IMPERIAL DOGS
IMPERIAL DOGS
Ugly Valor
Leaning back in his tattered white-wood chair, Savar grinned like a fool. Harris wore a smirk, and casually took a drag from his pilfered Lho-stick. It was a fancy stick, edged with gold leaf and cut from thick black paper. The pair still wore their greatcoats, and had helmets slung from their belts. Haunting gas-masks that characterized their unit hung slack from chest-mounted rebreather units. The two chem-dogs sat at a simple wooden table on the boulevard of what was once a gorgeous, marble-clad arts district. Pink stone arches lined the street, each leading into a gallery, or eatery, or studio.
It was a lovely city, Rose-Varyn. Before the Blood pact had torn through it. Savar and Harris served on a task force dubbed 'Mongrel', serving under the political-officer Harker Priad. They had been tasked with doubling back into the Varyn, and eliminating any trace of the chaos cult that yet remained. As far as they were concerned, the city was a ghost town. The rest of the platoon was inside the cafe, playing cards and perusing a stache of inappropriate literature. The only exception was a fellow called Domi; he had sat himself on the street opposite the dogs' occupied cafe. Domi was an artist, who had been commissioned to document and commemorate the cleansing of the Varyn. This was officially a way to pay homage to the hard fighting of their imperial liberators, but truthfully a way for the Noble guild Ankhull to flaunt it's wealth and 'benevolence'. It was all political, and Domi had no more wish to be there than the dogs did.
Savar reset the needle on an old record-piece that he and Harris were listening to. It scratched and struggled to find the correct groove to track. Domi looked down the street, drinking in the crumbling beauty. Chalky marble-dust coated everything, and craters from the prolonged blood-pact shelling lined the street like the footsteps of giant pachyderm. A hand-painted sign lay amidst the carnage, depicting an elaborate rose and a beautiful deep-sea fish. It lay nearly untouched except for the scrapes suffered as it fell from it's iron-worked post. He meandered over to it, and crouched to his haunches. It was beautiful. He hoped that the proprietor was yet living, and might one day soon return to his trade. Looking over his shoulder, Domi watched the two dogs on the street corner clinking snifters of Amasec. Looking ahead, he saw a mangy hound running into an alleyway. looking up, he stared into the eyes of a tall, red-clad figure. The painter yelped out a scream, and fell onto his rear. He heard a strange crackling noise, followed quickly by an irregular barking metallic rasp. He closed his eyes and found himself quite unable to scream again, and so crawled back towards the dogs.
Harris was the first to realize their situation, and with a single loud growl roused the platoon. Seven other dogs poured out into the streetway, diving into pre-designated cover and arming their hellguns.
Savar, red-nosed with drink and halfway through resetting the record needle again, launched himself forward. Hellgun levered into his shoulder, he fired a blistering salvo over the prone form of Domi. The figure looming over him crumpled silently, and a second screamed out as his guts fell heavily to the dusty street. Savar closed a strong hand around the drag-handle stitched in just below Domi's collar, and hauled him on his face through the rubble back into the cafe.
Looking up through teary eyes, the artist watched as Savar and Damir unsheathed 30 centimeter warblades and fixed them under their Hellgun's barrels. 'W..w... will it really come to that?' he managed to stutter. Damir shrugged, and slung a blind salvo out of the cafe's empty window. Domi could hear the dogs' microbead vox units crackling back and forth like stuttering audio artefacts. Suddenly and in unison, the pair vaulted through the window and disappeared into the dust and the violence, bayonets held ready. Sezari appeared in their place, with his heavy stubber knocked in the crook of the sill. He shot an ugly sideways smile towards Domi. The artist guessed that Sezari was roughly the size and shape of the simian warbeasts his ancestors might have raised - the man was nearly a full two meters tall, and heavily built from a life that hadn't allowed time for his body to soften.
Harris was thrown back through the open doorway, and landed heavily at Sezari's feet. He struggled madly, flailing and making a raspy sucking noise. It was only then that Domi realized he had begun to weep quietly, and at the sight of Harris' plight he felt his gorge rise. Sezari crouched down and forced the squirming man still with his elbow, closing his fist around Harris' mouth. A las-bolt had grazed the man's neck; it was not a fatal wound in and of itself, seeing as the heat of the shot had instantly cauterized the wound. That same heat had also fused Harris' windpipe nearly shut, however. Sezari found his war-knife, and without ceremony cut a precise and impressively delicate gouge into the man's throat. He coughed blood, and let out a gargled cry. Without a second thought, the huge man went back to his gun, pumping the trigger rhythmically in an attempt to keep their attackers pinned.
'We should be through this in a minute,' Sezari grumbled over his shoulder, trying his best to sound reassuring. Domi rolled into the wall beside the brute, and looked toward Harris - the dog had bandaged himself, and was working with bloody hands to reconnect his gun's power cell.
Perhaps the dogs do deserve a painting, Domi thought. He knew that their bloody valor and ugly smiles were more powerful an image than anything he could create with oil and ink, however.
