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Ghosts both recent and old come back to haunt moreaus and humans alike. Captain Tindall tries to understand his moreau charges, to varying degrees of success. Alrukhan and Piper get closer, and the shepherd Chanatja comes clean to Sergeant Martin, his human fan, and they spend some quality time.

When last we saw our heroes, they were engaged in fierce fighting that abruptly... ended. Let's find out why! This chapter takes the sunny optimism of the previous one and turns it down a notch. Alrukhan continues plotting, Channich comes to terms with his past, Tindall casts a die, and Corinna acquires a bad habit. Halfway to the finish, guys!_ As always, share and enjoy, and please chime in with criticism and feedback! If you like the story, that makes me happy. If you don't like it, the only way I can get better is if you tell me._

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

Steel and Fire and Stone, by Rob Baird -- Ch. 4, "Wade in the water"

---

Look over yonder, what do you see? God's going to trouble the water The Holy Ghost's coming on me God's going to trouble the water

Wade in the water Wade in the water, children Wade in the water God's going to trouble the water -- Spiritual

"TO: ALL UNITS. CEASE FIRE." Corinna stared at the message dumbly, not quite able to process it. Bester, too, still had his paws on the control mechanism of the mech, not yet spurring them into motion nor pulling them back and to safety.

"This is Durandal, stand down! I say again: stand down." A beat. "Sigrun!"

"This is Sigrun," she said, warily.

Bishop came in clearly through the radio, her voice sharp: "Sigrun, safe your goddamned targeting scanners." Corinna heard Stennis flip a handful of switches, and a few of the panel lights in her peripheral vision dimmed. "That's better. All units, report status. Over."

"Cortana. No damage. Out."

Corinna took a quick glance around the cabin to make sure that things had not gotten worse since the last time she'd checked. "Sigrun. Minor damage to the reactor, but other than that we're fine. Out."

"Hildr." Silverberg's transmission sounded noticeably weak. "We're on backup power. Emergency electronics only. Maybe twenty-five percent mobility. Rockets, nothing else. Out."

The third mech in their section, Sergeant Ranalaatuk's 'Rota,' did not answer; she recalled Bester reporting their destruction. The leading walker in the other section did not report in either.

"Skoll. Serious cooling problems. As long as we don't move, I'm having about an hour until the reactor needs to be scrammed. One cannon, ten rounds. No rockets. ECM degraded. Out."

He was the last. Of the six Rooijakkals in the platoon, only three were still answering the radio -- and only Corinna's own seemed to be in fighting shape. Tindall had asked her to muster with a few of the other mechs in a perimeter guarding the hill they had fought so dearly for.

"Jesus," she muttered softly. The six mechs of Lieutenant Parker's platoon had joined them, along with two Jackals from Tai's platoon and two from Lieutenant Tam's. When she changed her map to display the last known positions of the others, the struggle for hill 273 was marked in dim icons, flashing like headstones of the terminally gaudy. "What happened here?"

"We completed our mission," Bester said, his voice so flat she couldn't read the emotion in it. "Ain't that what it looks like?"

"You see any movement from the Kingdom?"

He shook his head. "Scope's completely quiet. No search radars or anything."

Still, sitting in the mech she had the feeling of a condemned man given a temporary reprieve. After the situation report, Durandal went quiet. The thylacine tried to watch the signals flickering on her computer screen, in the dark tension of the cockpit, and found no answers there.

The tactical map showed a battle frozen in amber. The two lines now looked something like an opening zipper; in the north, Confederate and Kingdom mechs were pressed together in close combat. In the south, they had opened up a widening gap in their attacker's ranks, forced wider still by the fresh mechs of Vallis Carignan's Bravo company. But now these were not moving either.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Then the northern front began to shift, too; the red stain of the Kingdom's battle line melted, and started to pull away. Her radio buzzed freshly. "Durandal. Everybody, power down your weapons. Heather Mosely has taken Fort Bulsan. The Kingdom's called for a cease-fire to discuss terms. We're not to make any threatening gestures -- that goes for either side. So power down your weapons and your targeting systems, and go to standby power. Keep an open comm link, and be ready to scramble in five. Durandal out."

Bester snorted, a soft, incredulous sound; the Rottweiler settled back in his seat, his head lolling towards Corinna. "You get that?"

"Yeah."

"We've won?"

Behind them, the smoke from fifty or more pyres rose in black, greasy supplication to the late-morning sky. Some of the fires were still burning; spilled ammunition crackled and occasionally burst in brief staccato on her scope. But the dead vehicles made up the only activity; none of their own mechs moved.

"Yeah," she said again.

He leaned forward for a moment, and then to either side, checking the area around the Rooijakkals. Then, carefully, he brought the mech to a crouch, and pulled the canopy open. Chill wind brought the odor of melted plastic and burning chemicals and charred meat to their noses.

"Hey," Stennis said quietly. "Close it?"

The Rottweiler looked to him, his weary face furrowed. "Eh?"

"It's... it's cold," Stennis offered; he did not mention the smell.

Bester didn't say anything; he nodded, slowly, and then undid his harness. Levering himself upright, the big dog slipped over the side of the hull, landing with a crunch on the snow. A moment later his paw reached up to close the cockpit once again.

They fell into silence. Everyone was waiting. Carignan's mechs stayed still, even as the Kingdom vehicles that faced them slipped off to the east, vanishing into the electronic aether in which their computers could divine no signals.

Finally the thylacine could take no more of it; she slipped back between Suresh and Stennis, opening the rear hatch to the outside world. The sun bathed the scene in a soft, inappropriate warmth. It was not as cold as she had thought, at first.

Bester had taken a seat on the Jackal's foot. He was staring back towards the hill, to where the towering columns of smoke met in a dreary pall, thousands of meters above them. The wind was starting to die down.

"Pretty incredible, ain't it?" Their mech's cooling fans were on idle, and he didn't have to shout. His voice was a low, graveled drawl.

"What is?"

Bester gestured with a paw towards the hill. "The scientific method, quantum mechanics, computers, lasers, spaceflight, jumpdrives... an' that's what we got out of it." Then he gave a little flick of his wrist, so that his paw traced the rise of a plume of smoke. "Those fires are burning a million years of human evolution."

"Bit of a waste."

"Naw," he shook his head. Then he took a deep breath, and steam spilled from his blunt muzzle with the exhalation. "It's just how they are. An' how they taught us, I guess," he added after a moment's pause.

Then he fished out the pack of cigarettes he carried in one of the pockets of his jumpsuit. Probably, she thought, this was to try to mask the smell. They were inhaling it; that was how scent worked, after all. Breathing in the destruction they'd wrought, the twisted machinery and the burnt and broken forms that had once been human -- or their own kind. "I guess this is what it means to win, huh?"

"Don't be like that." Bester closed his eyes, leaning against the struts of the Rooijakkals' leg. "Don't do the nihilist bullshit about how it's all pointless and none of it really matters. It matters, stripes."

Something about the way he phrased it caught her ear, although she didn't want to pick a fight. Mostly she was suddenly exhausted, physically and emotionally drained. "What matters about it?"

"What matters is those poor bastards are the dead ones, and we ain't."

She smiled wanly. "That's all? No wonder you don't seem especially upbeat..."

"Me?" He opened one eye, looking at her, and then held up a cigarette lightly. "Hell, I'm celebrating."

Corinna laughed; it was soft laughter, as though unsure of its place in the white emptiness around them. "Sure." She sat carefully next to him. The Jackal's leg had the warmth of a living thing at her back.

She didn't know what to think. The battle had not lasted more than a few hours -- a minor skirmish, really, in the grand scheme of their war. But they had come so close to oblivion... she could almost still hear the wail of missile-launch alarms in their cockpit.

Her first owner had been a well-off businessmen. He'd come back from a yachting vacation, wind-whipped skin tanned and raw, all smiles. And he'd said that he could still feel the rocking of his boat beneath his feet, even standing on dry land. Sea legs, he'd called it.

Bester was remarkably placid about the whole affair. But then, he had lost his calm in the cockpit, too, under the stress of what they'd been asked to do... and now he was lighting the cigarette, and she caught a faint trembling to his paw.

It was more than just the addiction, she realized, and more than the way it deadened the terrible stench that saturated her muzzle as the softening wind carried death to them. It was a stab at normalcy, a tangible link to a saner world. "Hey, Bester?"

"Stripes?"

"Mind if I have one?"

Without saying anything, he tapped the pack of cigarettes to extract another, halfway. She took it, and he brought out a lighter as well. The flame flickered in the softening wind, docile and eager to please. "You done this before?"

"No."

"I'm a bad influence," the Rottweiler shook his head. "Breathe in -- carefully-like. Take in some air while yer at it."

Corinna leaned back from him, against the Jackal, and inhaled slowly, feeling the burning smoke touch the back of her throat, filling her lungs -- then she was choking, a racking cough that almost cost her her hold on the cigarette.

Bester rolled his eyes, shaking his head again. "That, stripes, is your body trying to remind you you're doing something stupid."

She tried again, more carefully, focusing on the warmth in her muzzle and holding that sensation as long as she could. She felt peculiarly lightheaded, at some remove from her body -- and then a wave of something that bordered on giddiness. "Ah!"

"Right," the dog nodded. Then he said nothing else, settling back into phlegmatic contemplation and letting her find her own way. So she watched him, mimicking the relaxed ease with which he moved. The burning tip of the cigarette reminded her of nothing so much as a fuse -- but there was no tension in his body, no sense of impending catastrophe.

Such a change was reassuring. The startling euphoria gradually faded, replaced with a comforting, pleasant clarity. Corinna eyed the brilliant orange glow at the edge of her muzzle keenly; it was a practical concern that motivated her again. "Ah, the... the leftover bits? The burnt stuff?"

He half-turned to her, and removed the cigarette from where it rested between his teeth, giving it a snapping flick of his fingers that scattered the ash like flakes of grey, polluted snow.

After a moment's hesitation, she tried to echo the movement, failed, and settled for tapping it against a strut on the Jackal's leg.

"Close enough. How long do you reckon this all's going to be here?"

The two sentences didn't seem to have been related. "What 'all'?"

