Birthright

by L. Fergus

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  The powdery snow glistened in the light of dawn. Kita and Sarge played on the rocks and cliff faces while waiting for the men to pack camp. Having not slept, she had nothing to pack.

  “It’s not nice to tease those of us who aren’t augmented,” Cowboy yelled at her.

  “He’s not,” Kita said, pointing at Sarge.

  “This is his native terrain. He’s built for it.”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  Cowboy grunted. “We have several thousand feet to climb before we reach the pass. We should start moving.”

  Kita sighed. Pinks and yellows painted the sky. She bounced down the side of a cliff to her pack. As she strapped it on, growling and chuffing came from around their campsite.

  Kita dropped her pack as six war cats came down from the cliffs. Where there’s one, there are at least three more you don’t see. The humans fell back into a circle.

  “No sudden moves,” said Kita, “and don’t draw your weapons.”

  A large war cat growled and hissed. Sarge answered him and charged up the side of the cliff. The rest of the war cats disappeared into the rock and snow.

  “Sarge, come back!” Kita yelled. She took a few steps after him.

  “Wait,” Cowboy ordered, “you don’t have time to go looking for your cat. We need to get to the king's camp.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without my cat,” Kita called down from where the war cats had gone. “You go ahead. I will catch up when I find him.”

  “You are the commander, and you must put your forces above yourself.”

  “He is one of my forces, and I will not abandon him. Go!” Kita bound up the mountain, the wind whipped her cloak as she followed a trail of broken snow. The war cats wouldn't normally leave a trail.

  I’m gaining on them. I can hear them. The sound of compacting snow stopped, but Kita could hear the war cats breathing with her augmented ears. Have they reached their destination?

  Kita found them high on a crag overlooking a cave. Something guarded the entrance. Using the lenses in her eyes, she zoomed in. The creature had the head of a slender dog and the body of a man. Its skin was glossy black, and when it yawned, it showed a mouth full of needle-like teeth. It wore no cold-weather gear, just a loincloth, and held a spear and a small shield.

  Sarge licked her hand.

  “Why’d you run off? You worried me half to death,” said Kita as she scratched his ears.

  Sarge growled and hissed. He motioned toward the cave with his head.

  “Let me guess. Something in that cave has your friends upset. And I bet it has to do with the village.”

  Sarge rubbed against her leg.

  “Guess that’s the right answer. Ok, you guys wait here, and I’ll go see what’s going on.”

  Kita traversed cliff faces covered with treacherous ice sheets, around to the cave while keeping to the shadows to stay out of sight of the guard. Nice to know Omega’s dowry is so useful so soon.

  She climbed to a ledge above the cave. She ignored the guard as she dropped behind him. Ducking into the shadows, she entered the cave. The path made an S curve and came to an intersection. A table with dog-men busily played a strange game with blocks of wood. Kita slipped by them down the hallway to the right.

  The hallway had one door. It contained a large barracks with room for fifty people. Some of the inhabitance, most were giant pig-men, were asleep except a few at a table in the corner next to a massive metal door. Wonder what’s behind door number one? A second regular door was halfway down the right wall.

  Too many people to get to the big door unseen. Kita returned to the intersection and went down the left hallway. Doors led to a mess hall combined with a day room. The kitchen was next door. At the end of the hallway, a set of large metal doors stood slightly ajar with a soft wooden clacking coming from within. Kita slipped inside.

  She climbed a stack of crates, peeked around the side of the top crate, and gasped. Black pig-men ran a meatpacking plant. They were short, stocky, and heavily muscled with long snouts and large tusks. One stopped to talk to another, revealing dozens of tiny needle-like teeth.

  Is this where they force the cats to bring their kills? At the beginning of the operation, they fed in a live war cat. No, this is much worse. A pig-man with a hammer smashed the cat’s skull. Another pair removed the head, feet, and tail and threw them onto a conveyer belt going out of the room. More pig-men gutted and cleaned the body cavity. Afterward, they hung the bodies on a hook and skinned them. The pelts were sewn into sacks and taken to the grinder, filled with ground meat, and sealed. The cleaned carcasses traveled on the hooks to the cutting area.

  Kita retched. I’ve cut up my share of bodies, but how can they do this to cats? Unable to take anymore, Kita withdrew behind the crate. The assembly line is moving at a fast pace. It would take many cats to meet the demand. They aren’t taking them from the wild. Otherwise, they’d be extinct. So where are they come from?

  Climbing down, she snuck through the carnage to the doors where the live cats came from. Inside, her jaw dropped as beads of cold sweat drop down her back. Thousands of cages with chained cats sat in neat rows. Tubes from pipes above and below the cages ran to various orifices of each cat. Some had litters of cubs, others look like they were somewhere in the process of gestation.

  Clipboards with clear, easy to read script hung next to each cage. Kita picked one up. The cat’s gestation period had somehow been increased to four days and grew to maturity in a week. That can't be healthy, for any of them. These cats lacked the spark of life.

  In the next row, groups of pig-men grabbed cubs from mothers and shoved them into carriers or pulled grown cats out of cages and placed them into carts. This place made Kita want to cry. After taking a deep breath to get control of her emotions, she made her way to a door across the room.

