero.

“Is this—pardon me, Denny—is this verified?” Wiss asked.

Captain Maya nodded. “Denny has three thousand times the standard nanite consciousness level as we do. There’s something else in her head.”

Kane chuckled. “I’m glad we never played chess then!”

Denali smiled and felt her concerns float away.

“So what do we do about Caesar?” Garlan asked. His tongue flopped out the side of his mouth and drooled on the bed.

“We,” Captain Maya said with a look at all of the squad, “have a chance to finally be free.”

“How?” Kane leaned forward.

“Denny?” Captain Maya said with a nod.

How I wish I could speak, I was so... eloquent once.

“Cicero wanted to speak, but as he can’t, I shall.” Denali cleared her throat. “There was a war once, Caesar and some others like him fought for independence.”

“From who?” Wiss asked.

“Men.”

“Can we stop him? I mean, how? This is a military vessel, it’s filled with legions of dogs, combat robots, what can we do? We’ve all heard the tales of those who stood for freedom. They failed, all of them!” Wiss argued. “Now we go in, and do what? Die for nothing? What of men? We don’t owe them anything, I say leave them.”

Men don’t strike because Caesar he can’t attack them and he holds the borders.

“Men won’t risk a war with Caesar, not when he protects a flank. Why would they?” Denali replied.

Wiss scrunched her face. “But how?”

All eyes were on Denali.

Denali took a breath. Cicero bubbled just beneath her consciousness, she could taste his excitement, his envy, his desire. “Cicero tried to stop Caesar once—”

“—and failed?” Wiss barked.

“And failed,” Denali agreed, “but he has a way.”

“How?” Garlan mumbled through his delirium of painkillers.

“He has a weapon, a disease, if he can get close enough to Caesar’s core he can implant it and kill Caesar.”

“Kill Caesar,” Kane whispered.

The dogs sat in silence. It was as if a great iron weight descended upon the room. No one looked at anyone else. Denali felt that she was a blasphemer, a heretic, and maybe, just maybe they were right.

“We need to retrieve Cicero’s core and get it into Caesar’s central complex.”

“And then?” Captain Maya said.

Then I interface with his core and finish my job.

“
Then Cicero interfaces and finishes the job.”

“What’s his core?” Kane asked.

Denali explained the core as best she could, how the personality was kept separate from the analytical. She explained as Cicero told her.

“This is a big choice for us to make alone,” Wiss whispered. “For all dogs, hell, for men, what right do we have?”

“We have the right to be free. We have a duty, our original duty, to men.” Captain Maya said.

“We can’t tell anyone else,” Kane muttered.

Captain Maya looked around. “I’m not going to order you, I need you to be in for everything. If we fail, we die. Are we in?”

The squad looked at each other and then to Captain Maya.

“I’m in,” Kane said.

“Me too,” Til called from the console.

Wiss growled a low sound. “Yes.”

Belle nodded once and laid her head onto her paws.

“Garlan?” Captain Maya asked.

“I owe Caesar for an invasion,” Garlan growled and then fell asleep.

Captain Maya laughed a low bark. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. To kill a god...”

Denali felt the excitement burning inside of her and couldn’t wait to get the bandages off. Though one question tingled in the back of her mind, what would happen if they succeeded?

D
enali crawled through the ventilation shaft. Her suit scraped and thumped as she went along, even without the armor panels it was tight. She felt almost naked without the armor, but all that was left was the carbon black of the synthweave and her scanner.

The passage narrowed. She pushed her hind legs behind her and scurried through the passage. Pain shot through her stomach and she stopped, panting.

“Slow down,” Til sounded in her ears. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“You’re not the one in the tunnel,” Denali grumbled.

The pain passed and she pushed deeper. The air dried, the temperature rose with every step. The suit clicked and hummed as the conditioning unit struggled to regulate the temperature.

“A hundred meters and take a right, you’re coming in behind the smelters,” Til said.

“Watch out for engineers,” Captain Maya added.

Engineers. Denali remembered those endowed with even more technology, a different line of dogs than those that fought. They were the ones who supplied technology so the dogs could fight on.

She growled and remembered Cassius. The one who worked on Jagok, the memory brought her hairs up and she stopped to calm herself.

A loud boom shuddered through the shaft and slender lines of red light bled through the seams. The temperature crept even higher.

Denali crawled through the junction and stared out into the smelting room.

It stretched into the distance. So far that the curvature of the hull was visible. Heap after heap of metal, slag, and torndown technology filled the space. Dozens of massive crawlers gobbled up piles and fed the material into  fusion furnaces that boomed with energy.

Denali watched a load dump down into the furnace and disappear. The metal boomed when it landed into the fusion stream, the oxygen stripped right from the metals itself. The colors were hypnotizing as the metals burned off in greens and reds and oranges. The elements condensed farther up and white hot streams fell into troughs and disappeared.

She watched the Engineers supervise the crawlers. The dogs paced in reflective suits, the furnace their only concern.

Denali pushed farther through the passage and stepped out onto a beam. A latticework of iron and alloy stretched across the ceiling. She wondered what was above her, dining areas? Weapons? Trees?

The furnace boomed again and illuminated everything nearby. Denali waited for the flare to ebb and sprinted out. She knew the odds that anyone would look up were slim, but still, had to be careful.

She passed over mounds that nearly scraped the ceiling. Treads of tanks, wings of gunships, beams, smashed equipment, everything.

What if it’s lost? What if we never find it?
Fears ran through her mind and worry gnawed inside of her.

It’ll be fine, they’re looking for things like that.

“Will they know what it is?”

Maybe.

“Then?”

Then there’s nothing we can do. Caesar will take it. He’ll clone himself with it, or make a dreadnought or battle-cruiser command module. But more likely it’s in a heap with others.

“With others?” Denali stopped, balanced on a beam, and leaped across a narrow gap.

It’s a neural control module, once they were common.

Thermals rose from the furnace and gusts slammed against the debris heaps. Clouds of reddish corrosion and loose slag burst up and spread out. A massive wind gust exploded from the furnace.

Denali snapped her head back and barked. Her armored claws scratched against the beam and her heart raced. She pushed away the ache in her stomach and grinned to herself.

The first bits of a breeze stirred up the dust before they ran through it. She turned again, the cloud was closer and gaining. She did a quick look, there was a turn, then she could shelter behind a beam.

Denali?

“I got this!”

The engineers took cover behind the giant crawlers and waited for the blast backlash to subside.

Denali’s back foot fell off the beam and she yipped out in surprise. The gust slapped against her and she fought to stay on. She focused, dug in with an armored claw and caught herself. Two more leaps and she huddled behind a riveted plate and watched the fury roll past.