Bester pointed with his free paw to the hillside. "You think it's gonna get recycled? Like, we'd go and pick over the wreckage if it were nicer out, an' if this place had a functioning ecosystem there'd be scavengers what'd come an' eat anything tasty. But I think it's just trees..."

Many of those were now at broken, dying angles, and others had disappeared completely, scattered to splinters by high explosives. "I don't know," she admitted.

"Me either. Just be strange to think of it, if in a hundred years you could come back and that place'd still be a graveyard."

"Come again?"

"Humans," Bester explained, "are a bit twitchy about death. They get very sentimental about their corpses. Graveyards are where they store them."

"For later?"

He shrugged. "I guess."

Humans remained, despite her close association with them, somewhat inscrutable. So she simply nodded, and said nothing until her cigarette had burned so close she could feel the heat against her lips. She did not have sufficiently calloused paws to follow Bester's example in stubbing it out against her palm, but the Jackal's leg served as a convenient target. The ash traced a black stain not entirely unlike the scorch-marks the rockets left. "Huh."

"Huh?"

"The bits of stuff in your mouth. That's supposed to happen?"

"Reckon so."

"This, ah, this habit of yours. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it?"

"Nope." A beat. "You want another one?"

"Sure." This accomplished, he became quiet again. She wasn't certain how he managed it. Even with the tobacco, and despite her exhaustion, she was still edgy, still twitching to the sound of the cooling mech and the skittering debris caught up on the wind. "When did you learn to deal with it, Bester?"

"Deal with it?" he echoed her, and twisted his whole body around so that he could peer at the thylacine, his eyebrow raised. The eyebrow, as with much of his muzzle, was starting to go white with age. "You don't learn a thing like that. If yer lucky -- eventually -- you learn not to go crazy." He settled back down, taking a drag on the cigarette, so that he was facing away from her and the word was muffled when he added: "maybe."

"Great."

"When I was on Tikal, I worked recovery. Helped out the graves guys. That was a proper place, Tikal -- equatorial, nice weather. Meant sometimes... sometimes the rats, or feral dogs, or something, they'd get ahold of bodies 'fore we could. That used to really mess the humans up; they hated that. Remember one time, we come up on a feral dog gnawing on somebody's arm -- just the arm, you know? Happy as can be, that dog. It growled when we tried to take the arm back."

"So what'd you do?" She suspected she knew the answer.

Bester shrugged with one shoulder. "Ah, they set it on fire with a flamethrower. Dog weren't good for much after that." He pulled on the cigarette, holding the smoke for a few seconds.

"That's horrible," Corinna said softly, in the silence that followed.

"Well, the arm weren't either." His hoarse chuckle spilled wraiths of smoke from his blunt muzzle. "Guess it evened out. Anyway, later, back at camp, we were workin' on something... I dunno what. An' I heard one of the other guys start yelpin' like the dog did when it was on fire? You know, yawp yawp yawp... LT comes over, all, 'what the hell are you guys doing?' And the guy's friend says: 'I asked him to give me a hand and he wouldn't.'"

She shuddered. "How did he react?"

Bester didn't seem as bothered; his muzzle had turned up a little with the memory. "Ah, he didn't get the joke -- it was a stupid joke," the dog clarified. "But he didn't get it. Us guys, though, just... just cracked up. We'd been cleaning people out of wreckage with spatulas and plastic bags for a week... no sleep, under fire sometimes... geiger counter rattlin'... wonderin' if maybe you're gonna set off the reactor, or an unexploded rocket -- happened to a guy I knew. One moment he was there, next moment he was... everywhere. You know, it's your stress, not anybody else's. Long's you can, you gotta burn it off, and ain't nobody got the right to tell you your way's inappropriate 'less they know what you've been up to. Long's you can."

"And then?"

"I don't know what happens 'then.'"

"Just keep going?"

"Mm-hmm." The Rottweiler sighed, then, and his shoulders drooped. His voice was softer. "Shame about Ranla, though."

"Ranla?"

"Sergeant Ranalaatuk."

She nodded, tilting her head. "Friends? Something more?"

"Not really. I mean, he sucked me off a couple times, but he wasn't very good at it. Mostly we just... ah, I dunno. We had this backgammon game going. Playin' it the last week or so, when we had time. It was his move." He paused, and took a few deep breaths without the cigarette; he tried to speak more clearly, but the shakiness was briefly plain in his voice. "Never gonna know how that was gonna end, I guess. That... ah..."

"Yeah?"

His paw bunched into a fist, and he did not seem to be talking to her when he went on, after half a minute in which she heard nothing but his uneven sighs. "Fuckin' bitch of a bad roll, Ranla..."

"I'm sorry, Bester."

Taking a second to compose himself, he shut his eyes tightly. When he opened them, his voice was steady again. "We were out on watch, one night, when we knew they were getting ready to hit Tikal. Sergeant turns to me, and points at the last rays of light as the sun goes down, and he says: but behind this veil of gentleness and peace, night is charging, and will burst upon us. Pop! Like that. Just when we least expect it. That's how it is on this bitch of an earth." He growled the last sentence bitterly.

She didn't know how to answer him. Fortunately she was spared the task; the cockpit swung open and Stennis leaned out. "You guys finished down there, or is he still tied?"

The Rottweiler craned his head to look upwards. "Still tied. What's going on?"

"We're moving. Headed back to base."

Bester nodded, putting out his cigarette and getting to his feet. Snow had settled on his legs; he shook them, one at a time, and then clambered up the ladder into the cockpit. She followed close behind, securing her harness. They were headed back, back to safety, but even still something about the seat bid her heartbeat quicken; fear raised a whispered voice at the edges of her consciousness.

"Ready." Bester seemed to be back to normal. "Gonna run at forty percent. Fucks with the ADC a bit, but..." He tapped one of his gauges. "We've gone and lost our cool."

"Go to fifty," Suresh told him. "We've got a couple hours at fifty, with the fans on full. Just tell the base we'll be coming in with a reactor on reserve cooling."

She called the request in, received a curt acknowledgment, and reflexively keyed the microphone to talk to the section. She was almost ready to speak when she realized there was no point. Rota was gone; Hildr would need a recovery vehicle to drag them back to base. Instead she left it up to Bester, who started their mech on the path back to Seward.

The fluid rocking movement of the biped seemed alien for a few seconds only; then it was normal again -- she had her sea legs back -- and she concentrated on the passage of the scenery on her map and her command scope. They gave the hill a wide berth. As Bester had pointed out, there was liable to be unexploded ammunition there.

Closer to base, there were fewer signs of destruction -- no craters, no spent cartridges or smashed trees. Fort Seward itself was entirely unscathed, and the comforting afternoon light made their space in the hangar seem almost welcoming.

When Bester shut the mech down and the doors opened, Corinna slipped out through the back. Two figures were waiting -- part of the base's massive engineering team. The shorter of the pair was a moreau; they had gravitated towards serving Tindall's company. The young canine smiled, her ears perked. "Congratulations, sergeant!"

For what? This took her a moment. Then the thylacine realized that she must've been talking about the battle. "Oh. Uh... maybe."

Her companion was an older human with sergeant's stripes, though she didn't recognize him exactly. His voice, and his eyes, were softer. "Looks like you bent my walker," he said, drawing Corinna's attention back. "Take a bit to fix her, depending on what's wrong."

"Starboard reactor pump took a hit and we've been bleeding coolant. Core temperatures are still good..."

He looked up at the side of the mech, and Corinna followed his gaze. The reactive armor had taken most of the punch out of the rocket, but whatever had been left was still enough to tear through the thick plate, ripping it wide open, baring sundered wires and machinery beneath. Indigo-colored coolant was splattered down the side, and as she watched a droplet fell two meters to the hangar floor. "Shouldn't take too long, then."

"Ah... good."

"Brought you guys some tea, and some sandwiches. Grabbed 'em from the mess hall -- tea should still be hot." He jerked his thumb back towards a workbench, and Corinna felt for the briefest moment that a cup of tea might be the best thing in all of the universe.

"Thank you," she managed.

"No problem." The mechanic gave her an understanding look, and a faint smile. "It's good to have you guys back."

*

"... Upset victory over Kingdom forces on the mining world of Kaltrig in a bit of good news for an otherwise bleak Tuesday. Enemy losses are reported to be quite grievous from the daring early morning raid, which saw CODA take full control of the Kingdom's mining base and foil a half-hearted counterattack with minimal casualties. Our brave --"

"Hey. Pete."

Peter Hanay looked over. In the background, the chipper news reporter droned on. "Captain?"

"Can you change the channel?"

Captain Hanay glanced behind him to the holographic monitor, which Arnie supposed was little more than white noise anyway. When he saw the story, he nodded, gesturing to the monitor with his hand.

"-- dom's operations are of dubious legality, but --"

She vanished abruptly, and suddenly he was staring down at an emerald field and a new voice. " -- to third, but with two outs, a risky gamble for Ryan."

"Thanks."

"No problem, Arnie." Hanay settled back at his desk, and the two let the game fade into the background. It didn't feel any less relevant than the news report had been, and the diamond was easier on the eyes.

It had been two days. The formal debriefs were easy enough, and anyway most of them were inclined to focus on Mosely's attack. Nobody had been willing to say whether or not the 4th Heavy Division had really been meant to act as bait.

After the debriefs, though... Tindall closed his eyes and bit back a sigh. The letters; he had never had to write one of them before. Endless reports -- trying to read and respond without letting them get to him.

Sometimes there was no way around it. Frances Pereira, the senior enlisted man in Fourth platoon, came to Lachance with a personnel issue that had been escalated to him immediately. Sergeant First Class Pereira's composure slipped as she tried to speak, and finally she gave up, blinking back tears.

Emily had had to step in: "The memorial for Lieutenant Tai," she explained. "The OTHs are ambivalent about it."

"Why? Were there tensions?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Lachance said.

"No." Pereira was more insistent. "Nobody could've had a problem with him."

It proved to be, instead, that the OTHs had little in the way of any funeral traditions, and regarded them as resting somewhere in the verge between peculiar and distasteful. As far as they were concerned -- at least, Tindall clarified to himself, as far as they were willing to admit -- the relevance of an individual ended with their decease. None wanted to participate.

They mourned their dead in their own way, so far as he could tell, but they did not do it in any formal fashion. There were no commemorations, no rituals. "I expect, sir," one told him, speaking about a fellow moreau, "that Moss doesn't care what anyone says about her now."

