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Reunion: Chapter 13

There was sore from a hard days of back breaking labor that left it difficult to bend joints, crawl out of bed in the morning or operate as a normal person for days. Adrian had experienced that before on many occasions. That was the life of the Canis, be cheap manual labor to make those kilometer high sky scrapers possible, to make New London what it was, the jewel of humanity. Then there was soreness from being shot several times.

There was no pain when Adrian first opened his eyes when the ship began its approach vector towards the old human home world. The lights, that had dimmed when the ship's VI detected its sole passenger fall asleep were coming back on and an incessant beeping began in the cockpit. The pain came the moment Adrian even though about moving.

The little holes that were once home to small lead slugs became singularities of pain and suffering. Each one both burned and felt as if his flesh was tearing there when he moved to roll over onto his hands and knees.

The breath left his chest and he nearly passed out, but Dog was there to give him a mental boost.

“Whoa now." Dog said and immediately took some of the pain away. “The ship can fly in straight lines across space just fine, but it needs its pilot conscious in order to enter atmosphere."

The pain was now manageable enough for Adrian to sit up and slump against the bulk head. He clutched his side where the bandage was damp from the blood that had seeped through. There was also a stain on the makeshift bedding he had used as well.

“How can you deal with this pain?" Adrian asked and got up onto his feet at the mental urgings from Dog. He took a few shaky steps on the metal grating that made up the deck of the ship. It felt cold and lifeless on his pads, even with the slight hum of the ship. He had never on a space faring ship before. He had been on company transports that had carried to and from worksites, but they were always filled with other people that gave it life.

He was alone here on this ship, physically and looking around at all of the empty seats made him feel slightly sad.

“There are many things that feel worse than this." Dog replied and Adrian's mind got a little fuzzy. He was getting better at holding a conversation with Dog while controlling his body, but multitasking was still difficult. “Trust me, this is nothing." Dog was speaking clearly, the pain that he was putting onto himself to allow Adrian to even move wasn't fazing him in the slightest.

“Well." Adrian used the wall as a support and limped towards the cockpit. The beeping was getting faster, giving Adrian a sense of urgency. “Make sure that next time you take my body on a joy ride, don't do anything that will make this worse." He winced when he had to move his hand away from the wall to activate the door's opening mechanism, putting his entire weight back onto himself.

“No promises." Dog said flatly and Adrian got the picture. It was going to get worse and there wasn't really anything that he could do about it.

The door slid open with a slight hiss, revealing the single seat cockpit. Adrian slid into the seat and pulled his tail off to the side to prevent it from being pinched under his bum and the seat since there was no hole for his tail. This ship along with all other Dominion sanctioned vehicles were made with only humans in mind.

Adrian looked down at the controls. He saw a lot of flashing lights, buttons, switches and levers, all of which were entirely alien to him. He set his hand down on the joy stick that was connected at the end of the seat's arm rest. “Umm." He said, afraid of moving anything. “Help?"

“What?" Dog replied, his thoughts somewhere else for a moment. “Oh right. You should let me do this."

Adrian's first instinct was to say no. He hated the experience of sitting bitch in his own body and just watching from the sidelines. But, that was only for a moment when he took another look at the control panel. Another light had begun blinking and the view outside of the cockpit was changing.

Only a few moments ago, there was nothing but stars. Very beautiful, but it meant nothing to Adrian. Then one of the stars turned into something else. It gained color, a light bluish green and then it began to take shape until it was a discernible sphere that was quickly growing in size.

“Just relax." Dog guided Adrian through the motions. “Don't struggle. This is going to feel a little like drowning as I disconnect your mind from your body."

Adrian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt something slither from his brain and go down his limbs. It hovered for a moment and then it struck at what felt like his very being. He seized up, his muscles all tensing.

“Relax." Dog said as he pulled the very thing that was Adrian away from his body. This was nothing like back in the facility. The Canis had already been drained of strength then which made taking control that much easier, but now he was rested an mentally charged. “Focus on my voice." He said when his grip slipped a little. Adrian's mental barriers were back up and the loop holes that Dog had made weren't as effective. He had to brute force his way in.

Adrian did the best he could to avoid fighting back, though the body didn't always do as the mind said. His muscles jerked, trying to force this entity that was crawling through it out. He held his breath, unable to exhale with his diaphragm seizing up. He had never experience drowning, but as his body began to ache for air, he was hit with another sense of panic.

This new wave caught Dog unaware. All of his other hosts had never been this difficult. He could sense that Adrian was doing his best to not fight back, but his body was attacking Dog like a disease and he was forced to back off.

“Did it work?" Adrian kept his eyes closed, thinking that he was now riding passenger when Dog's invading presence faded away.

“No." Dog said, confused. Not even Riora had been like this and she had been one stubborn gal with a head harder than a dreadnaught's forward hull. She had been tough the first time they tried a switch, but he had been able to do it. This felt different, almost impossible.

Adrian opened his eyes and was shocked to see Earth. The short time that he had his eyes closed, the ship had slowed down and put itself into a high orbit over the planet. He could see everything from where he was.

