Dogs of War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Encryption had come a long way since then; there were plenty of cyberneticists saying it was time to give the robots another crack of the whip. Hartnell kept professional tabs on a number of replacement soldier programs aiming for the infallible and perfect robot infantryman. But the footage from Kashmir was still in people’s minds. It had been a humanitarian disaster. Parts of the region remained no-go zones because some of those machines were still going strong, drinking in the sunlight and killing anything that moved.

  Thus leading to the rise of Bioform infantry; thus to the age of the dog, to Hartnell’s posting here and to Ellene Asanto flying out to Hopelchén because someone up the chain was curious, but insufficiently so to actually go themselves.

  The air inside the armoured car was like an oven, and smelled of sweat and metal and the sharp tang of his whiskey. When they slowed to a crawl for the hundredth time, he cursed and banged on the ceiling as though trying to encourage a coachman. A moment later the message pinged in his implant: Arrived. From Asanto’s expression, she’d already worked that out.

  “Murray’s here?” she asked, because it was a long way to go if the man wasn’t going to show.

  “Murray?” Hartnell had taken to pronouncing it ‘moray’, like the eel, which had been funny the first time but now he kept thinking of fang-bristling underbites and ambush predators: all too apposite given the man himself. “Hell, I don’t know. Man goes where he wants. You try getting him to keep appointments.”

  Because it was Murray she was interested in, of course, not poor Hart. When the various corporations with interests in Campeche had needed to protect their assets, it was Redmark Asset Protection they had called on. And when Redmark had considered its options for a messy land war in difficult terrain, they had called on Jonas Murray. Because, while Murray’s primary qualification might be that he was a son of a bitch – Hartnell’s estimation – he was also the leader of the field when it came to directing Bioform warfare.

  There was a sharp rap above them and Hartnell wrestled with the hatch for a moment before getting it open. He and Asanto clambered out into thick, humid air that smelled of men and rotting vegetation and animals.

  He guessed forty soldiers there, all in the dull grey uniforms of Redmark – only one detachment of the total private security force in the field. The rest – and most of the Bioform packs – were out holding ground across the state. This was Murray’s personal taskforce, his clean-up squad. Troubleshooters, emphasis on the shoot.

  They had a perimeter set up – he saw turret guns and the spidery scaffolding of sensor towers. Instead of buildings there were spaces delineated by the filmy gauze of mosquito netting: zero privacy. Asanto stepped down, and Hartnell could see everyone there trying to decide if she was their problem. Making his own descent, he missed his footing and ended up sitting in the mud, cradling a bottle. It probably hadn’t lowered anyone’s opinion of him much.

  And then the man himself was there, calling to them through the netting, and every soldier abruptly had something else to be doing.

  “I suppose you’re Asanto?”

  Jonas Murray, Master of Hounds for Redmark’s experimental soldier program; Hartnell’s boss, and the source of the nightmares he was drinking to avoid. Of course, lots of people had bosses who gave them a hard time, but those bosses weren’t the Moray of Campeche.

  The Moray of Campeche. It helped Hartnell to imagine his superior as some sort of pulp movie villain. That way, he could imagine that, some day, a gun-toting adventurer would turn up and throw the man into a volcano.

  There was something appropriate in the nickname, though. When Murray smiled, Hartnell almost expected to see a row of needle teeth, as though he was becoming one of his own Bioforms. He was bald, scalp red and shiny in the heat, and although there were plenty of character lines on his face, he was almost expressionless right now: nothing but a slight, polite curve of the lips to admit to human contact.

  He was big: tall and broad-shouldered, a soldier’s fitness building on the sort of early-life muscle acceleration that had put all of those personal-trainers-to-the-rich-and-famous out of business a generation ago. Hartnell saw Asanto flinch slightly when he took her hand, but Murray wasn’t one for the crushing handshake. His strength was a cobra’s, lying in wait until it was needed.

  “Colonel Murray.”Asanto stumbled briefly over the name, almost saying ‘Moray’ after all. “I’ve come to see a man about a dog.”

