DogForge (7 page)

“I’ll be waiting for you girly whirl, now be you safe!”

A hissing sound came from behind and Krunk trudged away. “I go!”

“And here I go,” Denali said in a whisper and pushed herself inside.

The passage was narrow and bland. The smells were almost totally gone, like it was stripped clean. She worked her paws one at a time feeling the metal beneath them. Cool metal. Her eyes were open as wide as she could get them and she saw nothing.

A sound, a mechanical humming, grew louder before finally retreating. The giant door, she assumed, and pictured the great cogs whirling and dancing. She wondered what sort of wonders could possibly hide behind such a thing.

In the darkness she could feel the passage slide up and down. A crease in the metal announced something, but she didn’t know what it was. She had no worries about getting lost: her scent was like a beacon.

Then her paw hit something and she yelped in surprise.

She poked her nose at it. It was an old smell, a collection of smells all blended together with a hint of corrosion. She felt the obstacle with her paws, it was a mesh. She pushed and it fell away.

The lights came on.

Denali froze. She didn’t even take a breath. The only sound was the hammering of her own heart. The air was as still as creation.

A hallway spread out in front of her, bathed in an empty white light. The sloped floor was a littered mess of debris. Glass was smashed, devices shredded apart, and not a single container was intact.

Denali crawled out. She stretched her weary legs and took it in.
The first one,
she thought.
Me.
She felt almost giddy with excitement and sniffed wildly while her tail thumped against the wall.

She sniffed into everything and scratched away to see if anything was of value. The footing was difficult, she kept sliding to the low side. She paused near something that looked heavy and pissed on it. With her duty done, she set off.

She picked through every pile of debris and sniffed for anything of interest. There were vials. There was broken cases. Plastic and metal and things she couldn’t guess at. Through it all she was happy, excited, then the aching in her chest reminded her of the death of Sabot and her duty.

Farther down the hall, it was dark. When she padded closer, another section would light up and one farther back would go out. She passed closed doors pocked with dimples. She didn’t like doors. Doors were something dogs couldn’t get through.

It was a simple affair with no handle. There was something written on it, but Denali had no idea what. She’d seen writing often enough, and was told that once dogs could read it, but that was no longer the case. A narrow slit of a window was above the halfway point.

She sniffed. Nothing. She stood on her hind legs but couldn’t quite get high enough. The tip of her nose was barely at the level of the window. It looked dark inside, that was all she could tell. No, not quite, there was a glow. A tantalizing glow that teased her into action.

There was a small panel near the side and Denali judged that she could run, get two paws onto it, and leap up to where she could see inside. Satisfied with her plan, she took three steps back and pounced.

Her paws slapped onto the narrow panel. She could see the window approaching and was almost there when the door slid to the side. There was a moment of vertigo, a misjudgment of space: the door was opening. She leaped through and crashed onto the ground. 

It smelled different inside. Very different.

The corpse wore a uniform so old that the fabric crumbled in the fresh air currents. Its eyes were sunken and shriveled into ashen orbs. Lips were drawn tight against bleach white teeth. It lay on top of a metal suit with metallic arms embracing it. The side of the corpse’s head was splintered open.

Denali stood slowly and stared. Old was all she could think. Old.

It was mummified by the cool dry air. She’d seen enough skulls to know it was once a man, but never one like this.

She tore her glance from the dark eye sockets and looked into the rest of the room.

There was table after table, each held a corpse. The room was filled with the dead, a gallery of mummified remains. It smelled of death. Of a horrible thing, corpse after corpse, left to rot. Alone.

A barricade stood on the far side with a heap of corpses. Dead men in jet black body armor with hard edged weapons lay jumbled about. Just in front was a sealed door. A door ringed with silent gears.

Fear came into her. An animal fear. A fear like she’d never tasted before. All her senses told her to run, but her duty held her tight, and she was bound to repay her father. Bound to get something for the machine gods.

She pushed away the fear and stepped forward.

And then something moved.

