Kanigher heard the distant dog howl for the fourth straight night.
Its lonely voice filled his mind with a restlessness that kept him awake hours after the other prisoners fell asleep. In the gloom of the bunkhouse, his heart raced, and his head throbbed. Sweat coated him. It soaked through his coarse uniform and into his cot’s thin mattress. He had been on the brink of dozing off when the howling stopped. Now the quiet gathered around him, an almost tangible presence held at arm’s length only by the sleep sounds of the other prisoners.
Kanigher waited. No more howling came. Its absence troubled him.
Since the first night, he’d heard the dog crying in the dark, its howls had lasted as long as the moon hung in the sky. The lunar glow still fell through the barred, slit windows high on the bunk room’s walls, but the animal remained silent.
Maybe something killed it, he thought.
Kanigher sat up, slung his feet to the rough floor, and shivered.
In the bunk above him, Menendez rolled over and mumbled his dead daughter's name. He kept it like a mantra.Everyone in the camp relied on something from the past to carry them through the days.
Kanigher lived on the memories of what he’d accomplished before his capture, the hope that his work had at least saved some of his fellow soldiers’ lives. For all he knew, though, the brass had cut his program the day after he went MIA.
He rubbed his eyes, then yanked the blanket off his bunk and draped it over his shoulders, resigning himself to a sleepless night before another day of hard labor in the Pit. It was pointless to care about the dog or why it had stopped howling. The dog roamed free in the ruins outside the walls, where Kanigher most likely would never set foot again. If the animal ever wandered too near the prison camp, the guards would simply kill it for sport.
Yet the howl echoed in his mind. He couldn’t let go.
Since he’d first heard it, he’d sensed something familiar in the bestial voice. Something lonely and searching. Something purposeful. A question only Kanigher could answer, though the only answers that occurred to him were impossible ones.
He ran a finger over the old scars along the side of his head and around his eyes. The program, his work, his mission—all that existed only in his past. As much pride as he still took in it, only survival concerned him now, and he’d begun to question the value of even that. Death, at least, would free him from the back-breaking hours in the Pit and his captors’ cruel whims. He supposed, though, if he were ready to die, the howling dog wouldn’t have so roused his curiosity.
He walked to the end of his three-tiered bunk and, careful not to disturb his sleeping bunkmates, climbed it like a ladder, raising his face to peek out one of the windows. The night stretched into blackness diminished only by the camp lights. He discerned the faint shadows of the tall buildings in the lightless town, rising above the prison walls. In the early days of his imprisonment, he’d seen signs of life out there. The flickers of flashlights or campfires. Evidence of survivors. All gone now. Escaped, perhaps. Or dead from starvation, disease, or exposure. Or killed by soldiers. The enemy still patrolled the empty streets, but a long time had passed since he’d heard sounds of combat from outside the wall or seen air patrols fly over them. The town seemed so quiet he figured the entire region stood behind enemy lines now.
He descended the bed frame and returned to his bunk.
Outside the bunkhouse’s single exit, something scratched.
Kanigher froze.
His gaze darted to the locked door.
The low scratching noise repeated itself, persistent.
Skritch, skritch, skritch.
A faint huff of breath came. Then a muffled grunt.
Kanigher glanced at the other prisoners. Exhausted from eighteen-hour shifts in the Pit, none of them stirred.
The scratching grew louder.
Skritch, skritch, skritch.
Kanigher crept to the door. He stepped to the right, crouched with his back against the wall, and listened. The guards sometimes carried out random night raids, rousting prisoners and beating them. Kanigher had experienced his share of them, though, and unlike this, those attacks happened fast, the guards bursting through the door, shouting, flashing bright lights, waving guns and batons.
The scratching paused. Something clinked.
A small beep and a hiss sounded. A line of light appeared in the door, ran several inches up from the ground, two-thirds of the way across, and then back to the ground, tracing a crude half-oval. The glow flared for a second before the thick section of steel door dropped inward, sliced by a strip of quick-burning acid-flash tape. The piece thumped the floor, trailing wisps of smoke.
Kanigher recoiled, shedding his blanket, bracing himself.
His pulse thundered in his skull.
A shape emerged through the crude opening.
Slender white paws appeared.
A compact, whiskered face with tall, black ears came after them.
