Dogs of War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Come on Rex, he muttered as he worked. Keep it together, boy.

  6

  Rex

  My name is Rex. I am confused and uncertain.

  As we move in towards the camp, Bees brings more of her units together so she can assemble a better picture of what is going on. We work together on flagging threats. There are guns, but they are few and of limited threat even to Dragon, who anyway is keeping out of sight right now. I do not smell explosives or toxins or other threats, although the combined scent of so many humans together makes it hard to be sure.

  I am advancing at a steady, cautious pace now. The ground here is clear, all the plants torn up or trampled. There are many, many tents here, large and small, with many humans all around them. The tents could be storing weapons. We will have to check each of them. If we find weapons, does that make these humans enemies? There should be a link between these things but other humans without weapons have been declared enemies by Master.

  If the humans attack us then they are enemies, I think. I say this to the others.

  Bees’ channel: Agreed.

  Dragon’s channel: You worked that out for yourself?

  Honey’s channel? Honey says nothing, so I prompt her. I am leader, but I feel a need to know what Honey thinks.

  Honey’s channel: These humans are very scared of us.

  I know this. The air stinks of them in many ways, but particularly of their fear. Those that have guns are aiming at us, but they are the most scared of all. I tell my Big Dogs to track them, to save time later when we fight.

  Honey’s channel: Scared humans may do many things including attack us. Does that make them enemies just because they are scared?

  My channel: Only enemies should be scared of us. If they are scared of us, they are enemies? I do not mean to make it a question, but it is one.

  Honey’s channel: You are our leader, Rex, but my advice is that we talk to these humans. If they are not enemies and we fight them, Master may be angry.

  The very thought brings a sudden shadow of Bad Dog! to me and I start whining again. We are very close to the humans now. Many of them have gone into their tents, perhaps to get more guns. Even more are gathering together in a big crowd in the middle of the camp, including all the small humans – the juveniles, my database corrects. I begin making plans for how to attack this large group of humans. Target-rich environment, my database tells me.

  Bees sends me her proposed attack plan. She will form a perimeter about the target-rich environment to keep it target rich, and will pick off any who try to escape. She has suggestions about how Honey and I should attack and what ammunition we should use, but that is not Bees’ speciality.

  Dragon’s channel: You don’t need me. I’ll be sleeping.

  Bad Dragon! I tell him I will report him to Master but Dragon doesn’t care about that. I do not understand Dragon.

  I stand up on two legs. The smell of fear and urine increases. I look at the shaking gun barrels. “Down on the ground! Guns away!” I bark. Some of them drop their guns just from the sound of my voice, which is designed to hit specific frequencies that instil panic in humans. A lot of the humans are shouting at me, but I am not listening to them, and my own voice outmatches all of theirs’ without effort. “Down on the ground! Put down guns! On the ground! Bad humans!”

  Dragon is laughing at me. I do not like Dragon.

  Honey’s channel: Rex, can I try? I would like more practice in talking to humans.

  I give her authority and she lumbers up, on two legs also. Honey is much bigger than me. She has her Elephant Gun cradled in one arm, and the hand she waves at the humans has claws on it that make my own look tiny. There is more and more fear on the air and the smell of it is making parts of my mind twitch. My mind wants me to do things because I can smell all this fear, and the fear is crying out for me to act on it. It seems a shame to waste all that fear.

  “Humans of Campeche,” Honey announces. “Do not be alarmed. Please lay down your weapons and adopt a peaceful attitude, and none of you will be harmed. We are here to restore order to this state following the Anarchista insurrection. We are not here to hurt you unless you are in armed rebellion against the Mexican government.” She says it in Spanish and feeds me a translation.

  What surprises me is Honey’s voice. I have heard Honey speak before: her voice is like mine but more so, a deep growl to terrify the enemy. Now, though, Honey has a human female voice, loud but still gentle. I feel myself growing calm just listening to her, even though she is not talking to me.

