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An unlikely alliance forms in the wastelands of what's left of Jericho, and the Ibizan hound revolutionary Alrukhan rediscovers his animal side with his corgi second-in-command.

Fallout from the last battle settles and Captain Tindall organizes what he has left. Desperate situations become more desperate, and we bring together the two plot arcs as they careen towards their final resolution. This is effectively the penultimate chapter: if the next chapter isn't the last one, the actual last one will just be an epilogue. So at chapter's end here, the stage is set._ 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. 7, "He that would fight monsters"

---

Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.

He that would fight with monsters might take care that he does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

78:17. He had set up a clock to project the elapsed time since the bombardment. Approaching eighty hours which, though Tindall tried not to think about it, meant nearly ninety since he had had anything more than a pale imitation of sleep. He was not particularly tired -- the stimulants kept that at bay -- but it would be playing havoc with his reaction time, and he could ill afford that.

Early on in their time together, Emily Lachance had explained to him her love of fractals, those creations of infinitely repeating depth in which patterns repeated, over and over, as one looked at greater and greater levels of detail.

At the highest level of abstraction, they were in terrible shape. All told, only two hundred and ninety men had survived the attack -- fewer than three hundred, out of two combat brigades. Many of them were injured, and of the wounded few could be effectively treated. Charitably, Tindall and Eisenberg counted two hundred and twenty combat-ready soldiers.

At a slightly lower level, they were doing better. Vallis's suggestion to raid the motor pool paid dividends -- indeed, they had more mechs than they had people to crew them. The ones that had been powered off were still mostly functional, and they had enough ammunition to last them for awhile.

The Kingdom base was reasonably well equipped, where food and fresh water were concerned. He didn't understand their communications systems, and they hadn't been able to send a message back to CODA or the Confederacy's civilian government. They also had no effective surgery -- but then, after all, Tindall had few effective doctors.

So when one looked closer, then, they were still doing... "not great," Eisenberg admitted.

"Not great?"

"Shitty," the dark man corrected. They had enough Jackals, but the supply of spare parts in the motor pool was inconsistent. They had replacement chairs for the pilot, but no harness straps. They had boxes and boxes of hydraulic struts, but almost no spare armor plate. They had plenty of gears and servomotors, and very few computer modules.

This latter was the most problematic. The Jackals were highly computerized by nature; in the field, they were expected to operate for only a few days at a time without support from a maintenance unit.

They had men, but not enough, and too few officers for an effective command structure. Tindall organized them into two companies, with Captain Carignan in charge of the second. Carignan was helpful, and never once sought to take control -- of course, Commander, Alliance Forces Jericho was not a particularly plum assignment.

So far everyone seemed to respect the choices he had made, and nobody seemed bothered by the unusual makeup of his company. But he had doubts about how well they would hold up under fire -- the Kingom's forces were still curiously absent, but they would attack sooner rather than later. How many of them were there? Six hundred? Eight? Too many, even despite the defense Carignan had managed to improvise.

He had found some chalk and turned the wall of the room into an ersatz blackboard, outlining what needed to be done. Securing a communications relay was the top priority. Below that, finding medical supplies. Below that, gathering as many resources as they could to weather a possible siege. At the very bottom, he had written: "retake airbase," but this was a formality hailing from a distant and optimistic future.

Their radio buzzed, shuddering across the table. Miller jolted -- Tindall supposed the collie had fallen asleep; the amphetamines worked unpredictably on the company's moreaus. He listened to it with one eye closed, the gaze narrowing progressively. "Sundown," he said crisply -- this was the name the emergency procedures book had assigned to their command post. "Understood, Nina Two. Wait out."

"Specialist?"

"One of the salvage convoys, sir. They're under attack."

It was a long time coming. The convoys he'd been sending out were ranging further away with every mission, looking for survivors, or volunteers, and supplies they could use. "They're escorted?"

"Two Jackals for three Tarvos trucks," Eisenberg nodded. "Good enough to take care of little things..."

"They say they don't know the enemy's strength, but they've already taken casualties," Miller added. "They're pinned down -- about thirty kilometers to our north, I think."

They'd flagged that as a danger zone. Why the hell did I send them out with only two escorts? They were tired -- starting to make mistakes. He grimaced, and turned to Eisenberg. "Deploy the QRF and get the alert five up. Miller, tell Nina they can expect relief in forty minutes. What's their position?"

"Uh, they reported it as two kilometers south of Salem. I don't know if they're on the road or following the river or what."

The holographic map had powered on; he tried to get a sense of where they might be located. He had taken the Uniform Datalink for granted; now the world seemed huge, and almost incomprehensible. Salem was a small agricultural town; the area south of it lay in a broad plain, with little evident cover. If they were taking fire, Tindall supposed it had to be coming from the woods to the west, pinning them up against a snaking river the map called "Jason's Creek." Who the hell was Jason? Some damned colonist, no doubt, making it big for the first time on a new planet. Acting like he owned the damn --

"You alright, sir?"

Miller's voice startled him. "Y-yes. See if they can move south to the rail bridge." With any luck that would draw the Kingdom out of the trees if they wished to continue their attack.

"Yes, sir. Nina Two, this is Sundown. Take up position at the rail bridge to your... south south-east, six hundred meters, and stand by. Reinforcements will be in from the south, ETA four-zero minutes. Over." He waited, and closed his eyes; Tindall could see the dog's whiskers twitching. His eyes opened again. "They say they're pinned down, sir. They're in cover for now, but if they move they think they'll get hammered. They're estimating twenty to thirty enemies -- infantry, no vehicles. Looks like an ambush."

Back to their old tricks. Arnie nodded. "Have them hold position then," he shrugged; there wasn't anything else they could do. Carignan had direct command of the Quick Reaction Force, eight Rooijakkals that they kept on a constant, high alert. 78:48. He watched Miller, looking for any sign of a new transmission -- it was unlikely to be good news.

Wayne Eisenberg stepped back into the room. "QRF is on the move."

"And the alert five?" In the absence of a continuous air patrol, he'd ordered two Griffon gunships always kept ready for takeoff at five minutes' notice.

"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes until they can launch."

Tindall gaped, shaking his head in disbelief. "Twenty minutes? What the goddamned hell was the point of keeping them on alert, then? What does 'alert five' mean?"

"I can explain later, sir." Eisenberg didn't seem any happier about it than Tindall was.

"Explain now."

Sergeant Eisenberg took a seat, and put his head in his hands for a second or two before managing to straighten up. "Ah, it was going to happen. We don't have the skills to maintain the damned birds. I guess it turns out if you leave them for more than an hour without moving, the sensors time out and have to be reinitialized from scratch -- the pilots didn't know that, because that's not how they're used ordinarily. The maintenance guys didn't know it, because none of them have field experience with a Griffon."

"And now I've got a convoy under attack, and we don't have anything to support them with."

Eisenberg nodded. "'Bout the long and short of it, sir."

He wanted to scream. But at who? Eisenberg? God? Himself? Arnie forced himself to calm down with a great effort. It was extremely hard to look on the bright side, but he tried anyway. "At least we didn't find out something like that in the air," he said softly. "It could've been worse."

"Yes, sir.'

All they could do was wait. Wait, with whitening knuckles as his hands gripped the battered table. The clock had just rolled over to 79:15 when Miller reported that the QRF was engaging. After that, the battle was short-lived -- five minutes, then ten, and Miller said that the Kingdom appeared to be on the retreat.

"What were our losses?" Tindall asked; there was only one good answer, and he knew it was not the one he was going to hear.

"Ah. One dead, sir, two wounded. Looks like we lost a Tarvos."

Like the situation with their grounded strike craft, this was not as bad as it could've been. Still, Tindall felt a sharp pang. Three men was three men, after all -- and there were not many of them left.

*

Nothing traveled so fast as a rumor; they were in an improvised repair bay, trying to install a new missile launcher, when word came in that one of the search parties had come under attack. Nobody seemed to know which one. Chanatja tried to focus on guiding the M28 into place; the first two times it slid in poorly aligned, and they had to start over again.

The connectors clicked into place, and he shoved dark thoughts from his mind as he went about securing the cables that linked the missile pod's computers to those of Skoll, their Rooijakkals. If a convoy was under attack, then surely they would be sending reinforcements to help them out. And that would take air cover -- but he could not hear any sounds from the airfield. What did that mean?

Perhaps it meant that they had been wiped out completely. The white shepherd's fingers slipped, and his pliers fell three meters to the ground. "Yassuja!" And then: "Fucking goddamned piece of fucking shit."

"Hey," Ajay said softly. "It's okay. Calm down, we can take our time. Astra, can you handing the pliers up to Chanatja."

The muskrat tossed them, instead, but Chanatja caught them anyway. "You heard what they said," he told Ajay; the leopard was also atop the mech, on the other side of the missile launcher from the shepherd.

"About an attack? Yes... of course, Chanla." Ajay was trying to soothe him; his voice was unusually calm. "They can take care of themselves, though, you know that..."

"The Tarvos has a single APEC point-defense gun," Chanatja muttered. "No anti-armor capabilities. Thin-skinned -- yassuja, what if it was a mine? Or an IED, or -- or one of those man-portable rockets..."

The leopard nodded; then his head disappeared, as he bent down to connect a wiring harness. "But that's not likely, right? They'd never send a search convoy into hostile territory. So I'll bet the Pathies didn't even have time to prepare -- probably just popped a few light rounds towards a Jackal, somebody got overcautious... now the rumor mill's turned it into a big attack with lots of casualties..."

"Three." One of the maintenance workers on the ground had arrived with the big powered drivers they'd use to secure the M28 in place. "Lost three on that last op. One dead, two wounded -- down in medical now. QRF says they tagged a half-dozen of those Kingdom fucks, though, so... looks like we won that one."

