God's Dogs Book 2

A constructive approach to diplomacy doesn’t mean relinquishing one’s rights. It means engaging with one’s counterparts, on the basis of equal footing and mutual respect, to address shared concerns and achieve shared objectives.

Hassan Rouhani

At Rand’s urging, the governor pro-temp put out an amnesty offer to the DNP. Shortly after that, formal debates were scheduled with the candidates for various offices. The media took that as an opportunity to more fully educate the population on the governmental structures that, paradoxically, maintained freedom.

With the DNP gone, and its members struggling to find a new place in society, the educational efforts and the ongoing debates among the candidates began strengthening the populace towards the immediate goal of a constitutional convention.

Within a month, the situation was stable enough so that all three Coyote teams were recalled.

Sergeants Blessing and Yakooni showed up to see Quinn’s team off. The team boarded their shuttle after their farewells, and rejoined Satya for the ride home.

Once back on Penglai, Rand’s team took its turn teaching 4th year Coyote candidates for a year. However, Rand announced he would be retiring during the teaching deployment. His replacement would be part of the team during that time as Rand gradually stepped back.

Moss was surprised at this reaction to Rand’s announcement. It was a mixed bag of emotions: disappointment, nostalgia, anxiety, sadness, resentment, and others he couldn’t identify. None was happiness for Rand’s future.

Ari, Moss’ implant A.I., was surprised as well but knew better than engage with Moss about it. When Moss was ready, he would bring it up, which was remarkably insightful for an A.I.

It had only been a few years since implant A.I.s could be uplifted to full sentience. For now, that technology was only available to the Coyote Program. A longitudinal psychological study was underway to determine the risks and rewards.

Ari noted his response to Moss’ distress on his self-report to the psychology team. Moss didn’t notice the A.I.’s dilemma as he was puzzling out his own reaction.

The history between Moss and Rand reached back to when Moss was a teen working in his family’s restaurant. Rand was guarding a League dignitary that pissed Moss off enough so that Moss slipped him an especially hot dipping sauce. Rand collared Moss as he tried to escape, transported him to a jail cell, and marched him to see Master Lu the following morning for sentencing. To Moss’ surprise, the sentence was to enter the regional Coyote boot camp in a few months when he graduated school.

Through the years, Rand and Moss crossed paths at the monastery, ended up on the same job a time or two, but they never actually established more than a working relationship. Why, then, the confused emotional response? It seemed petty at best or mean-spirited at worst, and Moss was neither.

Since both teams were currently in residence at the monastery, Moss asked Rand for a time to talk. Rand was okay with that as his role was now becoming more advisory than operational; so he had the time. They met up after breakfast in the garden outside the Coyote compound on the mountain-facing side of the temple.

A gravel path meandered through the garden, which was a mix of shrubs and beds mixed with herbaceous flowers – peonies, daisies, poppies, mums – and some trees.

“What’s on your mind?” Rand asked as they strolled in the crisp morning air.

“I’m not really sure,” Moss said and grinned. “Your retirement hit me weird. I’m trying to figure out why.”

Rand considered that as they walked. Then he said, “I am a bridge to your past.”

“My civilian life and this life. I see that, and I can also see the synchronicity of your opening the door for me to live this life. So why does it piss me off that you’re retiring?”

“Yeah. That doesn’t fit, does it?”

Rand smiled, then, and they continued walking. After a bit, Rand asked, “What do Tricksters like you need to stay grounded?”

“Stability, consistency, routine. It’s one of the paradoxes I’ve managed to collapse. I see things by contrast. Others see things by reading a person within their personal frame of reference. People are predictable if you know their worldview and history, but that’s background noise for me. I see contradictions instead.”

“Which would be glaringly obvious because of the baseline stability you maintain.”

“Yes,” Moss agreed. “In fact, Master Lu pushed me to discover this when he told me to figure out why coyotes were also known as God’s dogs.”

“God’s dogs?”

“It’s an old designation from Native American mythology. Apparently, Navajo sheep herders named them that. But also coyotes held other characteristics that impressed the Crow and other tribes: they thrived where other canid species were wiped out; they are monogamous and both parents raise the young; and, like all predators, they help keep other species from over population.”

“So, a stable, tenacious agent of the Creator.”

“It would seem so,” Moss agreed. “I took from it what you said – stability and tenacity would be the basis for my ability to hunt down vermin.”

