“Yes, ma’am. A hound of ancient legend, and a formidable Dog of War herself. I wouldn’t have you flying anything else,” Marcus told her. He led on quietly until the five arrived beneath the hull of the great, mechanical beast. It was a hound only in symbolism, however. The Cerberus more closely resembled a monumental, three-headed eagle.
Its deep V of a hull was an alternating pattern of steel and what appeared to be black wooden slats. In truth, it was a titanium-Chrysum alloy that resembled the grains of wood. These parts of the frame glared a neon blue every few seconds. Kalus had only read about employing the technology in the field - a way to divert Chrysum blasts around a ship via particle behaviors similar to magnetism. It was supposed to be in beta. He never imagined it would close in the walls of the cabin he slept in.
The three “heads” of the Cerberus were protrusions of steel and glass from just under the rim of its top deck. Each of them looked like a one-man craft in its own right. Geometric orbs of seamless black steel enclosed light blue panels of glass over various weaponry. One bore two long-barrelled cannons. Another boasted independently operating blades on ball hinges. The third looked equipped with a long-range Chrysum cannon and several missile pods. All mouths hung open, but none wider than Commander Lilia Delphi’s.
“I…I get to fly this?” fell right out of her, whether she meant it to or not.
“So long as you take it where we ask,” Marcus chuckled. He prodded a finger at the three heads of the beast overhead as he went on. “Each of those detaches from the main Warbringer to operate independently. We’re talking about four state-of-the-art SkyLine-and-beyond-equipped crafts here. One for each of you, counting the main Cerberus as Commander Lilia’s. You’ll have a supporting crew at your disposal, too, but you’ll hardly know they’re there. They’ll take care of food and maintenance, but none of them have a Warbringer class license. That’s all on you and our autopilot program, once you calibrate it, Lilia. I expect you’ll take good care of it.”
“You should expect they’re going to get a little banged up. You do know where you’re sending us, and what you’re sending us to do,” Kalus warned. Captain Demi’s hand twitched with the temptation to crack it across the back of his Arms Master’s head. Even if he was right.
“Kalus!” Sophia scolded first.
“Right, right. Sorry, Uncle Marcus. Not a scratch,” Kalus apologized with mock seriousness. That ended the realm of temptation for Demi - he had to put his rogue rider in line. At least he thought he did, before Chairman Marcus Brass broke into a haughty guffaw.
“Thank God! I was beginning to think I’d picked a team of brick-bags,” he laughed, “I need you to be smart, on top of brave and resilient. You aren’t a battering ram; you’re a taskforce. Good to see at least one of you knows what you’re up against.” Kalus’ eyes went just as wide as the rest of the Dogs, if not wider. The Chairman sounded like he’d been looking for an excuse to laugh for years, with how long it took him to wind back down. “Well, let’s get you off-world. My research-escort is expecting you in five days.”
The launch horn blared through the Coliseum and the WCC Consulate over it for the first time that day. Its abrasive soundwaves shook the dust off of pillars. It separated clumps of sand to their most basic grains and crystals. The sound rattled eardrums in warning for any workers to move to the outer perimeter of the stone structure for two minutes. In that time, two gigantic plates of steel slid away from one another under the center of the Coliseum’s sandy floor. Two beige cascades of dust poured over into the opening, which reached all the way down to the hangar. Vents in the floor all around the huge room sucked down the grainy dust to storage containers. Later, when the Cerberus was gone, the sand would be shot back over the Coliseum floor, to conceal the opening once more.
Lilia sat rigid in her chair, however comfortably it embraced her curvy, muscular frame. She waited with a hand on each navigation bar, for the all-clear from their mission supervisor. A slit of light over them grew to a spotlight as two veils of sand retreated away from each other. Sunlight coned out farther each second, until it bathed the whole iron hangar in an orange glow.
“Dogs of War. You are clear for launch. Your first stop is Neptune. We’ll see you again as heroes, otherwise: goodbye,” Marcus’ voice filled the bridge through crystal-clear speakers. Lilia and Kalus gulped. Captain Demi straightened up in his leisure seat in the back of the bridge. None felt the tension deeper in their bones, however, than Sophia. She had, after all, been aiming for a mission like this longer than any of the Dogs of War. She sat upright, so tight Kalus thought he could see her skin tremble against her muscle.
Lilia gave each of her companions the courtesy of a glance, the chance to nod or shake in readiness or hesitation. Some reacted faster than others, but every one of the crew gave her the go-ahead nod, despite stomach-knots or heart cramps. Lilia squeezed the ignition buttons in each of her handles. She braced against the kickback of the controls while the Cerberus pointed its nose upwards. Lilia engaged the throttle lever. Everyone’s backs sunk an inch into their impact-absorbing seats. The ship, and the Dogs of War inside, shot straight up through the opening in the Coliseum floor.