"Do you know who?"

"Naw," the man shrugged, and pushed the ladder over, climbing up to join them. "Didn't ask. You hooked up the six-wire harness on this side?"

"Yes," Chanatja said, and held the bundle of wires up for inspection. "You didn't hear anything about their names? Or what unit they were from? Men or women?"

"Don't think it was one of you guys; didn't hear anybody call for a vet. You didn't do this right." The engineer turned the connection over in his greasy fingers. In his haste, or his nervousness, Chanatja had connected the top half of the harness only.

"Sorry," the shepherd managed, but his thoughts were elsewhere. "Vehicle damage?"

"Fuck, I look like the nightly news? Jesus, dog, why are you so fuckin' curious? Ship out yourself next time." Chanatja didn't say anything, and when the man looked up he seemed to catch the splaying of the shepherd's ears, for his tone changed. "I heard they got a Tarvos. Mobility kill; they asked for us to round up a salvage vehicle. Guess that's probably where the casualties came from."

Ajay clearly didn't want to, but he forced the shepherd to stay through the remainder of their shift, until the M28 was installed and they had gone through the basic diagnostics. At any other time the shepherd would've been happy to have the pod back; to have some semblance of defense against the Kingdom infantry that surely lurked in the woods to their west and north.

But not now.

As soon as Ajay released him he ran as fast as he could across the base to the makeshift hospital. He had not been before -- it was a dark place, depressing -- most of the wounded would not recover, and were heavily sedated. The medics all looked haunted; they had been constantly laboring for more than three days, and the grisly work was taking its toll.

He found one of the nurses slumped against a wall, staring blankly. He turned at Chanatja's approach, and nodded slightly.

"I -- I heard there was an attack, three or four hours ago..."

The man nodded. "Yeah."

"Do you know -- do you know where they are? The wounded?"

He raised his hand, pointing down the hall. Chanatja bowed his head in thanks and made his way further in -- the building looked like it had probably been an office, and the furniture had been piled haphazardly outside. Inside, it was mostly bare. Harsh lights made it seem even more nightmarish -- the sounds of muffled groans echoing in distant rooms snuck in eerie hints beneath the clatter of tools and shouted orders. He scanned over the faces, moving from room to room quickly, weaving his way around the bustling doctors.

Maybe, he thought, he had been too fearful. Maybe nothing had happened.

But he found Carla Martin alone in one of the rooms. She looked to be asleep; her uniform had been cut open roughly, and white gauze showed beneath the tear. The shepherd's ears went back; he padded over to her as quietly as he could, and it wasn't until he saw her chest move that he realized his own heart was still beating.

Her skin was pale -- not a spacer's paleness, brought on by the lack of sun in the corridors of a starship and the cockpit of a mech. This was a deathly pallor. Her hand felt clammy when he took it in his paws. She stirred; he squeezed her softly. "Carla?"

Her eyes opened, and focused slowly on his face. "Chanla," she breathed; his ears swiveled to catch the sound. It was only his sensitive hearing that let him understand her at all. "I... I'm so... happy to see... you..."

Folding both his paws around her hand, he nodded softly. "How are you feeling?" he asked, hating himself for it -- it was the only thing he could think to say. Something about her appearance had instantly chilled him.

"I'm not," she murmured. "Chanla... I don't think... I don't think I'm going to..." She swallowed; the words were hard for her to form.

He couldn't let himself hear them. He bent down, licked her nose softly, feeling her shallow breath shivering against the short fur of his white muzzle.

"Puppy..." Her voice was slurring, her eyes blinking as she tried to keep them focused. "I'm not scared, I just... I don't want to be alone when... when..."

Chanatja knew that he did not look reassuring; his brow was furrowed and his breath came in nervous pants. "It'll be alright," he heard himself saying -- he could not have said if it was now or years before, when he'd forced the same words from his shaking muzzle. She knew that he was lying to her; he knew that she knew. A tear formed in the corner of her eye, beading, spilling down her pale skin. "But... but even if... I... I'll be here, okay? I'll be here. I'll be here for you..."

A weak smile turned the corners of her lips. Then she closed her eyes; her head lolled. He stayed at her side a minute more, but she did not regain consciousness. Then he had to look away -- he couldn't see her, not like that. His teeth ground together; he choked back a growling sob ineffectively.

"You -- what are you doing here? Get out." Chanatja turned to find a woman lurching towards him, her coat streaked with blood.

"I -- I'm her friend," he managed. "We serve together. What -- how bad is --"

His sentences were fragmentary, but the medic cut him off anyway. "She's dying," she said bluntly. "We can make her comfortable -- as long as the drugs hold out. Maybe another day or two, but I doubt she'll last that long anyway."

"Why -- what -- what's wrong?"

The medic stepped past him, looking over a computer monitor that had been hastily taped to the bed. It was, he saw, someone's personal communicator that had been repurposed to the job of keeping track of Carla's vitals. "Internal injuries -- looks like she was crushed by something, I don't know. Get out of the way." He stepped aside, trying to keep close to the bed. "We need to operate, but we can't. Don't have the right tools, and don't have nowhere near enough blood for any operations. Blood drive's not keeping pace with how much we're losing."

The shepherd tried to recall everything he knew about medicine, most of which had been garnered from popular culture. "Don't you have a synthesizer for that? Can't you just --"

"That was back at base. We don't have anything here except morphine and kind words." Seeing the dog's bleak expression, the medic softened. "Look, I'm sorry about your friend. But there's nothing we can do for her." And Chanatja could see that by for her, the medic intended to imply or for anyone else.

His mind was racing, clutching at dimly offered hopes. "But -- what if you did have the blood? You could operate then?"

"I guess. If we had enough blood, and if we had a qualified surgeon, and if she was stable enough for it -- but it doesn't matter. C'mon, let's leave her in peace." The medic reached out, and grabbed his forearm.

Memories he had fought back for years rushed to him -- every moment of weakness, every time he had seen a moreau suffering and been unable to help. Devira, lying there on the floor of her own apartment, cut down like an animal. "No!" he snarled; the human jerked her hand away. "No, I won't just -- I'm not giving up. A fluid synthesizer, that ought to be standard equipment in a lot of places. It shouldn't be all that hard to get one."

His intensity dampened her natural urge to continue brushing him off. For the moment, she indulged the shepherd. "Sure. Any hospital; hell, a good-sized veterinary clinic ought to have at least a secondhand unit. But we don't, and --"

"Davis would."

"Yes..."

"Or one of the corporate campuses. Or maybe there's one left at our base -- but Davis definitely would, wouldn't they? They'll have a clinic there."

She shook her head. "Perhaps. But you can't get your hopes up about something like that."

"What else do you need? Put together a list." He didn't know her rank. He was giving orders anyway, running on instinct. "I'll -- I'll be back in ten minutes."

*

"I can't authorize something like that." The creature before him -- CHANATJA, according to his nametag -- was a tall, wolfish looking thing. He had burst into the command room, briefly saluted, and then in a rush asked to organize an expedition to the town of Davis, which was an hour away, past the ruins of their previous home.

"You -- you have to," the dog insisted. "Sir -- due respect -- our medical condition is extremely... perilous? Extremely perilous," he repeated, more decisively. "We need a better equipped clinic, otherwise..."

Tindall was not so deluded about the sense of altruism amongst the moreaus that he believed Chanatja had come to him out of the blue. Who was it, then? A friend of his? "I agree with you," Arnie said. "But now isn't the time, unfortunately. Our resources are spread too thin to cover that sort of thing. Tomorrow we can see what Captain Carignan can spare for us, and maybe..."

The dog's head shook briskly. "That's too late -- there are... there are people there who need help now, sir, not tomorrow. We can't afford to wait another day."

Arnie paused. Just after the attack, when they were still filtering into the Kingdom's outpost... he recalled seeing a white dog, and someone tackling him, wrapping him up in a crushing embrace. "Someone in particular, specialist?"

Chanatja's ears flattened, and he stared at the floor. "I suppose that's not really the point, is it, though, sir?"

"'Yes,' then? One of the Tarvos workers?"

Caught, the dog's ears splayed further. He still did not look up. "Sergeant Martin, sir."

He didn't really know who Martin was. He knew the name, and that she had been a driver in his support section. Her first name started with a 'C,' he thought, but when he tried to put a face to it, when he tried to imagine what she looked like... nothing came. "I'm sorry we can't do anything about it," he tried to speak as clearly as he could, as free of emotion. "The tactical situation is a little tight right now, though, as you've probably gathered. The QRF is supporting salvage operations to the north, and we can't guarantee air cover now that I know the Griffons need to be kept powered down or their sensors get upset."

"But... Davis, sir, it's to the west. That's friendly territory -- Alliance country, at least. We shouldn't need any support. I know you're planning on sending a search convoy out west eventually, but... now..." His eyes were deep, and soulful, pleading. Puppy-dog eyes, Tindall thought, and smiled sadly. "If not a convoy then... then please, give me permission to take out a Tarvos. I can drive it by myself..."

"You know how to drive a Tarvos?" He couldn't be certain, but if he recalled correctly the dog was a gunner in a Jackal, not anyone with experience driving a big mech.

Sure enough, his muzzle lowered again. "Not exactly, but I can learn. I just need the chance. Please -- sir -- I can't betray her like that, not if I can do anything about it."

Arnie sighed, and gestured toward the door. "Wait outside," he said quietly. Chanatja looked like he was about to protest, but nodded dutifully and followed the order. When the door clicked shut again, Tindall sagged forward, burying his head in his arms. "Jesus Christ..."

