The regular forces have arrived at the settlement in under half an hour, allowing Janine and the rest of her pack to return to the crawler. Allowing the engineers to take off the armor, Janine sat for a couple of minutes, allowing her muscles to relax, and closed her eyes. The cool air within the hangar bay irritated her, causing her body to shake a little and making the engineers start to work slowly.
“You are not hurting me,” she told them without opening her eyes. “Make it fast,” Janine asked after hearing a whistle when an engineer saw the bruise on her back.
Disconnecting the cables from the implants across her body left Janine with a small tingling feeling in her body. A few implants were pushed out of their alignment, but nothing serious had happened. Her own body would fix their positioning in time, and by the time engineers had finished wiping off blood from her fur, her cuts and bruises had mostly healed, leaving only a rumbling stomach. I do miss the times when we could simply eat our foes. Janine admitted it to herself and opened her eyes, seeing Bertruda standing before her, the coat and meat bar in her paw.
Veins bulged on Janine’s neck in response to the memories of the stolen victory. She felt the urge to bite, rip, and tear to reclaim her lost honor as a predatory growl escaped her lips against her will.
“What do you want, Sword Saint?” She looked aside, breaking eye contact, and took the coat. After a momentary hesitation, she also accepted the food, hungrily burying her jaws in a treat. Genuine meat from a cusack’s calf. Food of the gods.
“The medics call us. It’s our turn for the procedures. I came to pick you up, Lady Janine.” Bertruda’s voice had a slight nasal twang.
“They could’ve sent me a message,” Janine growled. She checked her body, finding a few strands of gray fur.
Shit. Is it time already? She wondered, tearing off the gray from under her armpits, before putting her coat on and storming out of the hangar bay, leaving Bertruda to follow her.
The corridor leading to the medical bay was wide enough for most people to walk shoulder to shoulder with no problems. Janine used her oversized arms to cover most of the corridor, forcing Bertruda to walk in her shadow. It was childish, hardly worthy behavior, but Janine found that it was easier to tolerate the other woman’s presence when she wasn’t looking at her. A mere look at this lean form infuriated her, spiraling her emotions into an unnatural urge for domination. Their fight wasn’t over, dammit! Until one is on the ground, bloodied, and beaten, there can be no victor!
“Camelia pointed out to me that you could’ve taken my eyes,” Bertruda said behind her back. “I am thankful for the courtesy, and I assure you that I truly wasn’t aware of the extent of your injuries, Warlord. I acted rashly and…”
“You have told me you came to pick me up. You did.” Janine cut her off, standing aside when medics rushed a stretcher with the scout who saved Ignacy. She almost felt Bertruda’s question and sniffed the air, receiving the information from the scent marks rubbed on the wounded woman’s neck by Impatient One. “She got injured saving a fellow soldier. Will be fine in a week or two; only her stomach is torn, and the spinal column is safe. No biggie.”
“I see. Thank you for sharing this.” Bertruda forcibly pushed herself into a space between a wall and Janine’s shoulder, not allowing herself to be kept behind. Janine slowed her pace, intending to let her go ahead, but the insufferable woman easily matched her steps, making them walk side by side. “Listen, I have caused some bad blood between us.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Flame Girl,” Janine snapped, looking at the wall. It felt easier to talk this way. “The mistake was mine for forgetting about the rules,” even if Ravager never bothered to tell them to me!
“Nonetheless, I have caused a slight against your honor, and for this…”
“Enough. Please,” Janine said, stopping in place, annoyed at having this talk. “Each time black fur and white fur deal with each other, black fur suffers. I have forgotten this simple rule and paid the price. Simple as that.”
“This is not a rule, but a simple superstition! And you know it!” Bertruda growled, and a flash of rage ran through her eyes.
Sure, and this is why my kin died tonight and Camelia is still as pristine as ever. Janine bit down the bile, not allowing herself to speak the words. It felt unworthy, even for her. Camelia had done everything in her power to aid them, going above and beyond to save her comrades. Another reason to ask Impatient One for penance.
