The Dogs of God

by Chris Kennedy

  “Hey,” Hank called out as he stepped through the doorway. “I think there’s something wrong with your friend here.”

  The other trooper turned her head to see what was wrong. Hank moved like a panther, stepped in close, and drove the blade into her brain, too. Her rifle clattered to the street as Hank dragged her lifeless body back inside the door.

  Amateurs, he thought, the smile disappearing as he pulled the weapon free and wiped it off on his sleeve.

  “Get that carbine, would you, Elena?” Hank said over his shoulder as he scanned the street outside. There were no troopers or dōrydōs in sight, so they had time. As Elena darted out and retrieved the weapon, he scanned the street and spotted what he was looking for. About ten feet past the door, in the middle of the street, was a manhole cover that led down into the storm drain systems. As Elena dashed inside holding the carbine like a professional, he stepped back through the door and closed it.

  When he turned around, he found all the prisoners except Elena and Hakeem staring at him with wide eyes, fear filling their faces.

  “Are you crazy?” Gill Juarez shouted. “You’re going to get us all killed!” He was a member of the City Council and owned the largest furniture shop on Main Street. He was also a teetotaler who never drank, never played cards, and spent his Sundays at the only church in New Haven.

  Hank ignored him. “Elena, Hakeem,” he said pointing at them, “put on their gear as fast as you can. Elena, you can help Hakeem, right?”

  “Yes,”

  “I don’t need any help,” Hakeem replied. “I wasn’t always just a metal worker.”

  “Copy that,” Hank said. “Get going.”

  The two of them moved quickly, pulling the combat armor and uniforms off the bodies as fast as they could.

  Hank watched Elena’s hands move like she’d worked with combat armor her whole life.

  “Merc, right?” Hank asked, looking straight at her.

  Her hands froze and she turned slowly to him. When they locked eyes, he could see pain there.

  She nodded once.

  “Corporate?” he asked.

  Elena’s features filled with shame, and then she went back to pulling gear off the female trooper lying on the floor.

  “Five years. At the end of it, I got transferred to a new ship…a ship with a bad captain…and for three months, I was one of them. Like what’s outside. I always managed to arrange for guard or support duty. I never killed anybody—I told them I wouldn’t. I turned a blind eye, took the money, and kept my head down. Then, one day, when we raided our first colony—one not too different from New Haven…” Her voice cut off, and she fought back tears. “When we hit orbit,” she said through clenched teeth, “we bombed the whole settlement to cover our tracks and went back to our regular transport support assignment. I got out as soon as we docked at Boondock Station and came here to start a new life.” She turned and looked at the stunned faces of the other townspeople. “They are not going to let us live…They can’t. They’ll wipe us off the map, head for deep space, and nobody will ever know what really happened here.”

  “That’s right,” Hank said. “So we’re going to fight.”

  “Fight?” Juarez asked. “We can’t fight that. And even if we could…even if by some miracle we were able to stop them all, their buddies in orbit can just come down, take what they want, and bomb us anyway.” He glared at Hank. “The only way out of this is to give them what they want and pray.”

  “There isn’t anyone up in orbit,” Hank replied flatly.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Juarez asked angrily.

  Hank turned to Elena. “You heard that driver back there. He needs to fire up their systems before they leave. If there were even a few crew members up there, the starship would be ready to go the moment he boarded. He brought his entire crew down here, and the ship is unmanned and asleep up there, waiting for a wakeup call.”

  Elena’s eyes went wide with realization.

  “You’re right,” she said. “And if that’s the case, then it has to be a corvette class with a single drop ship, the two APCs, and what looks like a platoon of troopers, plus the six dōrydōs. Standard compliment for that class. They were Ming APCs out front.”

  “And it was a Ming dropship that landed.”

  “So that’s probably a Ming in orbit.” Elena looked up.

  “Exactly,” Hank said. “Can you pilot one?” he asked.

  “In a pinch,” she replied uneasily.

