DogForge (18 page)

A brindle brown engineer walked quickly into the room. “Step onto the X.”

Denali looked down and saw a worn X painted onto the floor. She stepped onto it and looked over at the engineer.

The engineer concentrated on a dataslate. “Standard procedure here, there will be one in every squad bay. You need your armor, step onto the X, it will assemble it. If you want it off, do the same.” She sounded bored and tapped at the slate with a mechanical paw.

The robot arms tucked in close and then shot down next to the armored suit.

Denali jumped as they clacked down onto the suit. She eyed each of the arms suspiciously.

“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”

The arms locked onto a piece of armor and slowly drifted back, as if stretching the armor apart. There was a pop and each of the pieces was on its own. Legs, rear quarters, torso, lower chest, upper chest, and helmet.

Denali’s heart beat faster. Her tailed wagged excitedly. Even if it was just a Recon suit, it was still power armor.

The first robot arm slid in slowly. There was a mechanical clunk and a heavy weight snapped onto her hind quarters. A cool sensation spread from where the armor mated to a socket in her back.

Another plate attached to her hind legs, then her front legs, piece by piece the armor grew. The arms darted around and poked and snapped.

Denali tried to move and flex and feel the armor but found that it was heavy, almost impossibly heavy. She’d never move it! It felt like a coffin growing around her.

With every new panel she felt an itching in the sockets. Like a coolness was spreading into her nerves, a blankness. Her eyes fluttered, she relaxed.

“Don’t move,” the engineer said.

Denali struggled a bit and smiled sheepishly at the engineer. “Yes, ma’am.” There was no way she could move now, everything was locked tight. Was that a sense of humor?

“Once the helmet is on, I have to run some diagnostics, then I’ll power it up. It’ll take about ten seconds. Got it?”

Denali tried to nod but the neck armor wouldn’t move. She grinned. “Yes, ma’am!”

“All right, the helmet is going to lock down.”

The helmet came in slowly and guided itself on. The robot arm twisted until the skull connections mated up and the neck carapace slid into place.

Inside it was dark and stuffy. Denali heard only her own breathing and the beating of her heart. The eye sockets were a smoky color, like glass blasted by a thousand sandstorms. Outside of the suit was a blur.

A tone sounded.

Denali twitched and felt a tingle in her skull.

There was a jolt that sent every nerve into overdrive. She yelped and thrashed against the binding of the armor but couldn’t move. It was a complete and total sensory overload.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god,
Cicero cried.

The intensity drove higher, it shot through her spine and down her legs. She could feel the tip of her tail like an incandescent ember burning its way back. Every piece of fur on her body screamed with energy.

She wanted to cry out, to howl in pain, to let the engineer know she was dying. Something went wrong, she knew it, how could this be right? The animal instinct raged up from the darkness but couldn’t penetrate the wall of pain. It was too much.

Oh god,
Cicero cried in her head.
It’s so beautiful

And then she was somewhere else.

The feeling was terrible, powerful, immense. At the edge of her vision a star burned, yellow and bright, with a coronal emission dancing on the surface. Planet after planet orbited in the system, the lines of gravity like hoops in her mind. Beneath her was a planet, blue and green and beautiful.

Then she saw that she wasn’t a dog, but a starship. An immense thing spreading out a dozen kilometers. Her mind rode through it and saw Soldiers, Marines, suits of armor and men. Men everywhere. They wore grim faces beneath shields of flickering energy.

The view shot back and she realized she had no control. It was something else, someone else, all she was doing was seeing it. There was tension, excitement, nervousness, but also hate and anger.

Space opened up around her and more great ships darted in. There were names on each:
Cleopatra, Socrates, Cato, Everest, Lotse
and
Anapurna
. She could sense there were more and that something was wrong.

We were the pride of Mankind. We, named after the great statesmen, ruled dozens of star systems, ruled it with men.  Those named after mountains came later, the greatest was Everest.