"What if it was you, though?"

"I expect I wouldn't care either, sir. Being dead."

Tindall wanted to do something about the OTH dead, himself. He wanted there to be some sense of closure. A way to put them at peace, and to settle their restless souls, as any human deserved. A clean break between the dead and the living.

But few of the moreaus had contacts in the outside world, and he could not even be certain where to direct the remains. Asking the senior OTH, Sergeant Benjamin, what to do with them produced only a laconic: "well, we don't make good eatin'." He and the platoon leaders had decided to settle for cremation and internment in the local cemetery.

It was, he supposed, their way to be so apathetic about death. But where humans were concerned there had to be some give and take. They had made sacrifices for the OTHs, but it was important for unit cohesion that the non-humans not be stubborn about things like the memorial service. Thus it was that he had joined the platoon for the service, watching the moreaus stand obediently, if awkwardly, at attention.

Did it help? He didn't know, but he supposed it probably hadn't hurt, and he was willing to settle for that.

He hadn't had anything to say, himself. This bothered him, and it bothered him that he had known so little about Tai. A slim-boned man with dense black hair, he'd studied... Arnie paused, fishing for it like the answer to a particularly challenging exam question. Agricultural physics, wasn't it? Yes, his family owned an agricultural engineering firm.

Why hadn't he just bought his citizenship? Who knew? He'd gone the service route, though. His men liked him, even the moreaus. In his personal effects Tindall found a notebook; each day Tai had written a single entry, unremittingly optimistic. "They are not human; but still, they smile." "The patterns of frost remind us we don't have to look far for beauty." On the day of the battle: "This morning the dawn told me that summer is coming."

And now he was dead. A rocket had slammed through the armor of his command mech, tearing open the reactor. Before it could 'scram' -- shutting down the nuclear reaction -- the crew cabin had been flooded with a lethal dose of radiation. But the heat of the rocket's charge had set everyone on fire, anyway, so it hadn't mattered. The information was gruesome and he wished that he did not know it, did not have to know it -- but he did, and that was that.

"Captain Tindall." Someone was calling his name.

He stood, and stepped into the office with as much dignity as he could manage. Tai's family was still on his mind: the man's body was far too radioactive to be returned to them. They had argued against that point in a long letter to him that he lacked the strength to reply to, although he knew he would have to anyway. "Captain Tindall, reporting as ordered."

Aapo Ketterer pointed him to a seat. "Appreciate your help with the debriefs, Captain Tindall. This is a, ah... a follow-up, let's call it."

"Yes, sir."

"How are you holding up, captain?"

He looked to Lieutenant Colonel Moulden, who had asked the question, nodding slightly. "I'm alright, ma'am. Dealing with a lot of paperwork. Among other things."

She nodded in reply. Moulden always looked perfectly composed. He envied this. Not one strand of her dull red hair was out of place, not one crease appeared in her crisp uniform. She smoothly drew a computer from a stack next to her, glancing at it briefly. "Well, you had an interesting time. Taking that hill was risky, Captain. But it was good intuition; that's why I agreed to it. You saved a lot of lives."

"Did I," he said, his voice not quite rising to the tone of the question it implied.

Aapo Ketterer leaned towards him, and spoke softly with the gravity of what followed. "What were the final numbers?"

"Twenty-four dead, eighteen wounded. Two of the wounded are... well. It's twenty-six dead and sixteen wounded, really. Nine mechs destroyed outright, plus another five the mechanics are, in my opinion, too optimistic about saving. We're about half-strength right now, sir."

"Hell of a bill, for first contact," Major Ketterer sighed.

"I can't help but notice that, lives saved or not, three quarters of the battalion's casualties are from my company. Sir."

Moulden looked to the computer again, and then frowned. "What do you want me to say, captain? That I thought your men were expendable, or that I thought you were the only ones qualified to hold that line?"

Point taken. He shook his head. "Sorry, ma'am. I'm just..."

"Of course," Ketterer spoke up when he saw Tindall trailing off -- so deftly that Arnie might not have been seen to falter at all. "You've got a lot to deal with right now. Let us know how we can help with managing that. We have another issue to cover, anyway."

"What's that, sir?"

"We need to get your company back to strength, and we have a couple options. First, it's still chartered as an experimental OTH company. There are a few dozen OTHs at Fort Seward, plus a lot more in the auxiliaries. Base ops has given us permission to put out a call to fill your reqs -- no real NCOs, I'm afraid. Your new lieutenant will still be human, and probably fresh. So that's option one. We could do that starting today."

"And option two, sir?"

Ketterer smiled. "Well, you did good, captain. Good enough we could make the case for transitioning this away from an experimental company. Start populating with, you know..."

"No?"

"Non-OTH soldiers. Regular infantry, same as anybody else in the battalion."

"Probably less experienced," Tindall pointed out. Moreaus, he had learned, went to work from a very young age; most of them had a decade of work before they enlisted. Against a human of the same age they were smarter, better trained, and more qualified.

"Yes," Kala agreed. "But human."

Arnie saw the implication. "So you'd make it a real company."

"It's a real company now," Ketterer countered. Tindall arched his eyebrow sharply, and the big major shrugged. "Perhaps with some skeptics, yes. Which you could alleviate sharply."

"What kind of a message would I be sending to my men, though? 'You're good enough for cannon fodder, but as soon as I can, I'm replacing you'? Not much of a vote of confidence, is it?"

"It's an opportunity. Just... consider it, captain, alright?" Moulden urged. "Kala and I will back whatever decision you make, but you ought to think pragmatically, too, captain. If you spend too long in this, people might start to ask questions."

"Questions, ma'am?"

"You lie down with dogs, Captain Tindall..." Kala trailed off; his expression did not indicate that he agreed with the sentiment, but they were all aware that the higher echelons of CODA's command were as much about playing the right political games as anything else.

"Thanks, sir."

"Will you think on it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, about these recommendations you've submitted..."

On balance, Tindall left the meeting roughly as burdened as he had entered it. Some weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and some had been added. And he had more letters to write; the computer seemed leaden in his satchel. He started on the path to the bus station for the route that would take him to the bachelor officer's quarters.

Halfway there he stopped, and turned back.

He didn't know who he was going to see. Most of the big rooms looked the same. Finally he had to flag down an orderly -- harried, listening to him with forced patience. They pointed him towards a nurse, who was a little more inclined to help.

Most of his men were together. The first, however, he found in a little room, segregated from the rest. Half her head was dressed in bandages, and the wrappings continued until they met a thin blanket that hid the rest of her body from view. Her arms were covered in bronze fur and black spots.

Her one eye fluttered open when he approached -- a feline eye, pale saffron, with an unfocused gaze. "She's pretty heavily medicated," the nurse said. "Not... real coherent. In and out of consciousness since she was brought to us."

Indeed the cat -- a leopard, he guessed, or a jaguar -- said nothing at all. Her paw rested limply on the bed. It was warm when he took it, holding on gently and stroking the soft fur. She squeezed back weakly, by reflex, but there was no sign of recognition in her face, and a minute or so later her eye closed again.

The nurse leaned over to check one of the monitors, and then stood at Tindall's side. "We've done all we can, sir."

"There's a 'but' there, I guess." Tindall's voice was quiet. He was still holding her paw.

"But it wasn't enough, yes. She probably won't make it through tonight," the nurse told him. He looked to Tindall's hand. "You're her CO?"

"Yeah."

"Condolences, sir."

Tindall said nothing; he had nothing to say. When it became clear that the dying moreau was not going to stir again, he let her paw go. For a moment longer he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest. "Ah, son of a bitch."

He had to check his computer to connect names and faces. The feline was named Rekha, he discovered. A corporal. From Earth. No disciplinary record. That was all; beyond biometric information and a history of her deployments CODA had nothing further.

The next one he found was awake, at least, and closer to the rest of the injured. Tindall had seen him before, although he was not particularly distinctive -- a red dog with a white muzzle and floppy ears that perked when Tindall entered. The dog was sitting up, reading, but he put the book away swiftly. "Hello, sir."

"Morning." Tindall looked to the identification card, searching for the name. "Sergeant 2C-395C-SIL."

"Uh, yes, sir. The corporations are real good with naming us, as you can tell. We tend to pick our own. Our names are more dignified, and more unique."

"What's yours, then?"

"Bob, sir."

More unique, at least, it was not. Tindall found a chair, and set it carefully next to the dog's bed. "How are you feeling, Sergeant Bob?"

"Alright, sir. They've patched me up okay. Start some therapy tomorrow. Shrapnel made it through the antispalling net. They say it came three centimeters from my femoral artery." He held up his thumb and a finger, holding them apart to show the distance. "Can't figure out if the Pathies have really bad aim, or really good aim."

"What platoon?"

"Bishop's. Third platoon, sir. We didn't make it off that hill. They got one hit on us and, by god, they made it count. Both the guns, the reactor maintenance, PAWS, the motion controllers, all of it. Had to shut down. My assistant gunner, Cordie, kept the point-defense going until it ran out of ammo; that was all we could do."

"Good work, sergeant." Tindall nodded appreciatively; it was not worth asking questions about what had been worth it, and why, and how. "You'll be out of here soon?"

"Yep. Me and Cord both, sir. These guys do good work. Hope they can do the same with the mech -- honest, I kinda feel I owe her a debt of gratitude for saving our skins. I'd hate for them to have to scrap her."

The dog had a warm, friendly voice; for the first time that day Tindall felt his spirits lift. He chuckled quietly. "I'll tell the crew chief."

Bob grinned. "Thanks, sir. She's not much of a predator -- yet. Scorecard says we have a kill and a half, but I think honestly that was arty. Hard to tell, exactly, but they were raining PATCH rounds down when we opened up, so..."

"So you'll return the payout?" For the duration of the mission, CODA was offering bounties, payable to the crews of the appropriate Rooijakkals, as a reward for each enemy unit destroyed.

"I didn't say that. Who am I to argue with the scorecard?" The dog tilted his head, and his grin looked rather mischievous. "Anyway, we'll make it up, sir. I promise you."

Tindall laughed again. "Fine." He glanced at the door and started to rise. Then a question occurred to him, and he settled back down, his voice darkening. "Can I ask you something, sergeant?"