A tube-shaped cloud of nanomachines shot up from the rim of the hole in the center of the disk-shaped WCC Consulate a second before the Cerberus jumped through. A pulse of Chrysum turned the nanotech mist into a rigid tunnel full of blue light. In an instant, a SkyLine shot up from Earth, passed the moon and joined with the central SkyLine to the Outerworlds. The Cerberus fired through the center of it, like a blurry arrow. No sooner than it was gone, the tunnel dissolved back into mist, until the next chartered flight.
It took fifteen seconds for the Dogs of War to clear Earth’s atmosphere. In five minutes, the ship had vanished behind the shadow of the Moon. It accelerated each second it spent in the rippling SkyLine, through infinite blackness. As far as those watching from the ground were concerned, the Cerberus was gone.
Kalus made it mostly the rest of the day without distracting his sister from her role as pilot. He didn’t even harass Sophia, all too much. To occupy himself, he paced from the bridge to his cabin deep in the belly of the ship. What Marcus said about the support crew was instantly proven true. Kalus caught them only in glimpses, typing on panels or inspecting vents, then vanishing around the nearest corner. Maybe someone had warned them about the Dogs’ ornery Arms Master - none of them stuck around long enough for any fun. Kalus’ room was simple enough - a single plant for color and air, a comfortable bed and a bookcase with each shelf lined with books on Chrysum weapons. While it was usually his genre of choice, Kalus didn’t find himself much in the mood to plop and read. How could he, with the SkyLine and the cosmos ripping by through every porthole?
When restlessness gripped him again, Kalus made a pass through the kitchen. He snagged an apple and a few slices of lab-engineered turkey on his way to his head of the beast. It had called to him from the second
he laid eyes on it. Two fully independent Chrysum blade-arms? That one had to be his. Kalus ducked into his tiny cockpit and curled up with his knees on his chest. He watched stars and darkness zip silently by while he alternated between bites of lab-meat and similarly synthesized fruit. He could tell by the taste - just like home. It was all most folks could afford on Saturn.
Kalus tried to count each bite as a blessing. It was paid for by the WCC, after all. But then, each sour chomp brought him back to when he and Lilia had scraped their chests climbing under supply bin blockades for a mouthful of food just like it. That was paid for by the WCC too, and the officers were never hesitant to remind miscreants like him and his sister. The echoes of what they said, in the breaks between Chrysum zaps, lived in silences like this one. Miscreants. It didn’t help that he was surrounded on all four sides by steel and Chrysum. Just like home. Kalus sighed and scarfed down the rest of what he had.
He kicked his way back out of his Cerberus-head craft to find somewhere to be. Somewhere where there was noise. The bridge made the most sense to him.
“Hey, Lil, where’s Demi?” Kalus called out on his arrival. Even hours from their departure, Lilia still sat like her back was stapled to her chair. Kalus could hardly blame her. She hadn’t flown anything bigger than a scrapper before this. It was precisely how well she flew that scrapper, however, that earned her the seat around her bottom. “Lilia?”
“So sorry, Kal. Just focusing,” Lilia told him, her eyes glued to the glass viewing screen straight ahead of her. “And you should really call him Captain.”
“Yeah, right, got it,” Kalus lied. The second he heard that scolding tone of hers, his brain deployed shields to bounce off every word. “Where is he, though?”
“In the back office. He just finished charting our SkyLine transfers though, so he’s probably-”
“Got it. Thanks, Lil,” Kalus smiled. On his way past her, he laid the gentlest hand he could manage on her shoulder. The look on her face warned him she was full of shaken-up concentration. The slightest poke could release the pressure. “Hey. Don’t forget why you’re here. Marcus and all the rest owe you for what you did in the rings. They talk tough to motivate guys like me. Not scare gals like you. They couldn’t train someone to be as good as you, so act like it. Just a little.”
“You… Yeah,” Lilia managed a tiny smirk, “thanks, Kal.” Kalus waved her off, fist already up for the door to the Captain’s office.
“What, can’t bother your sister, so you go for the Captain?” Sophia prodded from a seat close to the viewing screen. Kalus gave her half an arms-crossed turn back.
“Oh, you wanna play a game of I Spy?” he asked. Kalus gave Sophia all of two seconds to answer before he turned back for the office. “Didn’t think so.” He rapped out three hard knocks before the Captain sighed and called through.
“Come in, Kalus.”
“How’d you…” Kalus began as he walked through the door.