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Praetorian

By Lusa Iceheart

'What separates highly advanced technology from the fictitious realm of magic and mythos? For our ancestors and the early civilizations of our homeworld, there wasn't any difference. Littered with the technology of a long lost, hyper advanced space faring race, the Lupine birthplace of Alurius held wonders our primitive culture knew only as Magic and relics of the Gods. For much of our early history, these ruins held their secrets closely. How could those who held only a rudimentary grasp of metallurgy comprehend micro-conductive alloys and nanofabricated crystalline glass? It has only been in the last 3 centuries that Lupine scientists have begun to truly unravel the marvels left to us by our long departed creators, the Precursors. These purposefully abandoned structures were filled with vaults of knowledge, left almost certainly for us to decipher. After first using these rapidly progressing new understandings of science to wage land bound wars, we entered a new age of prosperity, strengthened our homeworlds future and took to the stars to find what awaited us, potentially even our ancient benefactors. We soon discovered we were not the only relatively young race to achieve FTL capabilities, in fact during our First Contact with the Galactic Leonian Empire and the Ottarian Council of Nations, it became quite apparent our Precursors had planted seeds of civilization on their worlds as well. Genetic sequencing of all known galactic species shows common heritage, distant, but significant enough to confirm the long held theory that our species did not originally hail from Alurius, but was transplanted and adapted (or it was Alurius that was adapted to us), in a process dubbed "Life Seeding". The purpose remains a mystery; whether to preserve the life of a dying world, to conduct some vast experiment on the origins of civilization, or simply some plot to develop useful slaves that was never brought to fruition, the truth may just simply be lost to time. What stands is at least 6 sapient races across three multi-star cluster empires, and the remnants of a vanished power scattered between them.'

//Vid End

The clatter of a paw held vid-tablet on the nightstand caused a muffled groan from one of the two canine occupants of the small state room, the second, gently removing his clipped on ear pieces, set them on top. Taking care to not further disturb his suitemate, the canine stood up and quietly padded over to the connecting head, the motorized aluminum door sliding silently behind a swishing tail. The automatic lights came on a fraction of a second later, blinding the figure. Blinking rapidly, he faced a mirror and took in his own form.

Lucian Iceheart knew he wasn't the most muscular of dogs, merely average. On the slightly below average height, he wasn't the peak physical example of a Lupis, but certainly not unattractive. His deep black coat had a light sheen to it along his exposed midsection, despite only now beginning his early morning grooming. He grinned to himself. The effort to keep fur this clean and neat was worth the results, Lucian thought. A quick brushing of coat and teeth, applying a light scent freshener, and giving himself another once over, sapphire blue eyes scanning his reflection, Lucian finished with a silent nod. Turning 90 degrees he opened the adjoining closet and pulled out a fresh garrison uniform. Quickly dressing,Lucian snapped the manual light switch off leaving the head, then slipped out the still dark stateroom, making minor adjustments to his sleeves as he went.

The hall was quiet at this hour, being just before the first cycles shift was due to wake. The third shift would still be almost another two hours. Having little else to do and boring of more Outernet video documentaries, the dog made his way to the barracks wardroom, around a single corner. The perks of being a squad leader meant you were always placed closest to the kitchen. Lucian made his way to the small counter at the back and prepared himself some morning stim, not necessarily needing the morning pick-me-up, but more of habit than anything else. As he finished, the door slid open and barely coherent growl signaled yet another part of the early hour routine. Corporal Rorick Torrens shambled over to his commanding officer, gave an almost drunken salute and then slouched over the counter top, switching the stim-maker back on for his own cup.

ahh, the proud defenders of the Federal Lupine Republic, totally useless without pre-packaged, stimulent filled water

Giving a light chuckle, Lucian held his already made cup out to the poor dog, "It looks like you need this more than I do, Rorick".

He took the cup and downed the steaming contents far to quick to actually be able to taste it, "Thanks boss, I appreciate it," he managed to gag out. "I take it you were up all night again?".

"Yeah, most of it anyway. I don't know how many times I've said it, but this has to be one of the worst postings in the Republic. I swear, NOTHING happens here, despite all the things that could happen, nothing seems to."

"Well, we are posted on a commercial spaceport in the middle of Federal space, it has its own security force, we're just here cause we can be, really. It helps to think of it as a safe posting, rather than a boring one, boss," The groggy dog of gray and brown coloring offered. "We do get the occasional smuggler, though."

Scoffing, "the 'occasional smuggler', hardly. Most of the time its a normal merchant vessel, and they just tweak their manifests to skip on some of the import taxes. That barely counts as smuggling, let alone warrants our time. Isn't that why there's a station security task force? Ehh, I suppose I should've expected to be saddled with a post like this, knowing my parents".