"Of course, sir."

"Personal effects. Letters. I don't know how you guys really... how you guys handle that. I don't know where it should go."

"Letters?"

"To the next of kin." He had written two dozen; the twenty-fourth had been no easier than the first. "Expressing my condolences."

"We don't really have kin," Bob shrugged. "We have mothers and fathers, I guess... I've heard... I don't remember the matrix."

Tindall was frequently given cause to consider how profoundly alien humans and moreaus were to each other. They were occasionally quite close -- but then every time he let his guard down, they said something new to remind him. "The what?"

"The parturition matrix. It's not a physical thing. We tend to be more well-adjusted if we're naturally born, for whatever reason. But they keep the breeding stock in, you know, a separate place, so they won't bother any of the workers. After we're born, we're separated immediately, and raised for the first few months in a support network of wet nurses and medical robots and what have you. A parturition matrix." The dog's casual tone suggested he saw nothing unusual with this, and probably assumed humans behaved in a similar way.

"So you don't have parents or siblings..."

"Biologically, yes. We have littermates -- probably quite a number. I don't know how many whelpings you can get out of a moreau, but I think it's a few." He shook his head lightly. "But not families as you understand it. The closest thing is the corporate barracks. We form packs there. It can be pretty tightly knit."

"That's where you'd send the letter, then?"

The dog's brown eyes drifted thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose," he said. "But I wish you wouldn't."

"Why?"

He became more serious than he had been before; his eyes darkened, and he licked at his muzzle in a nervous tic. "Somebody would hear. They'd intercept it. And they'd use it against us -- they'd tell us it's just more evidence of how dangerous the outside world is, and how little we can be trusted with it. They'd tell us we need their protection more than ever. And they might convince somebody."

He could see the point -- but then, he was talking to someone in a hospital bed. "Well. It is dangerous."

Bob looked at him severely. "What does that mean? That you could die? Sir, I was an actuary for six years. I don't have all the tables memorized, but I do remember one very clearly. In 2477, for a child born to healthy parents in the upper quartiles of income and genetic fitness, the expected lifetime mortality rate was exactly one hundred percent. That's what it was in 2476, too. And 2475."

Tindall sighed. "I know we all die, sergeant. You do, too."

"I know. It's just about how. A friend of mine at the company developed cancer. I don't know that it was treatable; it wasn't treated. When he got too sick to work they fired him, and kicked him out of the barracks. We snuck him back in so that he wouldn't have to die in the cold, and we all went a little hungry so he could have some food, until he got too weak to eat."

Arnie had heard similar stories in the past, about humans -- they came from the darker periods in human history, tales of prison camps and slave labor. He forced the implications away to focus on the dog. "You said you were close-knit, yes."

"That's not the point, sir, beg pardon. See, we could sneak food easily, but we couldn't sneak any medicine. He kept us up at night, for a week or so. We drew straws. It wasn't me. But afterwards... afterwards I was just so happy it was quiet, and I got to thinking maybe I'd feel less guilty if I'd drawn the short one. That's what they do to you; how they make you think. And see... they'd get your letter, and they'd look at it, and they'd tell us: 'that's what's out there, dogs. Stay here where it's warm. Stay here where it's... quiet.'" Bob shook his head. "This isn't worse, sir. And if you'd told me then: 'Sergeant Silverberg, on your first real mission somebody's gonna drive a nine-centimeter chunk of steel through your fuzzy butt,' I still would've done it."

He could, at least, understand where the dog was coming from. "It's just... It's supposed to be a way of providing closure for them, you know?"

"Them, sir? Or you?"

*

The humans were becoming more nervous, which was both a blessing and a curse for Alrukhan. It put them on guard, and it made them irritated -- even Clinton was nervous and edgy when they spoke. For a few days he thought this might lead them to discover his plans. But their paranoia was honed to keen focus, and it was not focused on Alrukhan. He could operate in the shadows.

Alrukhan had not studied the Confederacy's foes in particularly great detail. He knew that they were a sprawling, powerful empire, forged from three Asian countries back on Earth, centuries before. For this reason the Confederacy referred to them as the Tripartite Kingdom; for more arcane, mythological reasons they referred to themselves as the Kingdom of Ninety-nine Paths.

The Ibizan couldn't care less. He knew only that their presence on the planet was causing increasing alarm amongst the humans, and they rarely paid attention during their meetings. They were always glancing towards the window -- as if expecting an invasion at any moment.

That was unlikely. The planet was located in a remote region of space that made it ideal for long-range mapping, and both countries had massive telescopes and transmitters for this purpose. But even the most cursory examination of the shipping records told Alrukhan that the Kingdom couldn't have had more than twenty thousand men on the planet.

The Yucatan Confederacy, by contrast, had four hundred thousand, scattered across a handful of big towns and industrial complexes. There was even a military presence, anchored at Fort Henry Kaiser -- this he knew, if nothing else, because of the sound of the spaceplanes screaming overhead. The sorties, and all the fuel they burned, were meant to do little more than reassure the Confederate citizens.

"But you never know," John Clinton told him. He was looking past the Ibizan's shoulder, watching a news hologram cycling behind them. "If they wanted to attack the surveying outpost, well, the DEC campus is right in their way."

It was not, actually, but the Ibizan did not feel like disputing fine points of geography. "Why would they attack, sir?"

"They've been getting more aggressive everywhere. They took the Iris System last week."

Alrukhan knew this, because it impacted supplies of silicon, which in turn changed the predictions he could make regarding the industrial output of their competitors. News from the system was bleak indeed. "But this is a little outpost in the middle of nowhere." They were well outside the heart of either empire.

"Doesn't rule out reprisals, though," John muttered. He stabbed at his salad fiercely. "Did you finish that report, by the way?"

"Yes. I concur with your hypothesis. We'll beat Intel by three months at least, and probably six. Certainly enough time for the trade show season next year. The data will be on your desk by this evening."

"There's a load off my mind..." John's eyes flicked back to the hologram. "Ah, this war, Simmy. Do you think we'll win?"

"No," Alrukhan said, without any particular emotion. "I think that's quite unlikely. They have the manpower and the materiel to outlast us." For a few days the news had been going on about a victory on Kaltrig -- but this, coming as it did on the heels of losing the Iris System, was plainly propaganda. "On the other hand, perhaps their goal is not our destruction."

"Chipper." His voice was low; dismal. "I wish we were somewhere better protected."

"You'll be safe here, don't worry."

Alrukhan's mind was elsewhere, too. For the moment, his handlers still believed the stories he had fed them about Piper's recalcitrance, and they were still allowed to meet, and plan.

There was only one logical outcome, and they had reached it early. Their overseers had no use for moreau independence, and would not grant it willingly. Therefore, it would have to be taken. Piper and Alrukhan were in agreement over the philosophy of the matter.

The means by which it could be achieved were less clear. Alrukhan had never entertained the prospect of armed rebellion. He believed that moreaus were smarter than humans, it was true. But they bled just as easily, and the Confederacy had plenty of guns. Piper was more bloody-minded, but even she gave up after a few heated arguments.

Instead, they would strike. DEC's nakath workers were too numerous and too valuable to simply abandon, and the company could not afford to bring in replacements. They were highly skilled, and the training alone would take months.

On the other hand, the barracks were reliant on humans for food, water, power, and heat. Heat would not be a problem in the pleasant spring weather, and they did not really need power, but nourishment and sanitation were overwhelming concerns. Alrukhan thought they could last four days without outside help.

There were three dozen nakathja in his barracks alone. With the other two barracks, that meant two hundred and fifty liters of water per day just for consumption. Piper wanted a generator, but antimatter was strictly prohibited for their possession and he did not think they would easily be able to smuggle it in.

Most of the barracks-dwellers had some real money saved up, a few hundred obols here and there. They indulged the fantasy that they would, some day, be able to purchase their freedom. Alrukhan knew that this was mostly fiction; it happened rarely. Most of the time freed moreaus were sponsored by organized crime groups looking for disposable labor, and the local town was too small to have much need for that.

Prying up the barracks floorboards revealed a vast crawlspace, so covered in dust it was plainly unmonitored. They snuck in heavy bags of antimicrobial plastic and began filling them from the faucets, a few liters at a time. Every sealed bag raised his spirits a little more. It was tangible; real.

Piper was waiting for him, her legs crossed. He licked her muzzle in greeting and, with a grin and a wag of her stumpy tail, she licked his back. "Your day has gone well, Alrukhan?"

"Well," he agreed.

"Good. We have a new problem to solve."

Piper was always full of problems. This time her big ears were perked up and her eyes glinted with the hint of one that she thought particularly enjoyable. "What now?"

"Communication."

"Between the barracks?"

"To the outside world."

He saw her point at once. News of the strike had to leave the DEC compound. If it stayed inside, the company could cover it up -- and there would, Alrukhan feared, come a breaking point. Eventually they would get tired of the stonewalling, and their grating demands to "be reasonable" would shift into something more sinister.

Once the news got out, though, they would have to deal with angry shareholders, and with the press, and with the laughably inept animal welfare groups. "I could learn to build a radio, I think," Alrukhan said cautiously.

"Well, your ears look like antennas already," the corgi teased. "Do you know anything about radios?"

"Nothing scientific," he had to admit. He had read about their construction in various technical manuals, and knew of the components -- information about those fed into the whitepapers he wrote. "But I'm a quick study."

"Start looking into it, then. Find out what we'd need to bring from the outside to rig up a transmitter."

"How far do we need to reach?"

"Davis, at least.

"Wouldn't it be a coup if we could get all the way to the Kingdom outpost, though? I bet they could make hay with that."

Piper's ears flicked, and she shook her head. "We'd be playing with fire..."

They had heard very little but rumor, and none of them knew which of the rumors to believe. It was generally agreed that the Kingdom was viciously opposed to the existence of moreaus, and regarded them as worse than the animals they were derived from.

Some said that they regularly skinned the moreaus they captured, and wore their pelts as coats. Some said they ate their flesh. It was whispered in the barracks -- more often, lately. They did not know where any of these rumors had come from, and it seemed not impossible that they had been planted deliberately.

Control -- true control -- came from fear. Fear of the lash, fear of disappointment, fear of death. Alrukhan believed, and told his comrades, that this was merely the next evolution. Their handlers had trained fear into the moreaus handily, and now it was one of their greatest weapons.

