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Julie Verne, resident dog of 3rd Platoon, B Company, settles into her life as a more or less respected member of the unit. She deals with some, though not all, of the demons that have filled her past -- but news of an upcoming deployment puts everyone on edge...

This is the fourth part of Cry Havoc_, my "serial" novel. There is some character development, for you character development folks. There is some smut, for you smut folks. Verne sort-of comes to terms with several parts of her past, and the stage is set for an operation that nobody feels very good about. If you like it, the rest of the novel will follow in installments as I write them. Beyond that, read and enjoy -- and as always, please chime in with criticism and feedback. Per ardua ad astra, and all that!_

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

Cry Havoc!, by Rob Baird -- Ch. 4, "Shadow at evening"

---

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

• T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

The news had filtered back to the platoon by the time she returned an hour later, but the marines bore it stoically. McArdle's response was typical; when she looked at him, quizzically, he simply shrugged: "At least it's a paycheck."

Verne grabbed her operations manual and padded off to be by herself; the manual was not particularly light reading, but the moving pictures and exploded diagrams gave her something to focus on, and she told herself that she was studying. Over the following two days, she spent most of her time engaged in this scrupulous review.

The advantage of being small, she supposed, was that it was easy to find secluded places -- in this case, a disused arms locker at the far end of the platoon's space in the belly of the warship. It was quiet, insulated from the activity all around, and the knock at the locker door took her by surprise -- not good, she thought darkly, for a C&S specialist, the eyes and ears of the platoon.

"Hey," Victor Ramirez said softly. "Are you busy?"

Decorum bid the dog treat him with some respect; in any case he was the first person to have stopped by. She shook her head, turning the manual off. "Not really, I guess. How are you?"

He fidgeted, pressing his fingers together awkwardly. "I'm doing alright, I suppose. Listen... do you have a minute? To talk, I mean?"

Julie looked at him curiously, and then shrugged, sliding back from the door to give him space to enter. "I'm just reading. Been through this chapter twice, anyway."

The belligerence that he ordinarily treated her with was nowhere to be seen; his soft, delicate features seemed touched, if anything, with a slight nervousness. He joined her in the arms locker, and took a careful seat opposite. "How are you doing?"

"I'm doing alright. At the after-action, there were some questions raised about how we could improve C&S operations next time, so I'm getting a head start on that."

Victor nodded. "Modifications to the suit?"

"No. I may try my hand at writing some new filters, for the next time we land. It's all those buildings -- it makes it hard to put the signals together cleanly. Hopefully, though, that can be fixed in software."

"Right," he murmured. Then he settled into silence; from the way he periodically shifted, his breath catching, she knew he was trying to work up the courage to speak.

Nothing in their interactions before had given her any reason to want to talk to him, but the quiet, in the little room, became uncomfortable quickly. "How about you?"

"I'm doing okay. I traded in some of my credits for a good, long shower. With water and everything. I guess, maybe, that doesn't sound so good to you, though, huh?"

"I don't really care for it," Julie admitted, "but it's a good way to stay clean. Gets a lot of the stuff the ultrasonics don't, in my experience."

"Yeah," he said, and lapsed into stillness once more. Finally he took a deep breath, sighed, and set his jaw. "Look, I wanted to say... about... on the drop, you know?" He met her gaze for a second, and then looked away. "I don't know that you, uh, that you saved my life, exactly. But... you probably did keep from taking a bullet or two."

"Maybe. But I was just doing my job."

"Well, that's the thing," he said -- still staring past her, unable to look the dog in the eye. "I've been trying to put it straight in my mind... like, if it was me, would I have done the same thing? And I... I'm not sure that I would've."

This was a remarkably frank admission, and it took a moment for Verne to settle on an appropriate response. "It's not your responsibility," she offered.

Ramirez shook his head. "No. Look, I appreciate you making excuses for me, but you know what I meant. What I don't know is... why, exactly. Like... some of it's just... talent. I... I mean, I don't know the suit interlink functions as well as you do, probably; I think I would've been slower. But... you thought it was worth coming over to check it out in the first place, and I think that I..." He swallowed nervously. "I might've felt it wasn't worth it."

"Perhaps it's because you don't like me very much."

Victor winced. "I guess you probably don't like me much, either."

"Our relationship," the dog demurred, "is slightly tense."

"We didn't get off to a good start," he said. "But... setting that aside, I... I do owe you, I guess. For helping me out back there. I mean, I saw how bad it was for Scott when they tagged him, and that was a snap shot. I think they were sniping me, weren't they? Maybe you did save my life."

Left to her own reflection, the dog was not entirely certain why she'd approached Victor, herself. It was possible, she had to admit, that it had simply been so that she could chide him for his thoughtlessness; the praise he was now offering her made her feel slightly uncomfortable. "As I said, I was just doing my job. I'm glad nothing happened."

Victor nodded, and then resumed his fidgeting, scuffing the toe of his boot against the floor of the locker. "Do you think that I hate you?" he said finally -- abruptly, as though the words had crowded together in his mouth.

Nothing Victor had ever said or done rose to the level of what the dog would honestly describe as hate, and she generally considered herself precise with the English language. "Perhaps not. I think that given a choice between having to deal with me, and not having to deal with me, you would always choose the latter."

"But you don't think I hate you?"

"No."

He settled back -- it was hard to read his expression; hard to tell if the answer had quieted his nerves. "It's kind of complicated."

"Is it?" Verne tilted her head a little, peering inquisitively at him -- her clear blue eyes were, as always, sharp and piercing; this tended, she found, to unsettle people, and while it was not strictly the goal nor was she especially sympathetic to his explanation. "I had just assumed that you generally disliked my kind, and weren't making an exception for me."

He winced again. Verne had learned to interpret human body language early on -- subtler than her own, and less expressive. Had he been a dog, his ears would've been splayed; his tail tucked. As it was his downcast gaze and soft-spoken voice were enough. "Pretty much. Or... well... it's not dislike. It's distrust."

"Distrust?"

"Can I explain?" he asked, hopefully.

"Of course." She folded her paws and tried to look attentive.

"So my folks weren't well off, okay? But my dad was friends with the neighborhood administrator, and so we... uh. So we had a... a... a one-of-you. I don't know what the appropriate, uh, name is. What you like to be called. A Moreau."

Julie shrugged. "Moreau is fine. It's the more general term, in any case. We Moreaus of canine stock, particularly from the GeneMark lines -- North America, BosWash or the Valley -- we call ourselves Nakath."

"Nakath? What language is that?"

"It's ours. In the early days we were expected to speak English, and they used a computer chip to control it. They were able to keep us from thinking certain thoughts, that way -- denying us the ability to connect thoughts and words. That's partly why we developed our own language, to get around their restrictions. It's also easier for us to pronounce," she added. "You may notice I speak with a certain accent."

Of course he had; she vaguely recalled him mocking her for it, at one point, but he made a noncommittal hand gesture, as though her speech impediment might be overlooked. "I guess, a little. What does Nakath sound like?"

"'Peculiar,' I think, is the word I've heard used. It's more guttural than English. The grammar is more complicated, as well."

"Do you speak it? Can you... can you say something?"

"I guess." She suspected that Victor was stalling to avoid continuing his explanation, but as long as she was humoring him anyway the dog didn't see a point in protesting. She thought for a moment, and then clicked her tongue. "Alkosh hakhlanzaha / tascatja to taq dawiy uchat / alhakhtadrakh kud / sansija-harku eko wegat / ran ja hota," she recited, emphasizing the consonants in the back of her throat.

"What does that mean?"

"It's a poem. It means..." Nakath-rukhat was heavily geared towards sensory experience; it took her a moment to consider how best to translate the ancient words. "'The song of the spring season is / rain on a flat roof / the smell of petrichor / and shy cherry blossoms opening / when I awake.'"

She thought she heard Victor laugh, though the sound was so slight it was hard to tell. "It's pretty. Maybe a bit less... growly, in English. Did you write it?"

"No. It's old -- much older than I am. Back from when they still had spring, in the Valley. I learned it from the barracks, when I was working for IBM. We tried to find ways to liven up our downtime."

"You lived communally?"

"We weren't really raised with a sense of privacy," she explained. "If you owned a domestic Moreau, they go through special training about keeping personal spaces."

"Oh." Victor nodded. "I guess that makes sense. Ours..." He bit his lip, sighing. "We didn't own it, exactly -- her, I mean," he corrected hastily. "She was on extended lease from the administrator. He lived by himself, and... my parents had me and my two brothers to look after, so they appreciated the help. She was a, ah... she didn't look like you. One of those big dogs... you know, the ones with the brandy around their neck?"

"Saint Bernards? They use those as housekeepers, yes. They're quite passive."

He shot her a strange look. "Passive?"

"They tend to be nonaggressive, and they take commands well. They're not very smart. Good-natured, though." Officially the domestic servant Moreaus had human-grade intelligence, at least by numerical quotient. But Verne had spoken with them in the past, and knew that their language and abstract reasoning skills tended to be quite poor -- she suspected that, given their size, their designers had felt it was best if they knew how to take commands, and little else.

"Her name was Doris. She... put up with a lot, from my brothers and me. We weren't mean, just rambunctious -- you know how kids can be, right?"

"No," Julie said. "But I will take your word for it."