  The humans are very confused and still very afraid. A lot of them are still shouting, but less than before.

  “Please,” Honey implores them. “We do not wish to harm you, but we have orders to search this area for Anarchista guerrillas. We will now search your camp for evidence of their presence. Unless you are harbouring them you have nothing to fear.”

  My channel: Where has this come from?

  Honey’s channel: I downloaded an alternative voice set. I have been waiting to try it out.

  My channel: I am leader. Why did Hart give this to you and not to me. Is it because you are a better talker? I am happy to admit that I am not the best with human words.

  Honey’s channel is silent, and I have a sudden leap in my mind and say, Hart did not give this to you, Master did not give this to you. You gave it to yourself. I cannot imagine how she could do this, or why. I am shocked. I know Master would not be happy (Whine). I am impressed.

  There is one human left shouting and he is shouting at the other humans, not at us. He wears different clothes that look darker under the dust. My database comes in unexpectedly with: Priest. I do not know what Priest is. The word has no connections in my head.

  The Priest human turns to us. “Please, there are no fighters here. These people, they are just hungry; they have lost their homes. Please do not harm them.” Honey translates his Spanish for me.

  Honey tells them to lower their weapons, and that we will make a search. The Priest human is standing well within reach of her claws. He is very scared.

  “Gather all your people in the centre of the camp,” Honey instructs. “No harm will come to you.”

  It happens slowly, and humans are constantly going back and forth, shouting, crying, being frightened. Once a juvenile runs up to me, pointing a finger at me and making sharp little noises with its mouth. It wants me to think I am under attack. “Pchu! Pchu!” it shouts. I understand: this is a game. I like games.

  I bowl the little human over and growl at it, playing back. There is a lot of noise and shouting and screaming. For a moment some part of me that is not my feedback chip is telling me, Bad Dog! and I cannot understand why.

  The juvenile human is reclaimed and brought to the centre. The Priest is standing apart from the others.

  I tell Bees to start the search. Her units split up around the camp and begin checking tents. Individually they are very stupid but they have good senses and the rest of Bees can coordinate what they find, and assign roving unit groups to investigate anything suspicious. This is not part of Bees’ combat role: she has designed this behaviour herself based on her instructive programming. It’s like flowers, she said.

  I do not understand Bees sometimes.

  Then comms are back and Master is shouting at me to report. He sounds so angry that, for a moment, I cannot. Bad Dog! his tone of voice says to me. Bad Dog! Bad Dog! my feedback chip picks up.

  I give him a summary of the situation. I tell him that we have met humans but they are not enemies and are not fighting us. He is receiving images from my cameras and from Bees. Now I am reporting to him, I am very worried I have not done a good job. I am leader. It is my responsibility to do the right thing when Master is away.

  There is a brief burst of return comms from Master and then I have lost connection again. I am very anxious about this. I am also relieved, because it means Master is not shouting at me now, even if there will come a time when he will be.

&nb
sp; Honey had been sitting down, waiting for Bees to finish, but now she stands up as tall as she can. “Listen to me!” she tells them, still in her calm voice but very loud. “You must leave here immediately. Take nothing, just go. Go now, all of you!” And then she looks at the Priest human and says, “You must lead them away from here. Bad things are about to happen.”

  I ask: What bad things.

  Honey’s channel: These are not enemies.

  My channel: They are not enemies.

  Honey’s channel: What happens if Master tells us they are enemies?

  My channel: I don’t understand. They are not enemies. Part of me does understand but most of me is confused.

  Honey’s channel: What happens if you and Master disagree about whether they are enemies?

  I cringe at the thought. Bad Dog! Honey does not need an answer from me. She knows we cannot disobey Master. We have been programmed with a hierarchy and Master is at the top. I do not even like thinking about the idea.

  Right then, without comms, I realise that I can think about the idea, even though it makes me very unhappy. I do not know what to do with this information.

  The humans are running. The Priest is shouting at them. They are picking up their juveniles and leaving the camp, but plenty are left behind. There are many, many humans. It is still a target-rich environment.