  “I can,” Hakeem said. “I think you know I was once a starship engineer. Before that, though, I was a pilot. I’m not the best there is, but I can get it wherever you want it to go.”

  “This is getting better by the second,” Hank said. “We’re all going into the storm drain out there. I need you two to take the others and head for the north side of town, toward the airfield. I’ll be back in a few hours. Listen in on their comms, call me if they realize you’re gone, and I’ll let you know when you can pop your heads up.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Hakeem asked.

  “I’m going to see if we can’t give these bastards a little bit more than they bargained for.”

  A minute later, with Hakeem covering, Elena led the still terrified townspeople into the storm drain. Hakeem then went down, followed by Hank, who pulled the manhole cover back over them.

  When he got to the bottom, he saw the lights from Elena’s helmet and rifle heading down a side pipe, leading the freed prisoners. Hakeem was standing there, waiting.

  “How will you know how to get out?” he asked. “You won’t have any light.”

  Hank bent down, put his hand into the small channel of water flowing beneath their feet, and nodded as he felt the slight current.

  “It rained last night,” he said with a grin. “The water will lead me straight to the river.”

  “In total darkness?” Hakeem said, astonished.

  “Piece of cake,” Hank replied. “Keep them safe,” he added, and then he headed away from the direction the others had gone.

  “See you on the other side, Hank,” Hakeem said.

  Hank raised a hand and kept walking. He heard Hakeem turn and set off toward the others, casting Hank in total darkness.

  He kept going, feeling his way along with every step.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 5

  Hank pulled the Enhancement Optics off his head as he pulled into the drive of his homestead. Five ground vehicles and one two-man flitter sat parked just outside his house. The sight of them made him smile.

  Sam’s been busy, he thought.

  He’d had no difficulty making his way to the river, nor getting back to his hovertruck, and the optics had been tucked beneath the driver seat, just one more Alternate Plan Bravo in a long line of them that had kept Hank alive through some pretty rough times. He’d raced back home with the lights off, checking the rear view to make sure nobody followed. That had been his one worry—well, one of two, actually. The other was if somebody had noticed the two troopers he’d killed weren’t where they were supposed to be.

  I just need a little more time, he thought, hoping the merc commander was too busy to worry about them.

  He stopped the truck, got out, and walked over to Miranda’s headstone. Kneeling down on the back side of it, he pulled out his tanto and dug a small hole into the turf. About four inches down, he found the sensor panel he was looking for. He widened the hole, cleared out the dirt, and brushed the plate clear of soil and grass.

  He stared at it for a few moments, drawing in a deep breath. He let out a long sigh and placed his hand on the sensor plate. The panel lit up with several status lights, all in the green. Hank nodded once and leaned forward.

  “Wake up, Miranda,” he said. “It seems we’ve got one last dance together. Security access Five-Five-Two Alpha.”

  He heard a faint, metallic clunk from beneath the soil, the whine of servos, and then the ground in front of the headstone started to rise. Without wai
ting, Hank rose to his feet with the same staccato popping sound of joints that had plagued him for over a decade, turned toward the house, and walked up to the front door. As he reached for the doorknob, the front door opened, and he found himself staring into the eyes of Sam Teller.

  “Sam,” Hank said, his eyes darting to the heavy assault rifle the thick man held at the ready.

  He looked past Sam and saw eight other figures standing in his living room, all armed with a variety of rifles. They were all farmers with homesteads on the periphery of New Haven. On the left stood Jodai Mumbassa and his two eldest sons, Marovar and Yobani, all traba grain farmers, as well as Cleve and Borda Svenson, who were big, burly vehicle mechanics of considerable skill. On the right was Sam’s cousin Treat Encinas, another shadda farmer, as well as Felicia Sweeny and her partner Abigail Takashi, who ran a small grocery a few miles down the road.

  “Come on in, Hank,” Sam said.

  As Hank stepped in, he spotted Kenny coming up the stairs from the basement. He held a long MAC sniper rifle in his hands, and to Hank’s surprise, he looked fairly comfortable with it.