"You weren't ever a kid, huh?"

She shook her head. "Not in any sense you'd know it."

"Fine. We were just a handful. Loud, destructive... my parents both worked really long hours. Doris was our surrogate mother, I guess. Took care of us, got us to school and back, cooked dinner, did our laundry and everything... I'm sure she was indispensable for our family. I kind of just thought of her as part of us. Like she'd be there forever, or something."

"I take it that she wasn't?" There were any number of reasons why a Moreau might not last with a family -- cost, of course, but illness also took its toll. The corporations liked, in her experience, to encourage the notion that Moreaus were more or less interchangeable within a product line, an illusion that was most difficult for people who used them as housekeepers around young children who tended to be more perceptive.

She suspected at first that this was the case for Victor, but the man's darkened features suggested something else. His jaw was set; he took a few deep breaths. "When there were the riots in Acidalia City, I remember my dad trying to talk to her. She seemed okay, but then... one day she just disappeared."

"Riots?"

From his look, Victor evidently expected her to be familiar with the event, although the dog's knowledge of instabilities beyond Terra itself had been limited by her employers. "You Moreaus, you know? It started out with just protests, outside the Acidalia city hall, and then it got... heated. They called troops in -- AAI, I think, or maybe Garuda."

"What was it over?"

He closed his eyes, thinking. "There was a demand for... unionization. I think. Over working conditions."

"Unionization, or manumission?"

"What?"

The dog shook her head. "Never mind. Go on."

"My dad went looking for her for three days straight, trying to find her... just trying to bring her back home. He told me and my brothers he wouldn't give up."

"Did he?"

He looked away from her. At this new angle, it almost seemed to Verne as though Victor's eyes were glistening. "She blew herself up on the 204 Limited maglev, outside the spaceport the troops were using. Killed six people."

Now it was Verne's turn to be subdued. "Oh." Such events were not unheard of, and in the abstract Verne understood their motivation, but it struck her as profoundly wasteful.

"I guess one of Doris's friends... a fellow dog... convinced her to leave us, somehow."

"Do you know that, or are you guessing?"

Victor laughed bitterly. "I didn't see them conspiring. But she didn't have any reason to leave us. She -- she was a part of our family. She had a room of her own, a... a... days off... we... we loved her," he insisted. "I trusted her, and she... that was all we meant to her, I guess." The wounds -- fifteen or twenty years old, at least -- were still raw.

"Maybe not."

"Yeah? Then why did she do it? Why did she give up everything for that? Why did she have so little respect for us? For... for people? If you're saying it was her choice; if you're saying she wasn't talked into it. Your kind has its share of revolutionaries, you know."

Julie began to understand that, in Victor's mind, her kind could be divided into two groups: plotters, who sought to undermine the natural order of things, and the impressionable, dimwitted sorts who followed them. She was, presumably, not the latter, which explained his statement about distrust. "Perhaps."

"And that's what I don't get." There was anger in his voice -- not rage, but the smoldering, blind anger that comes from incomprehension. "She had everything. We would've let her do whatever she wanted. She was family..."

The sentiment was not new to her, and for a few seconds more the dog entertained the thought of simply agreeing. Her voice -- quiet, insistent; in advance of conscious thought -- took her by surprise. "Was she? What was her last name? Was it yours?"

Victor blinked, taken aback. "I... I'm not sure. I --"

"What was her name, period?"

"I already told you -- Doris."

Julie shook her head grimly. "No. That was a product identification -- the same way mine is 'Verne.' My name is Runshana. What was hers?" Her voice was becoming clipped.

"I don't --"

"You don't know," she finished for him. "You only know the name that you gave her, like you'd give any other dog a name. That's what it's about, Victor. I'm not a good dog, I know that; I spend too much time wanting to be human. Craving it. Do you know why?"

The passion in her voice was uncharacteristic and edgy. Victor, who had seen her teeth up close before, could only shake his head. "No."

"Because it was one of you, centuries and centuries ago, who said that all men were created equal. That they were endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Freedom isn't something that you give -- only something that you take. You couldn't give Doris the right to do whatever she wanted any more than you could give her her own name."

"You're splitting hairs. She had choices -- just like I have choices, or you have choices. Like any sentient thing has choices."

"Sentient things," she echoed his phrasing with deliberate heat, "also know intuitively that they are born free -- that's the reason for every slave revolt, every peasant rebellion, every Bastille storming in history. I knew that intuitively. I knew that I could think. I knew that I could want more out of my life. And I knew that every single day, all my energies were yoked to an Assistant Product Development Manager who owned when I got up, and when I slept, and what I ate, and every single thing about me except my soul."

Ramirez glared at her, and she saw in his face some of the loathing he felt for the creature he believed had taken his childhood companion. "What are you saying? You're saying she was right to do what she did? To kill people for her... for her cause? Because that's bullshit."

"Of course it is," Verne hissed, eyes flashing. "But I'm telling you why it happened, Victor. One day you wake up, and you realize that your creator doesn't think he's endowed you with anything. You realize that you're chained to the circumstances of your birth, and that nothing will ever change those. Sometimes that's all it takes. Not some conspirator, some silver-tongued demon whispering treason in your ear -- just desperation. Just being pushed past the limits of your enslavement."

Her voice was hot, practically a snarl; she had meant to channel Forster's level-headed demagoguery and found herself instead giving voice to years of suppressed anger. There had been something about Victor's tone, something in the self-pitying remorse of a master who has long convinced himself of the virtues of his supremacy, that had broken her carefully constructed stoicism.

Victor himself appeared to understand this -- or at least to understand the source of the dog's fire. Her outburst might've had him on the verge of an equally heated reply -- but he checked himself, halfway through forming it, and the anger vanished from his face, replaced by dawning comprehension.

"Back when we first met -- when you got me up against the wall. You... you wanted to kill me, didn't you?"

Victor had reached the realization before her; Julie blinked, and her breath caught as she shrunk back from him. The dog's ears flattened, and she was deathly still for a few seconds -- her brain trying to form arguments against that conclusion. None of them seemed honest. "Yes," she said finally said -- dully, her ears remaining lowered. "I did."

It would've been his right to raise his voice again; instead, remaining quiet, he sat -- lost in his own thoughts. "Does that happen often?"

Julie's anger had subsided as quickly as it had first arisen. "No," she told him. Her voice was soft -- any further away, and it might've become inaudible.

"Was I the only one?"

"Not quite. I used to have more of a temper."

Verne had not meant for this to be a leading statement, but Victor had other ideas. "What do you mean?" he prodded gently, and then -- when she didn't respond: "I told you my story already."

She eyed him, and sighed her resignation. "Fine. Moreaus in my line of work -- 'newshounds' is the colloquial term -- are just designed to filter, and do trend analysis. All we work with is data, so the corporations don't bother to train us in how to deal with people. Most of us don't know how. Most of us die in the barracks, too, so it never matters. But I got out, and I enlisted, and I still didn't know how to win an argument, or how to avoid one."

"Basic must've been rough for you."

"Well, everybody was out of place. Most people were too overwhelmed to start fights. It was just this one guy. He was from the EU -- big, solid, hulk of a man. His name was Philip. He hated me right from the start -- I never found out why, but he used to needle me constantly. You know that thing that precipitated me shoving you up against the wall? That bit with the leash, and the collar, and the tag?"

Victor looked away. "I didn't really... mean anything... by that."

"Yes," she said matter-of-factly, "you did. But that wasn't my point. My point is that it's the kind of thing that Philip would've loved. He had a real thing about me being a dog -- when we did grenade training, he would throw his and shout 'fetch!' -- for example. He told everyone who would listen that I had given him fleas until the drill instructor made me go to the infirmary to get a clean bill of health. And I... I won't say that I gave as good as I got, but I wasn't particularly disciplined, either."

"Not particularly disciplined?"

"Mostly we just fought. Argued, cursed... a couple fistfights. After the infirmary I stole his rifle grease and emptied the entire container between the sheets of his bunk."

"That seems relatively tame."

Verne shrugged. "Also, I shoved him into the engine of a dropship."

*

"What in god's name is wrong with you two?"

The latest incident had started during the boarding of a training flight. They had been lining up, waiting to clamber into the battered old ship, and at Spitzer's patronizing reminder that although the doors would remain open Verne was not to "hang her head out the window" she had seized the man and pushed him back until he had tripped over the portside intake of their CLS-22.

The engine had been running, at the time, but the grate at the intake arrested his entry and with the ship's throttle set to idle anyway his suit had prevented any injuries. Now they were before the drill instructor, whose expression wavered between disbelief and disgust.

"Well, don't blame her. She's only human, you know." Julie's exasperated sigh carried with it the notes of a snarl, and Spitzer glanced at her sideways. "Oh, maybe I take that back."

Gunnery Sergeant Pak closed her eyes wearily, and took a deep breath. "Private Spitzer, shut up. You two need to be able to get over each other -- and yourselves. Here, if you don't get along, the worst that'll happen is you wash out. Out there, if you continue to act like children, you might get somebody killed, and that doesn't make anybody happy. So let's find a way to fix things, shall we?"

Pak's answer was to declare that Spitzer and Verne were no longer separate individuals. They would train together, eat together -- with one set of utensils between them -- and take the exact same exams, sharing answers.