But this did little to assuage the young dogs who knew nothing of freedom to begin with, and were convinced that the Kingdom meant to do them great harm. He expected better from Piper. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Iskich."

"Some of it has to be true," she shrugged. "You heard what they did at Bekatra, to the Honeywell nakathja. They --"

"I've heard it, yes." He did not need to have the story repeated; it turned his stomach.

"And after the UN brokered the general civilian exodus from Mary's Point, on Oz, the Pathies refused to let any non-humans through the cordon. Three weeks later, when we retook the Point, our soldiers found a mass grave there."

"You've heard, or you know?"

"That's what the news said. And I haven't been able to get in touch with my friends."

The Ibizan chewed on his lip. "So, then, that raises a new question."

"Alrukhan?"

"The corporate types have to be planning an evacuation, if they're actually worried about the Kingdom trying to take over. We should look into their preparations. If they don't plan on taking us with them, we may need to consider other options."

"Ah, yassuja," the corgi muttered, nodding. "You're right. I'll see if --"

The door swung open, striking the wall with a sharp clang. Lewis Keith Arrington caught it before it could bounce closed again, and then glared at the two. "What are you doing?"

"Talking," Alrukhan answered.

"What are you talking about?" Arrington posed the question in Nakath pronounced so poorly it seemed almost to be a mockery of the language.

Alrukhan answered in English. "Personal matters."

"You've been doing this for weeks now. What are you supposed to be here for? Don't try to fool me, dog."

The sharpness of the man's tone reminded Alrukhan abruptly of his status, and the fact that he was supposed to be subordinate. He flattened his ears obsequiously. "It thought your superiors would have advised you, sir."

"Tell me in your own words, dog."

He swallowed, tucking his tail and lowering his muzzle. "The 398E was asked to take a partner, sir. It chose the 397Y here, however, the 397Y was not... as... receptive."

Lewis rolled his eyes and then stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. His hand rested warningly on the baton attached to his belt. "A partner?"

"To mate with, sir."

"You two are supposed to be fucking?" Arrington's disgust curled his lip. "They want to make more of you? Who the hell said so?"

Piper, Alrukhan noticed, had remained completely silent, but her ears were pinned as well. "The 398E spoke directly with Dr. Spears, sir. It was told to do so at that meeting."

Lewis didn't seem convinced; he slipped the baton free, tapping it against his other hand thoughtfully. "You're telling me Director Spears wants you to knock that thing there up? Did you even pick a bitch, dog?"

"Yes, sir."

Arrington leaned to the side, examining Piper for a moment. "Incredible," he sneered. "Fine. I'll look into this. Don't go anywhere."

When the door had closed again, Piper turned to the Ibizan with a lifted eyebrow and a quirked ear. "Pleasant man."

"Trust me, I know..."

"It couldn't have lasted anyway, Alrukhan. They were bound to find out. We'll find some way to get back in touch. Clicknet, maybe, if you use it."

'Clicknet' referred to a tapping code employed by some of the barracks' moreaus for communicating between themselves surreptitiously. It was slow, and obviously prone to interception -- which is why most of the messages were routine and boring.

"I'll update you on our preparations every other night. Just numbers, okay? Liters of water, kilograms of food, number of waiting accomplices. Just those three."

"Same," he agreed. "And I'll tell you how I'm doing. If I say I'm in poor health, we might be in danger of being discovered, or something bad has happened. If I say I'm in good health, I've found a radio transmitter -- or a way of getting a message out, anyway."

"Good. That's a good idea. Work on the transmitter above all else. It'll come together, Rukkich."

This was the first time she had used any sort of nickname for him. He didn't have time to meditate on the implications; the door opened again, and Lewis Arrington stepped back in. He had yet to put the baton away.

"Dr. Spears' secretary confirms your story."

"Yes, sir."

"So have you done it yet?"

"Done what, sir?"

"Have you knocked her up, dog?"

His ears pinned. "Well, it hasn't been a-as simple as... as all that. Um. The 397Y, um..."

"Did what? What did your bitch do, dog? Did she disobey a direct order from the Vice President of Concept and Design? I would hope not. That could be a serious infraction."

It was true that penalties for disobedience rose depending on the rank of the person giving the order. Alrukhan shuddered. "Ah. W-well. It didn't mean to, sir."

"Take off your clothes. You too, other dog." His voice was curt, and irritated.

"Sir..."

"What, dog?" Arrington snapped. "You were going to tell me to fuck off, weren't you?"

"No, sir."

Lewis covered the distance between them in two steps, grabbing Alrukhan's muzzle and squeezing painfully. "Then what were you going to say?"

"Nothing!" The man's hand held him in an iron grip, pressing his cheeks uncomfortably against sharp teeth. Alrukhan whined helplessly. "It -- it didn't mean to speak, sir."

He snorted, and shoved the Ibizan roughly back against the wall. "Clothes, dog," he barked.

They were still wearing their work clothes, a light vest and shorts that were intended to preserve the modesty only humans cared about. His ears as far back as he could make them, aware that he was cringing, Alrukhan shrugged the vest off and stepped from the loose-fitting shorts.

Piper had done the same. The corgi looked even shorter, now, with her ears lowered and her body hunched submissively. He averted his eyes again, and tried not to meet Lewis Arrington's irritated glare.

"You. 397. On all fours." Her muzzle still inclined towards the floor, Piper glanced up to him questioningly. Lewis rapped her shoulder with the baton, and with a yelp she dropped obediently. "Better."

"Sir, please --"

Lewis wheeled on Alrukhan, cutting him off with a remarkably feral snarl for a human being. "Shut up, dog. You think I'm happy about having to do your goddamned job for you? Get on your knees behind her. You know how this works."

Alrukhan had just barely opened his mouth when the human raised his baton warningly, and so the Ibizan followed his instructions, settling down behind the corgi. He tried to avoid touching her, but there was little room to maneuver; his legs brushed the inside of her own. Piper's ears flickered, and her head drooped.

"Don't make me give you step-by-step orders," Arrington sneered. He pushed the dog forward, so that Alrukhan's hips pressed snugly up against the fuzzy fur of the corgi's haunches. The Ibizan closed his eyes, doing as he was told -- and nothing more.

*

Tindall had yet to make a decision. Reading between the lines, he knew that Kala and Lieutenant Colonel Moulden were trying to protect him -- warning him that if he chose to stick with the task he had been given, he would be painting himself into a corner from which there was little hope of escape.

A politically minded captain of his age would not have needed additional encouragement. But then, a politically minded captain with sufficient pull would not have accepted the assignment in the first place.

It was harder to make the decision in the hospital, and so this was where he spent such free time as he could manage. Over the previous days half of the OTH soldiers had been released; the remainder were more serious cases, and although he was told all would make a full recovery he still considered it important to spend time there.

In part, this came from a realization that he did not actually know much about them. He knew that none had been born free. All of them were from corporations of various types -- computer analysts, nurses, maintenance workers, engineers. He knew, also, that there were several different companies that produced moreaus -- and a number of smaller labs that turned out unique models now and then.

The rest of it was opaque. He learned from talking to them that the American Genetics Market moreaus were all canines, and that GeneMark named them after authors of speculative fiction. Most of the Trimurti animals were felines of various sorts -- these had Indian names, and a very limited amount of instruction in Hinduism. KMT did not name theirs at all; they had short product codes, instead.

He learned that they had their own languages, which they learned on their own, in the communal housing. He learned that they tended to curse in that tongue, because they had never been taught the equivalents in English and were only slowly picking them up. "Yassuja," a stout wolfish-looking dog told him, "is one of yours, Yesuscrist."

"Jesus?"

"Mm. Is one of your demons. Ja is how we make this plural. So it, uh... as if we are calling many of them. Lots of Yesuses."

"There was only one," Tindall tried to explain; the canine stared at him blankly. Individuality seemed to be a concept they took to slowly. They still had some hierarchical instincts, and so near as he could tell they assumed that there were a number of Jesus Christs, all at the head of different packs.

As he was at the head of their own. They respected him as a leader. At first he thought this respect was merely their habit, where humans in a position of authority were concerned. But a few of the moreaus were bitterly unhappy with other such figures -- barracks wardens, corporate managers, prior commanders -- and he took heart that he had not fallen into the same category.

Harder proved to be communicating outside of this hierarchy. Some of them, like Bob, seemed to be reasonably eloquent. Others had a difficult time reading nuance, and while they were sometimes well-informed their social skills were lacking. Tindall tried to explain his metaphysical inquiries to a black panther named Lakshmi, a gunner in An Tai's ill-fated platoon.

"Mostly, it's just that I'm curious," he'd said. "My brother died in an accident when we were both very young. He was only ten. I've always kind of wondered what happened to him afterwards."

"A long time ago?"

"Nearly twenty years."

"He probably rotted quickly," the panther had told him. "Juvenile humans have relatively low mass and comparatively high surface area for microbial activity." There was no malice in her voice. Probably, he had agreed, and ended the conversation.

He could not, at first, put a finger on what was so strange about them. Then he decided that it was as though they had missed out on some element of growth -- that despite their appearance, and their remarkable abilities, they were themselves rather juvenile at heart.

The trouble with this was that he did not want to adopt a paternal attitude towards them either. They were not his children, and he would accomplish little by indulging the desire to pat them on the head and instruct them in the ways of humanity. For better or for worse, they were still his charges.

They were not the only ones. Tamara Szanto had been badly injured in the battle. He'd wanted to talk to all the wounded, but she was unique. Her section had taken more casualties than any other in which the section leader had not also been killed. If they replaced their losses with humans, hers would be one of the groups most transformed.

So he asked the hospital to let him know when she woke up, and pushed aside the reports he was working on when the call came in.

Her eyes were closed, framed by disheveled blonde hair. "Sergeant?" he asked, softly. Her eyes opened, wandering over the room until they settled on him. "It's Captain Tindall."

"Jo napot," she murmured. Then she shut her eyes again, sighing.

"Tired, still?"

"No, sir. Something about the drugs. Get motion sick when I open my eyes. Sorry, sir."

"It's alright. How are you feeling?" The doctor's report said that most of the damage had been healed, already; indeed he could not see any visible trace of her injuries on her exposed arms, except that the new skin was still completely hairless.