  Then there are vehicles coming; even more humans. Down the road on the far side of the camp I see civilian cars. They have lots of humans in them and hanging off them. The humans have guns.

  Honey’s channel: The enemy are here, Rex.

  I am suddenly much happier. I am moving on all fours, working out where to take cover. Bees is mustering her units. Dragon wakes up and and slithers into a stand of trees from where he can get a clear shot.

  All the not-enemy humans are still running. Some of them will still be in the way. The vehicles are coming very quickly. Already the enemy are shooting. They are only hitting other humans, though: they cannot aim at this range when they are moving.

  Honey’s Elephant Gun explodes the lead vehicle. She is pushing through the not-enemy, and I tell her she should stay back to use them as cover.

  Honey’s channel: I need the civilians behind me so that I can shoot clearly.

  Honey can shoot over the heads of the humans easily, but I let her do what she wants because I know she is cleverer than I am.

  Dragon is shooting now. The targeting part of his brain is deciding which are the enemy leaders and he kills them with one bullet each. Sometimes he kills the drivers of the cars. Bang! he transmits. Target acquired. Bang!

  Bees is attacking. She reports to me her losses and her venom stocks. She is using her swift-kill venom because these enemies are better armed than the others we fought. These enemies all have guns.

  Now there are other humans coming: these are our friends. They have Redmark uniforms. There are not many of them and they do not join in the fighting, but just watch as we destroy the enemy, all of the enemy.

  The not-enemy have mostly run away by then.

  7

  Hartnell

  Rex, sitting on the ground, could almost look a standing Hartnell in the eye. The sheer bulk of him, the density of muscle and bone, seemed to tilt the world in towards him. It was impossible to not be aware of him, Hartnell considered, when he was there with you. Unless, of course, he was hunting you. The thought of being hunted by Rex or one of his kin used to send a chill through him.

  It still should , he told himself. I’m a fool for getting accustomed to this stuff. Because Murray held their leashes, every one. Murray was just ‘Master’ to Rex, and Rex’s electronically-imposed hierarchy was slaved to Murray’s dictates. If Murray told him to kill Hartnell, the Bioform wouldn’t refuse – couldn’t refuse. Following orders was what Rex was all about. It was why they used dog stock.

  Rex ran on all fours for preference. He had a dog’s blunt head, a dog’s dark eyes in which any visible expression was at least half in the mind of the watcher rather than the face of the beast. He sat like a man, though, arms resting on his drawnup knees. The pose made him look oddly contemplative, as though he was about to fire off a sonnet about the sunset.

  What’s going on in that big head of yours, Rex? Did the dogman have an internal life, thoughts and feelings, monologues and debates within that reinforced and cybernetic skull? Or was he like the behaviourists said all animals were, a reflexive Skinnerian machine, mere stimulus and response?

  Right now, the question was more practical. What’s going on in that head came down to whether it was some glitch in Rex’s wiring that was screwing up comms. Hartnell had been scanning and testing and prying for an hour now, while Rex sat patiently and panted in the heat.

  Ellene Asanto had met the other squad members, of course. Murray had probably wanted some gradual reveal of them, taking her deeper into his cabinet of horrors. Asanto was proving interestingly hard to flap, though. After her initial scare with Rex, she had obviously fortified herself, probably refamiliarised herself with the squad specs she would have access so.

  Bees had fascinated her. She had walked round and round the big charging rack where the swarm was recuperating, new units hatching out of pupae to a precise, accelerated schedule.

  “They just look like… bees,” had been her comment.

  “She,” Hartnell had corrected absently as he modelled their comms network on his tablet. “She, singular.”

  “The units form a single functioning artificial intelligence,” Murray had explained grandly – he had stitched his good humour back together and put the flayed mask of it back on his face. “Bees isn’t the best at abstract reasoning or planning, but her combat and reconnaissance versatility is unmatched.”

  “And Paddington over there?”