The animal wriggled on all fours into the bunkhouse, then stared at Kanigher, panting, its tongue hanging out.
Traumatic dementia. First, you imagine dogs howling. Then you hallucinate dogs crawling under doors. A textbook breakdown.
Other prisoners had snapped, talking to invisible people, running from demons only they understood. Inevitably, the guards took them to the infirmary. None ever returned.
Kanigher blinked, wishing the little dog away.
Instead, it pressed its whiskered muzzle against his hand and licked his palm. Warm and wet. Its tongue soft. And the smell of the dog—Kanigher couldn’t deny the distinct reality of its scent. Or its body heat. Sensations so familiar and wonderful yet so long denied him. They set his heart racing. He stifled a gasp and tried to make sense of the little, black-and-white animal sitting by him, licking his hand. A Boston Terrier. Athletic, barrel-chested, large for its breed. Not a dog he’d have chosen for his work but an intelligent, willful, and loyal breed, and with genetic enhancement, capable enough for the right missions. A harness rigged with miniaturized equipment hugged its body. A cybercowl covered a quarter of its face, interlaced with goggles that shielded its protruding eyes. Kanigher read the dog tag dangling from its collar: Bug Eye.
The dog licked Kanigher’s hand three more times, then sat in an attention pose and stared at him, its mouth hanging open in a dog smile.
Kanigher stared back at it.
The dog lifted a paw and tapped his hand.
Still skeptical, Kanigher studied the familiar gear strapped to the dog’s body. It included a small nozzle with cartridges for spitting out strips of flash-acid tape, which had been used to cut the hole in the door, as well as several small pouches along the dog’s back, arranged in a configuration Kanigher knew so well he didn’t hesitate popping one open and pulling out a tiny square cookie. He gave it to the dog, which ate it, then circled around and presented Kanigher with a tool strapped to its side. A low-level laser torch, powerful enough to cut the lock on the door.
Kanigher reached for it, then stopped.
The dog’s presence made no sense, especially not equipped with the rig he wore.
A rig and gear Kanigher had designed years ago.
Although streamlined and refined, the equipment remained recognizably his.
He had to be imagining it, dreaming, sleepwalking, or…
The saliva drying on his hand felt so real.
The dog’s scent.
Its warmth.
The howling…
Not this dog’s. But seeing his rig, the familiarity of the howling dog’s voice haunted Kanigher even more. He refused to let the thought forming in his mind complete itself, unwilling to risk entertaining something so improbable. He scratched the Boston between his ears, and the dog lowered its head, enjoying the attention for a moment. Then it snapped back to position and tapped Kanigher’s hand with its paw again.
Kanigher took the laser torch from its clip.
The dog retreated to the door and waited for Kanigher.
Kanigher didn’t move. The dog wriggled out through the opening, then poked its front paws and head back in and gave an exasperated huff.
Kanigher glanced at his fellow prisoners, none of whom stirred.
Positioning his body to conceal the light, he activated the torch and cut the lock from the door, catching the handle as it fell and then setting it silently on the floor.
The door swung open, and Kanigher stepped outside onto the edge of a familiar dirt path he’d never before set foot upon at night. The camp felt like a graveyard, the squat silhouettes of the other bunkhouses like grave markers. Kanigher searched for guards and spied them on the far side of the yard on the wall and in their towers, rifles poking over their shoulders. For years, he’d gone nowhere, done nothing without them watching him, ordering him, threatening him. The tiny freedom of being outside without permission almost paralyzed him.
Bug Eye took off to the left, then waited for Kanigher, who stood still, overwhelmed by the vastness of the night. Running back, the dog jumped up and hit Kanigher’s thigh with its front paws, jolting him. It settled on all fours, huffed, then darted off again.
Gripping the laser torch for use as a weapon, Kanigher followed.
Bug Eye led him along a winding path that skirted the camp’s lights, guiding him, step by step, closer to the eastern wall. Along the way, they passed the wrecks of the camp’s standard-issue hover-eyes, taken out before they could sound an alarm. As they neared the wall, Kanigher spied a faintly glowing hole in the steel barrier. It looked wide enough for him to fit through if he squeezed his shoulders together. No simple laser torch had sliced through the foot-thick wall, though, which meant someone with heavy equipment and stealth tech had sent in the Boston.