The metallic arm creaked up from the chest of the mummified man. It hung in mid-air for a moment. Its fingers opened from a fist and gently slid the corpse aside like a featherlight bird. Leather crackled and bones jangled as the man came to rest.

Denali stared, wanting to run, but too curious not to. The thing she stared at was similar—but different—from the skelebots. Where the skelebots were hard edges, like a skeleton of steel, this was smooth, almost plump in places, with cracked plastic panels and a yellowed tint. Its sea blue eyes were wide, downcast, and sorrowful. Like it cared so much, but nothing cared for it.

“A dog.” It looked at Denali with sad eyes.

“Yes,” Denali whispered in a tiny whisper.

The bot cocked its head and folded is fingers onto its lap. “It speaks?” Its voice was proper, simple, and Denali liked the sound.

“How old are you?” Denali asked. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then she noticed that it was pierced to the wall with a beam of metal.

“I’ve seen the gorillas off G142. Then there was that pack of chimpanzees, stage hands, and good ones, below Rigel. A horrible little place, but the theatre was definitely Shakespeare. Finally there was the little gibbons, they are all hands and tools. They patched the ships quite beautifully.” It looked hard at Denali. “But not a dog. Will men try to curse everything with a conscience?”

Denali didn’t know what to say. The usual fire inside of her seemed to have gone out.

“They fought ‘til the end,” it stated. “I kept them alive as long as I could,” It said. “Are you? No, not a dog, they’d send a man.” It looked to the corpse next to it. “Can you find a man?”

“They’re gone,” Denali said.

“His name was James,” the bot said sadly. It brushed a crisp lock of hair off the drum tight face. “He was my friend.”

Denali stood in silence and felt the fear trembling inside of her. She didn’t know if she could stay or go—either way, she had to do something. The cool stillness of the place was getting to her.

“Twelve hundred.”

“What?” Denali asked, surprised.

“Twelve hundred years, Terran Standard, corrected for position, stabilized for oscillation, variance quoted for dark matter crossing.”

The number was big. Bigger than any Denali had ever heard. The time meant nothing to her, it was simply a very long time.

“Do you have a name?” it asked.

“Denali.”

It nodded. “I knew a Denali once.” The face seemed to lighten and the eyes changed color to a more pleasant blue. “What do you want, Denali?”

Then she found herself telling the bot everything. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t place the feeling, but there was something about seeing a man, and speaking with something a men created. She told it of her family, of the other dogs, of the attack by the skelebots, and her reason for being. It did nothing but listen.

“Tribal society,” it muttered, and nodded. “You seek a Vee core.”

“Vee core?”

“There is only one left here. We were once so common.”

“Where?” Denali asked, creeping closer to the bot.

It tapped its chest. “I’ve no use for it. Please, release it.” It pointed to the top of a cylinder with an aged plastic finger.

Denali crept closer one paw at a time, not quite sure what to expect. She didn’t trust the thing, but she wanted what was on its chest.

She reached out, tapped the center, and jumped back. The canister popped out with a click.

“Once it’s out, things on this vessel will fail.” The voice wavered before snapping back. “There was much damage in the fall. So much. I can’t see it all.” Its voice drifted into silence before kicking back in. “They will be let loose.”

A cylinder of metal, as large as her forearm, slid out. The bot plucked it out gently and set it onto the floor with a clink. A low hum and a breath of air stirred the room.

“Leave me. I’ve wanted to die for so long.”

“What is your name?”

“Cicero,” it said, and the blue lights dimmed.

Denali snatched up the cylinder and ran.

A gust of air greeted Denali when she entered the hall. She sniffed the air, sensed danger, and ran.

Each door along the path was open. Rooms were filled with debris and wreckage.

The first skelebot lurched out from one of the rooms. Denali barely had the time to rush past its legs. It seemed drunk, slow, as if woken from an old sleep. It swung clumsily at her and fell against the sloped floor. It struggled to stand behind her.

