DogForge (6 page)

Most of all, she felt angry for not telling the truth. She could, she knew she could, but she didn’t want anything to happen to the pups. After the trial, she thought, then she’d tell. Samson would fail.

“Wait,” Barley said.

Denali almost ran the hindquarter into Barley’s legs and instead skidded to a stop.

Grat sat in front of the entryway with his legs sprawled out to the side. Beside him Samus lay with his front paws almost touching Grats. Three other dogs, each with a tint of white on their faces, stood on all fours. Karoc, Yuma, and Diogenes.

Denali knew them all. They were the elders. If Samus was the word of law, they were the voice behind him.

Grat looked at ease and this made Denali nervous. She glanced over at Barley. Barley shook her head in response. They waited.

Grat glanced beyond the elders and looked straight at Denali. Samus looked and then the elders. They all looked to be judging her.

The meat felt suddenly heavy in her mouth and she set it down. “Mother.”

“Denali,” Karoc barked.

Denali looked to Grat and didn’t move until her father nodded. She held her head high and walked under the gaze of the five before her. As she came closer they loomed large, she felt so very small. Almost small enough to scoot under their stomachs.

She came to them and sat. Each watched her and nodded to the others. Grat said nothing and looked at Denali.

“As pups, we’ve all made mistakes,” Karoc said slowly, with a growl like gravel in his voice. “But this is different.”

“If you were older, you’d suffer a different fate,” Yuma added.

“And you still might,” Diogenes said with a frown.

“We are here, as custom requires, to find a resolution,” Karoc said.

Denali wanted to tell him where to stick his custom. She was afraid, but knew that the truth would have served better.

“Did you lead my sons into the forbidden place?” Samus said.

Denali looked at Grat for some reassurance. Grat said nothing. “I did.” The words came out quickly, she felt nothing but hatred as she said them. The sounds of the pups inside of the shelter reminded her of why she was lying.

“Did you stand with them and fight?” Karoc asked.

Every part of her wanted to scream the truth. “I did not.”

Diogenes turned away and looked back. “We live as a pack.”

“And die as a pack,” Yuma finished.

“If we forsake the pack, we are nothing but animals, wolves, exiles,” Karoc said.

Samus nodded with no emotion on his face.

“Blood or metal?” Karoc asked Grat.

“Metal,” Grat growled.

The three elders looked to each other and agreed.

Karoc stepped forward and stood before Denali. “You came to us long ago. We raised you as a pack, and when your trial is done, all shall be forgotten. But until then, the shame of your deeds are upon your shoulders.”

Denali stood and felt as alone as she could. She saw no reason to reply, it was a judgment, not a statement.

“You have three days,” Samus said. “Then we leave for the starport—”

“Light of men,” the elders echoed.

“—for the trials.”

The group broke and the elders melted back into the waking camp. Samus glared at Denali before leaving. He paused, relieved himself on the edge of the building, and trotted off.

Denali looked to the ground and felt ashamed of herself. Not for what she’d done, but for what she said. “I—”

“I know,” Grat said quietly.

“What if I don’t get enough?” Denali asked, picturing the heaps of salvage necessary to appease the machine gods and be granted entry to the trial.

Grat exhaled and made a loud flapping noise with his lips. “Quality, not quantity,” he said, and stood. “Just like you.”

Denali looked up and saw forgiving eyes, knowing eyes, eyes of her father.

The structure was like a giant insect laid down on a rocky shore and plucked apart by tiny ants. The metal shell was cracked, worn, and grit blasted by the sands and time. Well worn trails led to the larger access points and the dogs still trekked in and out.

Grat plodded forward and picked the trail that led towards the center of the structure. It was the least traveled path. A crease in the hull was too small to admit any but the smallest females. To Denali, the crack was plenty wide, she knew the spot well as she’d helped Barley many a day, but never on her own.

The sky above them filled with clouds. The mountains funneled and channeled the stone gray into rising funnels. Snowflakes fell at random moments, just enough to pepper their fur with white. It looked like the storm might blow over.

Grat led her to the opening and turned to face her. He stuck his muzzle into the crack and inhaled deeply. “Quality. Not quantity.”

