“How…” Dawn tried, finding the words suddenly harder to articulate, “How long have I been here?”
“Captain Dawn Redding: Patient 07 in the Slayer Program since the destruction of Mukurus eight months ago,” Marcus recited to her from a clipboard the nurse handed him. With the white-coated woman’s help, he laid Dawn down on her cot and even tucked her in under the covers. Marcus and the nurse headed through the door. He held it ajar for just long enough to tell her, “I would love to stay longer, but I have a meeting tomorrow at an Earth consulate with a task force to do what you couldn’t. Don’t worry. It will all come back to you.”
Chapter Two: The Dogs of War
Kalus arched his back to scratch the space between his bony shoulders against the rough stone pillar. It was stained an eternal off-white from years of beatings from dust on the wind. Dark cracks ran up and down it like capillaries beneath sickened skin. Still, if these pillars were strong enough to hold up an entire ring-shaped floor of stony rooms and the new WCC base, they were strong enough for a decent back scratch. It was all Kalus could do to pass the time. That, or talk to Sophia. Imagining the forced small talk turned Kalus’ stomach. No, he much preferred to stand directly across from her, against a stony support pillar of her own, and scratch his back.
“Unbelievable,” sighed Sophia, arms crossed. She puffed half of her short bangs out of her face as she shook it. Her black pearls for eyes settled on Kalus. The color of their skin was the only thing the two had in common - a pale pallor endowed by very different lives both spent mostly indoors. At the uttering of one word, the atmosphere between them shifted. The very air seemed to stretch, tense, ready to snap. Unbelievable.
“What’s that?” Kalus dared. He cocked an eyebrow, ready to lunge verbally or physically any moment. The irony both understood, but neither appreciated, was that they shared a thought about their Captain’s unusual tardiness. Is this his idea of a joke? This would be only the most recent in a long list of the Captain’s attempts to remind Kalus and Sophia that they were counterparts on the same unit.
“Thousands of years, these pillars have stood. Thousands, Kalus,” Sophia marveled, as if he knew exactly what she meant by that. The enraging thing, for the slender blonde-mopped young man, was that he did. After countless hours of training in this very arena, of course he did.
“I know about the Roman Coliseum, Soph. My uncle might not be Chairman of anything, but I did have an education,” Kalus told her. Her forehead wrinkled more each second, from the sound of that infuriating pet name to the end of Kalus’ sentence. By the end of it, she looked five times her young age.
“My name is Sophia. I can’t help who my uncle is, but if you’re going to use his position to insult me, you might as well use the right one. Chairman of the WCC’s Outerworlds Outreach Program,” Sophia corrected for the fifth time. All the things she wanted to scream bulged in the vein on her forehead. “And forgive me for assuming, but you did actually grow up in a cave.”
“Well, I don’t expect you to know the difference - what with your upbringing as niece of the Chairman of the WCC’s Outerworlds Outreach Program - but a mine and a cave are actually different,” Kalus sneered. “Anyway, what’s your point? About the pillars?” He cut in, before Sophia could actually combust. Whatever she’d planned to say caught in her throat. She had to clear it before she could speak again.
“The ancients erected this place for competitions of man and beast. It was to please the gods. Even as the world moved ahead, and people stopped worshipping fire and lightning, even as cobblestone roads became concrete and fumes from cars eroded the atmosphere, this place remained. Thousands of years of political, social and religious change, not to mention erosion, and it persevered. Just to have a dipshit like you scratch your back on it,” Sophia exclaimed, as if truly astonished. Kalus’ first instinct was to launch. After all, he was the Arms Master of the crew- he’d proven in training before she had no chance at beating him close up. It just wasn’t worth the chewing out from the Captain he’d get later.
“Aw, don’t say that!” Kalus laughed instead. He could almost see the nerve pinch in Sophia’s neck. “It does nicely as a stand for your uncle’s fancy treehouse.” Kalus jabbed a finger straight up, at the massive steel disk of a building which outsized the Coliseum that held it up by a hundred feet all around. A massive, circular opening in its center let the late-afternoon sun down on them. “It’s the perfect height for you and him to look down your long-ass noses at the rest of us.” Sophia’s back peeled away from her stony column. Mission accomplished, Kalus thought with a grin. He kept his feet planted as she trudged straight for him. He flexed his fingers in preparation.