"Not like how I thought I'd feel with third-degree burns over twenty percent of my body." She swallowed, and then sat up a bit straighter, groaning. "They said it's been about a week. Is that true, sir?"

"About."

"How'd we make out?"

"We won. Kingdom gave up their mining operation. We took their equipment and let 'em go on their last transports off this world. Aegis batteries'll be here in two weeks. Corporations are picking over the bones of the mine right now, but they sabotaged the equipment pretty well."

"How'd we make out, sir?" She repeated the question with a new emphasis.

"We took some losses," Tindall admitted, as gently as he could manage. "That hill was pretty tightly contested. Your platoon lost three mechs. Two of them were in your section."

Szanto's hand gripped the rail of the bed, as if for support. "Ajay or Zeus?"

"Sergeant Zeus. There were no survivors. And... you were the only one who made it out of your Rooijakkals. Rekha was alive when we found her, but her injuries were too severe. She died two days ago." He had watched her fingers tighten with every sentence, the flesh white with the tension of the grip.

"Who in first section?"

"Sergeant... Ranalaatuk." He suspected that he was not pronouncing the name correctly. "There were no survivors there, either."

"I'm sorry, sir..."

"Sergeant?"

"I fucked up." Szanto opened her eyes; they were wet, glistening, and her voice was haunted. "I knew they were going to hit back. We just couldn't... we couldn't get into position in time. But if we'd been two hundred meters to the west..."

"Word of advice, Sergeant Szanto?"

She drew a shaky breath. "Sir?"

Tindall shook his head. "Don't do it. Not unless you can get something out of it. You find a new answer, hell, maybe it becomes worth it. But I've spent the last week second-guessing every decision I made, and it didn't make anything any better."

"I know. I... I mean, I think I know. But... it's just... six of my men. They were my comrades, sir. My... my..."

"Friends?"

Her face faltered. "I don't know. I would've liked it, but to be honest... to be honest I don't know that I ever earned it."

"Would you have wanted to?"

"Of course."

"Would it have been easier, if they were human?"

"Of course," she said again. "But I wouldn't trade them, not for anything. Not now."

"What do you mean?"

Szanto's clear blue eyes peered into his own. "After what they've done? After what they did out there? For us, sir? If I said now that I would've wanted it differently, what the hell does that mean? All it would be is me saying 'no. You're not good enough.' Why? For my own comfort? I can't do that, sir. If I thought that, how could I meet the eyes of any one of them?" She looked down, at the hospital bed. "How could I meet my own?"

He no longer felt any conflict. Aapo Ketterer was alone in the office; when Tindall entered, he looked at the captain expectantly. "I've made my decision, sir. I think we should keep it a 2130 company. It's a proven concept, and they're doing more for us in the field than they are taking care of paperwork."

Major Ketterer leaned back in his chair. "Not necessarily the best move for you... promotion board might look at that sideways."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" The big man shrugged easily. "This is the right thing to do -- for us and the 2130s both. My men have bonded with them, and it's the only place they're seeing any damned respect. Well, that's shortsighted. The Kingdom's at war with all of us. That means we're in this together, now, sir. If nobody else is willing to say that, then I will -- to hell with the politics, and to hell with the promotion board. Sir."

He knew little of Aapo's history, except that he had fifteen years of service and was up for promotion to lieutenant colonel. He was the same age as Tindall, or perhaps even a little younger. Lachance had hinted at a lengthy combat record and, although they had butted heads early on, Tindall had come to respect him. So it was not entirely a surprise when Aapo only chuckled. "Captain?"

"Yes, sir?"

"You'll do me a favor?"

"Yes, sir."

"Never forget that you're one of the good guys, captain." Kala laughed again, and got out of his chair, looking out the window. On the apron, they were readying one of the big lighters for departure; the distant figures looked as tiny, and industrious, as ants. "I deal with so much damned chickenshit, I... sometimes forget there are still decent people in the world. I'll make sure you get first pick of any mutt you want. Other guys are always trying to get rid of them, anyway."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'll let you in on a secret, too." He was still facing the window; Tindall could not see his face in the reflection. "We're shipping out as soon as the battalion is green-slipped. Three weeks, maybe four. Soon as we can integrate the new men."

"You know where, sir?"

"Yes. But I can't say. Another brushfire. Don't worry, captain. You'll do fine."

*

Chanatja was not inclined to become attached to machines. He told himself that the reason he was less fond of their new mech was that it was unproven -- although when he said this to Astra, she replied that they needed to find some way to prove it. This prospect did not thrill him.

The next best way to take ownership of it was to make it their own. One of the humans in the maintenance section proved to be an able painter, and Chanatja paid him a few hundred obols to come up with a badge -- they had been compensated handsomely, and he had no real use for the money.

The active camouflage plating would project something entirely different, but as long as it was switched off a slavering wolf now adorned the side of the Rooijakkals. It looked ferocious, with bared fangs and curled muzzle. The painter caught the wolf in mid-leap, sharp claws outstretched to snare a fleeing sun. Behind the wolf, tracing the flowing curve of its back, the word "SKOLL" was boldly scrawled.

Now Chanatja was adding the final touches.

"Sergeant Chanatja?" He turned to find Tamara Szanto looking him over. She was leaning on a cane for support, but looked little the worse for wear. Ellie Bishop stood next to her.

He set his tools down and snapped to attention. "Good morning, ma'am."

Bishop returned the salute crisply, and then smiled. "At ease. Sergeant Szanto and I have been inspecting the platoon. We'll be getting some new men in soon. As quickly as we can process them. How's the new mech?"

"Uh. Good, ma'am. We took it out for a trial run yesterday." There were still only three operational Rooijakkals in the platoon. "It's a 55i Block III; should have better cooling efficiency. It's a lot quieter, at least."

"The fans, maybe," Szanto nodded. "Not the paint job, I see."

"I asked for permission from Lieutenant Bishop. It doesn't compromise the active camouflage -- but when we want to be seen, I... I think it's best people know we mean business."

Szanto strolled beneath the big mech, looking up at the menacing, cold lines of the Colt railguns. Her gait was awkward, as though she was still getting used to her own body, but her voice was strong. "Would've thought these would do the trick." She reached up with her cane to tap the barrel.

"Mostly they do."

"What are you doing now, sergeant?" Bishop asked. She pointed to where he had placed his stencil, and his paintbrush.

"Ah..."

"Kill markers." Szanto nodded to the paintings on the nose, just aft of the wolf. "Seven confirmed in the last battle. That gives you... eight and a half, I think."

"Seven and a half in that battle, actually. Call it an even nine."

Bishop stared at them. He had already finished several -- little replicas of the Kingdom's flag. "Markers, though. That's somewhat... ghoulish, don't you suppose?"

"It's a... a personal thing, ma'am."

"Enlighten me?"

Chanatja flicked his ears. "The Kingdom doesn't like my kind very much. They've been pretty aggressive about showing that. You know, if they captured you, they'd take you prisoner. If they captured me, I'd be shot like a dog."

"I've heard that, yes."

The shepherd couldn't help his growl, and it spilled over into his words. "Well, two can play at that, ma'am. And if they get us -- when they get us," he corrected; no point in beating around the bush. "When they get us, I want them to know something. I want them to know that the score. Wasn't. Even."

Bishop and Szanto looked at each other, and then the lieutenant nodded. "Alright. Fair enough, sergeant; carry on."

"Yes ma'am."

The nine flags looked quite nice to him. He arranged them in two columns; one with five flags, one with four. It implied, to the shepherd, that there were more to come. The prospect of combat terrified him -- but it would happen; there was nothing he could do to change that. So he fortified himself with the knowledge that the empty column was waiting to be filled.

Rumors about an upcoming deployment abounded. They were installing the huge Aegis batteries -- a comprehensive multithreat system that could take out anything from snipers to starships. As soon as they were powered on, a garrison was no longer needed.

Indeed, Heather Mosely was already leaving. The PIG was being moved to another planet -- Nova Galatia, he heard, but the rumor mill was always grinding and little of it could really be trusted. Until they knew more, there was only training -- and the need to integrate their new comrades.

He was both perplexed and gratified to find that they were all nonhuman. Zeus's replacement was a tiger named Raghava Seven-One, a tall figure with a winning grin. His gunner Kiri, to whom Chanatja took an instant liking, was an energetic fox who had worked on the control software for the rocket pods.

Few of them were combat veterans -- Raghava Seven-One had fought on Redfire, and a handful of the others belonged to a maintenance battalion that had been pressed into service during the desperate defense of Fort Seward. So they had much to learn, but he did not feel particularly apprehensive about their future.

He was walking back from the hangar when he heard someone fall in beside him. Turning his head, he found Carla Martin, who gave him a little wave. "Hi, Chanatja."

"Hello..."

"Where are you headed?"

"Um. The mess hall, I suppose. I'm off duty now."

"Can we talk?"

Trying not to sigh -- humans, he found, did not appreciate knowing the exasperation they caused -- he halted, nodding to her. "Of course. What's going on?"

"Somewhere more private?"

Her roommates, as it turned out, were absent attending a training seminar. Chanatja stepped into the barracks, glanced around, and then took a seat on one of the beds. She took the other one, facing him, and then folded her hands in her lap.

"So."

He blinked, and tilted his head. "So?"

"You've been avoiding me."

The shepherd had, it was true, no particular affinity for Sergeant Martin, but nor had he been deliberate in his avoidance. His ears flattened a little. "No I haven't. Not on purpose, anyway... I mean... we haven't seen each other much..."

"No. The last time we saw each other was when I was handing you cases of ammunition."

"I suppose." He averted his eyes.

She leaned over to the side, reentering his field of vision. "Do you not like me?"

"I don't dislike you," he offered. There was no reason to offend her.

"But you don't like me." Carla didn't seem mollified. "You seemed to like me okay in the back of my truck, you know. Right?"

He looked back at her, blinking. "You didn't really ask."

"Well..."

"You just pulled me into the cargo compartment and removed my pants. You didn't ask about that either."

"You didn't want it?"

"No, not really."

"But you seemed... enthusiastic..."

