Dogs of War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  I have visitors back at HQ. Old friends with a new mission.

  40

  From “The Beasts Within” by Maria Hellene

  Chapter Seven: The Real Inspector Hound

  After the UN rights ruling, even before the UN adopted Rex and his kennel-mates, the New Zealand Customs and Borders Service was one of the first agencies to start making full use of Bioforms.

  My feeling is that they wanted the intimidation factor at first. There’s something about having half a ton of dog soldier looming at your shoulder to make the most determined smuggler crack. But of course, it’s more complicated than that. Even the basic ex-military models they started with had a dog’s full suite of senses. As soon as they trusted their new employees enough to tell them what they were looking for, things began changing rapidly. New Zealand was fighting a war against invasive species. Dogs can sniff those out for you. They can find drugs, too, and they can find explosives. In a few years there was an immaculately uniformed Bioform surreptitiously checking out everyone getting on or off a plane or a boat in New Zealand. Most people didn’t even realise they were going through the scanner, so to speak.

  And then the next generation of models came through. A home-grown Kiwi outfit engineered some less physically imposing specimens with much better noses, and contracted them out to the government. Five years later nineteen nations were employing over four-hundred Borderhound™ models in airports across the world, the engineering laboratory was one of NZ’s major corporate players, and the individual units were all putting money aside for a rainy day. When they finished their contracts they weren’t short of job offers.

  Mitch is a Borderhound™. He doesn’t work at an airport, though. He is attached to Wellington Central Police Station and he helps with the interrogations. He doesn’t do it like Rex might have, looming and cracking knuckles, growling fit to put the fear of Dog into the poor suspect. Mitch is a friendly little Bioform, deferential and quiet, and he can tell if you’re lying or hiding something. His human colleagues ask the questions, and Mitch knows just what it is you’re not saying. He beats a polygraph for accuracy, and can give a whole lot more information about what the suspect is feeling. Are you covering for someone else? Are you hiding your own guilt? Are you just naturally leery of the police and not cooperating for reasons that have nothing to do with the case? Mitch knows. A recent landmark precedent from the NZ courts ruled that Mitch’s evidence is admissible in criminal trials. Some maverick lawmakers wonder if one of his siblings might not be a salutary presence within the courtroom to keep a keen nose on witness testimony. A lot of New Zealand lawyers are getting very hot under the collars trying to explain why people have a right to lie under oath and have it pass undetected…

  Another model of Caniform, this one developed by a South African laboratory, is employed by the Wellington forensics unit. While ex-military units can still be seen going in first ahead of the armed response teams in police forces all over the world, New Zealand is leading the way in the intelligent use of Bioforms in law enforcement. The adjustment period is ongoing. Members of the public have grown to trust them at least as much as they trust the police force, and members of the police force have begun to treat them more as co-workers than mobile equipment. It’s a work in progress, but the rest of the world is beginning to notice.

  Nobody has even begun to think about bringing Bees into the mix. Bees’ special senses can be tuned for hundreds of different tasks, from detecting radiation to on-the-spot molecular evidence analysis. Her ability to eavesdrop on unsecured electronic communications may also be of use, but that has far too much potential for misuse to simply give it into the hands of governments. I can hear those lawyers complaining again, and this time they have a point…

  41

  Rex

  They fly me across the Pacific. I sleep most of the time, because I have not slept much in Kashmir and I will not sleep much after the fight begins off on the island west of Panama. That is where the next mission is. I like to be busy. When I was Master’s dog I slept a lot, but then I did not have to make decisions. Now I cannot just wait for orders but must be ready to choose, so I sleep while I can. That is the price we pay.

  Some of my team comes with me, including Sellars. Some have stayed behind to finish up in the Kashmir. I catch some of what people are saying about our work there. I see mostly human faces – UN officers, Indian and Pakistani politicians. Once there is a Bioform, a dog named Churchill. Churchill is a broad-chested bulldog model in a uniform made for his build. He nods sagely when asked a question and grins at the camera. The humans love Churchill, who is funny and a bit clumsy, always happy to be laughed at but also reliable and trustworthy. Churchill does not fight. His job is much harder. He must do every day what I did once in the courtroom: he must show the world that we are friendly and not monsters. I send him a message. Good dog.

  Before we land I download the known parameters of the new mission. It comes from UNAT command but familiar fingerprints are all over it. Honey has attached a file for my eyes only. HumOS is obviously involved at a deep level, and possibly she has a unit already in place, or uncovered and already dead.

  This will be a key mission in UNAT operational history because the facility that has been targeted is an illegal Bioform development laboratory. In the additional information Honey has sent me there are suggestions it may be important to me personally for other reasons. I look at the composition of the forces we are facing and feel that I have seen this before. I am taken to a night years ago at the edge of the Pound. I replay some memories that cause me pain but that I do not wish to delete. They are a part of who I have become.