"Not a good idea, sir." Eisenberg was always the voice of reason. "You know the way we've done this. One convoy out at a time, with the QRF ready to bail them out. QRF won't be back for another three hours, and we can't really send the alert mechs out again so soon. We don't have the men to support this operation."

"I know," Tindall told him, his voice muffled by his own arms. "You don't have to tell me that. But the dog's right, sergeant. We need the supplies. Christ, not just this -- spare batteries, water purifiers... but..." He had asked, a few hours earlier, for a report from the senior medic: the man's hollow look had told him everything he needed to know. "Especially the damned medical equipment. We can't wait until they start closing the noose on us."

"Then go after it tomorrow. The QRF will be rested by then; we can move out in force, and scour Davis for everything that isn't bolted down. Hopefully," he added, "you'll be rested by then, too, unless you feel like playing another round of Russian roulette with your stims..." The clock on the wall said 82:09. He had not slept in four days.

"When I can," Arnie said, without any particular promise of action. He knew that Wayne was right, but... "It's just something about it, you know?"

"What, sleep deprivation?"

He pulled his head from his arms, and looked to the dark warrior, whose own eyes were sunken and bloodshot. "No. Well... perhaps; god, I don't know anything at this point. But I think I'm going to have to do this op, Wayne -- I know it's not what we agreed to, but I'm worried. If they're starting to attack our convoys now, they'll be probing the base soon enough. We're going to have to expect casualties."

"That's true, yes," Eisenberg agreed. "Soon enough, though. Not this evening."

"We should've done it already." Tindall was becoming increasingly aware that he was beginning to slip -- that things were getting missed. Logically they should've raided a hospital almost immediately. But then, he should've known about the Griffons, too. And he shouldn't have lost track of their northeasterly convoys -- he'd let them get far too close to the enemy's front lines.

"Perhaps," Eisenberg acknowledged.

"I want to be proactive, for once. Can you get me Sergeant Benjamin?"

They had, by now, known each other long enough that Eisenberg understood when a decision had been made. He left the room, and returned a few minutes later with the sergeant. Corinna Benjamin was a moreau herself, and had previously been a section leader. She was competent, though, and quick-thinking -- the most senior of the moreau NCOs. He'd asked her to take over as platoon sergeant for Ellie Bishop, while Leslie Zula moved to help out Vallis Carignan.

Apart from being a good soldier, though, he still did not exactly know what Corinna was. The sergeant spoke with a thick accent that reminded him of the Australians he knew, and he dimly recalled her saying she came from the Tasman Geodesic. She looked vaguely canine, with a long, sharp muzzle -- but her tail was striped more like a cat's, and it tapered to a point. On occasion he wanted to ask her, but he thought the question might be improper, and had thus far refrained.

"Sergeant Benjamin reports as ordered," she said, and offered him a swift salute. He returned it, and waved her down into a chair.

"Platoon's well?"

"Yes, sir. Well enough. I'd say we're at about ninety percent readiness, ignoring some problems in the weapons systems -- the M28s, mostly. Real temperamental, those bloody mizzies." Catching his look, she explained: "Uh, the MSMCs, sir."

"Ah. But close enough, though."

"Yes, sir; she'll be right."

"Good. I have a special assignment for you. We need to put together a convoy and round up some medical supplies -- as much as we can get, but I believe we have some special requests. I want you to pick four Rooijakkals and two Tarvos, and head up to Davis -- that's old friendly territory, so you shouldn't face too much opposition. And while we're out there, I want you to take a quick look at the old corporate campuses -- we were getting some spotty intelligence that one of them might've gone rogue. If you see any Alliance types -- MPs in town, anything like that -- let 'em know where we are. If the corporate guys aren't friendly, teach them a quick lesson in manners -- let them know that we're still here, and I'm not about to tolerate lawlessness. But find what we're looking for, and get back here. Understood?"

She gave him a short nod. "Yes, sir. Four from third platoon, then?"

"If you can. If Ellie wants to keep some back, horse trade with one of the others. But move out soon. I want you back before we lose the light -- can your men be ready to go in an hour?"

"Reckon so, aye, sir."

"Good. Specialist Chanatja out there can tell you what you need -- make sure you take his mech, now that I think about it. You're dismissed, sergeant; good luck."

She turned to leave, and when they were alone in the room again Wayne Eisenberg shook his head. "You're a soft touch. I hope this doesn't come back to bite us."

"I had to," Tindall told him.

Wayne looked skeptical. "You did?"

"Maybe it does make me a soft touch. But we're in this together, aren't we? You saw how he looked. Jesus, sergeant, think about it. Would you have believed, when you first joined this unit -- hell, when I first joined this unit -- that you'd see that? A moreau, coming to ask me -- to beg me -- for permission to help him save the life of a human being?"

Eisenberg was silent. Once or twice, he looked to be on the verge of speech, his brow furrowing. But then he simply shook his head. "No."

*

The rest of the council had retired to bed, leaving only Alrukhan and Iskoshunja to continue their planning. There was still, the Ibizan thought, much to discuss. In particular, it was time to begin planning for their longer-term future.

In the week following the human attack on their compound, they had not seen the police again. Originally, Alrukhan had believed it would only be a matter of time until they pounced. Three days before, though, there had been a terrifying explosion well to their south, and now none of the communications satellites worked. He believed, and Iskoshunja did not disagree, that someone had attacked the Alliance military outpost that surrounded one of the continent's spaceports.

This lawlessness was both good and bad for them. It was good, in the sense that it lessened the possibility that some more organized, overwhelming attack would come. The local police probably no longer had a military on whose support they could rely. It was bad, though, in that he believed it increased the likelihood that more predatory, more enterprising individuals would try to attack on their own.

It wasn't unreasonable to think that they could fight these off, too. But Alrukhan had neither the resources nor the inclination to turn the Commonwealth's home into a fortified compound.

"We should," he allowed, "start to think about forming alliances."

"With whom? You think any humans will deal with us?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. But consider what we know, Iskich. There was that explosion, and now we can't reach any other city. That implies that the central government in Wittenberg can't reach anyone either, which means a complete breakdown in control. They're going to be going at each other like... well, like animals." They had, indeed, being hearing rumors of rioting even before the loss of the communications network.

There were certain psychological concerns, as well. Since the attack, and the execution of the human traitor, many of the Enlightened were worried about their security. It was not healthy, and it was not conducive to the friendly brotherhood that he believed they deserved.

Iskoshunja was looking at him with the burning glare she often used when something irritated her. He tried a different angle: "there is also the slight matter of the Kingdom, is there not?"

"We don't even know where they are, anymore."

"We don't. But this will be a target. There's valuable data here -- the computers, the prototypes; everything we haven't yet destroyed or hidden. They're worse than the Confederacy..." There had long been rumors that the Sangan Kingdom intended to capture the various corporate outposts on Jericho; they had, after all, done so on other planets. "And we have to assume that the Confederacy's military has been defeated."

"Probably," the corgi nodded. "At least, most of them."

"We could seek out the refugees and try to work with them."

"We could also take their weapons and use them for our own defense," she suggested. "You're still too kind towards them, Rukkich. They're not going to be willing to work with us. Were any of the others?"

The Ibizan lowered his ears. In the confusion after the explosion to the south, two of the human prisoners had attempted to escape. They had not, upon their recapture, demonstrated any remorse for the act. It was Yareta Rastlan who had raised the specter of what might happen if they reached the outside world -- what stories they might tell. The night of the battle, and its aftermath, had suitably awoken her to human treachery: with Iskoshunja, she had taken care of the escapees.

"By the time anyone can establish their dominion over this continent, we can already have carved out our place," she said firmly. "As long as they know not to tangle with us, we'll be safe."

"I don't think so," he shook his head. "We need to be more practical about this. There's farmland all around here, and plenty of undeveloped country in the wilderness. We can make our way there until this whole thing blows over. The Confederacy's not about to give up their entire claim to this planet... they'll come back, and when they do we can make our case to them. Or we can look for a ship, get offworld -- there's places for us, Iskich. You're making things too difficult for us."

"Have a little faith. We've already proven ourselves, haven't we? We drove off the last attack."

The Ibizan wasn't always certain that Iskoshunja knew how close the battle could've been, had the humans tried harder -- or how much they had lost as a result. "We got lucky. You're risking too much by inviting that again. You're too hotheaded."

"And you're a coward," she shot back, baring her teeth. "You bowed down to John Clinton for two years, you bent over for that useless fuck Arrington, and now you want to run away. When the hell will you learn, Rukkich? When will you learn that we have to fight, or we lose everything?"

He growled, lip curling right back. "When you learn to see the world in anything other than black and white. Everything you suggest is bloodshed and killing. What have you done for the Commonwealth?"

The corgi's eyes flashed. "I kept you from just rolling over like you always want to do," she snarled at him. "All you ever think about is safety! All you know how to do is run! If you had anything but a tail between your legs..."

He lunged for her, and she snapped for his paw, just barely missing it -- sharp fangs clicking on empty air. Twisting out of his reach, she tried again; burning pain jolted up his arm as her teeth raked over it, scoring the fur. A fierce growl bubbled low in the corgi's throat.

Alrukhan raised his snarl above hers, using his other arm to toss her back and following through the move to pin her against the wall heavily -- forcing her breath from her in a deep grunt. Her eyes blazed, but he pressed his lean chest against her squirming body to trap it, and his muzzle closed on her throat, just beneath her jaw.

The two froze. He was panting heavily, eyes narrowed and ears back. The corgi was no better -- her heaving chest warm against his shorter fur. Who was she to question him like that? But the longer he held her pinned, the more he became aware of how hot her body was -- how every growl made her twitch against him.

She had noticed it too, in the lull. When he pressed against her again she didn't struggle, and she gasped when his hips nudged roughly against hers, trapping her between his wiry body and the solid bulk of the cool wall behind her. "Iskich," he growled to her, the word slurred and dark.