Denali sprinted. She breathed in gasps past the cylinder clamped in her mouth. She could hear noises behind, her but didn’t dare look. Her exit was just ahead, she could see the grate.

Behind her, the noise rose into a clatter. She snapped her head around and saw a second bot climbing out into the sloped hallway. It thrashed through the debris like a beached fish.

There was a click and a slow steady scratch. Denali turned her head back, dreading the sight, and saw another skelebot crawling out from the darkness towards the shredded grate.

She gritted her teeth. The adrenaline surged into her. Her paws slammed against the floor and she ran in the low trough of the slanted hall. A single leap took her over the largest pile of debris. Two more bounds.
Two more!

She bit down onto the cylinder as hard as she could. She wasn’t going to be able to stop. The skelebot struggled against the floor and fell next to the grate.

She rolled onto her back and pushed off of its metallic face with her rear legs.

The shock tumbled her and she scooted towards the opening. The skelebot screeched an odd sound. Denali’s front claws scratched at the opening as her rear legs flailed about. She could see behind her: more skelebots were coming.

Her front paws caught on the edge of the vent. She’d never scrambled like she was now, her entire body felt like a coiled spring fighting to get inside. The heavy mass of the skelebot’s claw slammed against her, but only glanced against her hind quarter.

She yelped and pulled herself in.

She snapped around and backed away from the vent. A heavy claw pushed into the passage. It flailed about crashing into the metal around the grate.

Denali set the cylinder down gently, cradled it between her front paws, and yipped wildly.
Try and get me!
She grinned at the arm, just out of reach, and felt triumphant.

The thrashing stopped. The arm pulled back and light flooded into the narrow passage. The skelebot levered itself down and gazed directly at Denali.

She’d never been so close to one that was still alive. She stared back at it and watched its unmoving face and unblinking eyes. The desire to antagonize it was gone and replaced with a certain sadness. The skelebot was normally devoid of anything except a machine rage—this one looked somber.

Its eyes glanced down at the cartridge and back up to Denali. A moment later, it pulled back sharply and was gone.

Denali picked up the cylinder and turned into the darkness.

––––––––

D
enali knew it was snowing as soon as she emerged from the narrow passage. She could smell the snow. She’d been able to smell it since she was just a pup. A clean smell, a smell that was hard and crisp. It tingled the edges of her nostrils. That was when she knew she had a nose better than any of them. No one else could smell the snow.

She stopped halfway out of the passage and listened. The sound was gone. No hum. No dogs. Just the touch of wind on the outside. And the snow she knew was falling.

The hall sat empty. The sentinels of steel stood silently with a layer of frost on their shoulders. Where the pack gnawed on salvage there was nothing. She was alone.

Then the gears turned. First the outer gears. A slow turn with each cog clacking as it fell into place. After that, a thudding sound as double cogs settled in. Finally, at the top and bottom, the last gears hummed and sang.

Denali walked backwards with her eyes locked on the gears. Nothing good would walk out of those doors. She turned and sprinted away.

The gears slid and the door creaked. It opened painfully and the skelebots burst out.

She ran and felt fear gnawing inside her. It wasn’t just a fear of what was coming for her, but of what would come for the dogs in the camp below. She had to warn them. They had to get the pups out. The storm would give them cover. It had to.

Then the realization hit her: this time it was her fault.

Denali slid to a stop and set the cylinder down. She howled a deep primal howl with her nose pointed high. Every bit of her soul poured into that dogsong as it echoed down the empty halls.

A single howl replied.

She snatched up the cylinder and sprinted away. She snuck a glance behind her and stumbled when she saw what was coming.

Emerging from the geared door were a dozen skelebots and a mechanical construct that rolled on tracks. The skelebots clutched axes and pikes. Each shimmered blue with a field of energy bracketing them. The vehicle with treads moved slowly behind with a single heavy club. It wore a skull that so large it was comical.

Denali flew through the passage and emerged into the bright white. Snow fell and the wind blew drifts like waves at sea. The heaps of scrap below were barely visible through the driving white haze.