Chapter 11

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Enjoy snowsports on Makops's legendary slopes, snuggle in front of our community bonfires, and consider a lifetime of Makopsian luxury with our exclusive colonization benefits!

(Speak with your local HAG Department of Colonization representative today to learn which offers you and your family may qualify for.)

~ travel brochure from 30 years after Makops's discovery

With a bone-rattling roar, their pursuer turned back and faded to snowflakes. To nothing. To nightmares.

That first forcefield they'd passed through-well, it was clearly there to turn back large predators, like that one. The second forcefield, meant to deter smaller threats, bent over the gap of a natural crevasse. Both man and dog's momentum kept them skimming across it towards the spaceport.

Somehow Pit stopped his slide before he hit the other end of the stone garage. He dug his claws into the gritty floor until they made a sound that hurt his teeth.

He flopped onto his stomach, sides heaving. The connection between his brain and his jaws seemed underpowered, because he couldn't get out any words. Just soft, plaintive whimpers.

Jace dropped to the ground beside him, hands pressing against his temples. His eyes bugged out of his head. "Gods. I don't know what that was. I've been stationed here three times, I've memorized the known fauna, and I don't know what that was." The words came out between hard sucks of air.

Pit swallowed, his tongue thick and dry. He whimpered again, this time reaching towards Jace with one paw. It fell far short, but with the sting of the hard floor rattling up through his leg, Pit found his words again.

"Clearly...that was...unknown fauna."

Jace forced out a harsh chuckle. "We're in the garage furthest out, but past the field. We have to get you to the ship in the seventh garage over. He's only waiting another twenty minutes or so."

"He who?" Pit stretched his jowls around the sounds. The voicebox was working, but his face was half-frozen.

"Your ride. Fionn. He's the only person I'd have hired for this job." Jace came over to clumsily unzip the back of Pit's snowsuit, and Pit began the long process of shrugging out of it. Jace kept talking. "Only one I could hire, but the only one I would have anyway. Fionn's gotten me out of a scrape or two, and I've got friends who'd swear by him. Him and that silver ship of his. I think...I think you'll like him."

"Fionn who?"

"Just Fionn. He's a folk hero of sorts from a local system. Your average smuggler-rogue-space bastard type. Runs goods, provides services between here and Old Earth, if you pay him enough." Jace held the suit down against the ground so Pit could pull his paws and tail out.

Pit shook the snow from his fur and cleared his throat. "Did you pay him enough?"

Jace's eyes hardened. "What do you think."

Pit looked away. "Sorry. Thank you. I would really like to keep on living, and you've been an immense help with that. I've done a lot already to stay alive, a lot I would have told you a couple of days ago I'd never do. Get me out of here, Jace. Point me in the right direction and I'll go."

The conviction in the words shocked Pit. He didn't feel it in his tight chest or his shaky paws.

He studied Jace. Though the man was clearly exhausted, he shone with innate determination. The same trait that had first drawn Pit to that kid underling who didn't screw up as often as the others, whose careful eyes took in his peers' successful strategies and whose careful hands and mind replicated those good decisions. Even now, on the brink of an inevitable arrest and execution, his fellows already gone to their dooms and he about to throw away years of hard work in order to save the life of a saggy old man inside a saggier dog-despite all that, Jason McAver looked like a survivor.

Like someone who succeeded.

Pit congratulated himself for finding this specimen of humanity.

"Right. There's got to be a service panel on one of the walls. Makopsians don't engineer without an escape. It's...tradition." Another ominous word; and then, more ominously, Jace drew in a breath that shook with tears. "Sir, to be real honest, I'm having a hard time seeing. One of those quills hit me in the cheek, and it spread to my eyes. Everything's blurry. At best. You have to find the panel. Use your nose, sir."

Pit swallowed hard and spun around, almost tripping on his ear again. He pressed his nose to the floor around the edge of the room, giving the field a berth of a few feet. The bottom of the floor yielded nothing, so he raised his head and circled the room again, trying not to focus on Jace, whose hands were back on his temples.

Towards the far-left corner, on the back wall, Pit smelled sharp, cold air. He reared up on his hind legs and scrabbled at the stone. "Grrrrr. Grrr, damn short arms. Legs. Whatever. Jace, it's over here."

Jace turned towards the sound of Pit's voice. Pit continued talking for his sake. "Yeah, I can definitely smell fresh air. Wonder if this leads into the mountain, or maybe a ventilation system."

He danced away from Jace's hands as his man struggled to find the seam on the wall, then kept dancing. Fionn, whoever he was, wouldn't wait much longer.

At last, Jace grunted his triumph and came away with the panel in his hands. The resulting tunnel was big enough for a canine body.

But not a human body.

Pit whined and wriggled in place before he could contain himself. "Lift me up," he said, pressing himself against Jace's shins.

The lieutenant didn't hesitate. He scooped up Pit and slung him into the shaft.

Pit scrabbled for a hold on the icy surface of the ventilation shaft. In the darkness a faint haze emanated from each of the other garages' shafts, where the seams weren't perfect. At the end, however, he could see one small square of light where someone else had pried off their panel.

He twisted around and peered back at Jace. "Did you tell him to leave off his panel?" he asked.

"No. We arranged a signal, but it was assuming we'd be able to come through the front door." Jace leaned his forearms against the wall, wincing as he tried to straighten his back fully. His head was turned to Pit's general direction, but Pit could tell he wasn't seeing clearly. "You'll have to count."

"Right. I will."

After a while, Jace said quietly, "You know I can't come with you. You know why. You know I would, sir."

"I know," Pit said.

Neither of them spoke.

Pit coughed. He had no idea what to say. Not to someone who'd been such an integral part of his life for years, whose time in his life could very well be winding to an abrupt end.

Not to someone he might have called his friend.

"Fionn carries some odd cargo," Jace said, his voice heavy with complex emotion. "Watch yourself in his hold."

"I will." Pit's paws felt weighted.

"Get to the rendezvous. Chirtown, eight days from now. Even if I don't show up..." Jace took a heavy breath. "Keep an eye out for me, sir."

"Everywhere I go," Pit said.

In his head, he yelped, Dogs can't cry.

"Bye, Pit." Jace turned his face to the stone wall. He rested his forehead between his arms and released an endless sigh.

Pit intended to say goodbye. The words just stuck in his gullet.

He turned away instead of embarrassing them both with an ill-realized platitude.

Pit dragged his suddenly noticeable weight down the slick corridor, straining to count the elusive panels. Two. Three. Four. He almost missed the fifth, but he caught a whiff of rotor oil in time to identify the fine seam.

He didn't allow himself to think about Jace, stuck in that empty garage between the wraith of the wasteland and the shadow of General Tristan.