"Shut up," she gasped back. He felt claws at his sides, his back -- groping blindly until they bunched up the waistband of his canvas shorts, pushing them down roughly. The fabric ripped beneath her urgent, clutching grasp; his shorts fell away uselessly. Keeping her pinned with his chest he returned the favor -- trying to manage the button for less than a second before he simply tore it apart.

Spreading the corgi's thick-furred legs, he pushed himself between them. Her soft pelt caressed him -- then slick, bare flesh, and when he felt it surround him he thrust himself savagely up and into her, claiming her in one sharp movement. She gasped aloud -- back arching, claws scoring his sides.

He drew back as far as he dared and then, biting down on her jaw to anchor her in place, he bucked into her again, plunging into the tight, silky heat of the corgi's body. Her folds took him easily, slick and wet around his rigid cock, gripping him as he rocked his hips in urgent, clashing thrusts.

Every time their bodies met her growl raised in pitch and tone. He grasped her in his paws, clutching at her hips, pounding her roughly. He snarled her name possessively and she cried out, her muzzle lifting further, baring a vulnerable throat that he nipped and bit at heedlessly.

His knot was already swelling, pushing past her clinging lips as he pumped his throbbing shaft deep into the gasping corgi. She groaned -- then her paws gave his shoulders a shove. "Ah -- rrf -- stop," she managed. He was buried in her to the hilt, every pulse swelling his thick knot, spreading her wider. "Not -- not letting you -- tie with me like this."

For once he was not going to argue. It was degrading, even filthy, mating like this -- face to face, like humans. With some effort he tugged his shaft from her. Holding her was awkward; they staggered towards a thickly padded chair, and she bent over it obligingly, her thick white fur framing the parted, glistening lips of her sex.

He wasted no time in guiding himself back to her; she moaned as he entered and he grasped her hips again tightly, bucking against her fuzzy rump -- failing to fight off the pleasure that spread through him, threatening to take over each time he forced his knot into her quivering body...

Panting deeply, he bent double over her, forcing her down and into the cushions with the strength of his feral rutting. He could feel the rush of his climax approaching -- inexorable and close. He grabbed her hips and held her in place as his knot swelled, locking him to her. She clenched around the swollen flesh and he groaned, shifting his pace to deep, erratic thrusts as the chair muffled her moaning.

She shuddered the moment his shaft jerked inside her, and he followed the spurt of warm cum with a firm grind of his hips to help it deeper. Growling along with her, he filled the corgi in hot spurts of his canine seed until, muscles failing him, he collapsed forward and atop her back, and the two relaxed, gasping for breath.

"Rukkich," she sighed. "Where was that before..."

He wrapped his arms around her belly and pulled her up so that he could carefully settle down with her in the chair. "Distracted," he muttered. "Fighting."

"If that is what you call fighting, comrade," the corgi trailed off, her voice a thick purr. "Perhaps we should do it more often..."

"Perhaps." He hugged her again, and gave a little arch of his hips to work his trapped shaft gently in her snug folds, mindful of how oversensitive it was. "Maybe there is something to it, after all..."

*

It had only been four days since they'd last been strapped into the mechs, but it felt like far longer. Corinna was slightly surprised at how quickly it came back to her. The only difference was the absence of the maps -- without the UDL, the position indicators for her men were vague, and she found that it took far more time to try to keep track of what was around them.

Bester did not seem much the worse for wear. They had only seen each other once since her abrupt promotion, and when she asked how he was doing the Rottweiler shrugged. "Drawin' breath, I guess." But it was an answer he might well have given her before the attack.

Everything, at least, was going according to plan -- and perhaps a little better. They made good time on the roads westward. The hospital in Davis was still operating, although many of the civilians had fled westward. The doctor who met her at the door scanned her list with a knowing nod. "Trauma, then?"

"You saw what happened..."

"Saw, yes. News isn't exactly saying what it was, though." He was an older man, and the lines in his face spoke of someone who smiled easily. Now, he seemed pensive. "Guess an attack of some kind. Somebody went to McKeever, but it was completely leveled. I suppose that the Alliance military has chosen to retreat..."

"No," she said. "Not all of it. We captured a Kingdom operating base and are continuing the fight from there. Not gonna give up this planet, doc."

"How many of you are left?"

"Enough," she smiled. "There's enough. But we do have casualties."

He took the computer back from her, looking at it again. "Yeah. I gathered that from your wishlist, here, soldier. This is a pretty wide range of ways to die you're looking at. Radiation poisoning, burns, exsanguination..."

"We're very short on blood," Chanatja added. He had, for some reason, appointed himself as her assistant in the mission. "Beyond that, antibiotics, I guess -- I don't recognize the names of all these drugs. Can you help, sir?"

"Yeah. I can help. Are y'all animals? We don't have a lot of experience in that -- that's half a state away, if you need that." Corinna shook her head quickly, and he glanced between the two. "Uh huh. Well, took me a bit by surprise..."

"I appreciate the conversation," the white shepherd said -- coolly, though the intonation was subtle and Corinna wondered if she was the only one to notice it. "But we need the supplies as soon as possible. Executive order --"

"Aw, don't wave your damned executive orders at me. I know you can take any damn well thing you like." The old man scratched at his temple. "We can do it, sure. Olaf!" he shouted down the echoing halls of the hospital building. "You're kind of gutting us, though."

"How many patients do you have?" Corinna asked -- the shepherd next to her did not seem to care; he was already staring down the hall, waiting to see who else would emerge.

"Right now, just two. It's not a big town, and most people left when they heard there were still spaceships in Richland, two days south of here. Wouldn't surprise me if there aren't..."

Where did they keep getting these rumors from? A ship hadn't left Jericho in weeks, perhaps longer. It was a curious sense of optimism that drove civilians, she decided. "There aren't. Look, then, can you... can you come with us, mate? God knows we could use the help."

"Well... we're committed here..."

"I understand that, Dr..." she leaned forward to read the nametag on his white jacket. "Mikkelson."

"Eric."

She smiled, and bowed her head. "Eric, then, sure. I know you're based here, but... you said yourself there aren't many patients. We have a lot of wounded -- they need better help than we can give them..."

This seemed to have caught the shepherd's attention again. He stepped back from the door to rejoin them. "She's right. We have combat medics, and not much else -- we lost the military hospital when they glassed the spaceport."

"How bad is it?"

"Sixty wounded, most of them critical. We don't have the resources or the skill to do more than help them die easy, sir," Chanatja said; his voice was a little less demanding than it had been. "You'd be a real help up there..."

Olaf was a tall, blond-haired man who spoke little, but nodded when their needs were explained. Fifteen minutes later they were wheeling a big piece of equipment into the back of a Tarvos. Then Olaf and Eric helped them ransack the hospital -- grabbing crates of medication and equipment and packing them carefully into the truck.

Six doctors in total chose to join them. Two more offered to stay behind, and Eric explained that they were specialists, anyway, and would be of more use with their equipment, which had been left behind. She didn't know what they had chosen to take, but Corinna was pleased with the haul, and pleased that the doctors seemed so willing to assist -- and it was only two hours into their mission.

She radioed back to command, explaining their situation. They could return immediately, or they could take advantage of the convoy's presence to investigate the Raytheon and DEC campuses, which were supposedly abandoned but might prove to have more useful equipment -- to say nothing of the rumors Tindall had hinted at, and which Corinna had not heard before, that some of the corporate denizens had taken to their own form of martial law in the absence of a functioning planetary government.

Chanatja wanted to return immediately, she knew -- but it was not his mission, and she was willing to explore a little. The voice on the other end of the line agreed. It sounded like Sergeant Eisenberg; she gathered from what he said that Tindall was finally getting a few hours' rest.

The DEC campus was dead when they strode up to it, but thermal suggested there were still inhabitants. She was thumbing the controls for the loudspeaker, considering what to say, when a sharp crack! sounded through the wall of the Rooijakkals.

"Contact!" Suresh barked. "Left eleven, fifty meters."

Son of a -- "Section, take cover! Suresh, can you return fire?"

"It's from one of those office buildings, I think. I can hit it with a rocket, but god knows what kind of collateral damage we'd be looking at..."

Then she heard a voice -- booming and amplified, coming over a speaker from outside. "Halt! You're entering private property!"

Ah, of course, Corinna realized. Tindall was right. And wouldn't it just be like the bloody corpies to defend their damned campus against their would-be rescuers? She switched her own speaker on. "Attention. This is Sergeant Benjamin, of the Colonial Defense Authority. We're on the same team. You damned fools," she added, after she'd turned the microphone off.

They would not, she knew, become more servile after having discovered their error. Corporate types never were. No, then they'd start making demands -- they'd want to know when they were being evacuated, or where their security was, or when the spaceport would be reopened. They had it so damned easy, and they didn't even know it.

So it was a surprise when the response was nothing of the sort. "This is not Alliance territory. This campus belongs to the Commonwealth of the Enlightened. You are not welcome here, CODA. Turn around."

"The hell?" She glanced around to Bester and Suresh, neither of whom seemed to have any better idea of what was transpiring.

"Never heard of it," Bester grunted. "Probably a militia group, then. Nutjobs holed up in their basement with a bomb shelter and an armory, waiting for the end of the world so they can be heroes..."

"Leave 'em alone, or push it?"

"Guess it ain't real good to let criminals set up camp in Alliance territory, is it? Besides, they might turn to the Pathies, depending -- you never know."

No, they did not. "The Yucatan Alliance doesn't recognize any such Commonwealth. Now, let's talk about what you're doing with commandeered property, why don't we? I'll make it easy for you -- send out a representative, and we can talk like civilized folk. How's that?"