  “Kenny,” Hank said, “set that down for a minute. I need you to grab one more thing from the cache.”

  “What’s that?” Kenny leaned the rifle against the door jamb.

  “It’s a silver cylinder about thirty cents long, with green lights up the side, and a power coupling on one end.”

  “You got it, Hank.” Kenny quickly disappeared down the stairs.

  “So, what’s the deal?” Felicia asked. There was neither fear nor nervousness in the question.

  “I’ll get to that in a minute,” Hank said. “Before I do, I need to know who has combat experience. I don’t care what kind.”

  Sam, Jodai, Cleve, Borda, and Felicia all raised their hands.

  “Good. And the rest of you know how to shoot?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “People?” Hank asked, his face deadly serious.

  Abigail stepped up, her shoulders squared, and hefted a laser carbine. “We already talked about that,” she said. “Those are our friends in town, and if mercs want to try and take what we’ve built here, then we’ll kill them as easily as we would any other animal.”

  Hank smiled as everyone in the room nodded.

  “Fair enough,” he replied just as Kenny came up the stairs.

  Kenny stepped forward and handed Hank the silver cylinder.

  “Thanks, Kenny,” Hank said. “Now, let me tell you what’s up and what we’re going to do about it.”

  * * *

  When Hank finished, everyone looked at him with dubious faces.

  “Hank,” Sam said uneasily. “That’s a great plan and all, but you kept saying you’re doing this or that, and frankly, I don’t see how you could possibly accomplish half of it, even with those heavies that are still sitting in the basement. I’m guessing the two bigger ones go on your truck, but even one dōrydō will take that truck apart, given half a chance. You can’t get all of them with any of this stuff, including Kenny’s MAC rifle and that boomer that’s down there. You’ll be a sitting duck.”

  Hank gave him a lop-sided smile. “That’s where Miranda comes in.”

  “Miranda?” Sam asked. “Like on that headstone out there?” The few people who had asked Hank about the headstone had always gotten the same reply: that he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Come on,” Hank said. He walked out his front door with everyone in tow and then stopped. “Oh,” he said as he turned, “and Cleve, before we take off, go get the boomer. It’s only got two rounds, but it goes with you.”

  Cleve, a giant of a man just like his brother, gave a big shit-eating grin. “Thanks, Hank,” he said. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  He led them straight to Miranda’s grave. “I’ll show you.”

  As they approached in the darkness, Sam hit the light on his assault rifle and shined it onto what Hank had buried twenty-five years earlier.

  The dōrydō, standing upright in the bottom of a military-grade, long-term storage capsule, was painted a mottled dark gray on black pattern. It had smooth lines and thicker plating than the Azteks in town. A railgun rose straight up behind the right shoulder. The weapon fired slugs made of the same neutron-dense material as dōrydō armor. Over the other shoulder sat a small missile pod about thirty centimeters on a side, with six launch tubes and what looked like a wide exhaust port sticking out a couple centimeters on the side. A commander’s insignia—a cluster of three stars joined by a circle—decorated each of the outer shoulder plates, and over the right breast was the insignia of an angel in black armor, wings outstretched, holding a flaming sword. An elongated double-diamond of gold encompassed the angel, and across the bottom were the words, “NON ENIM MISERICORDIAE IMPIUS,” which translated as, “No mercy for the wicked.”

  “Holy shit,” Sam said. “That’s a Terran Republic Assault Unit…a Mancuso.” Sam turned to Hank with wide eyes. “You were a—”

  “Yeah,” Hank replied. “For a lot of years.”

  “I knew you were military, but I had no idea.”

  Hank gave him a wry grin. “That was the general idea. I wanted to forget all that, but once an Archangel, always an Archangel. It’s the oath we swear.”

  “What’s an Archangel?” Kenny asked, staring in awe at the war machine before him. He’d obviously never seen anything like it.

  Felicia spoke up, “They’re the TR’s best. When the Republic wants to put the hammer down on alien incursions or rogue mercs, they send in the Archangels.” She looked at Kenny. “And the Archangels kill everything in their path.”