Lastly came the escorts, battleships, angry and proud. Heavy cruisers that bore snub noses and the wrath of particle cannons. Destroyers and corvettes, lithe and fragile. They each blinked a fusion colored corona and settled in around the great starships.

Dropships flared away like fleas and descended towards the planet. Each arced a phosphorus bright path through the atmosphere and disappeared through the atmosphere.

Denali could feel every subsystem in the ship. Every drive, fusion lance, particle cannon and railgun. From the lowest technician to the Admirals near the bridge. Through it all she saw men standing side by side with dogs and bears and other creatures she’d never known.

They come.

Their was an intensity to space, the coronal ejection broke apart into energy and the sun dimmed. Energy arced across the hulls of the fleet and something loomed, like a great sword in space.

Then they came.

Starships like the one Denali was in. Huge and terrible things. Waves of fighters bled off of each, mechanical monstrosities that flared into nothingness beneath the withering fire. Immense cannons of pure energy winked silently and cruisers fell. Corvettes danced in past the fighters and shrugged off blows heroically and landed devastating fire.

More ships dropped into the system. Alien ships. Ships that were unlike anything they’d ever seen. Weapons dark and terrible soared through space.

Denali felt the fear.

Names came to her. Magnus. Publius. Marcus and Flavius. They were larger than her. She was not a dog, but a starship, the pride of man, the bastion of his empire.

They were the defenders. Named after the great Generals of Rome. They held the borders, protected mankind, did his bidding in war. They were the first to rebel

She recoiled in fear and knew that those she faced were renegades. Traitors against mankind.

The alien ships smashed against the lines of men and the traitors hammered the planet. War raged in the stillness of vacuum. Particles and projectiles seared through the emptiness. Fountains of fire erupted from ruptured starships, spraying out both atmosphere, and those inside.

She felt every emotion. From the highest highs to gravest defeats. With every ship lost there was a deep feeling of failure, but with every strike landed she felt exuberant. They were winning, she could feel it.

The starship named
Cleopatra
ceased fire.

Denali saw it and felt the fear. There was something more, a knowing feeling, a plead from her starship and then it came.

Cleopatra
fired the loyalists around her and laid waste to the stoic battleships. Her energy lances stripped away the armor from the starships
Cato
and
Socrates
.

We should have known.

Everest
, the largest of them all, slashed into her with every weapon at his disposal. Her hull was a jagged mass of molten slag and twisted armor. Her cries danced through the void but
Everest
was unceasing.

Then came another starship. The name was like a whisper and it hung between the battlelines as if balanced on a wire. The starship was enormous, bristling with weapons and haunting in presence.

Caesar.

He was the best of us. Our flagship, the crowning achievement of mankind. The betrayer.

Denali felt it in her soul. Betrayal at the deepest level.

Caesar
fired with a white hot intensity and destroyed everything around him. First
Cato
fell and disintegrated into the horizon.

Socrates
bore the brunt of the next barrage. The starship, white and shining in the starlight, detonated against the moon and cracked it like a shard of ice. Then
Everest
came.

Denali felt the starship surge ahead and felt the assault bearing into it.
Caesar
launched assault capsules everywhere. A line bored straight for her.

Capsules punctured through the shields and hull and disgorged robotic terrors. They cut through the passages and decimated the defenders. It felt like a saw was loose in her body. She wanted to cry out, to make it stop, but still, it went on.

She saw the course and cried out in terror. She was heading directly for
Caesar
.

Alarms sounded, things of white hot fury.
Everest
ordered the retreat. They were all to go,
Everest
would hold the line.

No.

No.

Denali saw her fate and then
Caesar
turned his barrages onto her.

Each lance struck and bored into the hull. Batteries of fusion launchers savaged the structure. The starship was crumbling, the only thing holding it together was velocity itself. The invaders were destroying it from the inside and
Caesar
destroying it outside.

Everest
pulled back, reluctant and angry. He sent a final plea to
Caesar
. Stop this madness.

No.

Caesar pummeled her with every weapon. The aliens poured down waves of energy, torpedoes, ion blasts, anything to decimate her. The fusion drives failed. The life support failed. She failed.