"Turn around," the voice on the loudspeaker repeated, "and leave. Now."

Corinna growled. "Suresh, fire a round into the air, why don't you?"

He did; the explosion rattled them, though now that she saw it most of the campus's windows had already been shattered. Some of them were boarded over; some gaped like smashed teeth in a dark mouth, evidence of a particularly vicious fistfight the building seemed keen to forget.

"Another, please, Suresh."

She did not have to order a third. "We'll send someone to talk."

"See? Easy," Corinna shook her head. "You think we'd be like this if we had property? Eh, Bester? Bester?"

The Rottweiler was blinking, staring straight ahead through the cockpit glass. "I don't know, stripes. What do you think?"

She followed the direction of his sight, and then her ears went back in surprise. "The hell?"

The figures that approached them were not human. The first had tall ears, and ruddy brown fur; it was naked above the waist, and wearing only a pair of shorts below. Next to it walked a red and white colliedog, shorter but similarly attired, carrying a rifle in its paws. Neither showed any hesitation; they walked without fear towards the walkers, and came to an easy halt. The taller canine cupped it paws around its muzzle, and when it shouted Corinna recognized the voice from the speaker: "Well? Are you coming out, or do you intend these things to be your own private firing squad?"

Baffled, it took her a bit to unfasten the hatch and drop to the ground. She put on her best calm, military bearing: "Care to explain what's going on?"

Fortunately, he seemed to be as startled as she had been. The moreau shook his head in confusion. "Ah -- alhakhnan goru... ilchidit khaash ran --"

"English," she told him.

"Angallash? Ah... very well. I was confused when you appeared from the vehicle... I didn't know they'd send something like this against us. Perhaps it makes sense. Where is your master?"

"Back at base," she told the dog. "I'm a soldier, and I wasn't sent anywhere -- just exploring." It was a slight falsehood, but she was willing to stretch the truth considering the circumstances. "What about your masters?"

The dog still seemed perplexed. "Ah, we -- they were deposed," he said. "Rather, they ran away, and we have taken over the compound. My name is Alrukhan; I am the Chief Speaker for the Commonwealth. We have no masters now, save for each other. What's your name, comrade?"

"Corinna Benjamin. How many of you are there here?"

"A hundred and ten, all told. Come, comrade, I can show you." He turned, nodding to the collie; at his gesture of friendship, the dog relaxed, though their paws still held tightly to the rifle.

"Put the gun down," Corinna told them sharply. They did not answer. "I said put it down -- I'm not going to be marched into this damned place under guard like your bloody prisoner. Put it down."

"Yarrich. Dhuhara alkarthen," Alrukhan said gently -- and, whatever he had said, the dog slung the rifle over its shoulder. "Yareta Rastlan is one of our most zealous guards. She only speaks Nakath."

"You're data dogs," Corinna pointed out. "She understood what I was saying."

"You confuse ability and volition," Alrukhan smiled gently. "I did not say she could not understand English; I said she only speaks Nakath."

"Kihad, tiro dhu ja kosida ilzheda," the collie spoke; her voice was calm, lyrical.

Alrukhan laughed. "Ako," he told her, and then looked to Corinna. "She said she hopes she did not offend you."

The thylacine was not offended, although she confessed to finding the entire scenario increasingly bizarre. "No, not particularly..."

The red dog patted his companion's shoulder affectionately. "Dhukugusat. Now, Corinna, shall we now pay a visit? The others on the council will be very interested to see you, I have no doubt."

Corinna returned briefly to her mech, and told Bester to wait half an hour for her return. If she had not by that point, she told him, "start shooting."

"You okay, boss?"

"I... don't know yet."

Alrukhan and Yareta Rastlan guided her through the shattered glass doors of the lobby and up a flight of stairs to a wood-paneled room of the type she had occasionally seen in her first job.

Then, she had been working for a wealthy businessman, and the room served as a meeting-place. Now it had been repurposed as a sort of congress; four other dogs were seated inside, engaged in quiet-voiced discussion. They rose when Alrukhan entered, and he introduced everyone.

"So you are... independent?" Corinna had heard -- as had most moreaus -- of independent colonies, scattered here and there in the universe. Generally they had found unoccupied planets; she was not aware of any outright rebellions.

"We are indeed." Alrukhan's oversized ears perked excitedly. "We had originally planned a strike, but when the human employees fled from the fighting we chose to establish a new state entirely -- free of human meddling."

"Bloodless?"

Alrukhan exchanged glances with a short corgi he had introduced as 'Iskoshunja'; she did not know enough Nakath to judge whether this was supposed to be a name or a title. "Yes," he said. "Though not for everyone. Humans attacked us last week -- police from the town nearby. They have no claim on us, of course -- merely that they do not wish us to be free."

As skeptical as she was of the notion of a moreau 'commonwealth,' she had to admit that it seemed roughly in character for the local humans to have done such a thing. Humans were panicky types, without a government to watch over them, and the Jericho government no longer existed in any practical sense of the word. "That's not surprising," she said. "And now you're self-governing..."

"Yes, this council was elected from the former barracks. Right now we're living off the supplies we were able to purchase before the strike. Perhaps in time we will engage in trade with humans -- such as your Alliance, for example... but at the moment we are finding our way."

There was a strange, cultish atmosphere to the presentation, but perhaps it was genuine enthusiasm. She supposed she should've been excited, herself -- true independence, not simple manumission, was a goal of many moreau rights groups. "Congratulations, then, for what you've been able to accomplish."

"Thank you! And... tell me, now -- how many soldiers are there like you? We'd never heard of any such thing at all."

"About a company's worth," the thylacine said carefully. "Over a hundred. The officers are all human, but most of the soldiers are moreaus. We've fought together for a few months now -- the company survived the attack a few days ago intact, so we're one of the strongest military units on the planet."

The dog nodded eagerly. "And you will join us, then?"

She blinked her shock to him. "No? Of course not. I might as well ask you the same question."

"What? Why?"

"You know this isn't a safe place for you."

"We've defended it before," he said, with a hint of pride in his voice. "We'll do it again. We're willing to fight, trust me. If they want to put us back in chains, well, my comrades and I will show anyone what we're capable of."

She admired his bravado, at least, but things were not nearly so simple. "With what? We were told to investigate this campus -- and if we were, other people will be, too. What are you armed with? Light weapons like that?" She pointed to Yareta and her rifle. "You want to play at diggers, fine, good on ya, mission accomplished. But how are you going to stop a hoverdyne?"

"Well..."

"Because the Kingdom has us outnumbered. If they come looking for you, they'll bloody level this place. And they're not much on taking prisoners, I hear, not when the prisoners are fuzzy."

That seemed to strike a chord with Alrukhan; he exchanged words with the other dogs, and then looked back to her. "So you also think the Kingdom is actually liable to attack..."

"'Also'? I'd be surprised if they're not already moving on it, mate. They need supplies as much as we do, and this is untouched -- prime territory, you better believe it. They could hit this with a tank platoon and you wouldn't be able to do a bloody thing about it."

The red dog turned to his companions. This time the discussion was more heated -- the corgi, in particular, seemed irate. But finally she threw up her paws, quieting, and Alrukhan looked to Corinna. "You think that we could strike some sort of deal with your leaders? Presuming we are treated as free beings, not as subjects to be ordered around, we can work."

"Well," she said. "It seems to me there is only one way to find out."

*

"Are you out of your mind, sergeant?" Tindall shook his head, holding up his hands. "Sorry, no, that's just sleep depriv -- are you out of your goddamned mind?"

The sergeant had returned from her mission with passengers. Six of these were doctors from the local hospital in Davis; they had agreed to help with the unit's casualties. This he was grateful for.

Two of them, though, were moreaus. A lanky red dog and a short orange-furred one; they were waiting outside whilst Corinna made her case for what, he supposed, amounted to asylum. She had still not answered him, so he continued: "We can't afford to take refugees."

"If we leave them there, they're going to be killed, sir. If not us, the local authorities would have to intervene, and they aren't exactly rational where this is concerned. If we can't afford to protect them out there, then it's our..." The sergeant trailed off.

He tried to finish for her. "Out what? Our duty? We're down to two hundred men and change here, sergeant. If I squint, I've got a mission-capable company. We can't support police operations in Davis, and we can't afford to guard these guys on-base."

"There's room in the barracks..."

"Wayne?"

Eisenberg shrugged. "She's right. But that doesn't say anything about food, or water, or what they'd do here besides getting in the way."

"They could help," Corinna offered. "Maintenance, cleaning things -- hell, maybe use them as scouts. They're dedicated, they're smart, and they have to know this area better than we do. They've been on Jericho their whole lives."

"Help me out, Wayne..."

Eisenberg looked up, arching an eyebrow. "You're the dogcatcher here, captain."

Taking advantage of the silence, Corinna pressed on. "Think about how little time it took to bring the new guys up to speed after Kaltrig. This is the exact same thing. I think if you asked, they'd be willing to help out. If nothing else, cor, we morries know the value of hard work."

"And we'd have to ask, wouldn't we?" Tindall shook his head. "Because they've decided they're independent. This isn't a can of worms, it's the whole damned cannery."

"They're allowed to do that, aren't they?" Eisenberg asked. "Wouldn't make them any different than your men. And this is a company's worth of bodies you're talking about..."

In a vacuum, perhaps it was. But Arnold had never really had to consider the question before. Had he? It was true that his command had not made him especially popular; that he took his meals alone and told himself it was because he enjoyed the time for quiet reflection.

And it was true that, these days, he treated the civilian moreaus he occasionally encountered with a new sense of respect. The scanner dogs at security checkpoints, for example; before he'd always spoke to them brusquely. Now, he at least exchanged pleasantries. They were, after all, not unlike his men.

