Chapter 5
Chapter 5.
We set down at the required coordinates on a moon with only numbers for a name. A small ship was waiting, a sleek silvery pleasure yacht. Its exterior finish was all chrome, it could probably be seen from orbit by the reflection of the system's sun. I wondered if that was maybe the intent, as Cane and Russel walked me towards a group of men, humans, standing a few hundred meters from it.
I kept my ears flat, like I absolutely hated the two holding my arms. Like I had had no fantasies when earlier, they had produced a pair of cybernetic handcuffs to lock my paws behind my back. Very soft, comfortable padding, until you tried to slide them off. I played it up, sniffing the air like I was terrified. The closer we got, the less of an act it became.
There were five humans present. Four were dressed in mismatching military gear. I felt a little insulted, thinking that my owner was so cheap that he would hire such poor quality. I wondered how much I was worth, if the parasite I wore cost more than The Hahkota?
We approached downwind, one of the humans smelled afraid, while the others were mostly
confident. One wore business attire, and he reeked of pleasure. He was the only one staring at me, the other four were staring at Cane and Russ. None of them knew the ship behind us had unlicensed particle weapons. Guns that could level a small city. If this was my new owner, he had just one path out alive, in our brig. Oh, the questions and demands I had for him, when that time came.
Chaos.
A loud ringing in my ears. For some reason, the world was sideways, and my muzzle leaned against dirt. I heard, and saw, large pieces of chrome fly in every direction, one passing by so close, it sounded like an insect, but it possibly weighed as much as me. I heard another deafening boom as a blur streaked by overhead, laying down weapons fire, my fur stood on end as The Hahkota's deflector shields crackled into life, a hundred meters away.
The noise as they deflected shots in the last possible microseconds were unlike anything I had ever heard. A sweet melody, music with a dangerous edge, rising in pitch.
It happened in just a pawful of seconds, and I was completely unable to link events to one another. Too much happened, too fast, for me to track. Was that a ship that just flew by? I turned my head and saw Russ screaming at The Hahkota.
"Fucking go! You're a sitting duck!" He gestured with his paws and pulled his energy carbine rifle off his back, swinging it into firing position. It emitted blue stabs of light that left a rush of fizzing noise in their wake. Disruptive energy which tore apart the atomic bonds of air molecules and anything else in its path.
What the fuck was happening? I felt in the center of my chest a deep vibration, the effects of anti-grav propulsion lifting a ship, my home, up and into the sky.
Russ dragged me behind a rock, using my collar as a handle. It didn't seem to object, a tidbit I'd remember, later. He fired a few more shots, then ducked as incoming fire sent pieces of rock splintering into the air.
I shouted, "I think a ship just flew overhead!" The look he gave me made my ears wilt.
Where was Cane? I tried to get my feet under me, but I was still cuffed behind my back. I saw charred bodies and wreckage everywhere, so many scents assaulted my nose, I thought it might explode. My ears were still ringing. My HUD showed inbound comms, it was Ash, and she seemed afraid.
"We're taking heavy fire from a third party, we have to lose them! We will be back, OK? Take cover with Russ and Cane. We're going FTL right now, out!"
I rolled over to Russ and told him what Ash just said. He scowled at me and popped another cartridge into his weapon, tossing an empty one into a growing pile at his feet. He released another controlled burst, then his floppy ears perked, he stood higher, scanning the area.
"We're clear. They're all dead, and... so is Cane." The last was spoken quietly; Russ looked at me with anguish in his eyes. I tried to think of what to say, I was still catching up. Cane is dead?
I heard another loud boom as a ship broke atmosphere. I recognized that sound, this time, a ship was approaching us, fast.
A ship can penetrate atmosphere at tactical velocities, using its shields to push the heat of re-entry around it. Protecting itself and its destination.
Suddenly, we were in a very big shadow, the air was alive with electricity, deflector screens at maximum strength: the only thing preventing the air in the ship's wake from shredding the flesh from our bones. I watched several guns level at us, and as the ship shifted around, their re-aiming made it obvious at whom they were pointed. A ramp dropped, clang, soldiers ran toward us with enough equipment to start a small scale war. I heard Russ's firearm clatter to the ground, he nudged me, "We're fucked," as he helped me up onto my feet. "Just let me do the talking."
"Freeze, freeze, freeze!" The half dozen soldiers ran up to us, all covered in black armor. They had long tails, and I realized I had seen one recently, I knew the species. Terellis. They looked like big Panthers on two legs, with sleek black fur covering rippling muscles. They were legendary in their military prowess, if you could afford them. They now had a lot of weaponry pointed our way. The one closest to me stared at a ruggedized datapad. He glanced at it twice, then stared at me. One look at Russ and he flicked a finger.
