Chapter 9

Pit's inertia and the slick outer surface of the snowsuit shunted him deep into the wide air duct.

He scrabbled for his footing and found it with the traction assistance grooves on his booties. He slammed head-first into a vent, which gave way. He spilled into an abandoned hallway lit by flickering, dying bulbs, and whipped his head around to assess his surroundings. The HUD lights identified the elevator panel almost immediately after he consciously thought about looking for it. (Oh. Now. That's cool, he noted.) He galloped to the panel, reared up on his hind legs, and smashed both front paws against the up button.

The elevator made a forlorn ding. Behind the doors, the mechanism squeaked and objected but finally complied. The doors flew open and Jace stumbled out.

Pit thrust his neck up and Jace snapped the leash back on. "This way," Pit said, lunging to the end of the leash and pulling his lieutenant in the direction of the freshest-smelling air.

Neither of them stopped to question or plan. They reached a door with a heavy lock on it. Jace dropped the leash and his shoulder, but as he readied himself to charge, it suddenly opened. A blindingly white light poured in, accompanied by a bitter wind that pricked at them with its icy claws.

"Oy! You here for the show? Aww, Horus, yes, of course General'd want you here." The young man standing in the doorway sported a beard that looked ragged and green, as if he'd just sprouted it for the first time, and he kept pulling on it as he spoke. "Lieutenant McAver, sir. Wondered if I'd find some of my mates back here, didn't expect a formie-" Having accidentally used the somewhat derogatory term for a uniformed officer, the youngster blushed, which made the beard look even less real. "I mean, sir, I'm just a contractor, here with my camera, s'posed to get the show. Don't mean any disrespect. Sir, to the contrary. All due respect for McAver. Due and then some."

"At ease, kid," Jace said, forcing his voice to be light and teasing. He even managed a chuckle. "I'm just letting Horus stretch his legs for a minute. He's, well, he ate a bit of something that didn't agree, and now he can't really speak. Mostly wheezing all morning. Thought some sharp air might clear the lungs, do him good."

Pit illustrated with a convincing wheezing sound.

"And then, of course, you can see the show from here," the contractor said, waving his hand as if coaxing out Jace's true reason for choosing to appear on the surface at this odd hour. "Best view you could get, I'd bet. And I'll get some of the best shots." He pantomimed holding his camera to his shoulder.

Jace's smile couldn't quite hide the ice in his stare. "Yes, I suppose you will."

When he declined to engage further, the youngster shrugged and pulled the door open wider. "Hey, if you just need to get outside..."

"We'll catch up when I come back," Jace said smoothly as he circled carefully around the contractor, letting Pit trot in the shelter of his legs. "Horus is a priority to General Tristan."

"Of course," the contractor said, bobbing his head and tugging on his beard. But there was an odd smell on his sweat, Pit thought, and he nudged at Jace's leg.

"Think he might suspect," he whispered when Jace looked down.

The lieutenant nodded. "Run on ahead when I give the word. I'll make it look like you took off and ripped the leash out of my hands."

Pit locked himself into his physical body. Though it was still strange and foreign, it hummed with familiarity he could only attribute to the part of his host brain that was still Horus the beagle-basset. The daugment technology bound the two foreign bodies together, made them work in a weird sort of harmony.

Pit really wished he could stop thinking about it so much.

So now he poured himself down into his nerves, feeling the way his claws flexed inside the snowsuit, the way his shoulders rolled with heavy muscle. He readied himself for Jace's command.

"Go," Jace shout-whispered.

Pit bolted, and his acceleration was so quick that he really did yank the leash out of Jace's hands. Jace yelped with surprise that was all too real, then hollered after Pit, "HORUS! GET BACK HERE! HERE, BOY!"

Though the fierce Makopsian wind stole most of the contractor's laugh, a trace of it drifted to Pit's ears and warmed him with hope. He kept bounding, surging with newfound energy, telling himself that this run across the smooth, wind-blown snowfield was just convincing the contractor of his escape.

In truth, the biting air made him frisky. He hadn't been this springy since he was a young man.

He supposed the general's dog hadn't been so wrong to be a smug little shit.

He let this thought go as he dashed nose-first into a snow-whirled wind. He heard Jace, now calling with a different kind of urgency, and began to make a slow circle back to his lieutenant. As Pit drew near, Jace pointed back the way they'd come, and Pit looked over his bionic shoulder.

The civilized part of Makops consisted of a military base and a desolate spaceport, both built from alien relics. The base's founder had possessed both eternal optimism and poor judgment, and chose to build a spaceport about ten times larger than the planet would ever need. Most of it had sat unused, occupied by squatters in the off-season and then in the spring by holomakers with grandiose snow epics that withered on the vine. Meanwhile, three lanes and as many garage bays were enough to bring in supplies and export ice hash.

Pit and Jace had come up out of the main military building on the deserted side of the spaceport, and the entirety of the outpost sprawled in the valley below them. Lights flooded the main hall, illuminating every substantial detail of its impressive but hodgepodge construction. Milling around like ants, a crew of over two hundred carried cameras, lighting units, generators, costumes, and food in a giant circle that looked, from this distance, like absolute chaos.

It was a massive set. Its proportions were close to a big-budget holo epic.

Pit stopped to stare. Jace came level with him and crouched down. "This is all for you," he said as quietly as Makops would let him. "For your trial, or whatever mockery Tristan was planning to make of it."

"Gods," Pit said, pushing his muzzle between his paws to keep from howling. When he was sure the noise would not tear free of his chest, he looked up mournfully at Jace. "All this...for revenge? For one trial, one...one single day?"

"No," Jace said, "all this for twenty-two years."