  Murray looked her up and down, still without any real expression. “My Assets are on their way back to us. Come into my office. I’ll see if I can get sight of them for you.” His voice was slow with a smoker’s roughness.

  “Assets?” She followed him into the little mosquito-net complex, Hartnell trailing behind. There was a makeshift surveillance centre set up in there, a half-dozen screens that could fold up into a suitcase.

  “That’s their official designation,” he confirmed. “I guess it makes it easier for the accountants to write them off for tax purposes.”

  “What do you call them?”

  “I call them by their names, Miss Asanto.” He took a seat before the screens. They had been showing various stretches of scrubland and jungle and empty, dusty road, but now them began switching and flickering as Murray linked to them. “Speaking of accountants…”

  She shrugged. “A lot of investors have sunk a lot of money into Redmark’s Bioform division. Can you blame us for wanting to see where all those dollars have gone?”

  “I suppose not. Although I’d have thought you could wait until we finish up and pull out.” Behind him, the screens starting abandoning the landscape and displaying a familiar figure: Asanto herself. Asanto getting down from the flitter; Asanto sharing a single glass with Hartnell as they waited for the car; Asanto jolting about beside him in the dim interior. It was one of Murray’s standard tactics to put his guests off balance.

  “Are you trying to intimidate me?” the woman asked, and Hartnell coughed over his whiskey.

  Murray’s “Of course not,” came a beat too late, meaning, Yes. For a moment he and Asanto just looked at each other, and the words I will call you on your bullshit were practically written on her face.

  Nobody had ever spoken to Murray like that, not the nastiest grunt of Redmark’s private army, not the Assets themselves. And yet here was Ellene Asanto patently not giving a fuck.

  I’m in love, Hartnell decided, knowing that it was three parts lust to two parts vicarious rebellion, but after four months in Campeche he’d take what he could get.

  “You’ve come at a rather opportune moment,” Murray was saying, as the screens returned to their wilderness surveillance. Down one dirt road a patrol of Redmark soldiers were slouching: just unrecognisable stick figures at that distance, with their ID floating over their heads in ghostly green figures.

  “Do tell.”

  “We got Parvez last night. Emmanuel Parvez.”

  This got a rise out of Asanto, at last. “Was that actually in your brief, Colonel?”

  “Well, when you find the man as guest of honour in a camp of Anarchistas, why not roll with it? I know he worked hard on cultivating his goody-goody image for world media, but he’s always been our most outspoken opponent back in Mexico City. When intel told us where he’d be, it seemed impolite not to drop in and say hello.”

  “May I ask how this intelligence came to you?”

  Something flat and hard clicked into place in Murray’s expression. “No, you may not, because you’re here to see how we’re spending your investors’ money. Everything else is classified.”

  Hartnell said nothing, and made sure he stood behind Asanto where any little ticks and twitches wouldn’t betray him. Emmanuel Parvez was dead then: he’d known the mission was planned but not that it had actually come off. This wasn’t going to play well back in the capital unless Murray and the Redmark politicos could do a very good job of smearing the man. Of course, finding him all chummy with a camp of Anarchista terrorists might ju
st do that.

  If that was what had actually happened.

  Hartnell had liked being a whizz kid in cyborg interface systems. It had given him a world of certainty. He could never have imagined what murky and doubt-filled regions it would finally lead him to.

  “So, fine,” Asanto said, conceding the point. “So where are your ‘Assets’ then?” She nodded at the screens, which hadn’t shown hide nor hair of a Bioform.

  Which doesn’t mean that much, Hartnell decided. Dragon could be teabagging the goddamn camera and we wouldn’t see him.

  But Murray’s small smile was back in place and he just said, “Ellene Asanto, meet Rex.”

  She turned and froze, and an involuntary “Fuck,” slipped out as she saw him.

  He was right there, a few yards off on the other side of the mosquito netting, just standing. He’d come from downwind, so that the earthy, doggy smell of him hadn’t registered. That meant Murray had ordered him to treat Asanto as the enemy, just for a little while, because Rex was trained to make sure his friends knew where he was. From Hartnell’s perspective, this was an unacceptably risky way of playing ‘I’ve got a bigger dick’. He knew what Rex did to enemies.