A sweeping spotlight crossed the path ahead of them. Bug Eye stopped, and Kanigher hunkered down and waited for the light to pass before continuing. He considered going back for the others in his bunkhouse, but it would only heighten his risk of capture and endanger them since he had no idea what awaited him outside the wall.
As they resumed their approach, the light swung back and flared on them twenty yards from the hole. Kanigher lost sight of the Boston in the blinding brightness.
Harsh voices shouted in Chinese. An alarm screeched.
Instinctively, Kanigher dropped to a crouch.
A gunshot cracked, sounding like thunder. Another round hissed through the air in front of him. He fired the laser torch blind and heard someone scream in pain. When his eyes adjusted, he saw guards scrambling atop the walls, aiming rifles at him, and guards on the ground running in his direction. A searing, fiery brightness came then with an enraged roar and concussion that knocked Kanigher to the ground and jolted the laser torch from his hand. Gunfire followed, dim in his ringing ears. Kanigher scrambled to his feet, disoriented, clueless as to where to run.
Teeth dug into his hand, biting firmly but not hard enough to break his skin.
Warm breath. Hot saliva running onto his wrist.
A dog’s mouth.
Too large for the Boston.
It tugged on Kanigher until he moved with it, and then it let go of his hand and picked up speed, forcing Kanigher to jog. He stumbled on the rough ground but kept moving after the dog. A brown-and-black Belgian Malinois, it wore a different version of Kanigher’s cybercowl, fitted above its left ear and eye. Its harness held pouches like those on the Boston’s, but the largest bore a red cross in a white circle.
Another explosion quaked the night.
Kanigher crouched and covered his head with his arms.
Muffled screams and shouts filled his aching ears as the thunder faded. Some in Chinese, some in English. The other prisoners. The explosions must have panicked them awake, and he’d left his bunkhouse door open. He hoped none of them were hurt.
A fourth explosion erupted much closer than the others. Shrapnel sliced Kanigher’s forehead, and the blast pushed him forward, driving him through the hole in the wall behind the running Belgian. Blood in his eyes, he fled the chaos at the camp and trailed his guide down a darkened street littered with burned-out cars and debris from the bombed buildings. His head throbbed. He wiped the blood from his eyes, trying to clear his sight. Kanigher struggled to keep up with the trotting Belgian. Bug Eye ran beside it, the two dogs stopping at regular intervals to sense the night and pick a safe path through the maze of streets.
Kanigher recognized the pattern.
Run five to ten yards. Stop. Scent, listen, look. Then another five to ten yards.
Stop and go.
A system he’d invented and perfected in years of training soldier dogs.
He intended it for safe, fast movement over unknown terrain.
Although he’d field-tested it, he’d never had an opportunity to see it in action.
He kept within one yard of the Belgian. They turned the corner down a new street, and Kanigher glanced back at the fire rising from the camp. A pillar of smoke drifted above the wall. The voices and gunfire faded. Soon patrols would prowl the city. Someone had blasted the camp to cover his escape, but in the din and flash of combat, Kanigher hadn’t seen who. He hoped—whoever they were—they were well hidden and had an escape route.
The dogs led Kanigher along a desolate side street cluttered with trash, broken bricks, and cracked cement. The Boston scurried down the block then sat, facing the intersection, watching. The Belgian circled back to Kanigher and lowered to a down position. Kanigher knelt and scratched the dog between the ears.
Kanigher read its tags: Nightingale.
“Good girl,” he said.
The Belgian wagged its tail.
Kanigher opened the First Aid pouch on the dog’s back, took out an antiseptic wipe and a tube of liquid skin. He cleaned and dressed his wound to stop the blood from flowing into his eyes. In another pouch, he found a stash of cookies and gave the Belgian two. The dog gobbled them, then snapped back onto its feet, curled away from Kanigher, and ran down the street, Bug Eye beside it. Kanigher hurried after them.
They raced through the empty town. Sharp rubble dug into Kanigher’s feet, shredding his flimsy prison sandals, but he ignored the pain and pushed himself to keep up. The dogs sniffed out their trail, winding a path east toward the edge of town. They passed the looming shape of a ballistic personnel carrier, five stories tall and embedded in the earth, one of the secret weapons that had enabled the enemy invasion. Then they rounded a corner and came to a plaza outside an office building. A headless statue on a cracked pedestal loomed over them. The building’s demolished upper floors threw down jagged lunar shadows.