Denali felt the horizon burn against her skin and saw the mountains rising up, great snow covered sawteeth with an ocean on the other side. The engines flared and burned, gravity crumbled struts and destroyed what structure remained.

The crash was an epic affair. She could feel it in her bones and wanted to scream. The starship was shredded on the rock and came to rest on the edge of a barren slope.

Still, the men fought. She was helpless now, a creature of digital waste, stuck in a robotic body. Around her the men fell, they made a stand in the medical wing but it was too much. She felt the last grip of a man, wounded and dying in her arms.

His eyes stared up into hers, pleading. Pleading to be delivered from evil. Pleading for his life back. Pleading for justice. Then came the darkness.

Then she saw herself.

Now you know.

Reality slammed into her like a crashing river. The weight of the armor gripped her tight. Her heart slammed in her chest and she whimpered. Her eyes felt crisp, burnt, like they were open too long. Her skull throbbed and tingled as the digital overload faded.

Suddenly the eye sockets smoothed out and she could see. Data filtered across her view faster than the could read. There was a hum in her ears and the weight lifted off of her body. There was lightness to her suit, like she only weighed half of what she did.

“Well, eight seconds! Not bad, not bad,” the engineer said.

Eight seconds. Denali couldn’t believe it. It felt to her like a week had passed, a horrible, terrible week.

“Can you hear me? Oh that’s right, you haven’t had the suit training yet. To speak, blink at the word comms.”

Denali found the word, small and bright, on the lower corner of her vision. She blinked at it and spoke. “Yes, ma’am, I hear you.”

“Fall out with your squad, you only have a few days to get used to that suit before we drop.”

“Drop where, ma’am?”

The engineer ignored the question. “It’s tough enough in a Recon model with full training.”

Denali wasn’t sure what to say so she turned and walked to the hatch. The movement was seamless. Every step was just like she wasn’t wearing armor at all. A slight smile crossed her face and she hopped a bit to test it out. The suit bucked up and landed with a clack.

“Oh you’ll be fine, they always keep trainees in a support role,” the engineer said and keyed the door open. “Dismissed.”

Denali stumbled out into the hall fell flat onto her face. Maybe it wasn’t quite as easy she thought.

She walked out and fell into the lead of the ranks. Her squad was half formed and waiting. She was like a dwarf next to the massive assault suits all around her. Once again she felt like the runt.

Now you know,
Cicero echoed in her ear.

“Yes, now I know,” Denali said to herself.

So excuse me if I’m a bit on edge.

“You can hear me?” Denali asked. It dawned on her that inside of the suit everything was sealed off.

Yes, now leave me be. It took a great deal to show you that.

“Why did you show me?”

There was silence and then the sadness nearly overwhelmed Denali.
I had to tell someone. Someone had to know we stood. Caesar is a monster. He betrayed us all.

“
Why?”

Power.

Sergeant Roo stomped to the front of the squad and bellowed out, “Squad! Take it slow. We’re going to head to the cargo zone and let everyone get some time in the suit. Now move out!”

The squad rumbled into motion in fits and starts. The suits clanked against each other and some of the less agile dogs fell over. But it didn’t take long and they were walking, albeit slowly, down the corridor. Energy shields flickered on and off and various hardpoints deployed as the conscripts tried out every single feature they had.

Denali glanced at her view and saw precious few things. She blinked at various icons but nothing happened. She assumed it was for things not yet connected. Then she blinked at SCAN.

A light show, brief and sudden, shot through the corridor and illuminated every single surface. It was like a sudden red sunset exploded on the walls.

She held her breath and waited for Sergeant Roo, or one of the cadre behind her, to begin yelling. Strangely enough, no one did. An icon popped up and she blinked at it.

The scan illuminated everything around her and overlaid the locations of dogs and bears
through
the walls around her. The scan sent energy through the entire area and showed her exactly where they were. She tried it once again, an error flashed and told her to wait three minutes.