"You mean your mother on the Federal Senate and your father the war-hero fleet commander? You poor pup, I feel so bad for you."

"That's exactly my point! Even if they didn't have a paw directly in it, this assignment is because any staff officer unfortunate to deliver them bad news would rather jump out an airlock. No one in their right mind would put me in a combat role, despite my aptitude scores and multiple requests for a transfer; my parents would have the tail of any officer who considered it for a winter scarf. Im being coddled and, more importantly, wasted, here." Lucian slumped back against the counter.

The slightly older canine gave a light shrug, "yeah, I can understand that feeling. Sixteen months we've been posted here, and all my years worth of medical training has been good for is to patch up a few drunken morons after a fistfight." Rorick turned his attention to the door as the third and final member of Lucians squad walked in, twiddling away on his tablet.

"Do you ever put those things down, Dev?" Lucian prodded.

The curly tailed black and white dog looked up, and gave a nod "I have to set em down to eat, don't I?" eyes then went back to the green haze of the tablet screen.

"It only takes one to eat the crap vending machine food you eat. How do you even fit in your uniform? Does moving your eyes burn the calories all away?". Clearly more alert, Rorick continued the barrage of teasing, to which Corporal Devius Seppala whined back something, Lucian had a hard time following the banter, instead tuning them out and checking the nearby patrol postings on a wall mounted screen. As long as his subordinates didn't argue like an old mated couple around the Garrison Captain, Lucian couldn't care.

Sighing to himself, he quickly read through the patrol orders: the Captain had them doing a snap inspection of Docking Array 5. This brought a smile to his muzzle. Snap inspections were entertaining if only because of the multitude of reactions they received from very unhappy merchant vessel crews. Occasionally some fool would throw a punch, and Lucian could drag them to the stations brig for the day. One of the few assignments that actually had what Lucian was looking for when he joined the Federal Military. Occasionally anyway.

Heading back to his suite, Lucian was relieved to see its other occupant was fully awake. Sergeant Terret Blake sat up on his bunk, casually stretching his neck.

"Had to wake me up early, right? Spent all night watching your damn porn, didn't you?" he yawned out.

"Hmmph, It was a history video, thank you very much."

"Ugh even worse. It's bad enough your up at absurd hours-"

"Regulation recommends we be awake at least an hour before we have to gear up" Lucian interjected.

"-And are such a damn puppy-eyed lap dog, I mean do you ever take a break?"

"I'll take a break when you stop treating everyone like trash, Blake."

The canine in question gave a growl and pushed his way past Lucian to the head.

Having become flustered by his asshole suitmate once again, Lucian tried his best to just ignore him and gathered his gear from the bedside locker, retrieving his field armor and sidearm.

The standard garrison uniform was more or less a wetsuit-like full body sleeve, which was worn with a sleeved shirt and pants over it and a pair of thin mesh boots when not in the field. For combat, the undersleeve had magnetic locks made to attach armor segments to. A typical ceramic and high density plastic breastplate, shin guards, and boots were the typical set. More specialized units were equipped with fully sealed EVA combat capable suits, with things like armor reinforcement, or heavy weapon mounts imbedded on the frame. Posting like this didn't get anything special like that.

For a sidearm, Lucian carried a P-37 "Paladin" pistol, a semi-automatic, anti-armor weapon. Not standard issue, but junior officers such as himself were allowed to carry their own personal sidearms. Hence it being stored in his room rather than the barracks armory. Modern firearms made use of miniaturized railgun technology, firing rounds with a fraction of the size of a traditional bullet with even greater impact force. This allowed a single weapon to require reloading once every few firefights, as the small bead-like rounds were much more compact than ammo of ages past. The down side to the modern gun was the power consumption: electric rail guns ate up lots of power, and depending on the size of the weapon, its ammo, its impact velocity, range, and whatnot, left a wide variance in how much power. This led to a counter-balance of sorts to the miniaturized ammunition, a high powered long range sniper rifle required much more charge per round than a single fire combat rifle, forcing a reloading of the charge pack (not unlike ammo clips of old, ironically) to continue firing. The P-37 managed 25 rounds before requiring a replacement charge pack, and was a fairly all around reliable weapon.

Having holstered his sidearm, Lucian turned and made for the stateroom door once again before Blake could ruin his morning.

Lupa and Lupis above, one of these day I'm going to beat the crap out of that runt-bred mutt He thought to himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lucian wouldn't call himself a stiff-tailed drill instructor of a CO. Despite Dev panting and complaining as the small three dog squad was put to a light jog, Lucian wasnt that bad. They weren't running in some desert heat, they were in a damn climate controlled space station, for Lupa's sake! The small mall complex in the center of the Arct Pallintine Orbital Commerce and Trade Port wasn't very busy, a few crew dogs from various docked trading vessels were mingling at the various cornerside cafes and shops or stumbling out of a bar depending on what time cycle they were on. Most of them were probably on shore leave while their ships had the entirely automated loading and unloading systems haul their cargo to and from one of the three massive space elevators that tethered the station to Arct Pallintine's surface. Each elevator cable was roaring in and out of atmosphere around the clock, ensuring a steady stream of goods to the surface of one of the Republic's most populated colonies.