I flinched at the loud crack that followed, scenting the sharp twang of cordite, and blood. Russ's brain matter spilled onto the rocks behind him, his corpse collapsed to the ground.
"Russ!" My mouth stayed open while I stared at his body, too shocked for an adrenal reaction. So much had happened in so little time, it all had gained an unreal quality because of the backlog in my mind, and I still needed to catch up. Maybe, if I had been amped up from the beginning, I could have kept track. But I was lost, stunned. I watched in silence while they dug through Russ's tactical vest and came up with the keys to my cuffs. They unlocked them and tossed them onto the ground. I stared at the circles of metal. A quiet voice finally spoke up in my head: run!
I turned to bolt, and found a long blued steel rifle barrel hard against my front teeth, held by a soldier who was waiting, ready for me to try that stunt. He hissed something that would drop a house cat dead. I had to terminate my forward momentum, twisting my head away from the lethal weapon. I bared my throat, terror quadrupled, worried I was next to die.
My HUD flickered once, twice, then vanished from my vision. That scared me more than the weapon pointed at me, I recoiled like I had been hit.
"Turn around and walk into the ship," he said, lowering his rifle and pointing a much smaller device without a barrel at me. "If you don't, I'll stun you and carry you. You won't like that, I'll make sure of it." I held my paws up in a placating gesture, this was all horribly bad.
I kept my ears flat while I approached the foreign vessel. I knew freedom didn't lay in that direction, that with every step I took, it was actually further away. The men surrounded me in a formation, they were highly trained and silent. The fact that my HUD had gone inactive was a killing blow to me.
This was no fucking third party.
They locked me in a small room, and the first thing I did was inspect the urine collection pod in the comer. I poked my finger inside the receiver, and felt a pointy tip waiting inside. The modification I would need to help me piss. My ears wilted even further, I leaned up against the wall and slid down it onto my haunches. Well, wasn't this a fine plan, I had no means of escape. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. Oh, my Dog, they're taking me to my owner! Shit! I pulled at the collar around my neck, trying to slide it off my head as hard as I could.
When the last pair of gold stubs lost contact with my skin, a loud spark ripped through the quiet in the room. Every muscle in my body tensed up, then lost most of their strength. I twitched in a heap onto the floor, whimpering loudly, still clutching the collar tightly in my paws. I now knew three things: it wouldn't fit over my head, I wouldn't try that again, and Russ had been right: I really was fucked.
Russ, Cane, hurf. Dead? Wait, my team! I had almost given up hope, then I remembered my remaining team was still out there. The Hahkota was one hell of a ship, they would die trying to get me back.
Such thoughts were all I had as I felt the ship take off and enter space. FTL kicked in, another ZPD by the way I felt it in my chest, and we were en-route. I hoped we didn't get to where we were going.
We landed just outside a modern estate. I pined for a window in my cell, maybe I could have recognized what planet we wound up on. Two of the felines attached a leash to my collar, clipping it to a "D" ring I hadn't seen before, it must have been retracted, flush with the surface. They forced me to walk on all fours, pulling the collar hard when I got more than half a step too far away. This was not happening. Dirt and rocks stung my palm and fingerpads, they were relatively thin and soft from disuse.
I stared, all around us was a gorgeous colony of Rhenthar. Laborers glanced at both the soldiers and me, warily eyeing us with distrust. I didn't see any collars on any of them. I smelled familiar scents, the local flora and fauna seemed very earthlike, the defacto standard for all Rhenthar. I felt hella embarrassed, being walked like a dog. And at the same time, I had never been so terrified in all of my life.
My leash passed from slender black paws into bigger, black paws. I stared up at him, then backed up as far as the leash allowed, shock and surprise spiraling through my mind, tangling together into a tight knot of confusion.
"What? You? But, you're, you're Rhenthar..."
Indeed, he was. And very large, all black, his bright yellow eyes focused on me closely, the eyes of a wolf, staring down at me with intense scrutiny. He was tall, and he moved with the conservative grace of a predator. I couldn't see that the flickering green light on my collar took on a steady high frequency pulse.
My awareness of the trees and buildings around me slowly shrank, leaving just him. He smelled male, very satisfied, accomplished. Curious, but again I noticed, male. Of all the things to stare at right now, why couldn't I look at something besides his sheath? I tucked my tail between my legs in the presence of someone with such high authority. Wait, authority? Fuck that, fuck you! Take this collar off me! I've been waiting to tell you... something.