  In this room she did cry. Hundreds of war cats in cages were stacked ten high with no room to stand. These were not the vegetables from the previous room but war cats taken from the wild. Grunting and squealing attracted her attention. Bile climbed up the back of Kita’s throat when a pig-man grabbed a handful of meat from a pelt sack and shoved it into a cage. Oh, this has to stop.

  Kita returned to the slaughterhouse door that led to the rest of the facility. She shut them silently and placed a thermite charge, standard gear for an assassin, on the doors’ seam, igniting it, the metal melted, sealing the door.

  Pulling the hood of her cloak over her face, she made her skin invisible and threw a flash bomb into the center of the room. A blinding light and loud explosion stunned the workers.

  Kita grabbed a pig-man and crushed his head between the giant gears driving the hook system. Charging up the stairs to the grinders, she immobilized two pig-men with precision strikes, and then fed them into the grinders. The despised skinners she hung on their own meat hooks and skinned them alive. The rest she hunted down and dispatched with vengeful ruthlessness.

  When the room was silent, and the smoke floated in a haze, the sound of whimpering came from behind a piece of machinery. Kita kicked several crates out of the way revealing a cowering fat greasy man wearing a bloody apron. Kita lifted him over her head, so his feet dangled.

  The man trembled, and tears ran down his face. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I’m here to supervise, that’s it. This wasn’t my idea; they just pay me. I knew this would make the spirits angry.”

  I’m a spirit now? “Pay you to do what?” Kita said in a low growl.

  “They paid me to design the system and ove
rsee the workers. If it breaks, I fix it. That’s it, I swear.”

  “Who pays you?”

  “I don’t know. I was hired by an agent. He gave me a letter with no name, just a seal with an R and L. The money arrives once a month. The sack is as big as my head. It’s a hundred times what I make in Leedings.” The man looked around nervously.

  “Who are you looking for?” Kita hissed.

  “No one. Please, let me go.”

  Kita dropped him and grabbed his ankle. She dragged him the long way through the blood and bile of the slaughterhouse up the stairs to the grinder. Kita held him over the large funnel by his neck.

  “Please, no!” The man screamed.

  “Who are you worried about?” said Kita.

  “I don’t know. They said if I spoke of this place, they’d kill me.”

  “What makes you think I won’t?”

  Kita raised her hood to reveal the nothingness underneath.

  The man’s eyes filled with terror. “What spirit are you?”

  Kita pulled him close and whispered, “A fallen angel.” She let go. The man’s scream was cut short when the grinder smashed his chest.

  Kita went to the breeding room and killed the pig-men there and found the control room. The control panel had a keyboard under it, and geometric figures filled the screen. Why do I want to say screensaver? Kita tapped the panel, and the screensaver vanished. A login screen appeared. Next to the control panel was a biometric scanner. She placed her finger inside, and a command screen appeared. Instructions to run a program called breaker.msi appeared in her mind. Another program activated in the top corner of the panel. A circular ring appeared in the center of the panel. When the ring disappeared, the panel unlocked. None of what she saw made any sense. I shouldn’t mess with it. I’ll bring Cowboy here. I might kill them by mistake. Though, it might be a blessing for them.

  In the cage room, she ran down the aisles cutting the doors opens. She dispatched the groups of pig-men without breaking stride. When she finished, she found the cats refused to leave their cages. Kita examined one. He looked healthy and accepted a head scratch. Something else must be holding them here. I wonder if it has to do with what’s behind door number one?

  Kita returned to the doors of the slaughterhouse and cut open the welds with Dawn. She made her way to the kitchen and dayroom; slipping past the guards playing their game. Kita jammed the lock to the dayroom door and went to the kitchen and discovered a handful of dog-men and pig-men working. Through the serving window, she could see more in the dayroom.

  Kita dispatched the kitchen staff without a sound and threw a smoke bomb through the serving window. The dayroom filled with smoke as Kita jumped through the window. She killed the dog-men and pig-men with brutal savagery, wanting them to suffer like the war cats. When she finished, the room looked worse than the slaughterhouse.

  Satisfied, Kita walked along the hallway dragging Dusk against the wall to make a loud scratching sound. The guards looked up from their game and jumped to their feet, launching their spears as Kita. She jumped and twisted her way through the barrage. The guards charged. Kita took up a defensive stance. Two guards leaped at her. Kita tossed her swords in the air and caught the pair by their throats. The barbs in her hand injected a nerve agent, killing them as she threw them at the other guards. The guards dodged the bodies as Kita caught her swords. A dog-man snapped at Kita with its mouth. Kita spun and brought Dawn down on its neck. The last guard tried to flee, but Kita threw Dusk into its back.

  She retrieved Dusk and went to the entrance. After tossing the unsuspecting guard off the mountain, she called Sarge, and a larger group of cats appeared.

  “I need your help. I freed a bunch of war cats, but they refuse to leave.”

  Sarge and the rest of the war cats sat. There’s still something. But what? It must be what’s in the barracks.

  “Ok. I’ll be back.”