The sound of distant engines grumbled, echoing off the old buildings as soldiers launched pursuit. Kanigher resisted the panic brewing in his gut. They had put a fair distance between them and the prison camp, but jeeps, tanks, and hoverbirds would overtake them if they remained in the open. Kanigher scanned the area for hiding places. The office building appeared far too damaged and unstable, and piles of rubble clogged the entrances to all the other structures in sight.
The dogs stood side by side, ears pricked up.
Waiting.
Seconds ticked away.
The motor sounds grew and spread out from the prison camp.
The rhythm of hoverbird blades picked up and cut the night.
Kanigher’s heart pounded in his chest. He knelt by the dogs, trusting them, knowing they saw a different darkness than he did, and heard a greater range of night sounds. A single, sharp bark came, and then the dogs took off running.
“Wait for me!” Kanigher cried.
He rushed after them, struggling to keep his balance on the litter-strewn street. The dogs raced around the damaged office building, along a side street, then down an alley. Kanigher chased them, ignoring his tightening fear as the alley sloped down into a darkness that swallowed the dogs and left him blind. He slowed, picking his way carefully through debris. Ahead of him, the dogs sniffed and panted. Their nails scratched concrete and jostled rubble.
Kanigher’s foot struck a wall. He stopped.
The noise of hoverbird engines buzzed.
“Where are you?” he whispered.
He clicked his tongue twice, a standard signal he’d used with his dogs. A low blue light appeared. It painted an aura around the silhouettes of Bug Eye and Nightingale and revealed a third dog, a Doberman Pinscher, also rigged with a harness and cybercowl based on Kanigher’s design. The light glowed from its collar. The three dogs surrounded Kanigher and ushered him through a narrow opening at the end of the alley into a tunnel. They walked for several minutes. The motor sounds died away. Kanigher caught his breath. Soon the yellow-white glow of a field lantern appeared up ahead, pouring out of a doorway. When they reached it, the Doberman sat beside the door like a sentry. The Boston and the Belgian entered the room. Kanigher inched his way to the opening and peeked inside.
An American soldier sat across the room, her back against the wall, head slumped onto her chest. Blood stained her uniform. She seemed very still, but her torso rose and fell with her breath. A fourth dog, a Chocolate Lab, lay beside her, its head on her leg. Blood spotted its fur. Its cybercowl covered nearly a third of its head, encompassing one ear and both its eyes, and it too wore a harness like the other canines. Bug Eye and Nightingale sat by the soldier’s sides. Kanigher approached the woman. All three dogs tracked him, ready to attack if he made a move to harm her. Slowly, he took the woman’s hand and pressed two fingers against her wrist, feeling her weak pulse.
The soldier kicked her leg, shuddered, and then snapped up her head. “Who’s there?”
The Lab lifted its head, bared its teeth, and growled at Kanigher.
Kanigher rocked back on his heels. The woman removed her helmet and tucked it onto her lap. A partial cybercowl covered her left temple and ear and encircled half of her left eye. In the poor light of the field lantern, she looked ghostly from blood loss. Her eyes locked on Kanigher’s.
She stroked the Lab’s neck. “Easy, girl.”
The Lab stopped growling.
Kanigher read the woman’s nameplate and rank insignia. “Are you badly hurt, Lieutenant Haney?”
Haney squinted, eyeing Kanigher’s face. She reached into a pocket on her sleeve, pulled out a mobile intelligence data unit, and tapped on the screen. The glow lit her eyes. An image resolved onscreen. She held it up to Kanigher, comparing his face to the face of a man in the picture, awaiting confirmation from a facial recognition scan. Though he hadn’t seen it in years, Kanigher knew the photo: outside his old kennel and training facility, a red bandanna in his hand, he knelt beside a German Shepherd, Sarge. A good dog. The first Kanigher had put through his cybernetics program. Involuntarily, he touched the old scars in the side of his head where his cybercowl had been mounted when he handled Sarge. Enemy soldiers had ripped it from him when they took him prisoner. In the picture, he didn’t yet have the cowl. He looked fifty pounds heavier, his hair clean of the gray that shot through it now, his face smooth and unmarred by scars and bruises—and he smiled.