But. "This is different," he said. "Everyone in our company is unencumbered. These aren't free. Somebody's going to want them back. They're still property, Wayne."

He snorted. "Yeah? Maybe organize them as three fifths of a company, then."

"Excuse me?"

Sergeant Eisenberg shook his head. "Nothing. You just can't own people, boss, due respect. You can put them in chains, yes, and you can make them do what you want. But you never own them."

Tindall knew, in broad strokes, that Wayne's people had been enslaved centuries before; that for many years afterwards they had been treated as second-class citizens. It was never anything that had come up in conversation before, but now Arnie paused. "You'd work with them?"

"Need the men, don't we?"

"Who's the soft touch now, sergeant?" He sighed, running his fingers through what was left of his hair. Then he grunted. "That's what I get for asking you. Sergeant Benjamin, send in their envoy, please, and give us the room. No," he raised his hand, as Wayne also stood. "You're not getting out of this so easily."

The taller dog was still slightly built, and not terribly imposing. He had a certain elegance to him, though, and he carried himself with none of the deferential cringing that canine moreaus often adopted around humans. His ears carried comfortably; his tail still. He inclined his long, pointed muzzle: "Hello, Captain Tindall. I'm Alrukhan, senior speaker for the Commonwealth of the Enlightened. This is Iskoshunja, my chief of staff."

Iskoshunja was a short dog with comically large ears that came to triangular points. Tindall thought the breed was known as a corgi, though his familiarity with dogs was not vast. Her voice was sharper, quicker than Alrukhan's. "Thank you for giving us your undoubtedly valuable time."

"Goru. Dhuchanat, jankito," the red dog told her.

"Please keep to English when you're speaking around me. And have a seat, if you would be so kind." When they had settled in, Tindall held out his hands, fingers splayed. "So... Sergeant Benjamin tells me that you're independent now, and looking for... asylum?"

"Perhaps an alliance of sorts is more accurate," Alrukhan said. He had a steady voice; it was clear, and pleasant to listen to. "I think that the Commonwealth and your military presence are in a similar situation -- beleaguered, in need of friends. Now, I'm sure you're skeptical of us, and we're very skeptical of humans, also, but it does suggest the opportunity for cooperation."

"What is this 'Commonwealth' you've mentioned?" Wayne wanted to know.

Alrukhan folded his white paws smoothly. "We had been... poorly treated by our corporate masters. Originally we had discussed the possibility amongst ourselves of a strike -- but when the situation here decayed, they abandoned us of their own volition. Therefore, comrade, we organized."

"Like a union," Wayne nodded.

"Exactly. The enemy of freedom, comrades, is anarchy just as surely as it is the master's whip. Fortunately, we in the Commonwealth understand the need to organize for our own protection, and our mutual betterment. We have already fought off one attempt by the humans to resubjugate us."

Arnold was not certain what this meant, nor of what to make of it. "So you can fight. After a fashion, I'm sure. You're volunteering to join up?"

"In exchange for our protection, I'm willing to allow us to serve as an independent auxiliary," Alrukhan countered. "You yourselves are mercenaries; you no doubt understand."

"You have experience with trucks? Rifles? Anything like that?"

"We're quick studies," the red dog told them softly.

"And we have no problem fighting, if it's for a good reason," his companion added. Such as putting a mutual enemy to the sword."

She said this with such heat that when Arnold glanced to Wayne Eisenberg, he found the sergeant already looking at him, eyebrow raised. "You have any other skills? Supplies? Food and water?"

"Some, yes. We have a wide variety of skills -- electronics, mostly. Radio work, computers."

"You could figure out how to fix things?" Wayne wanted to know. "Like sensors on our aircraft, for example?"

"It's mostly the same to us, yes," Alrukhan nodded. "I learned how to construct a long-range transmitter in under a week, and it's not my background at all."

"What about -"

Arnold caught up to what the dog had said, and held up his hand to cut Sergeant Eisenberg off. "We have a transmitter here. A deep space transmitter. We need to send a message back to our high command. Could you help us?"

"Interesting," Alrukhan said, when he saw the control room. Iskoshunja stood uncomfortably a few meters away, fidgeting. Arnold gathered that the corgi was not so keen on the nascent partnership as her companion.

"Interesting how?"

Alrukhan's eyes flicked over the transmitter, and the antenna stays. "The antenna design is about twenty years old; I'm familiar with it. The electronics are... well, all radios have to do the same basic thing, don't they? May I see the computer?"

Twenty minutes later, Alrukhan announced that he was ready, and pushed a microphone over. Arnold swallowed. "This is Captain Arnold Tindall, Commander, Alliance Forces Jericho. Message dated..." He switched his communicator over to display the time on Earth, countless light years distant. "12th June, 2484, 1630 zulu. We have sustained heavy casualties from Kingdom orbital bombardment, which has also resulted in the destruction of all other allied units and all senior commanders. I have just under two hundred men under my command, and we have taken control of the Sangan Kingdom's orbital outpost. If we are to hold this position, however, we require reinforcement and relief. At present I believe we can hold out a matter of weeks only. Tindall out."

Either Alrukhan didn't hear the message, or didn't care; he didn't seem to respond to Tindall's dour briefing. He simply asked for any encryption, and when Tindall entered his credentials the dog nodded without demure. Lights flashed on his computer. "Your message has been sent."

"Thank you."

"Of course. It was no problem. Now, we can..." the dog trailed off, tilting his head and typing hesitantly at the radio's keyboard.

"Is something the matter?"

"A response," Alrukhan said. "It's a read receipt."

Arnie felt his spirits lift for the first time in a long while. "Our message got through?"

"Yes, comrade. Only..." He turned the monitor so Arnold could see it; there was nothing comprehensible in text. "Only it has a signature from a Kingdom military relay."

*

There were more moreaus around, now; Chanatja heard the sound of Nakath everywhere he went. Sometime after their return, Sergeant Benjamin had led another convoy back north, and returned with four truckloads full of nakathja and another two of supplies.

The humans that were left didn't seem to mind, although Chanatja supposed it was probably because they were merely happy to be alive. Nobody seemed particularly energetic, nobody appeared invested in anything that was going on around them.

But Chanatja could not complain. His own attention wandered. Skoll was now ready for a patrol; the order had yet to come and he dreaded the thought that it might. Everything seemed muddled in the shepherd's mind. The medics had told him not to return; he was in their way, they said -- if something changed, they would send for him. It was the worst thing that they could've done to the dog.

When Ajay tapped him on the shoulder, and said softly that the doctor wanted to see him, his ears went so flat he could hear the ambient noise muffling in his fur. He made his way back to the hospital with his tail between his legs, slinking.

In only three days, the hospital had been vastly transformed. It was better-lit, and bustled with activity. Some of the new moreaus seem to have been impressed as orderlies, and the machines they had taken from Davis hummed with electronic life.

"Hey. I asked you for the spare inhibitor ten minutes ago." Chanatja turned to find a harried-looking human, gaunt-thin, stress lining his face.

"I don't work here," the shepherd said softly. "I'm a soldier, I was just... told to come here."

"Oh. Sorry," the doctor said. "You all kinda look the same to me -- who told you?"

Chanatja ignored the slight. "I don't know. I'm... I was asking about someone here. A human woman, a... a friend of mine. Sergeant Martin..."

Shrugging, the man shook his head. "Never heard of her. Doctor Holz," he called further down the hall. "You know a patient Martin?"

A head poked out, and then the rest of Dr. Holz, an older woman whose heavyset body was shapeless beneath her gown. "Ah? Oh. Yes, yes. Come here, dog."

Again he was too unnerved to protest; he nodded his head obediently, and followed; Dr. Holz led them down an adjoining corridor. Carla had been moved; he found her lying in a new bed, her eyes closed, a machine next to her whirring softly.

"They told me that you were very concerned about her."

Carla was still exceedingly pale, although there was more warmth now when he felt over her wrist with his fur-downed fingers. "Yes," he told the doctor. "We're very close."

"Friends?" Chanatja didn't answer, and the doctor shuddered. "Never mind. Just forget I asked."

"Will she... is she going to be okay?" He avoided Dr. Holz's gaze, which communicated a distaste he did not feel like arguing with. It was not the important thing; it never had been.

"I think so," Holz said. "Not out of the woods yet. She came around a few hours ago and was relatively coherent, so I suppose there hasn't been much brain damage, if any. It isn't as tense as it was, but... you will control yourself, right, dog?"

"Yes."

Holz's nod didn't make her seem especially convinced. "Call someone if anything happens, then."

Alone in the room, with only the sound of the machine's fans, Chanatja held the woman's hand in his paws. He was discomforted by her evident vulnerability. It was hard to imagine that this was the same woman who had fairly pounced on him, six months before.

"You asked me," he told her prone form, "if I could learn to trust people again. I think... maybe... I didn't ever answer you." Indeed it seemed to him that he had not, although they had shared a bed on more than a few occasions since that time. "Not everyone. I don't think I could trust everyone. But I trust you. Ah, yassuja, Carrich..." His voice had lowered to a whisper; his ears were pinned. "When I thought you were going to leave me..."

The thought was too horrific even to be voiced. He traced the bones of her hand with his fingers, one by one. Her hand tensed, the fingers curling beneath his grasp. But she did not stir, and despite the doctor's reassurances he felt a twinge of apprehension at her stillness.

Some minutes later Dr. Holz returned, with a human orderly. They checked Carla's vitals, and when he inquired Holz shrugged lightly. "They're better than they were yesterday. Has she woken up yet?"

"No."

"Stevens?"

Dr. Holz's partner set down the computer he had been using, and pulled out a syringe, injecting it into the intravenous line that snaked down and into Carla's arm. "Your bud, pup?" Stevens asked. He looked young, and not particularly malicious.