In later years Verne would discover Christopher Neumann's truism, which was that certain people could not be reformed -- only ignored. Predictably, the union of Philip and the dog was taken well by neither of them; they failed their first exam when Philip deliberately knocked the stylus off the table and she refused to fetch it for him.

Verne was not, by nature, an optimist; neither was she literarily inclined, or she might've hoped for a moment of clarity -- some point at which the pair realized that they were fighting on the same team and needed to put aside their differences. The squabbling continued -- though, for the sanity of the remainder of the recruits, their constant close proximity at least let them economize on volume.

Suit training, in particular, proved to be excruciating. Pak had told them to dress each other; Verne was not particularly careful, the dog was willing to admit to herself -- but then, Philip didn't have fur that caught painfully in between plates of the suit. This, after the first involuntary yelp showed her hand, he seemed to delight in causing to happen.

The planned drop was extremely simple -- a scavenger hunt, designed to familiarize the recruits with the sensor suite built into the hardware. It was a cloudless day in August, out in the scrublands of Arizona -- the suit, with its carefully controlled life support modules, was cool enough, but the blazing sun on her exposed face and muzzle left the dog panting.

"Stop drooling on me," Spitzer grumbled.

Verne looked from his face down to the wet spot on the arm of his suit, and then back again. For a moment, she weighed the benefits of doing as he asked, but the afternoon was scorchingly hot and she was in a sour mood. She let her tongue continue to loll. The doors of the CLS-22 were open, and the only wind that blew through the cabin was hot enough to deny them any respite. Probably, she reckoned, he was merely jealous of her ability to harness evaporative cooling.

Another drop of saliva landed on his suit. "Didn't anybody teach you not to be like that? Or is that just how you all are? Was your mom disgusting too?"

Julie had never met her parents, if indeed she had any, but she glared at him anyway. "Oh, is that where we learn things? So I take it your mother was an insufferable cunt?"

"Fuck you," he growled. "Do you lick yourself with that mouth?" Verne's reply was interrupted by the pilot, announcing the approaching drop zone. Spitzer grabbed Verne's arm roughly, torquing her wrist painfully as he called up the diagnostics. "Zero."

She repaid the favor. Spitzer's suit rebooted halfway through the diagnostic process, and then flickered uncertainly, but it settled on reporting no faults and she didn't care enough to quibble. "Zero," she echoed.

The platoon checked in "sweet," reporting no problems, and as the CLS-22 banked into its final turn the dog looked down at the unforgiving desert below them -- all dust and loose stone and reluctant plant life, shimmering in the late-day heat. The dropship's copilot was counting down, now; Verne had only been on two live drops before, and she ran through checklists in her head.

It served as a distraction from the jolt of the deployment itself -- the time between the seconds of the final countdown stretched out far longer, in her mind, so that the slamming sensation of the explosives that released them still came as a shock.

She heard the scream even as she was falling -- raw and desperate, coming through the air instead of her radio. The suit restricted her movements, but she twisted with the jets to find Philip Spitzer in an awkward, tumbling free-fall. One of the suit's rockets was firing, exacerbating the spin; the other, from what she could tell, remained dead.

Her own suit fired automatically, braking her descent, but even over the sound she heard the solid crack of her partner slamming into the desert floor. Others had noticed as well; she heard a call for medical help and extraction over her radio, but it seemed well in the distance -- she sprinted for the crash site as fast as the augmented muscles of the suit could safely carry her.

She found him lying on his back, having tumbled down the sides of an arroyo. The right leg of his armor was fractured, and the force of the impact had torn off his leg beneath the knee. The life support system seemed to have malfunctioned; nothing was staunching the blood that soaked into the desert sand.

At first she thought he was completely motionless, but as she kneeled next to him his head twitched, and his eyes turned in her direction, focusing lazily. She flipped open the computer panel on his chest, below a cracked nametag that currently read "PITZE." As she watched, one of the other letters cut out. All the numbers that represented his vital signs were red; most were dropping steadily. He groaned weakly.

"It'll be okay," she muttered, trying to get the life support system back online; in the haze of adrenaline she found that her senses were impeccably clear but her memory of the suit's computer systems had fled from her. "They already called for casevac."

Philip -- "PITZ," the suit flickered fitfully -- groaned again. His lips moved faintly; she couldn't make out the sound until she leaned closer, her ears swiveling. "You knew..." he gasped.

"No," she swore urgently, and returned to the suit's computer with renewed focus. "I didn't."

"You knew," he repeated -- half-coughing the words. "You fucking bitch."

"I'm sorry," Julie whispered. "I swear I didn't..."

His lips moved, trembling, but she couldn't make anything out -- then, eyes still locked on her, he jerked once, and his lungs emptied in a rasping sigh. Nothing she tried on the suit elicited any further response.

The others from the platoon found her typing commands in increasingly aimless desperation, bent over the empty shell of a man whose suit, accurately if fatalistically, now referred to him only as "IT."

*

"Was there an inquiry as to what happened?"

"Random malfunction in the suit's thrust motivators. They said that it wouldn't have showed in the diagnostics -- the reboot was completely unrelated. At least, that was the official conclusion."

Victor nodded softly. "You weren't held responsible?"

"No. But it doesn't matter -- just like it doesn't really matter that I didn't actually kill you, either. It's the thought behind it." Indeed, Julie had long since decided that, regardless of what the board of inquiry had determined, Philip Spitzer's death was ethically her fault even if it was not practically so. There was no possible penance for this, aside from lingering guilt.

"You know, it's not really any of my business..." Ramirez's voice was gentle. "But it seems to me that people beat up on you enough without you doing it for them."

The dog simply shrugged. "It's not about beating up. It's about the things you do, and the consequences of the things you do."

"But you didn't really do anything. Look... Verne... or..." He paused. "What do you want people to call you?"

"Verne is fine," she said. "Or Julie."

"I thought your name was something different? It started with, ah... with an 'r,' I think."

He seemed to be making an earnest effort, so she swallowed her incredulity. "My non-human name is Runshana," she told him. "But people don't really use our clan-given names."

"Why not?"

"I think it..." Julie caught herself, because the truth was that she didn't really know. "I'm not certain."

"Runshana it is. I'm just Victor. You already call me that. Look, Runshana" -- his pronunciation was remarkably faithful -- "my advice is... ah... you carry a rifle. You will kill someone -- eventually. But there's no point in picking up that ruck before you have to."

It was some time before the dog spoke. "The last couple of days... every time I've tried to sleep, when I close my eyes I see those people on the rooftop. Or I... I think I can hear the sound of the Strix's guns firing, and suddenly I'm wide awake again."

"I know. That happens to everyone."

"Does it get easier?"

Victor's expression darkened; his youthful face aging before her eyes. "A little," was all he said. She considered how to phrase a follow-up question, and was almost ready when the ship's intercom clicked on. The alarm bells clanged steadily, a sound they had heard regularly -- and then five words that were completely new:

"This is not a drill. General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. Go up and forward on the starboard side; down and aft on the port side. An unidentified ship is approaching the task force at high speed. Defense grid, all zones secure gold emitters and go to Alert Level Caspian. Condition Zed will be set in four minutes."

They exchanged glances, and then scrambled quickly for the hatch.

*

The platoon's General Quarters station was simply the main area of their space. Usher performed a quick headcount -- they were missing only Dennis Scott -- and then called in to report their readiness.

The marines were not, strictly speaking, ready for anything in particular; from what Verne had gathered, the embarked troops' role chiefly involved staying out of the way. The 1MC chimed again, marking one minute to Condition Zed. They waited.

When the time had expired, the magnetic locks that kept the hatches open released, and with the heavy sound of a closing coffin the doors around them slammed shut. This was designed to prevent the loss of the ship if one of the sections were to suffer from decompression -- left unstated was the corollary that, for the marines in the Kirishima's underbelly, it also cut off any avenue of escape.

Now the lights dimmed, until all that remained visible were the strips along the wall that marked the exit path to the locked corridor, and the softly glowing life-support indicators they all wore above their nametags.

"God. Why the hell do they have to kill the lights?" She recognized Klaudia Scholz's voice, in the darkness. "It's like being in a tomb."

"They kill everything in the non-essential sections," Tomas Sedlacek said darkly. "Lights, the recirculators, communications equipment..."

"Yeah, but why?"

Klaudia had not bothered to comment on the notion that they were non-essential; nobody else did, either. "Saves on power, I guess," Tomas told her. "Need that for the sensors and stuff."

"Heat." That was Enzo Eklund's answer. "All those things make heat. You have to dump that. It raises the ship's infrared signature a bit, which increases our detection radius, but --"

Someone cut him off. "Oh, bullshit, doc. We're in space. We're so hot against the background killing life support isn't going to make any damned difference."

"But, Serhat," Enzo continued with a sharp emphasis. "The real point is anybody who goes after us at range is going to be hitting us with lasers. You know what laser combat's like, Serhat?"

"Fast?"

There were a few chuckles, but most people stayed quiet, listening for Eklund's answer. "Laser combat is two ships pumping energy into each other, and the loser is whoever cooks first. In Condition Zed, they turn off our support and disconnect us from the heatsinks. Maybe that only buys the captain a couple minutes, sure -- but maybe that's all it takes."