His ears splayed, and he shrugged a little. "Physically, I guess. I don't... I don't have as much control over my biology as I'd like. I knew it would be like that, that's why I... I did try to protest, you know. You were just not intending to take 'no' for an answer, and... I don't know. You're my superior. I went along with it."

Her deep brown eyes betrayed a look of acute hurt. "You think I... took advantage of you."

In fact he did more than think this; so far as he was concerned, she had. "Yes."

Carla didn't say anything. She searched his face; her own expression darkened, and then she looked away. "I didn't want to." Her voice was soft. "I mean... I thought you wanted it as much as I did."

"No."

"Chanatja... puppy... aw, I'm sorry," she said. She drew herself up onto her bed, getting a few more centimeters of distance. It was not, Chanatja imagined, what she had expected the encounter to go like. Had she been a dog, her ears would be flat against her head. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

"What's in the past is in the past." This was a canine saying, roughly translated. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable; there was no point. "I don't hold it against you. I'm just saying it wasn't something I wanted."

"Then you don't hate me?" Carla glanced up, looking at him hopefully.

"No. Not conspicuously."

She managed a halfhearted smile. "That's a relief. I'd probably hate me."

"I've gotten past it."

Carla nodded, and relaxed a little. "Do you mind if I ask... I... I misread you a little. Were you just not in the mood? Nakaths can be horny, right?"

"We can. Under the proper circumstances."

"But not then." He shook his head. "Are you gay?"

"No."

"Then..."

The shepherd looked at her, and then shook his head once more. "You wouldn't like the answer, Carla."

"So it's me."

"What?" He hadn't intended that conclusion to be drawn. "No. That's not what I meant. It's somewhat larger than that. It's a personal thing, just... not really your concern. And it's not something I feel like burdening you with."

Martin put her feet back on the floor and leaned closer to him. "What if I asked?"

He sighed; his cheeks puffed out, and he looked to the side, trying to consider the possible consequences of the truth. "I don't like humans," he said at last. His ears lowered. In the presence of one it seemed a rather broad statement to be making. "Individual humans I can kind of manage, but... as a species. I... I hate them."

"Because..." Carla started, and then frowned. "Because we take advantage of you." Like I did, she did not add, but it was implied in her downcast eyes.

"It's not that simple."

"Tell me?" The human got up, and took a seat next to him on the bed. She turned her head to him expectantly. "I just want to know."

Little could be gained from the retelling, he knew. But what was he going to do? She would get it out of him one way or the other. Chanatja sighed again. "Life as a corporate dog isn't great," he began. "In the barracks, you're nobody. They don't like you to refer to yourself in the first person. They don't like you to have a name. You're just a machine."

Carla nodded. "Alright."

"So you want to get out. Ah, they talk about how happy nakathja are in the barracks, but it's all a lie. Some of them are brainwashed enough to put up with it, but most want to get out. It's hard. The corporations pay in scrip. That scrip goes to buy your meals and your lodging. They have it done so that the cost of everything is exactly equal to your paycheck."

"I thought that wasn't legal."

"Not for humans. We're not full citizens. We can't vote. We can't join the Ecclesia. Before about ten years ago they didn't even like us to be in the service. The corporations can do what they want with us. They own our liberty deeds -- it's a legal document of ownership. Officially, uh..." Chanatja splayed his ears, trying to think of how it was phrased. "Officially they're our 'guardians and sponsors.' That means they own us."

Nobody, he explained, actually wanted a dog. In a corporation they were useful as highly trained, highly specialized machines. A 2C data dog was a living computer, faster and smarter than what Cray could come up with. Cheaper to buy, and cheaper to operate -- the barracks had minimal comforts, and their thick coats meant the dogs didn't require heating, only occasional quantities of food and fresh water.

Chanatja had been trained to perform cost-benefit analysis for the human resource department of a multiplanetary defense contracting company operating under three or more labor law systems. It was a profoundly specialized job, and little of it had practical concerns outside of that specific company, whose HR protocols he could still recite from memory.

"So to get out, you find a sponsor. See, there are some people who want moreaus. They're people who are looking for something... less than human. Something you can sacrifice. For an older nakath, with a less flexible brain, the price to buy out a liberty deed might only be a few tens of thousands of obols. You could make that up on a good drug run."

Carla was listening raptly. "You became a criminal."

The shepherd took a deep breath. "I don't know. I worked for a criminal organization. The California Brotherhood, a Slavic mob organization in the Bay. It was simple enough. We were couriers, mostly. Meet up with a contact, hand over an envelope, or a briefcase... take something back. Our handler was a very unpleasant man named Sidor Abdulov. It was worse than the barracks. He was angry, and very often drunk. In the barracks, they'd turn off the air conditioning to punish us, or deny me dinner, or take my mattress away. Sidor was more physical. One time, after I talked back to him, he broke all the fingers on my right paw."

His human companion flinched, and reached for his paw reflexively. He let her; the broken bones had knitted many years before. He tried to explain the worst part about it -- which was that, in spite of everything, he preferred it to the corporation. He had convinced himself that he was free, and that was a potent salve for nearly anything.

"And I had my friends there. Yashpal -- he was a drunk, too, but a hell of a good person. Blish, he got out around the same time as I did..." Chanatja trailed off. He was finding it hard to continue. He knew what had to come next, but... but... "But about six weeks in, we got somebody new. She was from Menlo, a 399 named Devira. A husky, a red husky. The 399s were relatively new then. She was young, she was smart, she was driven... and she was..."

"Pretty?"

The shepherd looked away, acutely self-conscious. "I guess you might not've thought so."

"I thought you were cute, didn't I?"

"She was beautiful," he sighed. "Her fur was just... ah, god, in the mornings, waking up to that..." Every time he spoke of Devira, every time he thought the pain had gone, he discovered how wrong he had been -- it leapt back at him, sharp and cutting. "We fell for each other early, and in a couple of weeks we were... how do you say? Head over heels? It's never made sense to me; that's how your head is normally."

"Your first love?"

"First? Only? I don't know. We got an apartment together, a run-down hovel we paid too much for because we had to pay in cash. We were living in Seattle at that time. I don't know if you've been; it's pretty rough. Mostly gangs, plus a few of the old corporate fortresses. The Boeing arco is the big feature, but Microsoft has a walled city too. We didn't live there, but... I didn't care. For two months it was just perfect. We even started to think we might make it out for real."

Carla squeezed his paw tighter. She did not know where the story was going -- but he was there, so she had to have guessed its end.

"One morning, I woke up... Devira had gotten up before me. She was sitting in the bed... the light coming through the window made her fur glow. She told me that she had a job she needed to do. A meetup, a quick drop. I told her... I told her it could wait. I pulled her back to bed -- she didn't protest that much. Finally -- an hour later -- she got up; she left. I did, too."

He had never been completely clear on what had happened, because he had never had the time. But he did not have reason to doubt Sidor Abdulov's story, which was that Devira had arrived on time, but the client had arrived fifteen minutes early. A paranoid man, he had left, and when Devira got to the drop point there was no one waiting.

"That's what I hear, at least. I didn't know there was anything wrong when I came back to the apartment. I'd run some errands -- whatever stupid, ordinary things people do in the morning. Bought groceries. I thought I heard a sound. I went to see..." His breathing was growing a little faster, a little more ragged. It was harder to form words. "I... I found her on the floor. I think she... I think... tried to escape... ah..."

"It's okay," Carla said, softly, even though it wasn't.

"There was blood all over her muzzle; her nose... I thought she was dead at first, but... when I touched her arm she whimpered. Her eyes opened. She moved like... like she was trying to speak, but..." He shook his head. "She couldn't. And I... I took her in my arms. I told her it was going to be alright, I told her not to be afraid, I told her... I told her all the lies you tell when you... when..."

If he closed his eyes he could still feel the husky, limp, cradled in his lap. The shuddering of her breath, growing more and more irregular. The soft warmth of her paws, intertwined with his as he whispered into her ear; as he watched her eyes close... He could hear the sound of a raspy sigh, and feel the soft jerk of the thing that was no longer a living being. He tried to describe it, and heard Carla mutter a quiet oath.

"I went to Sidor's house. He had a beautiful house. Marble floors. They felt cool under my feet. Gorgeous. Aquariums with real fish. He was there with his girlfriend. I asked him what had happened. He didn't bother to hide it. 'Oh,' he said. 'Your bitch? Right. I taught her a lesson about failure.' He gestured to his feet. He had on heavy boots. 'You like these?' he said. I couldn't answer. He laughed. Made a little kicking pantomime. 'Yeah, it shut her up, too.' His girlfriend giggled nervously. I think... I think when I'm angry I can be quite frightening. I think she was scared."

"What did you do?"

Chanatja turned to look at her. Their eyes met and for the briefest moment, the briefest flicker, he knew how keenly she was listening to him. How much she cared. She deserved the truth: "I don't know. I really don't. I turned; I left. I saw into his kitchen. There was a knife there. I remember seeing it. I don't remember picking it up. Everything else is fragments. I remember hearing screams. I remember feeling the knife... catch... like it was hard to pull back out of... something. Cursing, I heard cursing. I felt a knife in my paw, but I don't... I don't know."

"But you killed him."

"Of course. I just don't remember it." Nor did he especially want to. "The next thing I do remember, his girlfriend was cowering in a corner. I was covered in blood. My arms were soaked; it was starting to get sticky, drying... I forced his girlfriend to open his safe. All our liberty deeds were there. I took them. And then I left. And I enlisted. I gave them my deed, to prove that I had it. I told them that my sponsor had died unexpectedly, and I needed a new home. And I left Earth behind forever."

"Nobody ever came after you?"

He shrugged. "No. They didn't care. There are a lot of humans who it doesn't matter if you kill them. This one was the lowest of the low. Scum -- every one of you would've called him that. But he was a human being, and that made him better than me. It meant that he had power. Just by being human, he had the power to destroy me. And he did."

"I see." Her voice was quiet; small.

"That's why I hate humans, Carla. Because the meanest of them, the weakest, the most vile... the least human being is still better in this universe than I will ever be. And they know it. Every barracks warden who took my food away, every shopowner that's refused to serve me, every recruit that threw their food at me when I was working in the kitchen rather than handing over their plate. Every sideways glance, every muttered oath, every closed door, every petty crime that goes unpunished, every thoughtless, racist joke that goes unchallenged, every blow that goes unanswered tells me that. It tells me that I'm a second-class citizen; that the vagrant digging at scraps behind a San Francisco brothel has the right to lord the accident of their birth over me because of their species. There's some part of me that has never, ever healed. And every time I'm reminded of who, and what, I am, that's the part that takes me back into my apartment, that morning, feeling the only future I've ever cared about die in my arms."