  I am an old dog now. There are better combat models, and there are so many civilian models whose capabilities exceed mine. There are even human models who can challenge me in various fields. Human biomodding is an area I try to keep up with. I do not understand much of the science but Honey sends me important updates. Most countries control the practice far more tightly than they do the development of animal Bioforms, but there is always someone willing to take the next step, whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.

  When we touch down I feel as though I have come home. This is not really like the Campeche, or even near the Campeche, but I have not been in this part of the world for a long time. The heat reminds me of so much.

  The target is a man-made island of unclear sovereignty, the sort of private domain that various corporations and wealthy individuals have been constructing, so that they can retreat from the world and/or any particular set of laws. Some of them are temples of serenity, some are the cutting edge of technological research, others are super-exclusive holiday retreats or private fiefdoms or black market brothels. One is, famously, a privately-owned asteroid mining launch platform, and may one day be the site of the world’s first space elevator. All this information is in the download and I sift through it quickly before discarding most of it.

  The jurisdictional uncertainties mean most of them are left alone, but UNAT’s sources believe this island is producing unregulated Bioforms. I know what ‘unregulated’ means. It doesn’t have to mean dangerous or unstable, although that might be true. Mostly it means ‘not free’. Because, despite all we have won, there are still those who want us to be slaves and to be things. UNAT has used legal and political pressure against such ventures before, and has used force to shut down some that had barely started, but this island off Panama has been under the radar. Whoever is behind it has had the chance to breed a generation of Bioforms and sell them: to militias, to cartels. Other UNAT troops have clashed with them. They are not yet comparable to the top of the line military models from the legal labs, but they are as good as I am. On paper, anyway. Technology alone is no substitute for experience. That is what I tell myself.

  So, we will have to fight our own kin, and we will have to fight automatic systems, and there will doubtless be humans with guns as well, because nobody who treats us like slaves would rely entirely on Bioform
s to defend them. Most likely their Bioform units will be crippled with rules and boundaries and systems to tell them Bad Dog when they try to think.

  We are camped out on the Panamanian coast some way south of a place called Pajarón. I do not know whether the government knows we are here. We are in the trees, in sight of the sea. It seems very wild but we are within a short walk of luxury beachfront properties. A scan of communications from inland suggests we have not been detected by any local presence, and the island does not seem to be on alert. Bioforms hide better than humans. We need less to live.

  The mission is already under way before I arrive. Initial reconnaissance has been effected and assets are in place within the island, assisted by favourable winds. A rack of Bees has been set up and new units are charging there. This is one of many, but they are all Bees. Honey told me once there is a kind of ant that has been carried all over the world by humans, and when an ant of this kind from Europe meets one from America or Australian, perhaps, they do not fight: they recognise that they are from the same global nest. So it is with Bees. She has millions of units now, worldwide. When they meet they exchange data. She is the same Bees, and yet she is always different with each meeting. For her this is natural as flying.

  I cannot imagine it. I am just glad to have her.

  We have some larger units engaged in active reconnaissance too. There is a dolphin-form out in the water, one of the few ever made. She was built by the British for naval recon before I ever came out of the lab, and her smooth hide is scarred where the implants went in and where a mine explosion came close to killing her once. She tracks every moving thing about the island’s shores by sonar, and she carried a rat and a dragon over as well, who have begun infiltrating the coastal defences. The island does not welcome visitors.

  We have a command conference. Honey calls us via an encrypted satellite link; Sellars is there for HumOS; Major Amraj Singh is our human commanding officer; Bees is Bees.

  Bees has a report, but it has been interpreted by Honey who understands her best. Bees tends to report in a string of images and emoticons which can be perplexing even for me, who has known her longer than anyone.

  Honey’s channel: Everything appears to be property of Morrow Incorporated.

  Major Amraj’s channel: Someone has a sense of humour.

  Honey’s channel: Quite. The majority of Bioforms on the island are either undergoing gestation and construction, or being tested prior to shipment. However there is a dedicated security force, and they also possess some sophisticated robot defences.

  Sellars’ channel: How sophisticated?

  Honey’s channel: So far nothing that appears to be an intelligence, although the distinction is hard to make with certainty.

  Major Amraj’s channel: George reports that our team has prepared the way for a viable beachhead. Now you’re here, General, we can commence our landing. George is the dolphin Bioform. General is what they call me. It is not an official UNAT rank and I do not think it is right, but I have given up trying to stop it. It started with Bioforms who came with me from the prison to the Pound and now even the human news networks use it. Honey says it is at least less ambitious than my real name.

  I run through the details of the plan again: how many boats, what countermeasures, which soldiers. The first onto the beach will be Bioforms, with humans to complete the pincer when we have established ourselves. I know this is taking advantage of us, but it is also the best way. We are stronger and tougher. And it is good. All these years and fighting the enemy is still good; helping friends is good. We are good dogs.

  Major Amraj expects me to stay behind. Honey is concerned too and we have spoken a lot about it. In the end I said I would go and she has told me I should look after myself. Honey has been talking a lot about operational lifespans. She herself has decades left, far more than any bear. I have lived more than any dog, but I feel time more than she does. The wounds do not heal as fast any more.