“I am thankful for your help against the mechanical beast and beyond grateful for keeping my soldiers alive, Sword Saint Bertruda.” Janine turned to look at her, feeling a tick in her left eye. The Sword Saint was dressed in a simple t-shirt with embroidered heraldry of her house on its white fabric and silken black pants. She carried no weapon; from what Janine remembered about the Order, this meant a sign of the greatest respect, for no Sword Saint would willingly part with his or her weapon for long. Bertruda’s nose had yet to heal after Janine’s headbutt; her shoulder was bandaged; and her leg was swollen a little. “My loss against you has caused a problematic loss of honor in my pack. For the sake of our troops, we best limit our relationships strictly to professional.”
“I count our fight as a draw, Janine.” Bertruda said stubbornly.
“Warlord Janine,” she corrected Bertruda. “And your wishful thinking is pointless, Sword Saint. I have already added my loss to our records. It is written in stone now, quite literally, too.”
“Then I will cut it out of the stone, and if your shamans try to stop me…”
“You will die, your pack will grow weaker because of it, and relationships between our tribes will deteriorate even further. We must think now before we act.” Janine admitted it begrudgingly, forcing herself to remember her mistake. Trying to socialize or make friends with the Ice Fang order was a mistake on her path. They are comrades in battle and kin in blood, but not true sisters and brothers. “Let’s be clear about something, Sword Saint. I can hardly stop myself from attacking you for what I view as a stolen victory. What is worse, you can hardly control yourself either.” Janine pointed with a trembling finger at the spark of anger in Bertruda’s eyes. “For all our sakes, let us stay away from each other.”
“It sounds like we have a lot in common, Janine.” Bertruda smiled and took a deep breath, banishing all the anger from her eyes. “The same anger issues and the same desire to come on top. I think that for the sake of our people, we ought to talk it out.”
“Can it.”
Ignoring the Sword Saint, Janine rushed toward the medical bay, noticing the soldiers from the mission waiting for a check-up. Most soldiers only had cuts and slashes, sitting unhappily in the corridor and being annoyed at having to treat such minor cuts. Janine spied Kalaisa sitting with her siblings and purposely ignoring them both. Janine had recommended the woman apologize, but apparently the Wolf Hag only dragged his brother to the medics when it came time to change the bandages. Well, at least she is not trying to beat her siblings right now. Cub steps, Janine, cub steps. Terrific also worked very hard to make a working unit out of you.
To her surprise, Dragena’s, and Alpha’s soldiers had shown up. Normally the calmest and most professional Wolfkins of the tribe now cracked jokes and playfully pushed the sitting soldiers with an elbow, trying to cheer up those who returned from the mission and simply anyone. When Anji sulked a bit, looking at her legs, two Wolf Hags grabbed the woman by the shoulders, asking if she wanted to talk. The Wolf Hag tried to break free, ashamed of her behavior, and the women seated her right back, whispering something into her ears. Kalaisa looked at this scene, and for once, kept quiet, only lifting a brow. A Wolf Hag from Ashbringer’s pack has announced a feast of celebration once the doctors finish treating the returned soldiers. Even males were invited.
We are kin. All of us. Janine felt a little easier at heart, seeing her own soldiers who came for support. Physical healing could only help so much. Even the Wolfkins sometimes needed care to soldier on further on the road of life.
“Degenerates! Morons!” A sound of sharp legs tapping against the iron floor has announced the arrival of Chak, who led behind him a small crowd of Wolfkins from the various packs, including three white-furred ones, escorted by the military police. None of them had any fresh injuries, yet all of them had a prosthetic limb or two, all in various states of disrepair. “You have been granted technological marvels, and you dare treat them like an afterthought? Do you even know how much it cost, you flea ridden idiots?” Chak rose to the ceiling, turning his long body half-way to look at the two Wolfkins. One was an ice boy, and another was a member of Ashbringer’s pack. Both let out low growls, angry at Chak’s insults. “And don’t you dare raise a voice against me, pathetic miscreants! I don’t need any help to deal with your shit!”