"And meanwhile we sit in the dark, and wait to die." Klaudia spoke for them all -- the soldiers, trained for combat, quiet and still in the artificial night. The indicators, glowing a soft green, gave the impression of looking on a sea of weary fireflies.

"Didn't Dennis say one of his friends was part of an RRTF that lost a corvette?" Verne couldn't place the speaker, whose voice was quiet with apprehension that, she had no doubt, would never be admitted to.

"That was me," Tomas said. "One of my buddies on the Coral Sea. He was part of the detail that went over for the recovery. Said everybody looked like they'd been freeze-dried. I hope it was fast."

"What happened?"

"The way my friend says it, some fast-attack boat popped up and hit 'em with a kinetic penetrator. At those speeds? Corvette armor doesn't even have a chance. It turned the air in the compartment where it hit into plasma, then buckled the bulkheads in the forward half of the ship. Decompressed all those sections before anybody could get protective gear on."

"Oh, shit." That gruff voice, at least, she recognized -- Oscar Baldetti, the zydeco musician. "Where was that? Carthage?"

"Naw, man. Right here."

"At least the aft bulkheads held," Klaudia pointed out. "Bet that crew was counting their lucky stars the reactor didn't go."

"Maybe." Sedlacek's voice had the quiet intensity of a child narrating a campfire story. "But who knows? The ship was maneuvering when they got hit -- orientation got all fucked up when it decompressed. Fleet command had to take the time to hack it -- needed to override the controls to shut it down."

"So?"

"So it got pushed out of position. Took 'em four days to get another ship into a rescue orbit. By that time..."

He didn't have to finish. They could imagine what it must've been like -- trapped in the dark, just as they were, while the air slowly ran out... even Verne, who considered herself immune to most human paranoia about death, shivered a little.

"At least here, each compartment has its own backup life support," Sedlacek said, to counter the mood that had settled in. "That's supposed to be good for at least a week."

"It is," Eklund agreed.

"See?"

"Of course, the non-essential compartments were meant for cargo. Emergency life support's only designed for four people; we're nearly thirty. So --"

"That's enough," Usher ordered, gently. "No use guessing."

"Sure, LT."

But without the morbid speculation there was little else to do. The temperature rose quickly in the enclosed space -- it was hot and oppressive; smothering. Ordinarily the dull noise of the climate-control fans faded into the background; its absence now was deafening. The air tasted stale -- only the lighted indicators on their nametags told them that they weren't suffocating.

There was no good way to keep track of the time. Verne tried to count the seconds. By the number ten she felt certain her timing was already off; by four hundred the exercise was no longer calming.

"Is the dog panting?"

Julie caught herself, swallowing nervously. "Sorry," she muttered. "I can't help it." And even then, consciously aware of their ears, tuned to her, she had to focus on keeping her breathing steady.

Then someone else started -- an exaggerated, hoarse sound -- and in a minute or so it sounded as though most of the platoon had joined in. The novelty wore off shortly, when the effort to mock her was outpaced by the unpleasantness of hyperventilation, but it briefly took the pressure off the waiting.

In the silence that followed they strained to feel any change in movement; to hear any sound. In the darkness their bodies began to lie to them, telling them what they wanted to feel -- so that when Ajibola asked sharply if they'd felt 'that' it took a moment to decide whether or not it had been a hallucination.

But they'd all felt it -- the sensation of rotational movement, with the floor lifting up below them. If it was fast enough to outpace the artificial gravity, the turn must've been quite abrupt, indeed.

"We're maneuvering," Sedlacek said. "If we're maneuvering there must be a threat. They're stingy with their fuel budget."

"They could just be taking some pressure off the gyros," McArdle suggested. That was true, too -- the ship controlled much of its rotation through massive flywheels, and the energy they accumulated had to be bled off, sometimes. Ordinarily it was too subtle to notice.

But they were not in the mood for rational explanations, anyway. "Why would they do that now?" someone asked. "That don't make sense. Do you think we're going evasive?"

"I think we are." Whether or not Sedlacek had really felt any additional movement was irrelevant -- now they were certain they could feel it too. They tensed up, waiting for the shudder of a kinetic penetrator hitting the ship, or an explosion, or a frantic voice over the 1MC telling them to brace for impact.

Instead, two minutes later, the lights came back on. The bells sounded on the intercom again: "Now hear this: all hands, secure from General Quarters. Now set Condition Three; defense grids, all zones go to Alert Level Baikal. Condition Yoke is set forward of frame two-six-zero."

The fans started up again, and Verne's ears caught the sound of the hatchways unlocking. The platoon exchanged glances; they looked exhausted, faces streaked with sweat -- turning like sunflowers to the open hatchway, with its currents of fresh air.

"Well, at least that's done with." The voice concealed the relief of its speaker poorly.

"Right," McArdle said. "Crisis? What crisis?"

*

The disruption interrupted their routine; the computers that ran the simulated environments had been shut down abruptly, and required most of the rest of the afternoon to reinitialize. It was, therefore, not until the following day that Verne had the opportunity to try out some of the changes she had been making to her C&S equipment.

Gratifyingly, they seemed to be working -- only experience in the real world would demonstrate it for certain, but McArdle had programmed hidden ambushers throughout the virtual city, and none escaped her scrutiny. Focusing on the technical details helped avoid any troublesome meditation; she thought in terms of signal to noise ratios and decibels, and in this way controlled her otherwise wavering mood.

She was eating lunch, after the training exercises, when Chris poked his head into her bunk and told her that the lieutenant wanted to see her. Verne set aside her tray -- the MRE was not terribly compelling, anyhow -- and padded silently down the corridor to his office.

Usher periodically engaged her in conversation outside the daily activities of the platoon -- this was, she suspected, a consequence of his own sense of being an outsider, which he had alluded to on occasion. When she leaned in through the hatch, he gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk. "Have a seat, private."

She nodded, and took it carefully. "How can I help you, sir?"

"I just wanted to see how things were going for you -- McArdle says you've been trying some modifications to some of your gear? He made it sound like we could pull a pretty good increase in sensor acuity, next time out. Actually, he made it sound like the training's been going very well -- squad gunners are getting PSS-30s for the Cerberus. There was a seminar yesterday, for training. Make sure the autolink is configured before the next drop."

"Yes, sir. As far as my sensors go, it's hard to know exactly before we actually deploy. But for certain parameters, it's good for removing some of the guesswork."

The man's grunting laugh seemed more fatalistic than anything else. "Well, we take what we get. We're so damned outnumbered down there... it all comes down to the little advantages, private; it's all we've got. I put us in for a guard mission tomorrow -- urban ops again. Very low TC, so take the opportunity to test out your new ideas. An' if they work, put 'em in the company auction pool. See if anybody bites, you know?"

"Yes, sir."

"I was going to say that you could always use the money, but I don't actually know what you spend your paycheck on. I mean," he shook his head quickly, "it's none of my business -- wasn't trying to say otherwise. I was just curious."

"Water, mostly. For showers, and things like that. I invest most of it, though... the thing about being a dog is that you can't really trust anybody for your retirement. I want to make sure I can pay for it. I haven't decided yet, but I might also buy a promotion."

"Oh? Good, good." Usher leaned back, his grey eyes closing and his hands behind his head. When he put them together, she noticed, it was always with the right one on the bottom, concealing his tattoo. "How's the platoon treating you, private? Do you feel like you're fitting in a bit more? People treating you okay?"

"Many of them, sir."

He chuckled. "Yeah? Victor Ramirez said he wanted to talk to you. I told him it was his funeral -- I wasn't sure it was such a hot idea. But he seemed insistent."

"He came to talk to me yesterday. We had a good conversation, sir. Until the alert interrupted us."

"Heh." The short sound was more a spoken word than proper laughter. "You know what that was about, private?"

"No, sir."

Usher opened his eyes, if for no other reason than to roll them. "Some ketch came barreling in from the outer system with a load of VIPs. Didn't file a flight plan, of course, because hey -- why would you? You're a VIP, after all; that's the point. So the sensors picked up these fucking idiots on a CBDR course headed straight for the RRTF and, of course, not monitoring the military channel because some knucklehead gave the wrong frequency on the system NOTAM that was telling everybody to listen."

"What happened, sir?"

"The Kaskara painted them with a half-terawatt warning shot. Burned out all their sensors -- probably a couple pairs of eyes, too, if they were doing the ordinary stupid thing, and coming in with the window shields up to enjoy the view. Anyway, that got somebody's attention. From what I hear, the ship's too big to take down in a lighter, so they'll have to have somebody repair them in orbit. So much for trying to save some time, yeah?"

The dog nodded slowly. "So much, sir, yes. At least it ended without explosions, though -- on both sides. That's a good thing, right?"

"Sort of."

"Sir?"

His eyes still open, Usher's gaze wandered over the low, featureless ceiling. Finally he sighed. "This whole thing's a bad sign -- it's dangerous, private. That's what I'm a little worried about. Nobody's acting -- just reacting -- and when it gets like that it's hard to know what's going to happen next. I don't think the path to armageddon has ever been a straight line. It's a kaleidoscope -- chaotic, always changing, and everybody who looks at it sees something different. You thought about that, private?"

"Out of my pay grade, sir," she echoed his earlier sentiment.