  I make my changes to Major Amraj’s plan, including inserting myself into it, and show it to him. He confirms. He is a little scared of me but I smell another scent there too. He is proud to be serving with the Dog General. I smell respect.

  We go to the boats.

  42

  George

  They didn’t want George to be free. She was a military model built not by a corporation but a national government. The Royal Navy were jealous of what they spent on her, but more than that, they were worried about what she might say. George and her pod had been deployed in numerous maritime theatres over the years. Surveillance and counter-terrorism was what it said on the brief. All too often her role was simple industrial espionage for the UK arms trade.

  Now she skims the waves alongside Rex’s boat, listening on a shifting bandwidth to the compressed, seconds-long transmissions of the agents she ferried over to the island, decoding them and reporting to Amraj and to Rex.

  The island is equipped with sonar tracking precise enough to pick up even these little boats, but George knows sonar. Sonar, as she frequently tells human naval technicians, is her bitch.

  George doesn’t like humans. She considers them a necessary evil. That curve to her mouth isn’t a smile. She has looked at images of Greek pottery showing her ancestors saving drowning swimmers, and felt a deep sense of cultural shame.

  She makes ghosts and veils in the water, partly using the equipment and brain she was born with, partly with what they gave her. The Navy developed good kit for Project Arion – or Project Flipper as most of its personnel called it. She cannot make sonar traces disappear, but she can bury them in background noise. To the island systems it will seem more like a calibration error than an attack.

  Good kit, the Navy bequeathed her, but they were less than careful about installing it. Their priority was to preserve her hydrodynamic profile, meaning they cut away far more than they needed, to ensure everything was properly flush. Everything hurts all the time. One of the reasons George cannot simply vanish into the sea is her need to refill her slowrelease painkiller dispensers.

  George liaises briefly about where the assault will be made. There are a handful of robot remote vehicles that patrol the island’s shores, nothing very sophisticated but people will notice if one gets knocked out. She has dodged them so far, bringing in the rat and the dragon, but the strike force’s boats aren’t capable of the same nimble subterfuge. She reaches out with senses her engineers only half-understood, forming a picture of the water and the seabed beneath it, the rising volcanic shores of the island. She is hunting subs. It was the first thing they trained her for, back in the day.

  She has killed people for the Royal Navy. She was in His Majesty’s Service for a long time. Many of those people posed a security risk to the motherland, but during a particularly xenophobic administration she attacked and sank seven boats of refugees seeking sanctuary in Britain’s calm waters. The wrecks were attributed to overloading and bad weather. The truth has never been released. To the people who gave the orders, George was just a weapon. None of them considered, at the time, that she was a weapon that could remember and inform the press.

  There is a robot sub coming. The island’s systems change the patrol rota, impossible to know when the next one will be along, and here it is. George breaks off from her escort to go say hello. The robot is swift and more heavily armed than she is, but it is stupid, and the system that has oversight of it is barely more intelligent. She has already foxed its sonar, but the little boat engines have attracted its notice. So far it is not on alert, but its investigation subroutines have activated. George is going to have to disable it and not give the game away. She liaises briefly with the rat and the dragon, who are monitoring the island systems.

  When she destroys these stupid tin fish she gives them names for her own amusement. The names are always of humans involved with Project Flipper or within the Admiralty.

  After the Campeche, after Bioform rights became a thing, they tried to kill George to bottle up what she knew.
Some of her pod did die, but George and the others had been ready for them. With help from Honey’s meddling, they escaped the Plymouth dockyards and fled out to sea. The Royal Navy went after them, but George could run rings around them easily. The only thing the Navy had that could catch something like her was her.

  She sinks underneath the robot sub. She has no engine noise and makes herself a ghost to its sonar. Now she lets herself come close, eavesdropping on its communications, using her senses to plot a map of its internal layout. It is coursing towards the boats, so she matches pace. Millions of years of evolution gifted her with a brain that can construct 3D maps effortlessly. It works with circuit diagrams as well as seascapes. In moments she has the measure of it and deploys her electromagnetic arsenal, deft as a surgeon’s knife.

  George cannot just run away and join the sea-life. It’s not just the painkillers. Unlike later models, she requires maintenance and recharging – not often but often enough. She was never intended to go on indefinite reconnaissance, even when they had her hunting Russian oil-drillers under the Arctic ice sheet. The Navy just had to wait for her to come back. George just had to tell the world what she’d done in the name of the Crown. There was a tense stand-off for two months that the rest of the world knew nothing about.

  She does not attack its sensors or its robot brain or anything so obvious. She is a water creature; she knows the weakness of the things humans make, that try to ape her. A single application of her tools kills one of its propellers. It is not an attack on the sub’s computer systems, and its damage report reveals nothing more than mechanical error. Things break down, after all.

  Another robot will come to fix or retrieve it, or even a manned vehicle. Rex and his squad will be long gone by then. George and the spies on the island monitor comms anxiously, but there is no suggestion the system suspects sabotage.