“Captain Kanigher?” Haney asked. “Is that really you?”
Kanigher read the doubt in her eyes, and, in an odd way, he shared it.
He must have seemed to her like a ghost risen from the grave. He certainly felt like one. She knew his name, who he’d been, but he couldn’t say for sure he was still that same man in the picture anymore. He opened his mouth to answer, but no words came.
Haney pulled herself up higher against the wall. “Wow. I can’t believe we found you.” She coughed lightly after speaking.
“How bad is it?” Kanigher said.
Haney mustered a false grin. “Could be a lot worse, could be a lot better.”
“Let me see.”
Haney nodded, then rolled her stained uniform shirt up to her left armpit, exposing the bloody wound in her side. She had field-dressed it, cleaned it, then sealed it with liquid skin, but several nasty slivers of metal still poked out from her flesh, letting blood dribble out around them, slowly bleeding her to death. Kanigher recognized the projectiles. Needles from a hover mine. Each a foot long and embedded deep in Haney’s side. At least she’d left them in. If she’d removed them, barbs on the ends would’ve ripped out her insides. He guessed she had a fifty-fifty chance of survival without immediate medical care.
“What’s the prognosis, doc?” Haney asked.
“Like you said. Could be better.”
“Story of my friggin’ life.”
Kanigher leaned back on his heels as Haney lowered her shirt. “You need a doctor to stop the bleeding.”
“Roger that. Soon as the rest of the squad returns, we can bug out. We get fifteen klicks out of town, and we can call for air evac. They won’t come any closer. Too dangerous, especially now we’ve stirred up the hornet’s nest out there.”
“Can you walk fifteen klicks?”
“Got no choice,” Haney said. “Move it or lose it.”
Kanigher nodded. A quiet moment passed, and he sensed the dogs watching him, protective of Haney but signaling something more with their stare. Something like—affection? Admiration? He recalled the plaintive howling of the unknown dog, how it had seemed meant for him.
“Lieutenant,” Kanigher asked. “How’d you wind up here?”
“Ran into trouble about seven klicks east of town. An old battlefield, full of leftover live ordnance. The dogs did great. Led us across most of it safe and sound, but the mine that got me sat in the crook of a tree branch. Its hover unit had died god knows how long ago. No sound, no scent for the dogs to pick up on, but as soon as I blipped its proximity sensor—wham! Knocked me and Sallygirl on our asses and gave us a good sting. My second, Sergeant Andru, wasn’t so lucky. Seven needles in his neck and head. Didn’t make it out of the field.”
“I’m sorry,” Kanigher said.
“He was a good man.”
Haney stroked the back of the Lab’s neck then gestured for Kanigher to check the dog’s side. Five needles, twins of those embedded in Haney, protruded from between Sallygirl’s ribs.
“Sallygirl got it worse than me.” Haney’s voice turned shaky and clipped. “She’s the only reason I’m still alive. She jumped in front of me, took the worst of what came our way.”
“Sallygirl’s a good girl,” Kanigher said. At that, Sallygirl raised her head a few inches, met Kanigher’s eyes for a moment, then settled down again on Haney’s leg. “What I meant was why are you here in the first place? This place, town. Behind enemy lines.”
Haney scrunched her face. “Damn, Cap, isn’t it obvious? We came for you.”
Kanigher shook his head. “No, no. Bullshit. I’m not worth you and Sallygirl sitting here with those needles in your sides or Sergeant Andru’s life. Not after all this time. A hundred other soldiers in that camp are worth more than I am.”
“Not to my squad,” Haney said.
“Your squad?”
“Guess I should introduce you.” Haney gestured to the Boston. “You’ve already met the little guy, Bug Eye. His size comes in handy, and he’s got more determination than most soldiers I know. He can get in and out of anywhere if you give him the right scents. And Nightingale you met. She’s our scout. Carries our med gear too. Outside the door, there is Marshmallow Soldier. As fierce as he looks, but he goes soft the second you give him anything sweet. There’s not an explosive he can’t sniff out, no matter how well hidden. Sallygirl is our tracker. The rest ought to be here soon. I feel them nearby.”