  With his slight stoop, Rex stood seven feet eight inches tall. The flat crown of his head was just a little lower than the parrot guns – his ‘Big Dogs’ – mounted on his shoulder harness. His physique was not a bodybuilder’s textbook musculature but something leaner, harder: made to run and fight. And something not entirely human, of course: as happy on four legs as two. Tailoring body armour to the way his shape could stretch and compress in action had been quite the challenge for someone. Asanto must know Rex’s particulars: the super-dense muscles, the impact-resistant fibres in his skin, hollow bones that were strong as titanium… None of that foreknowledge helped, when you first came face to face with Rex, and Rex was arguably the least scary of the Asset team.

  His head was the doggiest part of him, there was something of a bulldog, something of a Rottweiler. One of Hartnell’s jobs was to check his teeth. The first time, he’d found it terrifying. One snap of those jaws and he’d be trying to design himself new cyborg hands.

  “What’s the matter, Miss Asanto?” Murray asked genially. “You were expecting us to keep him in a cage, perhaps?”

  Asanto said nothing, eyes fixed on the Bioform while not meeting his gaze. Rex only had eyes for Murray in any event. He was panting slightly in the heat, which made him look as though he was smiling.

  “Later on, you’ll have to meet the others,” Murray continued. “You know we’re fielding a Multiform team here? All very new, very exciting. What was your phrase, Hart? ‘The future of war enforcement’?”

  “I’ve seen the specs of the others,” Asanto confirmed tightly. “Do you let them run around like that as well?”

  “Within reason. Hart?”

  “Ah—” Hartnell started guiltily, mind hauled back from a happier place. “Bees is currently replenishing. Dragon and Honey are on perimeter.” He was just reading off the information Murray sent him, making it look to Asanto as if it was business as usual, not some specific gaslighting arranged for her benefit. Murray wanted her to focus on Rex, the acceptable face of Bioforming.

  “I see you’re not convinced that our Assets are being properly managed,” Murray declared, all showman now. “Rex, would you come in here, please?” He could have asked directly, implant to doggy implant, but he was enjoying himself.The Moray of Campeche enjoying himself had enough poor associations that Hartnell felt his heart rate speeding, fight or flight kicking in. It’s not going to be like that time, he told himself, over and over. He needs Asanto to go back and give the thumbs up. Nothing’s going to happen to her. And nobody needed to know just how ungracious a host Murray had been in the past, when he’d tired of his guests.

  Asanto was very still, watching Rex slip into the mosquitonet compound and lope through to the surveillance suite. His brown eyes swivelled from Murray to Hartnell, Hartnell to Asanto. Was she scared? Hartnell wasn’t sure, but Rex would know, and he’d tell Murray if the man asked.

  “Hey, boy.” Hart reached out and dug a couple of fingers into Rex’s skin, feeling the rock-slab muscles there. He knuckled at the dog’s jaw and sent a message to his feedback chip. Good Dog, it meant.

  “Rex, this is Ellene Asanto. She’s come to see the good work you’re doing with us. Say hello, Rex,”Murray prompted.

  “Hello, Ellene Asanto.” The voice was calm, accentless, a little robotic, broadcast from Rex’s implants, not his throat. It also wasn’t Rex’s real voice. That was rough and growling and deep, pitched at a frequency that could turn your bowels to water. Hartnell remembered all the work Murray had put into choosing that voice.

  Asanto said nothing. She was masterfully in control of her face and body: nothing in her save her stillness suggested that she was in claw-range of the Bioform, or that Rex could have taken her face off with a single motion.

  At last Hartnell gave in and had his implant talk to Rex. Is she scared? he subvocalised.

  And Rex replied, Scared a little. And then, She is not enemy. She should not be scared.

  Remember how I was when I first met you, Rex?

  Rex’s shoulders twitched a little, the last remnants of him trying to wag the tail he’d lost. Very scared.