Chanatja nodded, but Holz added her own commentary, a muttered: "you don't want to know."

Stevens didn't comment, and nor did he ask for clarification, although a smile crossed his boyish face. As humans went, the shepherd took a faint liking to him -- but his focus was on the silent woman before him. He threaded his fingers through hers, and gave her hand a hopeful squeeze.

His keen ears picked up an almost inaudible whisper. "Hey, Channikins..." The shepherd perked, and looked hopefully at her; her eyes were open, and she gave him a wan smile.

He couldn't help himself. He knew his tail was wagging; it struck the chair painfully. Keeping his paws on her hand, he leaned over the woman's bed -- nuzzling her, licking her face giddily. "Carla! Ah, Carrich --"

"Jesus, calm down," Holz muttered.

"Aww, doc," Stevens protested gently. "Leave 'em alone."

"It's not hygienic."

"Then don't watch. C'mon, you wanted to check up on Kirby."

Chanatja heard their conversation distantly; he was more focused on Carla, who had become a little more animated. But he couldn't stop, not until he felt her hand pushing him weakly away. She tried to laugh, her breathing shallow. "Thanks, puppy..."

The two other humans had left. He gave Carla's nose a parting lick and straightened, grinning at her. "I'm sorry," he lied. "I couldn't help myself. When I saw you..."

"How am I?" she wanted to know. Her voice was stronger than it had been the last time he'd seen her awake, but it was still tired-sounding and thin.

"The doctor seemed to think that you'd be alright. Do you... do you feel any better?"

She closed her eyes, as if to think about that question, and then nodded. "A little. Maybe it's just seeing you so happy. Before..."

Chanatja bent down to lick her nose again. "That was a long time ago, Carrich."

Carla didn't answer. Not for a long minute, until he had to look at her to see if she was even still awake. Her eyes were still open, though; and they had a little more life to them. "It was one of the medics," she suddenly said. "Jenny Molloy... she was in our section..."

The shepherd tilted his head. "Yes?"

He could see her biting her lip, though it still trembled faintly. "She was the one who told me I was going to die. She said... she said they couldn't do anything to help us..."

"I know." When she was stronger, perhaps, he would explain, but it seemed selfish to admit how terrified he had been when the medic had told him that. How he would've done anything, made any bargain -- how desperate he had been, when he stood before Captain Tindall and begged for Carla's life. "But she was wrong."

He didn't want to talk about it anymore. Carla did not seem any more inclined. Instead she smiled to him, at his answer, and lifted up an arm to hug him. He leaned obligingly closer, so that she didn't have to exert herself. "Puppy..."

The shepherd licked her nose again. "Yes?"

Softly, she returned the smile he had given her. Then she kissed him, their lips meeting for a second, until her strength ebbed and she had to settle back, into the hospital bed. "Puppy," she murmured again. "I love you."

*

"Whatever you say, sir." Bester grinned on the last word; he seemed to be having fun with it. "I'll bring us to the right side, then; we'll have cover from anything to the west."

Corinna did not put a great deal of weight in the field promotion, reflecting as it did her role as a glorified chaperone. Tindall had asked her to serve as his liaison to the newly organized auxiliary provided by the Commonwealth of the Enlightened -- a construct she still regarded extremely skeptically.

Tindall had said, too, that they should be on the lookout for Kingdom forces. According to the captain, it was possible that they had inadvertently tipped their hand to the Kingdom, in transmitting a message that was intended for CODA's High Command. The long-range transmitter was now switched off, but who knew what to expect?

Corinna, who had a hard time thinking of herself as 'Lieutenant Benjamin,' had to admit to pleasant surprise: for civilians, the dogs were quick studies. They followed her orders crisply, and they carried them out with ruthless efficiency. In the ten days since they'd begun training, the moreaus had made remarkable progress.

They did not have time for anything close to a full curriculum. This was, indeed, a combat mission. To the left and right, twenty moreaus armed with rifles and grenade launchers flanked her Rooijakkals.

"Anything on sensors, Suresh?"

"No, sir," the fennec shook his head. "If I had to guess, I'd say the valley two klicks ahead, to our one o'clock."

"Bugger," the thylacine muttered. The Kingdom was out there; this was nothing that could be argued against. The previous day, they had fired two rockets into the base, injuring six sentries.

Dishearteningly, she knew that they would have no support if they came under attack. Tindall had relegated their Griffons to emergency use only, until a solution could be found to their prodigious hunger for spare parts. Carignan's QRF was twelve kilometers away; without that, they were one Jackal and twenty infantrymen against the world.

The Kingdom, though, was unlikely to be faring much better. From their intelligence, they were up against irregulars -- the yakuza and triad footsoldiers that the Sangan Kingdom relied on to fight its less serious battles and keep the peace on its border worlds. They were fierce, but not especially well equipped.

That meant they traveled on foot, in all likelihood; Tindall and Benjamin agreed that this in itself implied that the men who had attacked them were close by. "Flush them out, and kill them," the captain had told her.

"Contact," Suresh said. "Thermal, right one. Three thousand meters. Nothing on acoustic, but who knows? I make it as two humans, sir."

She unfastened her harness so that she could lean over to take a closer look at his screen. The heat signatures Suresh had found were in a rocky valley, where the current of a swift stream would provide a lot of distracting noise. "If I wanted to kill a Jackal," the thylacine mused, "I'd lure it somewhere I could hit it from the top. Wouldn't you?"

Bester took the Jackal a few hundred meters to the side, so that they could see their quarry more clearly. They were still, but unmistakably human in shape -- and when she took the image to maximum zoom, she could see the faint outline of a heavy rifle.

"Two of 'em," Suresh traced the figures on his screen. "Waiting for a patrol, maybe? Civvie traffic?" A paved road followed the course of the river; the sniper would have clear visibility over it.

"I don't think two is enough." Partly this was logic, partly it was intuition. Even sappers needed more people to carry their supplies. Two people was a spotting party -- but there was nothing to spot; Tindall was no longer sending convoys out, and hadn't done so for days.

"They're going to know we're here," Suresh pointed out. "The Jackal's pretty big." She agreed with the fennec -- but if they fired at the mech, they would give away their position, and ran the risk that they would not disable it with the first shot.

Drumming her fingers slowly, she forced herself to play out the possible scenarios. Once she had indulged the conceit that it was something like chess, and compelled Bester to play along. Then, one game, he'd abruptly flipped a coin, then flicked one of her rooks off the table. "Made up my own rules," he'd grunted. "That was an IED."

This was closer to the way the real world worked.

"Anything in EM?"

"Zilch," the fennec told her. "EMABS is dead out there."

Stennis twisted around at that, leaning on his chair and looking at her. "Yeah, but, they're not going to be emitting, right? They already know where our mech is. And if they're close together, they won't need radios to talk."

This brought them back to square one. She asked Suresh to turn the sensitivity of his thermal scanners up -- and then, when this found nothing, to do so again. He grumbled; they were burning valuable time.

They discovered the soldier only through a stroke of luck -- a blob of faint color moving too quickly as the fennec happened to sweep the sensor over it. "Thermal suits," Suresh muttered. "Blend 'em practically right into background..."

They were no easier to see visually, but now Suresh knew what to look for. There were eight of them, spaced out over a hundred meters -- in the high ground above the road, where they could take their time lining up the perfect shot on the hapless Rooijakkals.

Corinna split her moreaus into two groups, ordering one to stick close to the mech and the other to circle around and up the valley wall. With luck, the Kingdom's troops would not notice, and she told Bester to turn the reactor up, making as much noise as possible as they stalked towards the two figures she now felt almost certain were decoys.

It owed as much to the submarine warfare of Earth's past as to infantry combat, Corinna thought. Her first owner had been a fan of naval history, as had many in the Tasman Geodesic. So much of what they did now amounted to waiting -- trying to catch a hint of their enemy, knowing that whoever got the drop was likely to emerge victorious.

At two thousand meters away, Suresh announced that a rangefinder had painted them. His voice was lowered; they were back in the quiet, dedicated mindset of the hunter. Even the new moreaus seem to have picked up on it -- though when she'd ordered them to move they had seemed thrilled by the sudden prospect of actual activity.

Corinna needed to keep their enemies distracted. Gambling that the Kingdom wouldn't take the first shot unless it was a guaranteed kill, she ordered the moreaus close to her to fan out -- increasing the number of targets their enemy would need to follow, skirting what she considered the maximum safe distance from their guided rockets.

They were circling around towards the two decoys, trying to give the impression that this was still their primary goal. The closer they got, the more cautious she asked Bester to act. Neither of the two thermal targets had moved -- no, they had to be fakes.

If she took too long, though, the enemy would know that something was up. She lowered the boom of her microphone. "Isaac, this is Sigrun. Remember those two targets I highlighted for you guys? Can you still see them? Over."

"Yes, sir," Isaac said. "Targets in sight. Both of them."

Yes, but then that wasn't saying much; they were right next to each other. "Okay. On my mark, I want your guys to give me suppressing fire on them. Act like you mean it. Out." She waited for his acknowledgment. "Bester, circle right ninety meters at full speed -- got a solution, Stennie?"

"Aye."

"Let's do this, then. Suresh, you don't let those bastards out of your sight." She cracked her knuckles, took a deep breath, and keyed the mic again. "Three. Two. One. Mark."

Less than a second later, as the Rooijakkals sprung to its feet, she heard the roar of the Cerberus machine gun pouring fire downrange. The intermittent crackle of lighter weapons punctuated it, growing a little softer as the mech gained distance.

Bester halted it with an expert swiftness just as Stennis called out his solution. "Ready."

They dropped into a firing crouch. "Shoot!"