Kanigher touched his forehead, indicating where Haney wore her cowl.
“Yep,” Haney said. “Plugged in and ready to play. I guess you’d know all about that.”
“It’s been a while. I imagine it’s different now.”
“The tech, yeah, a little. We get and send clearer sensory and emotional impressions than your original equipment, but it’s still only impressions. Thing is, dogs are dogs. They’re smart, and, you treat ’em right, you got friends for life.”
Kanigher nodded. “I worried all this went away with me.”
“Almost did. A year after you were captured, the brass tried to shut it down. One of my squad convinced General Kubert your program was worth funding. They hired new geniuses to continue your work. They’re adapting your cybernetics work for human/machine interfaces now. Making good progress too. Rumors about top-secret programs and new kinds of weapons. Hasn’t ended the war yet, but it lets us hit a whole lot harder.”
“How… how bad is it?”
“Like me. Could be a whole lot worse, could be a whole lot better,” Haney said. “The Coalition occupies four states. Used to be six. We’re in one of the occupied ones.”
“They dropped you behind enemy lines to rescue me?”
“My squad only works behind enemy lines. Guerilla warfare. Hit-and-run. Us and a few other squads spread throughout the occupied territory. We drive the Coalition nuts, fouling up their supply lines, screwing their communications, spoiling their food. You name it, we gremlin it. I’ve been deployed almost a year straight now, and they still haven’t quite figured out what the hell keeps hitting them.”
“Are we winning?”
“That call’s way above my pay grade,” Haney said. “Every day seems the same to me. Cloudy, with a chance of explosions and gunfire. Coalition is dug in deep from Providence to Atlantic City and over to Pittsburgh, but we stopped them advancing past Pennsylvania, even pushed them back a good way. Two years now, we’ve had troops on the ground in China and Russia to busy them on their own turf. Mexico’s on fire, and the border is a no-man’s land, but they never did get a foothold in Texas. We kept them out of the Northwest too. Our allies are propping us up best they can, but they’ve got their hands full with their own fights. At least no one’s gone nuclear, yet so that’s considered a plus. But it’s going to be a long war.”
The news stunned Kanigher. “We’d been fighting five years when they captured me. How long have I…?”
“You don’t know?”
Kanigher shook his head.
“Guess it all blends together, the beatings, the hard labor, the lousy food—kind of like being in the infantry,” Haney said. “Hard to keep track when you’re living like that.”
“Hey,” Kanigher whispered. “How long?”
“Eight years.” Haney rubbed Sallygirl’s head while Kanigher absorbed her answer.
“Guess I should’ve known,” he said.
Bug Eye and Nightingale jolted to all fours, eyes and ears alert. Sallygirl lifted her head, and from the corridor, Marshmallow Solider growled. Seconds later, a tremor ran through the ground. Kanigher put a hand down to brace himself until the rumble ended.
“Tanks,” Kanigher said. “Looking for us.”
“No doubt about it,” Haney said. “Probably backed up by hoverbirds and foot patrols.”
“If we stay here, they’ll find us,” he said. “The rest of your squad may never reach us.”
Haney shook her head. “Don’t worry. Those Coalition bastards can’t always go where my squad can go. That’s what makes us so effective.”
In the corridor, Marshmallow Soldier filled the doorway. His blue light flashed three times, darkened, then flashed three more. The click-clack of nails on cement and the scrape of metal echoed down the tunnel. The Doberman backed into the room. Two shapes followed him and moved into the light, a pair of German Shepherds. One, young and lithe, wore a standard harness rig and cybercowl, which wrapped the right side of its head. The second stood taller than the other dogs. It took Kanigher several seconds to accept what he saw, but he knew the moment the dog moved into the light this one had made the howl. Impossible as it seemed, he knew its face and its stance. He knew its scent. He remembered the sound of its voice.
The Shepherd made eye contact.
Sarge.
