Chapter 13

SHIP NAME: Certainty

PILOT FIRST NAME: Fionn

PILOT LAST NAME: It's just Fionn.

SHIP REGISTRATION NUMBER: 002-001-101982

PURPOSE IN PORT: Handling some mismanaged mischief.

~ Plutonian customs form dated October 15, 2566

Fionn swept through formless corridors, sometimes turning sideways when they narrowed, until he dropped down a few stairs into a room filled with cargo. Pit scanned for the inevitable, and located it on the far end of the hold: two animal carriers, crafted of bio-plastic and stainless steel.

One of them was already occupied.

It was the other life form he'd seen on the heat signature, Pit realized. His nose wriggled and, at the smell of another dog, the hair on the back of his neck spiked.

"Hush, boy, it's only Ravenna," Fionn said, giving Pit a hearty shake. The motion jarred Pit's HUD, and a wave of misery washed over him. His skin crawled where Fionn's fingers touched it through his fur.

He hated everything about this: Asking a stranger for help. Being touched by that stranger. Being treated like a commoner. Like a dog.

Dogs were the worst.

"Fuck," Pit summarized as a frantic whirring alarm sounded behind them.

Fionn swore, too, and dumped Pit inside the other carrier. Latching the metal door, he clumped away, vanishing into an invisible seam in the blackness.

Pit yipped and scrabbled at the bottom of the crate until his claws were numb. Then he flopped back on his hindquarters, threw back his head, and howled. Partly out of frustration, rage, and sorrow, and partly because it really hurt when he hit the soft part of his nose on the bio-plastic.

When his throat could take the raw sound no more, he dropped his head on his paws.

Everything was terrible. He'd thought his life was bad in his childhood, when he'd always dreamed of a dangerous adventure. Nope. Nope, nope, nope, not at all. An unkind word was sticks and pebbles compared to this kind of peril and humiliation.

As a human-and a rich, well-connected human-he'd been the beneficiary of many relatively tame planets, the result of his species' conquering, domineering nature. As a transplant daugment, he was at the top of the canine totem pole, above ordinary idiot dogs and enhancement-failure "shelts" and the original daugments, the dogs with bionic enhancements. But he was still stuck on all fours without the benefit of his lifelong training, at the mercy of strangers' consciences, a fugitive on the run from humanity's most powerful ruling body.

Small-Pit, he thought to his former self, check your tears, little buddy, your life is easy. You have it good.

Pit felt very sorry for himself.

Then the hold began to shake.

Pit raised his head. His tail swept hopefully on the floor of the carrier. For a moment, a very human hope welled up in him: Let this be a dream. Let this be the impossible detail that makes me realize this is all just a dream.

It wasn't an impossible detail, and it wasn't a dream.

Certainty roared and tipped forward. Pit and the other dog lurched as their boxes slid a few inches towards the invisible seam.

Pit's howl was cut off as the ship shuddered and tilted upwards. The floor sloped-forward became up, behind became down. Pit found himself squished in a heap at the back of his carrier, limbs akimbo, and gave up trying to fight the intense pull of gravity.

He closed his eyes. He'd never liked taking off, in atmo-craft or in spacecraft.

As a daugment, the experience was even worse. His metal bits dug unevenly into his skin.

The acrid stench of fuel burning, of matter converting to heat and energy, brought with it a raging headache. He snapped his jaws together and licked at his nose, but only tasted the tangy air. He whimpered at the inescapability of it all.

The other dog yipped. Pit jumped and whimpered again as his weight came down on his tail. "Stupid bitch," he barked, fear fueling a sudden wave of directed rage. "Whining and whining, stupid and scared, doesn't even know why to be afraid." For a very sensory reason, Pit was convinced the dog was female. He'd detected the scent immediately upon entering the hold. He despised the growing anticipation in his stomach when he took deep breaths.

Certainty leveled out, or else the artificial gravity caught up with the forces outside, and Pit gained enough control to press his eye to the bio-plastic slats as he tried to get a look at his travelling companion.

He caught glimpses of a restless dog, of silvery spotted fur, of a white ruff and a white streak down her muzzle. Black ears flattened and lifted over sharp golden eyes.

Pit's filing cabinet of a brain retrieved the breed name and description: Koolie. Originally from Australia. Bred to herd sheep. Small, sturdily built, loyal to the tune of exclusivity, and smart-well, as dogs went, anyway.

Pit hated dogs, and yet this sinister new brain of his stored facts about them anyway. He sighed, his tongue lolling, and felt sorry for himself again.

But only for a moment. He was too curious.

The Koolie paced around her crate in tight circles, seemingly unaffected by the interruptions in gravity, pausing to face front intently and watch the place where Fionn had disappeared. Her tail moved only when she turned, and then it was soft and fluid, like a fox's tail.

After a while, Pit identified what she was watching by following the line of her vision. It wasn't the seam itself, as he'd assumed. Just to the left of it, a pale light blinked every ten seconds. The Koolie's circles were carefully paced to watch the light.

A feeding signal, he guessed. The light changes its pattern, Fionn comes in with food.

He spoke just to stop his teeth from chattering. "I never understood that about dogs. How they can be so smart when it comes to food and so selectively stupid the rest of the time. Maybe it isn't selective. At least then I could forgive it. Gods, this is going to be a miserable trip. Stuck in the hold until Fionn decides I've been a good boy and lets me out for exercise."

The Koolie turned her piercing golden eyes fully on him, focusing through the slats of her carrier. Until now, she'd only given him random sideways glances when her circling brought her around. He was struck by how quickly she finished sizing him up. She carried the weight of a thorough judgment in that gaze.

Pit suppressed the urge to let his tongue loll. Then he registered something and voiced it: "We've stopped shaking!"

The Koolie's ears flew straight up, like twin pointy hats. Her attention flashed to the light, which now beamed steadily from its tiny recess. She caught the carrier latch between her teeth and her paw and tugged it free.

Sleek and silent, she nosed the door open, and then slipped across the hold and through the seam.

Pit was left to stew in his thoughts. He was pissed at himself for his gross underestimation of the other dog-daugment? he wondered, unable even now to give an ordinary dog credit for such a deliberate act. Or it was a feeding light, and she'd been trained to go fetch her own dinner on command. Pit supposed that wasn't out of the question.

Then he remembered the way she'd looked at him.

He'd never felt so naked before someone, not even before those he'd brought to privately pleasure him on the rare occasions when the desire struck him.

He'd never felt so soul-bared even before his mother, whose judgment reduced him to rubble.

No, before the inscrutable Koolie, Pit had been peeled away and left helpless, all his shields destroyed at once.

He hadn't been a general. Not an academic, an inventor, an artiste. Just the essence that was Pit.

He didn't even know what that essence was, and now someone else held that information from him.

He had to find the Koolie.