Denali knew that Grat couldn’t smell a thing. His nose was so worn that he had a hard time smelling dinner. He was doing it for her benefit. She stepped closer and sniffed.

It smelled of old things. Dust. Plastics. A decay of time. There was also that smell of men. Long dead smells. But, to her surprise, also a smell of different things. Something had been breached.

“Kalus tells me they breached a new chamber, none can fit through the openings around it. Get in and be quiet about it. He will be waiting,” Grat said.

“Why here?” Denali asked. It was a shorter trip near the main entrance.

“No one can follow you out.” Grat glanced towards the pack members who worked lower on the slope. “Some think you don’t deserve this, don’t give them the chance to do you harm.”

Denali looked back at Grat and wondered how much he knew. “I’ll show them.”

“I know,” he said. His great nose nudged her side.

She smiled and stepped into the edge of the crack. It was wide enough that three of her could have walked abreast. For some reason she turned to Grat and asked, “Who was your father?”

He seemed taken back by the question. His eyes drooped and took on a heavy look. “A different dog than I.”

The passage narrowed almost immediately. It was cool inside, the sort of chill that never seemed to go away. The walls were gnawed smooth with any protrusion chewed away. Stubs of wire, chewed conduit, and tooth worn metal marked the way.

A still light illuminated the path. It came from the corners, like the residue of a sunset that was never swept away. While it wasn’t dark inside, it was definitely not light.

Denali listened and crept forward slowly. The only sound was her claws clacking on the floor. She walked slower, she could smell the wider passage ahead. Finally she came to an old thing with a smooth top. She propped herself up and scanned down the hall.

A dog, wide in the shoulders and narrow in the waist, pulled an empty caribou hide sled. His eyes focused on the ground in front of him and each step was a mechanical movement. Denali knew him well.

She leapt out in front and bared her teeth. “Krunk!”

Krunk skidded back. In a moment he tumbled sideways with his tail wrapped up in his harness. His sleepy eyes were wide and his mouth was on the edge of a howl. “Denali!”

Denali grinned and padded up next to him.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

Denali helped him right the sled and untangled the raw caribou hide harness from his rear leg. “Says who?”

Krunk kept glancing down the wider passage. “Munin. He said—”

“You know me.” Denali tugged on the back of the sled.

“So why?”

Denali ruffled her nose into the flaps of the caribou hide. She hopped up onto the sled and pushed the flaps aside. The hiding spot seemed good enough, no one would look inside an empty sled.

“Why did you lead them on?”

“You know Samson and Sabot, right?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“So what do you think?”

Krunk scrunched up his nose. He sat heavily, propped out his rear leg, and strummed at an itch on the bridge of his nose. His tail swished slowly. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“You don’t have to!” Denali said, as she pulled the flaps over her head.

“What are you doing?” Krunk growled.

“Pull!”

“They’re looking for you,” Krunk added, but began to pull slowly.

“Who?”

“Munin and Samus. Tohan is waiting at the outside. How’d you get past him?”

“He’s old and fat, how do you think?”

“Hrm,” Krunk grumbled. “You’re gonna owe me.”

“I already owe you.”

“Hrm.”

Krunk pulled the empty sled at a plodding pace.

The passage had the look of a metal cavern, and not the inside of something, well, something else. Denali watched the gnawed walls pass her by through a crease in the hide.

Doors came at regular intervals. Great octagonal things with giant bolts set in the center. The bolts were gnawed, as was anything else of value that a tooth could fit on. What was inside, no one knew, the mechanisms to open them were long gone.

Denali remembered a game she once played as a pup. All of the younglings would see who could creep forward and touch a paw onto the cool metal door. Behind, everyone else would growl and snarl. The pin-pricks of fear came back to her and she couldn’t help but smile.

Her mind drifted as she felt the sled crawl upward. She’d owe Krunk for this. Marmot. He loved Marmot. She knew that she’d have to spend many a day digging. She always liked Krunk, he was slow, but excelled at the job given to all those who hadn’t passed the trials—pulling salvage.