Janine chuckled, earning herself a look from Bertruda, who quickly turned to glance furiously at the order’s Wolfkins. After seeing the prosthetics in Ygrite’s pack, Janine went straight to the captain, voicing her concerns about a lack of proper maintenance of the artificial limbs and a potential risk in combat because of this. No doubt Cristobo went apeshit at the news and gave the order for a full-on inspection. If any signs of disrepair were found on the metal limb, the soldier was to be immediately dragged to a medical bay for the medics to check for any signs of infection before being sent off to the engineers.
Even seeing so many of her own kind here, it felt really good to know that the ice boys weren’t so flawless either. And it was somewhat cute to see a white-furred boy lose his temper like their cousin.
“Shouldn’t you be resting, Chief Quartermaster? Surely someone else could take on this task?” Janine asked with a wide grin.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Ravager came back and stole my room for herself,” Chak grumbled, watching over the group like a worried mother hen in fear of losing her chicks. “She had offered me to share the room, but I refuse to sleep side-by-side with the woman who has human flesh stick between her fangs! I may as well take care of the problem at hand properly without allowing any coddling for these meatheads and let my men have some semblance of rest.”
True, you only want to sleep with one woman, bastard. Janine thought sourly, leaving him to the task.
She came straight to the door, stepping inside without the need to wait, with Bertruda following right after. A thick smell of anesthetics has greeted them, making Janine frown in disgust. The sounds of dental drills, the beeping of the medical equipment, the doctors and nurses hurriedly moving from patient to patient—everything was telling that the poor personnel hadn’t had an easy night so far.
A few settlers were here, men and women with too many serious wounds to be treated on the site. The doctors worked overtime trying to stabilize their condition and ensure their survival. In a separate compartment, Onyxia was looking at how Dragena was performing an autopsy on the fallen raiders. Curious, Janine and Bertruda came closer to the glass wall, looking at the operation within. Beneath their armor, all attackers had similar-looking, chubby bodies with a vast excess of fat. Man or woman, all of them shared this trait.
Yet as Dragena was cutting off the skins on their arms, she found hardy muscles beneath, easily allowing raiders to prove hard prey for males. Cutting open their chests, Dragena found a single heart and two lungs—nothing out of the ordinary. The warlord kept on cutting, planning to fully vivisect one of the dead bodies before her and allowing the nearby medics to take notes. Onyxia reached out and picked up a cut-open stomach, sniffing its contents to see if the attackers were perhaps cannibals.
“Take someone alive next time, Janine,” Onyxia grumbled, throwing the organ back. “There is nothing for me to work with.”
“Enough, sister.” Dragena looked up, her eyes hidden behind bloodied medical glasses. A green medical robe covered her body. She quickly gave a nod to Janine and Bertruda and resumed her gruesome business. “The situation did not allow enough room for a maneuver. Janine performed the mission exemplary. You heard names, and we know that the enemy has tried to take civilians as captives. We saw the vehicles and beasts that they were using. Based on the contents of their stomachs, we know that they aren’t cannibals. Judging by the use of weapons and power armor, they have some sort of industrial base. Plenty of information from one encounter. Find some slavers, and make them sing. Someone, somewhere, has to know about this Gilded Horde. Take note,” she said to a nearby nurse, “that their organs are looking extremely similar. My theory is that rather than being accidentally exposed to the glow, they are instead like us, people coming from a large tribe of new breeds.”
Hearing a groan of pain behind them, Janine saw the mauled male whom Ignacy had saved. Part of his body became paper thin, and the poor soul survived only thanks to the machines in the emergency room. Each groan was filled with almost otherworldly suffering, and an amber eye looked at Janine, pleading for the release of death. The soldier tried to raise his good finger when Camelia stepped forward.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to die under my command, soldier,” Camelia said.