“This is Earth." He stated and held his paw up, pressing it up against the glass. He could see swirling white clouds hovering over land masses, all of it spiraling slowly as he orbited it counter to its rotation.

“Yeah, really pretty." Dog said annoyed. “Since I won't be able to fly this thing, I need you to do that now." He pulled Adrian's eyes away from the planet right before he could see the brown, dead splotch across the coast of the North American continent. “I need you to listen very carefully."

Adrian let out a soft whine when he couldn't look up at the planet anymore. He had never seen anything like it before. All he had ever seen was the city and the grime ridden slums that had been his home his entire life. Now here he was, hovering above a blue pearl, so far from Mars that he wasn't even sure where he would look in the sky to see it.

“This is important." Dog was frustrated. He wasn't the type to be denied what he wanted. “The virtual intelligence can handle most of the stuff, but I need you to concentrate long enough to handle the main controls and get us where we need to be."

Adrian sighed and gave him his full attention, not expecting to be given an entire crash course on atmospheric entry, soft throttle burns and landing procedures. Dog went into as much detail as he though.the Canis could handle. He was a bright person, capable of learning quickly, but he was learning in half an hour, what cadets would learn over months or even years.

Adrian went through the motions of what he needed to do. Enter the coordinates, a long string of numbers and some letters that would get them going in the right direction. The ship would handle the straight line flying part, but Adrian would need to adjust for turbulence, or unexpected drops in pressure, anything that a VI couldn't adapt to. Once they were low enough, he would need to take more control and actually fly the ship which Dog claimed was easier than it sounded. It sounded horrendously difficult to Adrian and he wondered how people ever got off the ground in the first place without exploding.

Dog finished with the very simple landing procedure. Hit the ground at a speed that was slow enough not to kill them.

“You got this, kid." Dog said and pushed a few images of the first steps into his mind.

“Yeah, sure." Adrian looked over to his left where the nav computer was. He selected Earth as the target and then entered the coordinates. He had Dog double check and then confirmed the destination.

The ship lurched as the engines ignited and they began to push the ship towards the planet after passing though the debris field that surrounded the planet.

Adrian looked at the hulls of ships, over a hundred years old and yet perfectly preserved in the vacuum of space. Their hulks drifted aimlessly, damned to remain there as the tombs of the thousands of souls that perished aboard them.

Adrian shook his head at the thought of the thousands of dead. It wasn't his own thought, but leakage from Dog who was very quiet. Another question for another time.

The hull began to light up when they entered the atmosphere. Adrian held onto the joystick tightly, trying to remember what Dog had told him to do. He could ask, but it would be dangerous since it would divide his attention. He instead just looked out for any sense of alarm from his ethereal mentor. He had to hold it steady, to maintain stability and keep the ship going in a straight line.

The view turned white as they entered a cloud, instantly cooling the ship and leaving droplets of water streaking across the glass.

Adrian's ears folded back against his head as he felt sweat drip down the side of his face and stinging his eyes. Normal canine couldn't sweat, but he wasn't a normal canine, a mix of human and dog.

The cloud faded away and the planet revealed its true self to Adrian.

The city of New York was a barren waste. The once massive skyscrapers were gone, having fell to corrosion long ago. Only buildings shorter than ten stories really remained and even then, most were below five. It went for miles and miles of blasted, burnt out, dead, and crumbling buildings. It was raining as well which gave everything a bleak hue.

“What happened here." Adrian had to ask. This was nothing like the beautiful planet he had seen from space.

“War is what happened." Dog said. It was safe for them to talk at this moment since the VI could now take them to their destination with little input from Adrian. “It was nearly two hundred years ago when Earth was the center of mankind and Mars was only a colony. Ships of alien origins appeared in the solar system and attacked. They took Earth fast, wiping out it's fleet and set upon the planet. The fleet at Mars, managed to hold on and launch a counter attack to retake Earth, but it became apparent that the few ships left were not enough and so the use of nuclear weapons was authorized since most of the planet's population was either dead, evacuated or unreachable. This is the result."

Adrian gazed out and remembered to get ready to land when they began to fly between buildings, slowly lowering.

He lowered the engine power, decreasing the speed and engaged the landers. The ships chirped when the landers were extended and Adrian slowly brought the ship down, performing a nearly perfect landing on his first try.

“I'm impressed" Dog really was. People never had landings this good on their first try, they usually smashed into the ground with enough force to give whip lash and damage the hydraulics, but Dog didn't think he could have done it better.

Arian let out a breath of relief. “Ok, now that's over. What now?"

“Now we go hunting?"

“For what?"

“A long time ago, actually around one hundred years ago, I was here before. At this exact location." Dog explained, even going as far as pulling images from his own memory.

Adrian saw that he was on a ship filled with people, both humans and Canis. They were lookng at him with grim, but determined faces.

“The Dominion wasn't yet in power, but it was happening." Dog was being very serious. Adrian could feel him in his head like a brick of pure lead. “They were playing the public like fools, relying on fear and bigotry, turning humans against Canis. They needed to be stopped and we found a way."

“Spit it out." Adrian demanded.

“We weren't sure what it was when it contacted it us, but it called itself the Charlie Protocol and claimed to be the last AI on Earth."