Deeper inside the adult dogs, those who passed the trial, would gnaw and use the metal teeth to rip out steel and wire salvage. Salvage, the thing they all paid to the machine gods. With it they gained a tough of strength or healing for a wound, or sharpened teeth. With that they could fight, they could win, but most of all they could survive.

A youth, with no such enhancement, could only help by pulling what they harvested. Denali was blessed that her size was too small to pull, but plenty small enough to ferret herself into the tight places. She normally didn’t find much, but she liked spending plenty of time acting like it was hard work. Though she was always careful to get plenty dirty after waking up from the nap.

Krunk stopped. He itched himself and his foot slapped against the floor.

A bark echoed down the hall.

“Thanks, Krunk,” Denali whispered, and kept still.

The sled pulled forward and stopped abruptly.

“Did you see Grat, or the bitch?” Munin asked.

“No,” Krunk replied.

“Move,” Munin said, stifling a yawn.

Denali watched through a slit in the caribou. Munin sat down heavily and rested his massive gray head onto his paws. She shivered in the cold and felt good to be past that one.

Her eyes snapped open and she realized she’d fallen asleep. The sled was silent. She was about to ask Krunk what was going on when a nose poked inside.

Denali nipped at it with her front teeth and burst out the side. Her heart burst with fear and she scrambled away.

Krunk grinned back at her and Kalus was chuckling in his deep bass growl.

“You!” Denali growled back and chased after Krunk.

“C’mon!” Kalus said.

“Thanks!” Denali called back to Krunk and followed after Kalus.

The passage narrowed and they skirted past an oval door that was jammed open. Inside a wide open space was lost to the darkness. Large metallic bat-like things hung from the ceilings in clusters of three.

Beneath the shackled fliers were great caricatures of large metal men evenly spaced across the floor. The arms were tucked close near the center of the chest while the head was bowed, as if in prayer. On the shoulders perched dust shrouded boxes. Great armor plates covered them, plates unmarked by nanite teeth.

She kept close to Kalus and watched the great forms pass by. They reminded her of the skelebots but unmoving, watching, knowing.

Kalus spoke in a whisper. “Dimim he da chewed through some spicy wires and poof, upsee goes a door.” He stopped and rested against the side of the passage. “Chewy bits inside, easy pickings, yes? Some crunchy bits, too, man things, soowee! Good to pick ’em up!”

“Like, never been in?” Denali asked.

“Nope!” Kalus said with a click of his teeth. “Karoc be pacing like a bride.”

Denali liked the sound of it, at least for salvage. Most of the times she crawled, it was a dead end. If this really went somewhere new, well, that was going to be different. “How do I get in?”

“You already are,” Kalus said, and grinned.

Behind Denali a fresh piece of electrical conduit was pinched tightly with a ragged pigtail of wires draped beneath. “But where?”

“They be workin’ on da big door. Big big big. But for you—” his eyes lit up and he leaned down close to Denali, “—I founds a little spot.”

Denali followed close to Kalus and took in the smells of the place. It was an old smell, the air was still with a cloistered taste to it all. The dust seemed a bit thicker on the edges. She had expected more, something grander, something well, not quite so boring.

Kalus stopped and peered around a corner. Denali scooted between his front legs and peeked as well.

Another wide space sprawled open. Row after row of pillars stood with an unknown purpose. At the end of the hall, a ringed alloy door spun slowly.

A patchwork of gears, golden and bright, made patterns that mesmerized Denali. Words caught in her throat: “What, what is it?”

Kalus shrugged and walked into the shadows towards the corner of the room.

Denali could hardly take her eyes off the door. It was a thing of beauty to her. She grew up in a world filled with machine things, dead machine things, and now to see one that still functioned...

Kalus stalked back and grasped her by the scruff with his jaws like a pup.

Denali stifled a yelp and scrambled into the shadows. She didn’t even notice Samus watching over the rest of the pack as they gnawed and chewed.

They came to a wall with a panel peeled back. Tooth marks and claws had shredded it open. Inside, a passage drifted into total darkness. It was like the others Denali had scrambled into, too small for any but herself.

She sniffed but only smelled the stillness. A part of her was afraid, the fear of the dark places was instinct, but another part was exhilarated. Somewhere truly new. “Will you be waiting?”