The Sword Saint donned the green medical hazmat suit and started operating on the wounded Wolfkin, moving far faster than most automatic machines and surgically connecting every torn artery before going after the muscles. Camelia’s paw turned into a blur, and for the first time in her life, Janine had seen the Gentle Star, as patients called the Sword Saint before, in action. All Sword Saints have been doing one of many spiritual quests before accepting their title. Janine knew that First had claimed two hundred lives in a span of twenty heartbeats, fulfilling the Quest of the Death Bringer. Bertruda supposedly finished the Quest of Compassion, which involved giving up all her earthy possessions for a while and serving half a year as a simple worker in one of the poorest soup kitchens. And Camelia had completed the Oath of Healing, dedicating her life to mastering the arts of healing and only stopping practicing after ascending to her new rank.
What should have been done with the help of an expert team and heavy assistance from the machines, Camelia was doing on her own. She cleaned the wounds from the bone dust, stopped the bleeding, and began working on the ruined organs, using cell-regeneration medicine meant for Sword Saints, paying a fortune just to save the life of the lower rank. Janine bowed to her, ashamed of her earlier thoughts.
Bertruda gasped, seeing how the medics were operating on the wounded scout from before without any anesthesia, leaving the scout grimacing from pain with her paws behind her head. Janine and the tired medics only rolled their eyes at Bertruda’s demands to immediately give the woman at least something for her pain. Bertruda stomped with her leg, announcing that she would pay for the medicine herself if needed.
“Here is the thing, Sword Saint.” Janine grabbed her under the arm, struggling not to twist this weak-looking limb. “It is not needed. For her, it’s hardly more than an itch.” The scout nodded thankfully, grimacing as the doctors kept working on her wound. “See? We have different pain tolerances. No need to waste medicaments.”
“But this isn’t just!” Bertruda stomped on the floor. “The way you treat your own kind, the utter disregard for physical suffering—all of this is nothing short of abhorrent!”
“We are but the shield and sword of the state. Nothing more and nothing less. For that reason alone, we live and hone our skills with true cruelty. Such is our duty,” Janine said.
“Rubbish! Nothing but outdated nonsense! You can justify any cruelty with a ridiculous argument like this!”
Janine almost dragged the Sword Saint after herself, heading to the west part of the spacious medical bay. With a bit of relief, Janine saw Anissa resting on a bed; a crimson ocular could now be seen in her slightly swollen right eye socket. The fur around her right eye was removed during the operation, giving the Wolf Hag quite a ridiculous look. Her eyelid had a bit of trouble closing around the metal, and the doctor near her gently adjusted the device, pushing it a bit deeper.
The doctors have completed the most difficult part of the operation, connecting the long-ruined optic nerve to the artificial eye. Now only the single doctor and Bogdan attended Anissa. Bogdan was busy cracking vulgar jokes about the ice boys, trying to lift up Anissa’s spirit, and making Janine feel a bit of relief that his wife has decided to stay in the village and give birth to their most recent litter in peace. Otherwise, she would’ve straightened him up here and now. Aside from fooling around, he also helped the doctor by showing his sister pictures from a special medical terminal. Anissa only used her new, mechanical eye to tell whether she could see the image clearly or not, and the doctor adjusted her eye each time her vision got blurry.
This was just the first part of the recovery procedures. Once the eye is calibrated enough for static pictures, Anissa will have to go through grueling training, testing his eye on fast-moving targets. Then Anissa would have to try her eye underwater before she could fully be considered healed. Janine half-expected the medic to be pissed off because of a new job, but the man seemed to be genuinely happy to help the Wolfkin.
“I can wait until you check up on your daughter,” Bertruda offered.
“Drop the small talk!” Janine growled back at the Sword Saint, walking toward her destination. “Wolf Hag Anissa is perfectly fine and in good company.”
They came to the west side of the medical bay, a far cleaner and calmer place located behind a translucent glass wall. With a soft hiss, the doors leading inside opened, allowing the woman to step inside and see First and Alpha suspended in the air within two green spheres, curled into a ball, and submerged in the restorative fluids. Where First looked elegant, Alpha had trouble fitting into her own sphere due to her oversized claws, which simply refused to go in her fingers. The Warlord had to put all her efforts into not scratching the reinforced glass around her. Alpha’s loose, crimson hair covered her like a cloak.
