Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Mar 10, 2024 1:08:49 GMT -5
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When Lenora Holt was little, the people in her mining town would often talk about the mountain hounds brought on from the Dark Days.
Twenty men, the story went, killed on the slopes, path smelling rotten for days with all the pools of blood soaked through. It happened in the forties. The teeth on the bones were canine, but the claw marks weren't. As a kid, they would say the hounds were roaming in the abandoned mines, carcasses of old prey piled in there, some that were human.
Thing was, the miners always swore they could hear the beasts howling at night, but nobody had ever laid eyes on one in the last five decades at least. It was explosions, it was accidents and equipment failure that killed the most people out there. And it was the mountain hounds that they remembered in the end. Myth of a mutt, predator of predators.
There really aren't that many left in the wild.
That's what Lenora learned.
Some man-made mutts aren't made to survive in the wilderness. Dragged through the forested slopes on a devotion bred in, unrepentant to the body, those mountain hounds would die hunting their prey because of that terrible, rigid kill drive. Only ever knew how to live guided by the hand of a human.
She's only ever seen one in the nineteen years of duty. Happened two years into the service term. They sent the rotting thing on ice to the Capitol, a specimen returned to its maker, loaded onto the hovercraft with a fragile tag.
One spring day, called back to the base, Richard McDermott's still wearing the sheen of morning mist from their station inside the forest of Region 9. Another ranger had made the trek last night to inform him that he was to report back to the headquarters by zero eight-hundred.
He was sent off on rotation three months ago when winter was still clinging to the branches, snow melting slow in the warming sun, and hadn't been back to base since. Kid from Ten, a little wild when they got him, a little wild still. He strolls into the office, stands a bit straighter with a smile, Mornin’ Captain.
She tells him to sit down, eyeing him for a moment.
Nineteen years later, Lenora's made it out of Twelve. Made officer. Captain Holt now.
The rundown is quick.
Someone's dead, killed north of D7, Region 5 - Zone B, a special forces peacekeeper on mission. No one's supposed to know. Fucking mutt got him, of all things.
Loaded his body up in a vehicle on ice, returned to Nine for inspection. Then, home for the funeral. A lieutenant too.
She leans back in the chair, crossing her arms.
They've been wandering the woods for weeks. Can't survive for shit. The mission's going shit. Need a guide.
Captain Holt tells it to him like this.
He sits there, no response, jaw set.
She doesn't need one.
His clearance has been upgraded. The transfer was approved last night. And she was the one that had recommended him to the Major of Division Seven, put together the proposition when the ask was made.
He's not the obvious choice.
Not an officer, not bred out of an academy.
There are a few lieutenants, but they're usually on base. There are older rangers, but he outscored most of them five years ago on weapon qualifications alone. And she knows him because she's known since that first month, all the Tusken with the same neat, easy, lower shoulder shot, minimal shrapnel damage, right through the lungs and heart on every single one, just like they were hunted to be eaten. All tagged with his name.
No mountain hound.
There'd been just one thing, though.
But she'd flipped to that officer candidate test result in his file again, looked at the copy of the paper. Stared at it a bit longer. How very funny.
Captain Holt looks at him.
You're being reassigned.