  Hank moved up behind the dōrydō, twisted a small hatch mechanism on its back, and a small door opened with a whine of servos. He slid the powercell into the empty socket, and there was a subtle hum as the primary systems powered up.

  “Miranda,” he said to the Virtual Intelligence, “would you please open up for me?”

  More servos whined. The back of the suit, including helm and legs, split along invisible seams as the suit automatically leaned forward for counterbalance. Hank stepped into the dōrydō with muscle memory that hadn’t faded in twenty-five years.

  “Button it up, Miranda,” he said as the HUD came alive before his eyes and ran through a sys-check. Most drivers viewed their VIs in the same way captains viewed their ships.

  “Copy that,” a feminine voice replied within the suit. Miranda was not a created intelligence in the classic definition of the term. She was merely a Virtual Intelligence simulacrum that gave the appearance of sentience, but was actually just an advanced combat system. VI rigs were only available to Terran Republic dōrydōs, the Archangels in particular. Drivers required an intensive and intrusive surgery that implanted a hard-wired networking mesh just beneath the cranium. The process was one of the military’s most closely guarded secrets and had, as yet, not been duplicated by the private sector. At least, not the last time Hank checked.

  Servos whined again, and he felt the suit close up around his body with a thunk-hiss as the atmosphere equalized within the suit. He felt a dozen pinpricks pierce his close-shaved scalp, and then a sure of energy flowed through his body as he joined with the suit. A wave of memories washed over him. He had never wanted to get back into the thing, but there wasn’t much choice at this point. When the sys-check came back with all systems nominal, he checked his weapons loadout: twenty-seven MAC rounds and eighteen hyper-velocity micro-missiles in the launcher module. He also had three recon floaters built into a small housing attached to the back of the missile launcher. He bent down and picked up the Aggressor Mark V Heavy Autocannon nestled into the side of the storage capsule. He checked the mag, saw it had all eight rounds, and then ran his hand over the two mags clipped to the back of his suit just above his ass.

  You ready to dance, Miranda? he asked with his mind.

  No mercy for the wicked, the VI replied.

  In his HUD, he looked over the nine figures standing bef
ore him, all their faces frozen with awe. His system automatically did a scan of their weaponry and sent back the threat-analysis data. He actuated the external comms.

  “Alright, everyone,” he said. “You know the plan. Mount those heavies on my truck and get moving.”

  “Copy that,” Sam, Jodai, Cleve, Borda, and Felicia said together. The others merely nodded their heads.

  As they all started moving, Hank sent a signal to the local comm tower that served the area and confirmed that their satellite linkup was dead. He had Miranda ping the comm units for all nine of the people headed toward the house. Everyone raised their hands to an ear to activate their comms.

  “Hello?” all of them replied, and then stood looking at one another in surprise.

  “Just checking comms, everyone,” Hank said. “We’re linked by my dōrydō through the central comm tower.” He could reach anyone in New Haven, but not beyond about a twenty-mile range from the center of town.

  It would be enough.

  Miranda, Hank thought, ping the tower and connect to every comm unit inside of New Haven. Activate the Emergency Broadcast System, temporarily cut their transmitters, and then pipe me in.

  Stand by, Miranda replied. EBS coming online.

  The alert warning sounded in the entire town’s comms three times, and then a default message indicating an emergency played out. When it was finished, Hank spoke up.

  “People of New Haven, I need you all to pay attention. This is Henry Combs. As you undoubtedly know, mercs have invaded New Haven. What you don’t know is they’ve come to take the süns shipment and kill everyone once they’re clear so there’s no trace of what they did here. I and a few others intend to stop them. I need everyone to lock your doors, get down into your basements, and get beneath as much cover as you can. Tables, benches, whatever. There’s about to be a fight, and I can’t promise there won’t be weapons fire or worse going through your houses. Don’t come up until you get an all clear from the EBS. This will all be over soon. I give you my word as a Terran Republic Archangel.”