Rand snorted at that. “You do have a reputation for popping inflated egos.”

“That’s pretty fun.”

Rand paused to admire a waist-high bank of flowering plants. After a moment, he said, “Could it be you have me as a symbolic cornerstone for your stability?”

“Yeah,” Moss said with a dubious tone in his voice. “That would fit, I suppose.”

“Well, if so, then you need not worry. I’m joining the training staff here for my retirement.”

Moss did feel a lightening in his mood with that announcement. So something fit. He smiled at that as they emerged from the garden and went their separate ways.

The next mission for Quinn’s team was to escort a group of scientists from Penglai to a conference in the Galactic Congress. Satya was too small to carry them all. Consequently, they were booked onto an armed merchant that could not only carry passengers but also freight.

The Blue Dragon was a flat barbell shaped spacecraft. The aft 400 feet was propulsion and engineering,. The forward 400 feet was command and control. The thick middle, 600 feet long, 200 feet wide, and 100 feet tall, was passenger compartments on the top deck, and cargo space on the bottom two decks.

Quinn’s team studied the schematics, read up on the crew of twenty, examined the armament, and finally conducted a walk-through inspection with the ship’s executive officer.

The ship was in low orbit, and they landed in the shuttle bay near engineering. The XO, a gnarly retiree from the League navy, met them. He was a stocky Asian with a long, wrinkled face. He wore a dark blue, one-piece ship-suit with a blue dragon logo on the left breast and his name and rank insignia on the right breast.

“Welcome to the Blue Dragon,” his gravely voice said. “Not sure what you’re looking for, though.”

“Your security plan, primarily,” Quinn said.

“And you are?”

“Quinn, team lead. With me are Moss, Pax, and River.”

“Ben Toyo,” he muttered in reply. “Okay. We can look at the operating manual, but almost my whole crew is ex-navy. Most of us have been in combat, and we hold drills on a regular basis.”

Pax stepped forward, feeling the man’s resentment, and spoke to assuage it, “I think that’s one of the reasons you were chosen for this mission.”

Toyo nodded once and said, “Well, let’s get to it.”

They wandered around the ship, and the team was struck with its cleanliness, the orderly design, and the upbeat morale of the crew. Eventually, they ended up in the ward room for lunch with the captain.

Captain Naomi Williams was a serious-looking black woman in a matronly frame. She stood to greet the team and invited them to sit at her table. Her face was full but with sharp angles; her hair, cut short in spacer style so that it, was a tight cap of graying black curls. As soon as the team sat, a steward appeared and handed them menu tablets.

Eyeing the team over her coffee cup, Williams asked, “Did you find what you were looking for, Quinn?”

“I think so,” Quinn answered and made a selection on the tablet. “Mr. Toyo let us see your plan to repel boarders, the defensive and offensive capabilities of the ship, and you have a first generation dimensional shield. Unless there is a sustained attack by a substantial enemy, we should be good.”

Over the next week, the ship filled with supplies and passengers. On the second day, River met one group as they boarded. A lean, redheaded woman broke free from the crowd disembarking the shuttle and ran to give River a hug.

Raina was both an accomplished physicist and a fully trained tulku. She and her implant A.I. Grace were the first to combine human and A.I. sentience. That, in itself, was a startling evolution in consciousness, but the two of them pushed hard at the boundaries of knowledge. Even the three human super A.I.s were impressed with their work in physics.

River, and the rest of the team, still viewed the precocious almost-30-year-old through the lens of having rescued her as a teen. Over the years, she became one of their team, especially after she designed the dimensional shields that were not only fitted to their armor, but also to this and other ships. Raina felt a similar kinship to the team, and relished the time that River spent, during her six-month break, on the space station where Raina worked.

“You didn’t tell me,” Raina accused in a breathless rush.

“We figured it would be a fun surprised,” River grinned. “Yes. We are going with you to the conference.”

A few of Raina’s party gathered around them, and Raina told them, “Well, you can all rest easy. Our favorite Coyote team is here.”

River knew some of Raina’s people and greeted them. Then she led them to their cabins.

In all, there were 150 scientists and their staff. There were trade goods, from a few systems that highlighted human manufacture, loaded into the cargo bays. There was also a small League diplomatic team tagging along to deal with any political incidents. Once they were all accounted for and the loading bays filled and locked down, the Blue Dragon boosted out of orbit and headed for the hyper-limit.