"It shouldn't be," he said, still looking upwards. "You know what this is? What's happened? Let me tell you. A beleaguered government, facing an insurrection funded by off-world companies, thinks that the best way to solve this problem is through diplomacy. They can't keep the peace by themselves, so they hire a PMC to come in and keep things calm while they negotiate a settlement with their unhappy citizens. That sound about right?"

Well, it was what the government said, anyway. "I suppose that's accurate, sir, yes."

Usher nodded. His thinning hair scuffed against the back of his hands with the rustle of dry leaves. "But let me also tell you: a government that has grown fat, and happy, and lazy on the backs of its western mineral-workers discovers that they've finally had enough. And they realize that even if they aren't strong enough to take them on, they can contract some mercenaries to take care of their little problem once and for all, and teach a a lesson to anyone stupid enough to think they actually had a voice in the government. How does that sound?"

"Somewhat more cynical, sir."

He laughed. "Isn't it? I think, myself, that it's somewhere in between. But it's hard to know for sure. The government has declared martial law -- is that an attempt to keep civilians safe while they pursue negotiations? That's what they think. Or is it the first step in bringing in the big guns to slaughter their troublesome rebels? Because that's what the separatists think. And the thing is, how do you respond to that if you're one of the separatists? If it's the former, you can come to the table and talk in good faith. If it's the latter, maybe you start thinking about where to place those surface to air missiles you bought."

As a rule, Julie tried to avoid troubling herself with human politics because it tended to be complex, and sectarian, and it was easy to make the wrong choice when identifying with one side or another. "I see what you mean when you say it's dangerous," she said, which was the most neutral position she could think to take. "Although I don't know what that really means for us, sir."

"No, of course not. Neither do I," he admitted, and then straightened up again. "'Theirs not to make reply,' and all that."

"Sir?"

"An old, old poem, from Earth. 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' -- about a military operation that went terribly wrong because someone didn't understand their orders, and nobody knew enough to stop them. A lesson on the perils of not having enough information, I guess -- or of using the information you have available in a bad way. I --"

The phone on his desk came to life with a dull, mournful chime. Usher frowned at it for a second or two, and then pulled it from its mount.

"This is Usher," he said cautiously. "What? No, sir, we can't. We're already scheduled for a drop. We're -- no, I just said we're already scheduled, sir. We're out of rotation. We -- yes?" He listened, and as Verne watched he grew very still. "I see. How long do we have, sir? Very well. Yes. Yes. Uh, thank you, sir. Understood." He replaced the phone with meticulous precision, and his hand rested for a long time on the smooth metal.

"Is everything alright?"

His eyes flicked to her for a moment; then he sighed, heavily. "Well, get your stuff together. We've got a briefing in half an hour." Then he stood, and she followed him out and into the commons area of the barracks. "Listen up!" he said; she joined the other marines to pay close attention. "We've been removed from our earlier assignment and given special tasking. Somebody find Fran and tell her we have a briefing in half an hour. Bourne, Haruki -- I need a general readiness assessment. Green slips on my desk in an hour."

"Yes, sir," they dutifully answered.

"Squad leaders, check your equipment and go over your wish lists. The operation is threat coefficient two, with an open spending ceiling. The company card's unlocked for this one, guys; this here's your chance to pick up some new toys. Mayer, are you still friends with the armorer?"

"Sir?"

Usher narrowed his eyes at the sergeant, putting a crisp edge on his words. "Sergeant Bourne, are you still fucking Petty Officer Morales?"

"Oh. Uh, yes sir," Mayer confirmed, lifting his voice above the nervous laughter of the gathered men.

"Warn her we'll be placing a large order in a couple hours for immediate fulfillment. McArdle, Private Verne: let's go."

*

There were fewer people in the briefing than before; Argus Quezada's platoon was absent, and this fact weighed on those who remained heavily. Their conversation was quiet and subdued, and when Captain Freeman entered they eyed him warily, like trapped beasts.

"Thank you for reporting here on such short notice," he said. "I know that Ray, you and Jacey were already booked, so I apologize for having to screw up your plans. If it's any consolation, the new op we've been given is classified as high priority, so the money's good, at least." He nodded to a slender man standing next to him, whose suit was so closely fitted that it almost seemed to predict, rather than accompany, his movements. "This is Ilari Korba, our liaison from Jefferson. He'll explain a bit more."

Freeman stepped away from the podium, and the well-dressed Ilari took his place. "First of all, let me say how grateful we on Jefferson are to have your support in these difficult times. Without it, I daresay we wouldn't be nearly as able to respond to the threats that our country currently faces. I think you all are heroes, plain and simple."

Quiet grumbling greeted him -- mumbled 'thanks' that were given with the same sincerity as the original praise. However happy Jefferson was to have the mercenaries around to do their dirty work, their happiness had yet to take any non-monetary form.

Perhaps realizing the chilly reception, Ilari started again. "The situation has, I have to admit, become increasingly precipitous over the past two weeks. A series of terrorist attacks has killed at least fifty people -- most of them civilians. We've also seen disruptions to pipelines and railways, as well as the threat -- as yet unrealized -- of a general strike. Obviously this represents a grave threat to the stability of the sovereign Jefferson government."

"Can you elaborate on your military response?" Freeman prodded gently. Nobody cared about the political science.

"Of course. We've stepped up patrols and activated the Guard, but we've yet to see a decline in either protest activity or in attacks on the military infrastructure. The separatists are striking with increasingly heavy weaponry, which we have cause to believe was procured off-world and smuggled to the planet by way of traders aligned with foreign governments."

"Usher's discovery of advanced weaponry that appeared to be brand-new lends some credibility to this position," Freeman added. "We're still trying to analyze the source of the rockets, but it's pretty clear they didn't just buy them from a street merchant."

Ilari nodded briskly. "Correct. So this is the preeminent issue we have to deal with. Unfortunately, to be perfectly frank we have certain difficulties in this sphere. In particular, our control in the western parts of the continent is, right now, limited to the urban areas. In the countryside, reactionary elements are able to operate with effective impunity."

McArdle leaned over to catch Usher's attention. "They want us back in the jungle," he whispered. "So much for urban ops." Usher sighed quietly.

"Our intelligence tells us that these criminals have a habit of landing in the countryside -- where their weapons caches are -- then funneling it into the cities at the last minute. Search operations in the cities have consistently turned up nothing. Fortunately, we finally have an answer -- we owe you for that as well. We've identified what we believe to be a transshipment point, a route that runs on the roads that parallel the Tubman River. If we shut that down, we could potentially disrupt weapons flow into all cities south of the Cairo Mountains -- or, at least, force them to find a new route, and now we know what we're looking for. You brave men and women will be instrumental in helping to secure the peace and stability of the entire continent."

"In a less flowery way," Freeman said, and took the podium back. "We're going to hit that checkpoint, take anyone we find there prisoner, and destroy any infrastructure we can positively associate with it. We have our first opportunity tomorrow morning. We've received reports that a ship carrying powerful antimateriel weaponry landed earlier today, and a convoy is being assembled to transport them from the landing site down to cells in Lincoln Township. They'll get their directions and local guides from the checkpoint and move onwards. So we know the area will be manned, and we know we have a high-value target to go after."

Somebody from Mackey's platoon raised a hand. "What does this checkpoint look like, sir?"

"It's a few buildings -- some improvised pillboxes and guard towers, really. It's in a rocky area, so they've excavated a couple places to stash fixed guns, we think. There's enough cover they wouldn't even really need that. Beyond that, the approach is guarded by a low-intensity monitoring network. Nothing too serious, but we'll take that down, too. It'll look good for the press to show a pile of captured illegal sensors."

"It's not a low-intensity network," Ilari protested. "Some of it shows distinct Kingdom signatures. I think we should assume that the Triads were involved in setting it up."

Freeman shot him a sideways look, and addressed the men of the company rather than the government's representative. "The network, judging by the passive radiation we've been able to slurp up, looks like off the shelf components connected with software written by one of the monarchy's zaibatsus. I don't know that I would call it particularly high-quality or particularly damning, but that's something that intel guys will have to decide."

"So what are we going to do?" Hui Hsiung asked, shrugging her shoulders questioningly. "The ops brief said this was going to be intense."

"It's intense in terms of its implications," Freeman offered. "The operation itself is relatively simple. The checkpoint is located roughly here... about fifteen kilometers past where the Dragon's Back flows into the Tubman River. There's a paved road that runs along the western bank of that river, and the checkpoint appears to be linked directly to that road. That road is also where we expect to find the convoy, which will be unmarked, civilian-grade gravidynes."

As he spoke, the large holographic display behind him lit up. The terrain was sharply defined, with steep, craggy cliffs to either side of the river. Some years before the river had two channels, producing a slightly raised island in the middle of the valley; Freeman highlighted a spot in the middle of this island when he spoke of the checkpoint.

"We're committing the entire company to this operation, minus of course Lieutenant Quezada's platoon, which is still out of action. Lieutenant Hsiung, you'll land to the north with Lieutenant Mackey's support, and move southward to secure the checkpoint. Usher, you'll land to the south and mop up anything that Hui and Jacey push towards you. It should be relatively simple, all things considered. But, as I said, CODA views this as important, so we're opening the checkbook up to make things easier. Are there any questions?"