  “Rex, Miss Asanto wants to see what you can do.” Murray shot Hartnell a look that suggested he knew his assistant had been talking where he wasn’t wanted. “She’s not convinced that you’re safe, you see.”

  Which wasn’t what Asanto had said, precisely, and was setting Rex against her again, or at least Asanto would see it that way.

  “I enjoy working with people, Ellene Asanto,” said Rex’s polite robot voice. “I have a stimulating relationship with Colonel Murray and Mr Hartnell.”

  “I know what, Rex,” Murray announced, a terrible mockery of spontaneity. “I’m a bit stubbly this morning. How about you give me a shave?”

  “That would be my pleasure, Master.”

  It was Murray’s party piece, the one he always rolled out for guests from head office. He had a real old-fashioned shaving kit to hand, and before Asanto’s incredulous eyes the hulking Bioform applied gel and then barbered Murray’s chin to perfection using a real honest-to-God cutthroat razor. He made a good job of it, too. Rex could have bench-pressed well over a ton, but he had the muscular control of a surgeon. Men like Hartnell had done well to build him.

  It had cost them a lot of dogs. But then you could do to dogs what you could not do to man: you could make them superhuman, give them all the advantages they would need to rule the battlefields of the future. All you needed was sufficient dogs and no real qualms about how many you ruined before you got it right.

  Hartnell had always used to say, ‘I’m not a dog person,’ back then. And here he was now, watching a Dog Person shave his boss.

  “You see?” Murray asked, and Rex kept the razor moving smoothly, even when his master’s jaw was moving. “Our Rex here is perfectly house-trained. Give it a generation, we’ll have a Bioform in every home.”

  Later on, Hartnell took a fresh bottle of whiskey and called, “Knock knock,” at Asanto’s tent. He’d seen a lamp on inside, and when she unzipped the flap he saw a tablet with its password screen showing. No doubt she was filing her initial report.

  “Just wondered if you wanted a nightcap.”

  She looked at him levelly. “That’s the sort of line that works where you come from, right?”

  He flapped his lips for a moment before managing a graceless recovery with, “Just a nightcap, honest.”

  “Come on in, Hart. Mi casa and so on.”

  He folded himself into a cross-legged position, leaning forward to avoid the slope of the wall. “Let me guess, you’re really a cat person.”

  That actually got a laugh out of her. “So you ‘got’ Parvez. Was that timed to coincide with my arrival, just so I’d have some progress to report?”

  “Ah, no,
actually. Don’t think so. Just happened, you know.” He remembered her reaction to the news. “I mean, it’s a good thing, right? For the investors?”

  “I don’t know. Does it actually do anything except up the stakes for everyone? Parvez had a lot of support, and now he might be a martyr. I mean, things were winding down, but…”

  “Yeah, but, you know, politics.” Hartnell waved a hand vaguely, offering her the bottle. “But it shows that Rex and his team are working as intended, right?”

  She took a swig and passed it back. “Killing respected statesmen isn’t a bug, it’s a feature?”

  Hartnell frowned. “I, er, OK, not sure where this is going. I just do the tech, OK?”

  “Sorry.”She shook her head.“OK then, got a tech question, Mr I-just-do-the-tech.”

  “Shoot.”

  “That business in the tent, that was Murray talking through the dog’s speaker, right?”

  Hartnell said nothing for slightly too long, and then stumbled over the denials. At last he caved and nodded. “Yeah. Rex can get his point over when he needs to, but he’s not exactly articulate like that. The words, even the voice, that was the boss having his little joke. I…” He tried a sheepish grin. “Actually, I wish you’d got to talk to Rex properly. He’s a nice guy. OK, now you’re looking at me like I’m crazy. He’s a Good Dog, then. Affectionate, loyal. Considerate, even. I mean, that’s why we started with dogs. Dogs are used to fitting in with humans. They know their place – the perfect gangmaster for the other ‘Forms and the perfect servant for us, right?”

  “That’s the advertising pitch,” she agreed. “Makes me wonder why your boss was so cagey about letting him speak his mind.”

  “Oh, that’s Murray,” and again, Moray. “He just likes being in control, like he’s directing a film or something.”