The high explosive salvo burst the area where the decoys had been into hot flame; shattered stone and bits of burning wood kicked out in all directions. "Cease fire! Cease fire!"

It took longer to dwindle than it had to start. Now, she hoped, the Kingdom was well aware of Isaac's squad, and of the commotion caused by the mech. The next part of the gambit was trickier. Bester edged them closer, caution building each time Suresh whispered another rangefinding pulse.

"Sigrun, this is Shura. I'm in position." Shura Narrakja was a muscular, imposing shepherd who was proving to be a natural soldier. She glanced at her map: without the UDL, it was hard to make out, but she supposed that he was roughly where she had wanted him.

"Sigrun. Shura, do you have a visual? Over."

"Shura. Negative, sir. They're hidden by the slope and these trees. Maybe I could see better if I was about... two hundred meters closer to them? Over."

That close, though, and they were likely to be discovered. The thylacine stroked her muzzle carefully. "Sigrun. Hold position and wait for my orders. Out."

"Try to hit those guys from here?" Stennis asked.

"Think so," she nodded. "Flush 'em north into Shura's team." She brought up her map, and had just added the first lines to it when Suresh snapped his head up.

"Signals! Guidance laser in tracking mode -- they're getting ready to shoot."

"Bloody -- Bester, evasive!" she barked, and as the mech lurched she clicked her microphone on. "Isaac -- suppressive fire, the rock wall bearing 350, fifteen hundred meters --"

"Missile launch! Twelve o'clock -- Bester, come hard left!"

"-- Shura. Engage targets to the south at will. Sigrun out!" she finished, reaching out for a handhold as the Rooijakkals lurched to the ground.

"Miss," Suresh called out, a half-second before she heard the sound of the explosion to the mech's right side.

Now she dearly missed the maps that TacNet and the Uniform Datalink had created for them. Without the network, her holographic map was almost impossible to read -- cluttered with the noise of the battle that had suddenly erupted.

Only the thermal images helped. Isaac's squad had taken up decent firing positions, and the tracers burned laser-straight lines through the map. Almost immediately, they began to draw return fire -- rapid, and increasingly accurate.

Just as it began to grow too close for comfort, though, Shura's moreaus opened fire, and the Kingdom infantrymen turned to face this new, closer threat. They were, she thought, rather close -- and then Shura charged. The thermal signatures merged; briefly, someone's mic opened, and she heard the sound of close-quarters combat. Isaac could see this, too; she heard the order to cease fire.

A few more shots rang out. Silence.

The radio clicked on again. "Sigrun, this is Shura. Targets eliminated. Over."

The whole affair had taken, perhaps, two minutes. Brief, vicious, and final. Shura had attacked with ruthless efficiency. She blinked, looking at Bester. The Rottweiler shook his head. "Don't ask me, stripes."

Suresh did not report anything else suspicious; ten minutes later, Corinna ordered the auxiliaries to regroup, and waited for the other squad to rejoin them. They pulled back to a bridge over the unnamed stream, and she opened the hatch to a refreshingly warm sun. Over the past two weeks most of the dust seemed to have settled from the atmosphere; the sun no longer shone a hellish red.

"Everybody alright?"

Isaac and Shura both nodded, in turn. There had been no injuries in the quick engagement. And none of the Kingdom's fighters, Shura told her, had survived. "We were not asked to take prisoners."

She had never suggested that they were, although in the event the speed with which the battle had developed, and ended, seemed to have precluded it to begin with. She let Isaac's men take a quick break, and pulled the shepherd aside.

"What happened back there?"

The tawny-furred dog tilted his head, his dark eyes narrowing in confusion. "Sir?"

"That attack. You could've held your position -- why did you charge?"

"They saw us," he said. "And attacked. A drawn out firefight would've put us at a disadvantage, I believe, sir. We're not marksmen, after all. I did what I thought was likely to be most effective."

The thylacine's ears flattened a bit. Shura's voice was not particularly harsh -- it was, indeed, almost clinical, as though he was reporting on the news. It was very analytical. "Should be... maybe a bit more careful," she suggested. "That could've been risky."

"If I'd held back," he countered, "they might've escaped."

"Yes... that's true..."

"And this way," the shepherd continued, "they did not."

She could not argue with this, and she could not dispute the effectiveness. The thylacine nodded, and turned to pull herself back into the Rooijakkals. One of Shura's men caught her eye, a fluffy husky with eyes that were the same slate grey color as her fur.

It had not been the eyes that drew Corinna's attention. But as she closed the hatch behind her, she very nearly managed to convince herself that she had not seen the blood that stained the husky's muzzle.

*

Arnold Tindall, the leader of the human army, seemed surprised that the nakathja had proved so adept. This was, to Alrukhan's way of thinking, symbolic more of human narrow-mindedness than anything else. But he took the compliment graciously.

"Of course, comrade Tindall."

"Lieutenant Benjamin says they might be useful on their own patrols -- without our supervision. With your consent, I suppose we could authorize that." Tindall had a large map of the area on his desk, spinning slowly. Markers indicated where the human thought the Kingdom might be active.

The Ibizan understood the human's sense of caution. Iskoshunja had begun to spoil for a more aggressive approach, but to Alrukhan this was overconfident. Some of the Enlightened were decent fighters, and many more wished to be, but he was content to let Tindall direct this.

Most of the human's activity centered around stockpiling supplies and organizing for a defense against the siege he believed was inevitable. It reminded the Ibizan a little of the planning that had gone into the strike, which now seemed countless ages in the past.

"They're still weak," Iskoshunja grumbled. She was curled up against his side, as was her habit. The Commonwealth had been given two buildings to make their residence in, with rooms large enough that it was easy to find common beds.

"Of course, Iskich," he agreed. "I never said anything else. But the council is agreed, are they not? For now, we hold to the alliance. And this is not so bad..."

"You're letting them fool you," the corgi said. "They still believe they own us, in their hearts. As soon as we're no longer useful..."

He licked one of her broad ears soothingly. "Must you always be so paranoid, comrade? It's not like we're getting nothing out of this arrangement. Safety, for one -- not to mention training that I venture to say might be useful, if in our independence we face something more threatening than some fat old city policemen..."

"Yes, yes. Shurrich playing at being a soldier," she said, with a wave of her paw to indicate just how little concern she had for this. "But we become complacent. You know he's making friends with the human's housepets."

It was something he had been keeping in mind. Iskoshunja did not think kindly on the moreau soldiers that Tindall commanded. In particular, she seemed to find their willingness to serve a human master some sort of betrayal of principles she felt strongly about.

But they were independent -- more so, even, than some of the Enlightened. More than a few of the ex-DEC nakathja murmured nostalgically about their past, when they had been provided for, and been given concrete tasks to accomplish.

They would overcome this only with time. For now, he took the patrols as a good first step. They were a chance to get out of the palisade, and every time more nakathja volunteered for them. In the following days, they traveled further and further afield -- mostly encountering nothing.

He entrusted Shura with most military tasks, and so when the shepherd knocked on the wall to get his attention he looked up with his ears perked attentively. "Yes? What is it, comrade?"

"Tindall wishes that you be informed, comrade Alrukhan, that one of our patrols has failed to report in. They are overdue now by four hours."

"Who?"

"Comrades Sunara, Tascatja, Bova and Rinnat. They were exploring a possible radio signal to the northwest -- on the road back to our old home. We've heard nothing from them at all, and I believe it's prudent to be concerned."

Alrukhan stood, starting to pace. "Is Tindall planning to send his walkers out?" Between themselves, they accorded neither humans nor CODA's moreaus the title 'comrade.'

The shepherd shook his head. "Not until the morning, at least, I'm afraid."

Morning, though, brought no news. Captain Tindall authorized a patrol, but they returned empty-handed. The human captain asked if it was possible they might have gotten lost, or gone AWOL: Alrukhan's glare was the only answer he got, and presently he nodded, and apologized for the suggestion.

Hearing that they had been vanished reinforced the gravity of their situation, in a way. They had not lost anyone since the beginning of the strike. Alrukhan abandoned the council room to stand in the watchtower, looking for any sign of their return. He was waiting there when one of the CODA nakathja climbed the ladder. "Captain Tindall --" seeing Alrukhan's withering look, the collie began again in Nakath. "Captain Tindall wants to see you. He says it's urgent."

He was alone in his office, and when the Ibizan entered Tindall pointed to the chair next to him. "Thanks for coming. I have some news on your men."

"Not good, I take it, comrade."

"No," Tindall admitted, with a gentle nod. "I'm sorry. We pulled this off the wire..."

A hologram came to life. It showed a stocky man with oriental features -- unremarkable, so far as Alrukhan could tell; the vagaries of human appearance often escaped him. His mouth began moving, and presently a talk track carried the translation. "Citizens of the civilized Jericho, a bulletin for your education. The pathetic Yucatan Alliance on the far continent have reached a new low. Not content with their crimes against humanity, they now send against us their pets."

"Propaganda," Tindall explained. "On their line-of-sight broadcast channels. We picked it up from a bounce off the ionosphere, I guess."

The hologram gestured behind him, and the display showed a grainy image -- but unmistakable. It was the four missing nakathja. Alrukhan felt his blood run cold as the talking resumed. "Fortunately our brave soldiers are well trained against this menace. They are an easy prey."

The Ibizan gasped. "What does he --"

"But fortunately, they have their uses. It is the new style. For next winter."

The hologram reached offscreen, and pulled something heavy back. With a leering grin, he draped it about his shoulders -- then Alrukhan could see the pattern of the fur. Red and white, like his own coat. Like Sunara Tayus's. Alrukhan, the speaker, howled in a bellow of wordless rage. When the doctors arrived to sedate him, it took six men to pin him down.