There was at least one glaring absence in the briefing; Mackey hit on it first. "What's the strength and disposition of the opposition forces in the area?"

Freeman and Ilari Korba exchanged glances. "Our intel suggests that they are starting to organize in a more regimented military capacity. Right now, their actual fighting strength is limited -- I would say they're operating at platoon strength, at best. Thermal signatures suggest maybe a squad of people at the checkpoint proper. Other radiation tends to agree."

Julie tapped Usher's shoulder lightly. "Look at all those little canyons to either side of the river valley, sir. Active pinging won't show you much there. It'd be trivial to camouflage your numbers."

"Sir," Usher said. "The valley walls and the plateaus to either side look seriously unfriendly. You could put a lot of bad guys there and we wouldn't know until it was too late." He didn't add: and they're already shooting at us.

"I agree that the conditions aren't ideal, but HUMINT from the Jefferson Bureau of Domestic Intelligence tells us that the Jefferson terrorists don't have sufficient numbers or organization to present an operational threat. However, to allay potential concerns CODA has attached additional support assets to the drop. We have four elements of Intruders assigned to us. Two, call signs Thresher and Tachi, will cover your southern approach, Usher; the others, call signs Stingray and Tiger, are tasked to the northern operation. To coordinate efforts, two Fleet forward air controllers will be attached to us -- one to your platoon, and one to Mackey's."

The more junior officers exchanged glances. "Ah, sir," Jacqueline Mackey asked hesitantly. "If this operation is so uncomplicated, why the TC 2 category and why are we at double strength on air support? Is there anything that would suggest fixed defenses or anything that would need Intruders to take out?"

"It's for effect," Ilari Korba spoke up. "And to demonstrate our commitment and support for your valuable operations in our area. That's why we've volunteered to cover the fuel and any munitions costs of the air support. We want you to know that we have your backs in this."

"Right," Freeman nodded, although he looked slightly uncomfortable. "There's no real indication that I've been given that any of the air assets are actually going to need to be used. But we have them available, so in the absolute worst-case scenarios we'll be able to deal with anything."

Usher coughed. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Freeman's head turned involuntarily in Korba's direction; then he shook it, eyes narrowing. "You may not. If anybody has specific operational questions, please raise them now. Otherwise, I want plans of action and readiness reports before 2100. Drop is at 0700 ship's time tomorrow."

*

Usher's hands gripped the small computer on which the mission map was displayed tightly; Verne could hear the plastic starting to creak in his grasp. "Will you be ready for the operation, chief?" he asked Fran softly. "Upgrades to your ship are done?"

"Yeah." Her voice, too, was solemn. "Got everything calibrated and loaded. Shouldn't be any problems, that I can see."

"Good." Usher stabbed at the computer a few times, cycling through different views so aimlessly that Verne knew he wasn't really focused on the display. "That's good," he repeated.

"Sir," James McArdle spoke cautiously. "I don't want to question the authority, the military competence, or even the goodwill of our benevolent employers... But this looks an awful lot like an ambush."

"That's because it is," the lieutenant muttered. "You know it, and I know it. Freeman knows it. I'm sure that skinny little government fuck he was with knew it. You think Colonel Cho signed off on this mission? If she did it was only because she didn't have a choice. Christ."

Verne had not seen the lieutenant so dejected; her ears flattened out, and she found her stance becoming more submissive by instinct. "We have enough information about the battlefield, sir, we... ought to be able to keep surprises to a minimum, I hope."

"They still have the home court advantage." He turned, and caught her questioning look. "They know we're coming, and they have the kind of knowledge you get from living somewhere for two centuries. All our ground-penetrating radar isn't going to help with that one."

"What I don't get is the why," Fran shook her head. "Everyone can tell this stinks. What's going on?"

Lieutenant Usher looked at her blankly. "You can't see it? The government's getting worried. Whether they want to bring the rebels to the table or not, they don't have any leverage over them at all without us. But we're not committed right now. I mean, piecemeal operations between us and the 26th? Little police actions? You heard their talking puppet -- the intensity of the attacks is only going up. They need us on the ground and getting serious."

"So why not ask?"

"Because we'd say 'no,' Jim. This was supposed to be easy for us -- we don't have the resources to prosecute a major insurrection here at the same time we're getting ground down at Carthago and the rim. We're losing those wars, guys. Jefferson was supposed to be a way to fill our coffers and get some breathing room. If they need to put another battalion down, that means going for the reserves -- and we don't have many of those left."

McArdle took his irritation out on the floor, kicking his booted foot into it sharply. "So they're forcing us to confront the separatists head-on?"

"Well. They were hoping that we'd commit in force after Quezada's Strix went down. But CODA's board chalked that up to an accident, so we were looking at going back to a more low-intensity footing. Jefferson needs us to get more serious -- what better way to do that than to sacrifice a platoon or two in open combat? Freeman's company's already taken a few hits -- might as well just knock it out altogether, right? So the battalion's at three-quarters' strength for a bit -- who cares? CODA will reinforce the whole thing. Maybe even convert it from a rapid-reaction task force to a serious deployment."

"You're a cynic," Horvat shook her head, but her heart wasn't in the accusation. "Is third platoon the sacrificial lamb?"

"I think it's Hsiung, honestly. Her quarterly review wasn't so good and the platoon has definitely underperformed. If you look at the mission plan, Mackey's heavy weapons platoon actually lands a half-kilometer behind Hsiung. Supposed to provide cover and help them establish a firebase at the checkpoint site -- just in case, of course. I suspect they'll get pinned down, and we'll get pinned down, and Hsiung will get rolled up. I just -- fuck!" he growled, and lifted his knee to snap the computer in half across it.

It was a rare outburst; the three looked at him with concern. "LT?"

Usher looked at the jagged edges of the broken computer. A thin line of red snaked down his wrist from where a bit of plastic shrapnel had nicked him. "I just wish they'd be honest," he told them quietly. "That's all."

McArdle nodded. "Escalate to the colonel?"

"I don't think that would help." The anger was completely gone from his voice; he sounded weary, and a little resigned. "We've got this mission straight from Jefferson. We can't turn it down without voiding the contract. Freeman has to know that. Cho, too. Nobody likes it, but..." He made a strangled, choking sound that it took them all a moment to identify as a laugh.

"What's so funny, boss?" McArdle's brow was furrowed -- as if he was trying to determine whether or not the lieutenant had finally gone over the edge.

"Ah, just something I was telling Private Verne about, a couple hours ago. An old human poem, about the cavalry being sent into certain death. "Was there a man dismayed? Not, though the soldier knew someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply; theirs not to reason why -- theirs but to do, and die." His voice had dropped to something guttural and bitter. "All in the valley of death rode the six hundred."

"Sounds like somebody knew CODA, yeah," the sergeant agreed.

"It dates from the nineteenth century," Usher corrected, and offered a smile that was more a grimace. "What -- you think fucking over your soldiers is anything new? Oldest story in the book." He seemed ready to continue, but then checked his cynicism, biting his lip. "Not that it matters. We can't do anything. Fran, you'll be fine, at least. Private Verne, I want you to go over the approach -- find every damned hiding place and tell me what to expect. Think like a rebel, if you can, and give me a report by the evening. As much detail as you can manage."

"Yes, sir," she nodded crisply.

"Jim... hell, I dunno, Jim. Let's see if we can't come up with a way to pull our part of the whole damned thing out of the fire, even if Freeman can't. Right?"

"Right."

"Then we'll go over the proposal we were given and see what can be salvaged. It'll keep our mind off things, at least," he chuckled mirthlessly. They were back at the entrance to the platoon's barracks; Usher stopped, and fixed McArdle in grey eyes that seemed darkly clouded. "But there's something else you need to do first. I need you to talk to the squad leaders. Don't get 'em too worried or worked up, because they can't change anything. But..." He trailed off, and then sighed helplessly. "Make sure they know they need to have their affairs in order."

*

Usher's suggestion that preparing for the drop would help keep their minds off it proved to be counterintuitively accurate; Julie found an unoccupied corner of the barracks and began sorting through maps of the operational area, scanning them contour by contour.

Whether or not the lieutenant actually believed that she was capable of "thinking like a rebel," it was easy enough to see where the slopes and craggy lines of the river canyons made for natural hiding points -- and, from this assessment, to see which of these hiding points looked set to conceal snipers or heavy weaponry.

Her conclusions were not terribly optimistic. There were two dozen places where people could be hiding, and half of those would prevent effective surveillance until the platoon was nearly in the line of fire. The Strix could help, to a degree, but if Usher's suspicions were correct and the separatists were setting up an ambush Verne was not convinced even Fran would be able to find anything. Any amateur, given sufficient time, could take measures to conceal themselves from airborne observation.

As the day wore on into ship's evening, the marines began to internalize the prospects of the mission -- the conversation slowed, and when the work was done they seemed more inclined to quiet reflection than anything else. Dinner was taken in near silence.

She handed over her analysis to McArdle and Usher just after dinner, which she skipped; the two had covered the lieutenant's desk with an array of computers bearing maps and plans of operation, and the stains that ringed Usher's coffee cup suggested it had seen heavy use. Neither said anything, at her approach; only nodded in acknowledgment of the tablet she added to the pile.