"Chanatja," she murmured, when he had finished. "Jesus, Chanatja. We're not all like that. Or... we... we don't mean to be." He said nothing. "We want to be something more." He said nothing. She turned to him; she took his other paw, which hung limply. "Chanatja, please believe me."

"Believe what?"

"You've had more pain than anyone deserves. But I think... I think you need to know that there are people who care about you -- humans who care about you. Maybe the first step in getting beyond that pain is just... admitting that. It's not an act. It's not pity, or... or trying to get something out of you..." But here she winced, and had to catch herself to swing back to safer ground. "Just admitting that you're cared about."

The shepherd swallowed. The first time he tried to speak the words were an empty croak. The second time they came as a weak whisper. "I... I don't know that I can..."

"Chanatja, I'm one of them. I care. I... I'm sorry about what I did. I didn't know. That doesn't make it right but..." She let his paws go, and wrapped her arms around him, hugging the shepherd tightly. "Even if you don't forgive me, I'd still care about you."

Something in him wavered, and gave in. He leaned against the woman; his chest heaved. If he had been a human he might've cried -- instead he whined, a soft, anguished sound, keened with flattened ears. He felt her hands, warm and soothing at his back, stroking him. He put his own arms around her; a tight, desperate embrace.

There was something comforting in it, and to his overloaded mind it took a second for the shepherd to realize what it was: he believed her. He believed her, and in that moment he was giddy with the sense of relief, of released tension.

It was cathartic, to feel that he could trust someone. When he could think properly again it was though a weight had been lifted from him; as if the world was momentarily clearer and more colorful. Carla was still petting him, still smoothing down the fur of his bare arms.

"Thank you," he said.

She hugged him tighter. For the first time in many years he did not want to pull away from the touch. "You're welcome." And then, a few seconds later: "Are you going to let me go?"

But he found that he did not really want to do this, either. "Ah, perhaps."

Carla laughed. "Alright." He did relax a little, because his muscles had been locked so tight he realized he must've been hurting her. Then he nuzzled against her neck; she stiffened and twisted away. "Ah -- sorry. Your nose is cold."

He licked at the bare skin of her neck instead, and she settled back into him obligingly. He owed her for her patience, for her acceptance, and he found... he found that he believed her. The shepherd licked at her nose, now, and gave a thumping wag of his tail. "Thank you," he said, again.

"Don't worry about it, puppy," she smiled. Her eyes had lost their sadness. They were warm again, soft, the same dark color as his own. "Uh. Do you mind if I call you that?"

In general he disliked such words, but from her it sounded more affectionate than patronizing. "It's alright." He licked at her nose again, and she wrinkled it with a grin.

"What would a nakath call you?" Carla tilted her head.

"Um. Channich. Chanla, if they were trying to be cute."

"Chanla," she echoed. She lifted her head, so that her nose rested on his. "Why is your nose wet, anyway?"

"I lick it. Reflexively. I don't think about it."

She nodded, and then gave it a lick of her own. His nose twitched; she snickered, and her embrace of him tightened. What might before have seemed an affectation -- like trying to use a Nakath pet name for him -- now felt endearing. He wanted to repay the favor in kind...

Chanatja tried to remember what he had seen in the human entertainment media... the little bits of their peculiar behavior that he could remember. He tilted his head, and then pressed his muzzle forward until their lips met, pulling away a second later to watch her expression. "Do that again," the human whispered.

This time when he did he felt her lips part slightly. Hesitantly the dog followed; his soft, velvet tongue slid forward, into her mouth. Carla gasped; he felt her hand at his ear, pulling him into her, dragging down through the fur of his cheek. Her tongue found his; her mouth was warm, and sweet, and he kept his muzzle pressed as closely as the shepherd could manage.

He didn't know, exactly, why humans enjoyed it so. But his ears twitched to the sound of her soft gasps and he took it as encouragement. Her eyes fluttered closed, and her hands grasped at his side, his neck, keeping his body pressed to hers. The shepherd slid his paws down, over her back, and was rewarded with a quiet moan against his muzzle. "Oh, puppy..."

When she leaned away from him he fought back, a little, trying to stay closer. Then she put a hand at his chest, holding him at a few centimeters remove, and he felt the fabric of her tunic bunching as she pulled it upwards. She looked at him expectantly, and he did the same, pulling his shirt against the grain of his fur.

He had to shake, to settle it back down into place; she laughed at the sight, and when he looked back at her he found the human woman was naked from the waist up. Her skin was lighter where the sun could not reach, a soft caramel. It was warm, under the soft pads of his fingers, and she shivered ticklishly. When she leaned back, slowly settling against the bed, he followed.

"So soft," she whispered; her fingers were gliding through the thick white fur of his back. He answered her with another kiss, briefer, and then nuzzled into the soft hollow of her neck. He lapped at her bare, smooth skin, arching his back as he worked lower. Her chest hitched with her pleased gasps and the dog found that his tail wagged to his own enjoyment. His silky tongue dragged over the woman's pert nipple and she whimpered, her nails digging into his shoulders.

He enjoyed this newfound power to make her squirm and cry out in delight, losing himself in it so that he barely felt the kick of her legs as she wriggled from the rest of her clothes, or the feeling of fingers pressed through the fur of his hips, doing the same for him. It wasn't until her fingers squeezed at his rear and he felt them sinking right through the fur that he realized he was naked. Then her soft fingers were cupping his sac, gliding up to stroke the short, soft fur of his sheath -- brushing over stiff, sensitive flesh. He growled, and she answered in a quiet moan.

Her thighs parted readily for him; he shifted his hips and felt her fingers close around him, tugging his shaft gently until the tip brushed against something warm, and wet. The shepherd growled again, and pushed forward. Her lips parted smoothly around him. There was a moment of snug resistance, then he glided forward into slippery, inviting heat until he was buried all the way inside, and Carla sighed in gratification.

He held himself a moment, until he felt her paws -- hands, he corrected -- squeezing his sides encouragingly. Then, pressing his muzzle to her lips in another kiss, he tugged his hips back before thrusting forward again. It took an effort, a great deal of concentration to keep the pace smooth -- but he did, pistoning his hips slowly as she moaned beneath him.

The last time, his mind had been elsewhere. Now the shepherd endeavored to savor every moment of it. The woman's scent, filling the room, clouding his thoughts. Her fevered panting, gasped hotly against his lips and whiskers. The texture of her hot, wet folds, engulfing him slickly as he rocked into her. Her thighs lifted as she arched her hips to meet him, her fingernails raking his shoulderblades, mewling strained encouragement as his pace built.

He moved faster. His breath ebbed to soft grunts. It was getting harder to hold back; his knot swelled unbidden, and he had to fight not to finish as his instincts begged -- hard and feral, craving only his release. But even still... even still the tight grip of Carla's walls around his slick canine shaft begged him for his release.

"Chanla," Carla moaned; her legs were wrapped around him now, her limbs enfolded about his bucking form. "Don't hold back... all the way inside, puppy..."

He growled, and Carla let out a soft squeal as he pushed forward, hard, sinking his knot past the clinging heat of her lips and holding there, buried to the hilt in his human lover. He gritted his teeth as orgasm gripped him. His body tensed; quivered. He growled again as his hips pushed deeper with the first spurt of his release. Pleasure rolled through him in heady waves as he surrendered to his need, his warm canine essence pulsing into her in hot ropes.

Carla cried out; her folds squeezed down around him, tight and gripping around his swollen knot. He grunted, hips still hitching, pumping his cum in weakening spurts until control left him and he collapsed, pinning her to the bed with his heavy weight.

The world came back as a sound. It was the sound of a voice, whispered into his ear. "Puppy. Puppy?"

"Mmf."

"I can't breathe." He growled weakly, and rolled onto his side. "Thanks," she sighed, and ran her hand down his side affectionately. "How long are we, uh, immobile, Channikins?"

He opened an eye, and discovered that it was facing the white of the sheets. The other one revealed Carla's face. She was smiling warmly at him. "I dunno," he mumbled. "Few minutes."

"It that something real dogs do?"

He shrugged. "I dunno," he repeated. He was in a good mood, but the lassitude that held him was a warm spell that clouded his mind in fuzz.

"Seems inconvenient." She stroked the bridge of his muzzle with a finger. "If you ask me. Fortunately --"

"Take it up with the gods."

"Fortunately," she repeated sternly -- and then grinned. "It's also a lot of fun. I... I like that. I like feeling that we're... you know. Joined." She hugged him closely. "You know, puppy, after the... after the fighting, I... I couldn't bear to look at the report, just in case you were on it. I had to ask my assistant for it. I do like you, Chanla."

He turned a thought over in his muzzy brain a few times, until he decided that it was accurate. "I like you, too."

"Not like getting married. Not even like romance or nothing. But I, uh. I wanted you know that back in the truck, that time, it... it wasn't just about getting off. I mean..." She seemed to realize that she sounded as though she was trying to limit her guilt. "That was a lot of it. Um. A friend of mine told me to try it."

He'd heard this before. Moreaus were not uncommon as ersatz partners for the desperate. They were generally willing, or could be compelled to be. They also could not get a human pregnant, and their immune systems ensured they were free of disease. He couldn't fault her pragmatism. "Of course."

"But the rest of it was real. Just something about talking to you. Even still." She snuggled up to him, and kissed the side of his muzzle. "Do you think you can maybe work with that? Be a bit more open to us furless types?"

Again he thought about it. This one was harder; there was always the specter of the rejection he would face, out in the human world -- the scorn, the anger, the unkind words. The wounded part of him still acted up.

Last time, afterwards, he had felt cold, and distant -- as though his biology had betrayed some better part of his being. He had thought then of feeling Devira's warmth, cradling it. But now there was another memory. Again a figure held someone in its arms -- but this time he was the weak one, seeking comfort, finding it... Chanatja sighed and answered as truthfully as he could.

"Maybe."