  Honey had been sitting, chewing over a thick slab of rations. She glanced up at Asanto’s words but didn’t say anything. Hartnell had guessed Murray had all the squad on silent for now; he was too much of a showman to want to share the moment.

  “Honey provides heavy weapons and close combat support.” Murray had gone right up to the great slouched bulk of the bear – far taller seated than any standing man could be. He stood in her shadow and slapped her on the flank, his eye on Asanto. Look at me! I am Master here. I am Man. I have tamed these beasts of the wild. Except the taming had been the work of a team of bio-engineers, programmers and cyberneticists in laboratories hundreds of miles away. But perhaps it wasn’t enough to design and breed and condition. Perhaps it was the using of such assets that truly counted as taming. That was Murray’s speciality. He had been running dog packs for various private security firms for years, getting a real reputation for efficiency so long as you didn’t ask too many questions. The Multiform pack was just the latest killer circus that he had been made ringmaster of.

  “And that thing?”

  Dragon had been lazing in the sun, his dorsal crest up to make the most of it. He was a long, sinuous creature, a good twenty feet from his crocodile snout to the tip of his whip-like tail. His scales were a drab brown right then, which meant he wasn’t trying. He was the least humanoid of the three vertebrate Bioforms, only his arms looking a little manlike. One turreted chameleon eye was on Asanto, as though waiting for her to get close enough to lunge.

  “He’s mostly from anole and monitor lizard stock,” Hartnell had said, and then, because laughs were rare in this business, “Funny thing is, when he got delivered, the docket said, ‘anal monitor’, and we were all, ‘Hey, we don’t want any of that, thank you.’” Looking between Murray and Asanto, the grin died on his face, and then his boss had pointedly asked if he didn’t have some work he should be getting on with, and so here he was.

  “I don’t get it, Rex old boy,” he told the huge slab of teeth and muscle. Rex flicked an ear at the sound of his voice and Hartnell wondered how much the Bioform actually understood about what he was doing. “Everything’s in place. Nothing’s messed up. Your head’s just fine. Good Dog.” />
  Rex’s shoulders twitched and Hartnell’s tablet told him the dog-man wanted to speak to him. He opened a channel to his ear implant.

  I want a new voice. In his ear, Rex’s voice was neutral, artificial, nothing like the gut-loosening growl of his audible speech.

  “I, ah…” Hartnell glanced around to make sure Murray was nowhere around, then murmured back. “You want what now?”

  I want a new voice.

  “We can’t really do that, Rex. It’s not something we can do.”

  Rex just watched him with that mutely accusing stare that dogs did so well.

  “Well, look. OK, maybe it would be possible – you know, eventually, some time. It’s not exactly priority at the moment, though, boy. I mean, you can talk to us just fine like this, and it’s not as if you’re going to be sweet-talking the Anarchistas for biscuits. This… is a weird thing to be asking, you know?”

  Which begged the question of where the thought had come from, and Hartnell saw a shift to Rex’s body language: something more defensive, head lower, ears down. A faint whine, almost too high to hear, escaped the great jaws.

  Hartnell knew Rex, or he thought he did. How much was real, how much was anthropomorphic thinking, he couldn’t have sworn to, but he felt he could read the Bioform. Rex was a dog at heart, after all. He came of stock that had been learning to understand humans for thousands of years.

  Watching Rex then, he found himself thinking, This new voice business, where’s it come from? Because Rex sure as hell doesn’t want me to ask. If he posed a direct question, the dog would have to answer him. There was that hierarchy of obedience wired into all the Bioforms, and into Rex most of all. Murray was at the top of that hierarchy, but Hartnell came second.

  That thought was not a happy one. Second would not be enough to protect him, if one of Murray’s tempers led to him ordering Rex to tear Hartnell apart. Not your usual concern, when dealing with workplace politics, but Murray was like a little emperor here in the Campeche. He had his job to do and no supervision at all. So long as he got his results, his corporate paymasters didn’t care about his methods.