To stave off the need for reflection she found another hour or so of busywork -- making sure that her C&S computers were properly synchronized to the platoon's sensors and the new scanning equipment being attached to the Cerberus machine guns took a bit, and she saw that even those crews were happy for the distraction.

"The hardest part," Chris said -- sitting in his bunk, folded like a geisha. "is the waiting. That's the problem with being imaginative creatures, pup."

"What do you mean?"

"When we can't see something clearly we tend to imagine. We tend to project our... our fears, and our expectations, and our beliefs. It's the only thing we know how to do -- we can't cope with uncertainty."

"You mean, like the general quarters drill a couple days ago?"

He nodded. "Exactly. When it's dark like that, you can think practically anything you want is happening, I suppose. The future's even worse. It's a chaotic system. You know?" He held up a small, spherical battery cell. "What happens when I let go of this?"

"Well, it should fall to the deck, right?"

"Sure. So you can predict the future that far. What sound will it make? Where will it roll, after it falls? If I don't pick it up, who will? What will they do with it?"

"I guess I don't really know."

"No," Chris smiled slightly. "Nobody does. It's a great unknown. For as long as we've known about the future, people have wanted to be able to predict it. It's madness, pup. You know, some cultures describe the future as being 'in front' of us -- because if we're walking forward, it's the part we haven't gotten to yet. Some cultures describe it as being 'behind us' -- because it's the part we can't see."

Like most reshaped creatures, Verne's own sense of time was largely abstract. She had a decent sense of the present, and the recent past, but taking the effort to put everything in order had not come naturally.

Independent study, during her final years at IBM, had helped -- but most of her life before that was a jumble of memories stripped of any sense of when, and she still had difficulty conceiving of the future as anything more than a theoretical construct. "It's interesting, though," she mused aloud. "The future tense, in your language, is all about will. It is as though you think that it's determined entirely by volition."

"Someone's volition, sure. God, maybe. It's not like that in your language?"

"Dogspeak isn't good with time. There's a known past tense, and an unknown past tense -- but the known tense is very formal. I wouldn't use it. Similarly, there's a future tense and a future conditional tense -- but we only ever speak in the conditional. Who knows what's destined to happen, anyway?"

"Well, there's a certain honesty to that, if nothing else. Like I said, us humans, we were brought up differently. If we had that kind of philosophy, maybe we'd spend less time fretting and more time enjoying the moment. Instead -- like right now -- we don't know what tomorrow will be like, so we imagine the worst."

"I'm not free of that sort of apprehension, myself," the dog admitted quietly. "It's hard to ignore how edgy everyone feels."

"Well. My squad leader told us all to check on our contingency papers and make sure everything was up to date. He's never done that before. The mission itself... ah, it's just all the things that don't add up. But we can't change it now, right? So we're just being irrational."

Irrational or not, Verne was unable to clear her head, and after the platoon went to bed she lay atop the sheets quietly. Her night vision was better than a human's; the dim, eerie light was just enough to give slight form to the supports of the bunk above her. They were dark -- straight, sharp metal slats that looked, increasingly, like the bars of a jail cell.

The claustrophobia she felt was not quite physical -- not as though the world itself was closing in, but rather as though the realm of possibilities was constricting by degrees. The effort it took to keep her breathing controlled left her mind alert and racing.

How did the humans deal with this? Drink, she supposed. Or more physical pursuits -- she recalled Chris explaining the way she'd found Victor and Tomas, in the maintenance room. Right before a drop, everybody's on edge -- so you put that nervous energy to good use and get some endorphins out of it. No harm, no foul...

She was definitely on edge. The thought of physical contact began to seem increasingly desirable until she was almost craving it -- not even anything carnal, just the warmth of another body close to her. In the past, for various reasons, she had ignored these impulses -- because her corporate masters had warned her against them, because there were no suitable partners; because she considered them too animalistic.

But now... Julie swallowed thickly, and then decided that it couldn't hurt. In any case, perhaps Chris felt the same way. Quietly, she rolled from her bunk -- the fur on her feet deadening the sound of her footsteps as she padded over to where Chris lay. Motionless.

Julie prodded his side lightly, but he didn't stir. His breathing was deep, and regular, and a closer inspection revealed, in his right hand, the edge of a bottle of the sedatives they had issued by McArdle to help them rest. Well, she supposed that was another way of dealing with the stress.

Not for her -- at the infirmary, nobody had been able to decide whether or not the medicine would react with her system, and erring on the side of caution they had declined to give her any. She'd considered spending some of her paycheck on similar narcotics intended for her kind, but the thought seemed slightly unseemly -- and it was too late for that, anyway.

A circuit of the barracks suggested that either the platoon had recently gotten much better at unaided sleep or the drugs had been a popular option -- a few bunks were empty, but she found most of the marines deep in slumber, faces slack and peaceful. She sat at the edge of her bed, frowning.

She had built the prospect of it up in her mind, and its absence now left her feeling rather more dejected. Her ears wilted, and her mind wandered through other options, discarding them one by one. Then, with a raised eyebrow, she glanced sideways in the direction of the hatch to the outside.

Clinically, she could imagine what the outcome of her quest was liable to be; there was no great reason to fear it. It was, after all, only sex; in bits of downtime, she had furtively gone through the medical texts in the ship's library to see if there was any note of what to expect -- the medical texts and, on occasion, the novels that she knew Fran Horvat considered to be a guilty pleasure. Their covers were dreamily illustrated and always seemed slightly out of focus, depicting unlikely couples embracing in exotic locations. Like the medical books they held nothing of real interest -- but she could guess at how the subject matter might translate to her life, and conclude that the corporation's warnings had been self-serving and inaccurate.

She tried to figure out how to introduce the subject -- some pithy line of dialogue that would communicate her intentions without seeming desperate or naive. Maybe she could seem like she knew what she was talking about. Maybe she might even manage to seem like she had completely taken charge of her life, for once.

And maybe it wouldn't matter, anyway. Perhaps nothing would come of it. Who, after all, knew what was destined to happen? She smiled thinly and pressed the button that marked the doorbell. A few seconds later, the hatchway opened.

"Runshana?" Forster looked at her blearily, his eyes not quite focused.

Now her ears pinned back. "Did I wake you up?"

"Sort of," he mumbled. "But I don't mind." He took a deep breath and blinked a few times, clearing his head. "What brings you up here? Is everything okay?"

Now all the carefully planned dialogue seemed trite and awkward. She frowned, and settled on the truth. "There's a drop tomorrow, and I'm nervous, and I was hoping for some company."

The shepherd's dark eyebrows arched; then, with a sympathetic smile, he stepped back from the hatchway to let her in, closing the door behind her. "I'd heard there was a drop planned -- I guess they don't have any spending checks on it, so... lot of work in the accounting department. Big op?"

Julie shrugged. "Big enough. A few people are really worried, and a lot of people are worried a little bit, and I don't know what to expect. It's the first time they're sending us in expecting combat."

"You think it'll be dangerous?"

"I think it could be," she admitted. "And if it is, then I... I... either way I haven't been able to take my mind off it, and I couldn't sleep, and nobody else was awake 'cause they all took their sedatives, and I've never seen them do that before either, and..."

She had trailed off; Forster frowned, and patted the edge of his mattress -- as a civilian, and evidently monied, it was quite a bit more comfortable than her own. Julie took a careful seat, and when the other dog joined her she leaned against him heavily. "You don't sound... afraid, I guess?"

"Tense," she clarified. "I was hoping I could find some way to calm down and get a bit of rest, before tomorrow."

"Fair enough," the dog nodded. He draped an arm over her, and she snuggled into his chest. He had thick fur, dark and richly colored; he was not wearing anything above the waist, and her fingers trailed through his pelt contemplatively. "What did you want to talk about?" he finally asked, to break the silence.

Julie leaned back, and tilted her head at him. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm not sure I even wanted to talk about anything."

"Oh?" Forster blinked, and his face darkened -- trying to determine whether or not the implications he perceived were actually there. "Then what did you want to do?"

Her nerves were starting to come back; she set them aside as consciously as she could, and leaned up to give the shepherd's muzzle a cautious lick. A moment later he repaid the gesture; his tongue was warm, and slightly ticklish as it brushed over her sensitive whiskers.

It was a remarkably comforting sensation. His strong body was warm and soft beneath her paws, and every time she inhaled she caught the shepherd's scent, which had soaked into every corner of his small quarters. She did not, in general, find the odor of human beings to be especially pleasant; Forster had the smell of a good friend, and its presence was reassuring.

She pressed herself closer to the dog, and he didn't protest when she reclined away from him, resting on her side. Instead he joined her, swinging his thickly furred legs up and onto the bed, and his arms found their way around her back. She buried her muzzle in his neck, snuffling warmly, and presently she felt careful teeth at the rim of her ear. He nibbled gently, and when her ears flicked by reflex he gave a soft, knowing chuckle.

"Ah, Runshana. Hakhalunan hakhalka ash dhulcheka."

Julie felt herself blushing, and nudged her nose deeper into his fur. "English," she said, her voice muffled.

"Apologies," he murmured. "I got... distracted." He bit her ear tenderly, holding her in place while his big paws smoothed the fur beneath the loose-fitting tunic she wore off-duty. Then they kept going, down past her hips to where the garment ended, and when they moved upwards again they pulled the cloth along, too.