Needles came from the top of each sphere, piercing the skin around the spine of each Wolfkin while countless sensors checked their heartbeats. Before Janine’s eyes, the spheres had opened, unleashing a torrent of fluid in a recess on the floor, and needles had left the patients’ bodies. First has jumped out of his sphere with a gracious somersault, spreading his arms to allow the nurses to wash away the remains of the fluid from his body and disconnect the sensors. Alpha landed with a tremor and bowed her head for a nurse to tie up her hair.
“Marvelous, simply marvelous job.” First smiled at the medics, turning left and right while they were busy drying up his fur. “Ah, I always feel so energized after a procedure. My friends, you have outdone yourself, like always. I thank thee from the bottom of my heart. Sweetest Alpha, I have come into possession of a wine from Sol’s Vineyard, no less! How about you and I leave for my chambers and enjoy this fortunate purchase?”
“Don’t care. Into a topknot,” Alpha told the nurse, lowering on one knee so the man could have an easier time. “Go and drink yourself to death alone, for all I care.”
“Such a taste is not meant to be enjoyed with anyone but the dearest friends!” First’s fur has dried up, and he has bowed to Janine and Bertruda before allowing the two squires to dress him in white robes. “Alpha, just imagine an orbital platform circling around the very sun itself, built for the only purpose of creating the finest beverage in the entire system. Doomed during the Extinction, the gifts that were made by its noble personnel are highly sought even today. In some regions, you can buy an entire island for a simple bottle of this beautiful drink!”
“I am trying to quit smoking, First. Replacing one bad habit with a love of cheap booze hardly looks like a good trade-off. Shut your trap and join me in the command center if you want to do something useful. We need to find out who these bastards were.”
“You have but to ask, my lady!” The Grandmaster of the order took Alpha’s clothes from the nurses, and together they left for the benches.
Good luck and all, but couldn’t you find anyone… less bitchy? Janine wondered, stepping toward the freed sphere and allowing the nurses to undress her and put sensors on her chest. The Spirits knew that Janine herself had her own problems with temper, but at this point it was just sad to see how many times First had tried his best to mate with Alpha. And for the life of her, Janine couldn’t understand why. Alpha wasn’t beautiful; she lacked fur, her claws were all weird, and her temper was foul most of the time. And then there was First, someone who made breath stay still even in the females of the Wolf Tribe, always pleasant and ready to help, with impeccable swordsmanship. The two simply had nothing in common aside from being trusted comrades in arms.
She inhaled, ignoring the minor annoyance of the syringes’ needles piercing her skin. Upon seeing the edges of the sphere closing, Janine curled herself into a ball, allowing the fluid to wash over her and lift her up, like a fetus in a womb. A quick moment of panic came upon her when Janine breathed in not air but a thick liquid, but her lungs adapted to this just fine. And after this sensation, the cold came into her veins.
The rejuvenation shot. A technology developed shortly before the Extinction reversed the aging of cells within an organism, potentially providing almost full immortality if you keep enduring this procedure. At set intervals mandated by the medics, all Warlords, shamans, sages, and Sword Saints, along with a few exceptionally valuable new breeds, like Anji, for example, were to undergo this procedure, which returned them to the prime of their lives. In this new world, the new breeds, like Bertruda and Janine, were more valuable than most automatic weapons; they were mobile, thinking weapons of mass destruction, carrying on the Dynast’s will, and leading soldiers in their wake. Many benefits and exemptions were given to them to ensure their loyalty, but, like with all good things, there were negatives, too. Their soulmates were aging like normal humans, shattering the hearts of their partners at each parting. To see your own cubs grow older than you, to see them dead before you, to see your dear comrades wither and die, leaving you all alone on the road to a better future… It wounded her heart like no spear ever could. This, too, was part of their sacrifice to the state.
Closing her eyes, Janine has allowed the machines to work, let her conscience trail off into memories, and brought Colt’s spirit back to life once more.