This was the commercial station, a separate spaceport in outer orbit served as the civilian docking port, ferrying people down to the surface ports in large transit ships. This kept the bulk of larger craft away from populated city centers. Imagine a luxury liner the size of a skyscraper accidentally grazing the tops of buildings on the surface. It was far easier to dock them in orbit, then shuttle passengers down in smaller craft. Personally owned freighters and other Corvette or smaller sized craft could land planetside at the public port or a private hanger, however most spacers found it not worth the extra fuel. The civilian spaceport was much more rowdy on average, dealing with the hectic flow of people rather than lifeless goods kept it an even less enticing post than this one. Here, the crews had to mostly be on good behavior as the vast majority worked for corporate entities who would gladly relieve them of their work if a port authority logged any incident reports on them.

Still weezing, Devius managed to complain, "Do we really... have to... run like this.. Boss? Whats the point... of patrol... if im too damn tired... to do stuff..." he huffed out.

"I told you, if you keep eating trash like you do, this is only going to get harder and harder", Rorick chimed in.

"The point is to keep your ass in shape, and to break up the monotony of standing around all day checking manifests" Lucian barked.

Coming to a stop at a bulkhead junction separating the central mall and its hubs from the docking arrays, Lucian let his dogs catch their breath and down some water. Checking his wrist mounted datapad, he took note that there were only 7 ships currently docked on Array 5, so it wouldn't take too terribly long to check what filled up thier holds with the manifests. Glancing out the nearby viewport overlooking the expansive docking yards, and the beautiful blue, white and green world below it, he could see most of the other docking arrays were moderately busy. Of course the Captain only wanted Array 5 done. The near empty array would mean less paperwork.

Everyone here is either lazy or has next to no aspirations beyond this. I hate it. Rorick and Dev aren't here by choice though, like me. I'm pretty sure I'd go crazy without them

Lucian smiled to himself as he watched his subordinates, and friends, lap viciously at their canteens.

The first three ships the squad inspected were just as listed, Lucian was almost disappointed when the fourths single error on the forms was a misspelling of the ships pilots name. The dumb administrative AIs that automatically filled out the forms always had trouble with Ottarian clan names. No surprise there. The fifth vessel had a half-naked crew chief who showed the unit the assortment of females lingerie packed inside the industrial containers. Lucian was tempted to ask the dog to model some of his products, but decided against it.

They walked up to the bulkhead door of the sixth occupied docking slip, and rang the door, to no answer. Grunting in frustration, Lucian began typing in the override code for the door, if an inspection crew received no answer, they had full authority to enter the slip and the vessel itself. The door slid open, revealing a scrawny Lupis trying to stuff what looked like packets of drugs down the stations waste disposal slot along the wall of the slip. Rorick jumped at him faster than Lucian could order, and between the large dogs tackle and Dev's drawn sidearm, they had him subdued before he stepped past the airlock threshold.

Still in the hall, Lucian caught sight of a pair of Leonians, males judging by their manes, step into the hall, followed by a second pair carrying a large crate between them. The two leading felines had the telltale shape of a holstered pistol at their hips, concealed, but not well enough. As if a vessels crew unloading cargo by themselves, without the automated loading systems, wasn't suspicious enough, the armed guards had Lucian's own weapon out and pointed down range just as quick as the felines could register who he was.

"Halt, paws on your heads now!"

Reaching instead for their weapons, Lucian shot the first twice to the midsection before he could unholster. One of the two crate hauling Leonians took a third round in the knee, dropping the crate, before the last two took cover in a sealed airlocks doorway. The armed Leonian returned a half dozen shots his way, striking Lucians own bulkhead cover. Ducking out, Lucian fired again, this time tearing thro the neck of the unarmed Leonian. The last hostile fired a round to his horizontal, then a dozen rounds downrange well overshooting Lucians cover. Suppressing fire, no doubt, as he bolted back into the docking slip.

By now, Devius and Rorick joined him in the hall and they pushed on towards the airlock door the Leonians had come from.

The lone lateral shot to the floor had been made to the skull of the runners crippled comrade, Lucian could see the cats brain matter speckling the crate, which had popped open. He stopped in his tracks when he saw what was inside.

Wires. Circuit board. Remote receiver. Over a dozen canisters of highly explosive hydrazine fuel-cells.

A bomb big enough to blow a quarter of the station.