Kanigher wasted no time doubting it. The red bandanna from the photo, now faded and pocked with holes, encircled its neck. The first of the cyberdogs he’d created and trained, older and scarred, gray in the fur around his muzzle, a chunk missing from one of its ears, and yet still possessed of the same warm, intelligent eyes he remembered. He offered Sarge his hand. The dog sniffed, then licked it, then Kanigher knelt and let the dog lash his face with its tongue and press its muzzle against his neck. Kanigher stroked it and scratched its sides. He felt as much steel under his fingers as he did hair and muscle. He backed off for a better look. Cybernetics and prosthetics comprised nearly a third of Sarge’s body, including his rear legs and part of his torso, no doubt increasing his strength and speed far beyond his original abilities. His cybercowl masked the left half of his face. His rig, larger and more complex than all the others, integrated into his body cybernetics, bore a launcher for high-yield mini-mortars—bombs the size of cherries—and a compact projected-energy gun. The weapons used in the breakout. He glanced at the other Shepherd, who wore only a standard cybercowl and a similar rig mounted only with an energy gun.
“Sarge has been looking for you a long time,” Haney said.
“I can’t believe he’s still alive,” Kanigher said.
“Around the time the brass tried to shutter your program, Sarge ran with a platoon in Oregon doing explosives detection. He caught wind of an underground encampment, enemy tunnels, an ambush waiting to happen. Saved hundreds of lives, including General Kubert’s nephew. Even got wounded in the firefight. After that, the lab boys put new gear to the test on him first, and he made everything they threw at him work. They say it was like he was trying to make you proud. I had my doubts when I got assigned as his handler, but he wiped them out fast. Caught your scent a year ago, and he hasn’t let it go. He made sure the rest of the squad knew it too. Like he was worried you might be forgotten if something happened to him. He isn’t getting any younger, and this is probably his last tour. Now or never. Him and all the others, they’re like your children. You and Sarge set the course for them, for all of us. You gave us a lifeline.”
“I heard him howling,” Kanigher told her. “I didn’t want to believe it was him.”
“Yeah, he was damn stubborn about that. I couldn’t keep him in with me while I planned the break. He smelled you in there. They all did.”
Kanigher rubbed welling tears from his eyes. Sarge circled him and sat at his side, ready position, his head pitched toward Kanigher’s, awaiting orders. The other dogs fell in around Kanigher, all but Sallygirl, who stayed with Haney.
“It’s your squad, now, Cap,” Haney said. “I guess, in a way, it always has been.”
Kanigher raised an eyebrow. “What about the others?”
“This is everyone. It was me and Andru and the dogs.”
Kanigher laid his hand atop Sarge’s head. “All right, then. Let’s move out.”
He helped Haney onto her feet. Weak but steady, she pulled a couple of buzz tabs, one red and one blue, from one of Nightingale’s pouches. She ate the red and fed Sallygirl the blue.
“A little boost to keep us vertical,” she said.
Sallygirl stood with a whimper and walked out the door.
“Sallygirl’s a smart one. No sense in wasting time,” Haney said.
They moved out, Kanigher and Sarge right behind Sallygirl, the others behind them in a loose ring around Haney. Silence and night greeted them at the end of the alley. Bright Eyes, the other Shepherd, took point, and they moved through town using Kanigher’s stop-and-go routine. They walked east through abandoned streets and dense shadows. Soon the buildings came farther apart, and treetops marked the open horizon outside town. A trash fire burned a block or two south of them, and the wind carried its heat and smoke across their path, filled with the odor of burning rubber and wood. The dogs hesitated as the cloud flooded their senses. Kanigher spied the fire glow on buildings in other parts of the city and wondered if the enemy knew about the dogs and had lit them on purpose. Regardless, they had another five klicks to reach their evac point. Kanigher sought an alternate route, but debris choked the nearest streets, leaving them only two options: double back or forge ahead. Kanigher urged the squad onward. They covered a few more yards, and then the dogs stiffened. Their ears pricked up. They scanned the night in every direction, enough warning for Kanigher to drop to a crouch, pulling Haney with him, shuffling them both behind the meager cover of a rubble pile.
The air whined, then the ground shook, and fire erased the night.
Broken rocks, concrete, and glass rained down on them.
When the echo of the explosion died, soldiers yelling replaced it.
He peered through a gap in the rubble. Ahead of their position sat a tank parked on a cross street, four soldiers around it, all gazing in the direction of his squad, weapons ready. One scrambled for a grenade launcher propped against the tank treads. Another buckled the strap under his helmet. Lit cigarettes glowed on the ground. If not for the soot and the heat from the trash fire, the dogs would’ve detected the cigarettes, the scents of tank oil, and human sweat. Kanigher chided himself for not turning back.