She was not so encumbered; pressed tightly to the dog, feeling his chest rise and fall almost in time to her own breathing, she could let her paws glide over the fur of his back. It felt good, running between the smooth pads of her fingers, and from the pleased sigh the shepherd let escape into her ear she gathered he felt more or less the same.

Then he leaned back, using his paws to push her away; she heard someone whine in protest, and it took a moment to realize that it was her -- trying to curl up against the shepherd again. He snickered, holding her a few centimeters away from him with one arm as his paw pulled her tunic up. "It's this, Rushana, or I cut it off with my claws..."

When the shirt was gone, the bone-white fur of her chest glowed, for a moment, in the soft light of the cabin -- then vanished, as she flattened herself to the shepherd's frame once again. He growled appreciatively; his paws stroked her sides, along the edge where the white met the bluish grey that covered the rest of her body.

Something in the strength of his embrace and the heat of his breath along her ear made Julie feel giddy -- excited, tense like a pup. Her heavy tail thudded sharply against the bed -- then wagged faster, when Forster gripped her still-clothed rear in his two paws, giving a firm squeeze. "Hakhana," she breathed into the fur of his neck. "Do that again..."

He obliged with a grunting chuckle, and then let go, sliding his paw between them to unclasp her dark trousers. He undid them carefully -- even in his ardor he was a dog, still, and sensitive to the tendency that fur had to get caught up in zippers. But not this time -- this time there was no resistance, and he worked her pants down her leg until she could wriggle from them without much effort.

Forster muttered something into her ear -- in Nakath, she thought, her orders to the contrary, but it had been difficult to make out. And perhaps it did not matter -- his voice was dark and rich, and just the sound of it sent a little shiver down her spine. That seemed to be all the encouragement he needed to feel about for her knickers, pushing them off to join her pants on the floor of the little room.

Now that she was completely naked before the shepherd a bit of apprehension sparked a few protests in her mind. Hold on, she thought dimly. It's my first time and I... I... He was moving with a great deal more sureness, now, his paw sliding between her thighs to spread them apart. And she did -- because she knew that if she were left to lead, then nothing would happen at all.

Still, she draw a short, gasping breath when his finger slid over her sex. There was no resistance to its passage; she had not really grasped how aroused she truly was until she felt the firm, smooth pad gliding over her. He did this a few more times; she gasped at each, and just as her breath started to escape her, in a wavering sigh, he pushed his finger all the way into her, and her shivering moan became throaty and full.

The shepherd answered her in a reassuring growl, pulling his paw back and then sliding in to the knuckle again. And again. And again, this time adding another finger. She squeezed around him instinctively -- already so wet that the questing digits slid easily back and forth as they pistoned within her. She heard the rustle of fabric, and the deepening purr of the other dog next to her.

Julie was starting to quiver -- all whimpers and pleased moans -- when the feeling vanished suddenly. His fingers were gone, and his teeth at her lightly folded ear had disappeared as well. She blinked in surprise, and started to try finding her voice again; then his paw was at her shoulder, and she rolled pliantly onto her back. She tilted her head, looking up at him curiously.

He leaned down, giving her nose a playful nip, and she felt the pressure of his foot along her calf. Her legs parted further, gamely -- she knew, more or less, what was happening -- but when something firm, and slicker than his fingers had been, pressed against her lips her breath caught, and for the briefest moment she wondered if she was afraid.

Forster didn't give her time to dwell on this, or to let nervousness get the better of her. He rocked his hips forward, and she felt him push deep inside her, all the way in, until his crotch was nestled right against her own. His lips were drawn back in a canine snarl, and he had groaned with his first thrust -- but it was that fullness she dwelt on, the feeling of his thick, smooth maleness buried within her.

It was not what she had feared -- nor even what she had expected. It felt good -- so pleasurable that, a few seconds later when he started to pull away, she whimpered again, aching for him not to, just to stay there. When he rocked into her once more, sliding in to the hilt, she wrapped her arms around his upper back and hugged him desperately.

His movements were slow, at first, but did nothing to hide the power of his muscular body. He bucked his hips smoothly, taking her in deep strokes that left her panting raggedly beneath him. When she moaned to him, and her dull claws gripped at his shoulders, the shepherd gasped, and started to move faster.

Before long his pace was quick, and urgent; his back arched, pushing his nose against the base of her ear so that she could hear every strained pant of his hot breath. His movements, in their need, might almost have been violent -- save for the growing sparks of pleasure they were forcing from her.

This was nothing like the measured, calm philosopher, or the brotherly figure who had held her, after the disastrous mission in Lincoln City. Forster's coupling had become wild, and he seemed to growing bigger with each deep, grinding thrust. It was quick, and heated, and inarguably thrilling. She cried out, and he licked blindly at her ear in answer.

The pressure that had been building gave way like an overburdened bridge, tumbling down into a current of rushing pleasure that consumed her in a swift torrent. She wanted to howl with it -- only a titanic force of effort stilled her, but even so she whined like a dog as she squirmed blissfully beneath the shepherd.

He slowed for a moment or two, but by the time she had regained most of her faculties his thrusting had begun again, in earnest -- drawing her back to that heady precipice. He had definitely swelled larger -- there were a few times when she thought she might not be able to take him, and a few more when she thought he might not be able to pull out.

The latter happened first; then his back took a stronger arch, and he clamped his muzzle on her shoulder to muffle a lupine snarl. The sharp sensation of his teeth was almost painful -- then her attention was drawn back within her, where her body had engulfed him snugly. His buried shaft twitched, and she felt a sudden pulse of liquid heat, burning deep down inside her. He snarled again; his hips jerked, and she quivered as he filled her, falling into a trembling second climax as his grinding knot stimulated her.

She came to her senses atop him; Forster had rolled onto his back, taking her with him, and he licked her face all over, until finally -- still panting giddily -- she pushed his sharp muzzle away. "Oh... oh, god, Hakhana..."

"Are you feeling better now, ansharuk?" he asked teasingly, his paws resting gently at the small of her back and holding her in place.

"Better," she laughed weakly. She slumped downwards, her wagging tail thudding against his legs. It took her a minute more to catch her breath; then the giddiness had ebbed enough to leave her coherent again. She wiggled her hips thoughtfully, feeling the shepherd's swollen knot grating against her walls. "So that's what it means to tie with somebody, huh?"

"Yeah. I haven't... I haven't done that in a long time. It's... somewhat harder with humans. Some of 'em can't... Most of 'em don't want it, anyway."

"It's certainly different," Julie managed. "I... I do sort of wish you hadn't done that."

The shepherd raised a tired eyebrow, his head cocking. "Are you in heat?"

"What?" She shook her head. Pregnancy was a vague possibility, amongst those of her kind that had not been frightened away from the concept, but she had generally seen fit to take the chemicals that suppressed her twice-yearly cycles. They had never caused her anything but grief, and she was not one to long for pups. "No. No, I'm not. But what if we'd gone to general quarters, huh?"

He shrugged. "I'm supposed to stay here."

"I'm not."

Forster hugged her tightly, and gave her muzzle a lick. "My clearance is good for everywhere on the ship. 'Cept the engine spaces, but who would want to go there anyway? I'm sure nobody would mind if I carried you."

Julie shook her head, although not quickly enough to hide her smile. The shepherd yawned, his muzzle stretching wide, and when he had finally shrunk enough to let him move again, ten minutes later, he nudged her ear softly.

"You should get some rest, Runshana."

She frowned, her ears pinning. "I know."

He felt around her, for the side of the bed, and retrieved a small towel -- pulling himself free from her, gently, and then using it to soak up their combined fluids before it could make a mess of the bed. When that was done, he tossed it towards the small bathroom, and used both of his arms to hold her close. "It'll be alright, Rushana. CODA isn't always friendly, but they're not evil. We'll be looking out for you, up here."

With a wan smile, Verne got to her feet. "I know," she said again.

He joined her, feeling for her paws to give them a squeeze with his own. "But you be safe, okay? Don't get yourself into any trouble. Somebody needs to make us Nakath look good..." She promised him that she would, licked his muzzle again, got dressed quickly and slipped back out into the corridor.

The walk back to the barracks seemed longer than its linear distance. She had hoped that her activities with Forster might have calmed her, but while she was physically quite drained they had raised only more uncomfortable questions.

She was not certain why she had enjoyed the rough, feral mating so much -- nor why, in the deepest throes of it, she had felt like howling. It was so uncouth, so very doglike... and yet...

Too, some part of her thought that her first time, more properly, should've been with Christopher Neumann, who she thought probably loved her. That was how humans did things, wasn't it? Love -- affection, at least, certainly -- before a bed was shared? That was how it went in the escapist books she had found in the ship's library. Nobody in the novels wound up sleeping with another dog (getting fucked by, she corrected; might as well be honest about it) because of their nerves.

In her bunk again, staring blankly into the nothingness above her, she tried not to feel too guilty about the pleasure -- nor about the way she tingled, still, thinking about it. Nor about the day to come, scant hours ahead, stretching before her anxious form, misshapen and bent like a shadow in the dawn.

Her sleep, when it finally descended, was anxious, and in grim dreams darkness augured darkness.