“You two!” The words boomed through the open amphitheater. They bounced around in a wide array of tones, off of sand, stone and steel. Kalus and Sophia straightened up instantly. The flames rolled back from between them, back down their throats and into their lungs.
“Captain.”
“Captain Demi,” Sophia and Kalus said at once, the former much stiffer than the latter. Kalus let his loose fingers down from his forehead long before Sophia even breathed. This earned him a glare from Captain Demitri Alexander, but also a devilish smirk.
“You can at least act like you respect me,” growled Demi. Kalus’ eyes flitted up and down his Captain, a foot taller than he and entirely filled out with sculpted muscle. His dark brown hair was slicked back above two smoldering hazel eyes. A thick chinstrap and goatee of the same color rounded his jaw, which protruded with pride yet knew how to smirk. Demi wheeled on Sophia next. “And you - God knows how you ever take a seat with that stick up your ass. Ease up, just a little. You’re making me uncomfortable.”
“Ye-yes sir,” Sophia fumbled. Heat rose to flush the arc of her cheeks.
Kalus imagined it would be hard for her - sticks in asses was in her genes. After all, she was the niece of the man upstairs. The one they’d been waiting to see. The Chairman of the Earth WWC Consulate. Kalus choked a chuckle at the thought that the poor girl probably didn’t wipe without taking measure of her form first. He couldn’t blame her, though, not really. He’d seen firsthand on Saturn how WCC goons groomed their kids. He couldn’t blame her, but he could damn well bust her uptight chops.
At the same time, Sophia imagined it must be hard for Kalus to walk in a straight line, after the crooked path that dumped him on the WCC’s doorstep. She smirked at the thought of how her uncle would receive this Outerworld ruffian. If anyone could put Kalus in his place, it was Marcus Brass. If it wasn’t Captain Demi - former Blue Terra undercover specialist himself - that recommended Kalus, she doubted he ever would have made it half this far.
Demi stopped between them, thumbs hooked in his thick belt. He turned his head back and forth, from Kalus and Sophia.
“You two… My Artillery Specialist,” Demi said to Sophia Brass. “My Arms Master,” said Captain Demi to Kalus Delphi. “You two are counterparts. The shield to address one another’s weakness. You make up a perfect defense system, together. No other way. How many times do we have to go over that? I don’t want to have to remind you of it in the field. Which is exactly where we’re going.” To this, there was no quirky comeback. No quip. Not from Kalus or Sophia. Not this time. Then Demi turned back to the fourth body in their unit, who had slipped into the Coliseum quietly behind him.
“They were at it again, huh?” she asked. “Guess I owe you dinner,
Cap.”
“Lil! Betting on the failures of your own brother?” Kalus cried out in mock disappointment. Lilia shook her head, twice as disappointed as their Captain.
“I bet against your failure, Kal,” she told him. Kalus let his eyes wander to the ground, so he couldn’t feel her glare.
“Well…I guess it’s a bit your fault, too, if you actually believed Soph and I could stand to wait here this whole time alone,” he muttered, the same way he used to when their mother would come down on them. Lilia sighed.
“Even I’m not that optimistic. I bet you’d last fifteen minutes, at least,” she told him. She clasped a hand on his shoulder, smiling in spite of herself. Her shoulder-length hair was a darker shade of blonde than her brother’s, though they shared the same sea glass green eyes. Their similarities ended there. Sophia had spent many a long training session wracking her brain for how in the hell two slum surfers from Saturn from the same family had come out the other end so different.
“If I could have three Lilias on this crew, I would. Hell, I’d swap myself out to have four of your sister,” Demi chuckled to Kalus, “But as it stands, we’re it. The last hope of the Milky Way against those scaly scumbags. The Dogs of War.”
At his this announcement, Sophia, Kalus and Lilia turned in to share a single nod. For the first time, the true gravity of their mission weighed on them. They’d veiled it in humor and avoided discussing it for weeks since they arrived here to train at the new Earth Consulate for the WCC. The time for that was gone. No one needed to say it - every one of the Dogs of War felt it like a stone in the pit of their gut.
Captain Demi stepped between them for a nearby pillar. This support was steel, far younger and much taller than its stone counterparts. It reached up past the high walls of the ancient Coliseum, to the underside of the disk-shaped Consulate. Kalus, Sophia and Lilia followed a step behind their Captain to the base of the steel pillar. A hidden panel slid aside to let them in. The platform beneath their shoes floated up without a sound, without a tremor. A holographic screen activated on the inside of the lift as it rose.