Haney rested her rifle in a crook in the rubble, then handed her sidearm to Kanigher, who took it even as his eyes scanned for the dogs. He saw only Sallygirl hunkered down behind a neighboring rubble mound, head on her paws, eyes glued to Haney.
The soldiers opened fire.
Shots chewed up the remnants of the street and pinged off the rubble. Haney returned fire, scattering the soldiers, all but the one holding the grenade launcher, who stood steady and aimed at their position, preparing to wipe them out with one shot—but he never fired.
Landing like a demon falling from the sky, Sarge hit him from the shadows, clenching his teeth on the soldier’s neck even as he tore him sideways to the ground. The grenade launcher fell and rolled away. Bright Eyes and Marshmallow Soldier took down two other attackers, coming at them from out of their line of sight, hitting them hard and fast, bringing them to the ground, and lunging past the hands they raised in defense to rip at their necks and faces. Kanigher and Haney eased out from the rubble and fired on the fourth soldier, ripping bullets across his chest and dropping him. On the ground, the other soldiers all lay still, and the dogs withdrew from their corpses. A soldier in the tank snapped the hatch shut. The engine rumbled. The turret swiveled, bringing the gun around on Kanigher and Haney.
The sound of hoverbirds filled the air.
A flurry of barking rose from the dogs, then the animals scattered.
Sarge, Bug Eye, and Bright Eyes raced toward the tank and leapt onto its body.
Marshmallow Soldier and Nightingale bolted for Kanigher and Haney. Nightingale took Haney’s wrist between her jaws and dragged her away. Marshmallow Soldier stood by Sallygirl, locked eyes with Kanigher, and barked three times. Kanigher took the hint. Careful not to drive the needles in her side any deeper, he slung Sallygirl across his shoulders in a firemen’s carry. She whimpered in pain but settled against him. Behind him, a small explosion erupted. A shot from Sarge’s mortar had broken the tank turret. Now the dogs worked the hatch with their energy weapons.
“Move out!” Kanigher shouted at them.
They couldn’t hear him. He caught up to Haney.
“Use your link to order them to fall back and come with us,” he said.
Haney nodded. Kanigher watched the dogs. Only Sarge lifted his head long enough to meet Kanigher’s eyes. He wagged his tail, barked, and then resumed working at the hatch.
Kanigher started back, but Marshmallow Soldier grabbed his hand, urging him to continue. Lights from three hoverbirds painted the buildings now, closing on the tank’s position. The dog’s energy beams flared, and the hatch exploded free of its mounts.
Bug Eyes and Bright Eyes scrambled off the tank.
The hoverbirds dropped low, spotlights painting the vehicle. Like a living shadow, Sarge skipped the edge of the lights and vanished into the tank. Kanigher hesitated, waiting for the dog to reemerge, resisting Marshmallow dragging him onto a rubble-strewn back street that led away from town. A huge explosion rocked the night, spewing from the tank, catching the low-flying hoverbirds in its blast. Three more followed as the hoverships ignited.
Fire painted the sky.
Sarge’s howls echoed in Kanigher’s mind.
Haney faltered for a moment, knees weak, her expression blank, and Kanigher knew what she’d felt through her cybercowl, the last impressions from one of her dogs, one of his dogs.
They trudged to the evac point, keeping to shadows, the dogs picking a route over ground no tank could travel. Twice they heard enemy soldiers nearby, but Nightingale led them safely around them both times. Bug Eyes joined them one klick out. At the rendezvous, Bright Eyes sat waiting for them, a bloody gash in his side.
Kanigher didn’t look for Sarge. Understanding gutted him and filled him with pride at the same time. After all those years, their reunion had lasted far too little time.
The squad held its position, hiding in the dark for an hour before their ride set down in the clearing. Kanigher hesitated, unwilling to leave his fallen dog behind, like so many others had been down through the history of soldier dogs. Then he thought of all that Sarge had given his comrades, all that Sarge had given him, and all he might do now with his freedom. He had no choice but to honor Sarge’s sacrifice. Haney placed her hand on his shoulder. He let her lead him into the hoverbird. As it lifted into the dark, Kanigher’s memories of Sarge howling blotted out the sound of its blades.