But it was missing from my mind. My coherent thoughts broke up, but they didn't stop. Words in my vocabulary dwindled, like in a massive data erase. I quickly chose simpler things to say, and was about to blurt it out, then they, too, were lost. I groped for them, feeling like something was caught in my throat. I knew they were there, but... what were they again? What's happening to me?
He crouched down on long knees, gravel crunched as he set his weight on them, he looked my body over with a critical eye, inspecting every hair that wasn't in the right place. He pulled at my fur where the autodoc had injured me, grimacing, all while I tried to come up with something to say. Dialogue flashed around in my head, now mere concepts instead of words. Ash... but who's Ash? Russ... who's Russ?
He pet me between my ears, like I was his dog. Who the fuck are you to treat me like this! My pupils widened, then narrowed, because it actually felt good, for some reason. I couldn't begin to remember why it shouldn't. I had a lot on my mind, things that made me very angry, and I was so tired of being angry. Things that made me afraid, and I was tired of being afraid. These things vanished when I tried to identify them. What was there to be angry at? Why be afraid?
The fight drained out of me, by the simple fact that I didn't even know what fighting was. That I should, could, or even would... ceased to exist. I looked back up at his huge black body, kneeling so close next to me, and I knew, he would know what to do.
"At long last, here you are. I've been waiting a very long time, Arrrick." He smiled huge, what was that reference, who's name...?
My tail slowly fell, and my mind seized to a halt. Before, it had been empty, now, it was jammed. It felt like a physical blow on my brain itself, and I had to look away, to the sky, the ground, him, back to the ground. Strong nausea rose in my throat, I quickly puked green bile up onto the ground. I felt so sorry and embarrassed, my body shook, I'm freezing, endorphins... way too much. A concept unlocked in my mind at the mention of that name, directed at me. I kept repeating it, bouncing it around, it became all I could think about.
He nodded, like he had expected this to happen. He continued to rub me behind my ears, and that was a comfort second to none.
"Keman," the thoughts in my head froze, ceased. Calm silence. "We're going to have ourselves an adventure, you and I." Adventure? I like adventures... a heavy weight lifted from my consciousness. The sound of his deep voice was soothing, and I still couldn't think of what to say.
I cocked my head sideways and splayed my ears, to let out small whimpers. My head still hurt a little, from all the effort needed to hold myself together. The foul taste in my mouth faded, but I was slipping, I couldn't hold it...
"We're going to unmake you, and then remake you. It's going to take a long time. I'm willing to invest it all, in you." My fur bristled, puffed up painfully, I stopped breathing. Something itched in my head, agonizingly, a lone neuron identified that concept, pointed out that's bad, real bad. A single word surfaced in response, I blurted it out, "Who-"
Fast as lightning, he grabbed my muzzle and squeezed my jaws shut tightly, digging his claws in. "Don't speak." He stared into my eyes, to make sure I understood. I wanted to look away, but there they were, and I was lost in his huge yellow eyes. Lost, and found. It was a command, and I was good at following commands.
Slowly, calmly, with precision, he set my fur to rights, flattening it all out. With each stroke, my heart slowed down, back to normal. I liked his touch a lot, I wanted more of it. What did I have to do... to get more?
He nodded at the two soldiers standing near us, they left. I stared at them as they went, then looked back up at him. He stood up, and pulled my leash gently. I should go where he goes, with that. Everyone knows this.
He led me into a big house with a lot of other people in it... coming and going, a blur.
"This is Keman," he says.
Many responses. "Congratulations." "Ohh, he's a good boy!" I am? "Finally." "So this is him?" It is! "He's so lucky..." I am! "You're so lucky..." He is! "Quite a find..." "How long until...?" My tail flew from all the positive energy, I soaked it right up. The excitement was contagious, people were looking at me, smiling at me, touching me. I could smell joy and comfort and support. Everyone was unimportant, though, compared to him. He was all that mattered.
Up on a platform, in a room, I was made to "lie down." I knew what that meant, everyone knows that. He produced a needle and blood was taken from my arm. It stung, and brought a variety of thoughts, vague, nothing I could recognize. I hated needles, but it was him doing it, so that made it ok.
Every inch of my body was inspected, some of it tickled. My teeth, my eyes, my fingers, my sheath. Urg... something about my sheath bothered me. Traces of pain, fear, anger. His fingers fondled my sheath, pulled it back, he stared. I tried to hump his paw, hopefully. Eagerly. Expectantly. He grinned at me, I and liked that smile.
"We'll take care of that, later..." I could hardly wait, whatever it was. He rotated my collar and positioned it just right, on my neck, which felt amazing. It was warm, I was secure, protected, his.
He lead me to where I was supposed to sleep. How did he know how tired I was?
I slept.