God's Dogs

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

Sun Tzu

Sgt. Murphy and Quinn shared a suite. The others were lodged in basic hotel rooms. Pax knocked on the door to the suite and Moss let him into the living room where the surveillance gear was set up.

Moss told him, “Nothing going on. Not even where the bodies are.”

“Okay.”

Moss left to get a few hours sleep as Pax studied the screens. Sgt. Murphy set up cameras so that they could monitor all the approaches to the hotel, the lobby, the elevator and stairwell, and the hall where their rooms were. The team left cameras in the hotel where they killed their would-be assassins.

Pax found nothing suspicious. The people outside looked to be going about their normal afternoon business. He settled into a chair and prepared for a boring four-hour shift.

Sgt. Murphy emerged from his bedroom a few hours later and made coffee. He brought Pax a mug and settled into an adjoining chair.

After watching the screens for a moment, Murphy remarked, “Boring shift?”

“Pretty much.”

“Mind answering a question?”

“If I can.”

“Why are you called coyotes?”

Pax grinned, “At least that’s no secret.”

“I could never find a reference about it,” Murphy said.

“No, you wouldn’t.” Pax’s grin widened. “The short answer is the coyote in Native American mythology is the Trickster, the wild card, the force that can’t be accounted for in any equation.”

“And not publishing that bit of information, even though it’s not classified, is itself a coyote trick.”

“You got it.”

Murphy shook his head. “What’s the long answer?”

Pax scanned the monitors again, took a sip of coffee, and answered, “Buddhism spread across the world in the 20th Century. During the 21st Century there was a concerted effort to find out how, or if, the other mystical traditions were exploring the same trans-rational locations.”

“What mystical traditions?” Murphy wondered.

“All the great religions developed a mystical tradition – for those people who wanted a direct experience of the Divine rather than doing what the clergy told them: Sufis in Islam, the monastic orders in Christianity, the kabbalists in Judaism, for example.

“The Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and Shinto practitioners were already known in the East. What the researchers found with the Native Americans was a form of Shamanism that was highly evolved.”

“Huh,” Murphy grunted. “Didn’t see that coming.”

“Apparently, neither did they. What fell out of the research was all these traditions did explore the same realms of Spirit but for different purposes.”

“How many realms are we talking about?” Murphy asked.

“Well, there are four broad plateaus: the qi-field or Nature mysticism, the archetypal or Deity mysticism, the formless or Void mysticism, and beyond that is the Great Mystery.”

“And on each plateau there was lots to discover.”

“There was. What had been discovered over the eons was what each tradition was looking for.”

“Like what?”

“Like finding where the caribou herd was hiding so the tribe could go get dinner.”

Murphy snorted, “Not something a Buddhist temple full of vegetarians would care about.”

Nodding agreement, Pax went on, “So the traditions started sharing. They had all explored the same realms of Spirit and found different attributes. Eventually, they were able to get a pretty complete picture of what was happening on each of those plateaus – like a detailed map of each realm of Spirit. And that was important after FTL was discovered, and we started running into aliens.”

“Yeah, I know about that,” Murphy said. “The first contact missions that were most successful were the ones with monks.”

“Yes. They could meet the local shamans in the qi-field and work things out. They could do so because the Native American shamans knew a place they called ‘near entity communication’ where they could talk to plants, trees, or any living thing.”

“So the sharing paid off,” Murphy noted. “Was there more cross fertilization from the alien races?”

“Not much. In fact, they ended up learning from us,” Pax replied. “I guess the good news was that none of those races were interested in conquering anybody.”

“Then the Corporate Wars happened and Penglai got sucked into it,” Murphy prompted.

“And, on Penglai, the Coyote Project came out of it.”

Murphy nodded, “So, do you guys get all the augments our special forces get?”

“No. We want to appear normal on spaceport scans. We do get high-end nanos, A.I. helpers, and whatnot, but not enough to raise flags.”

Quinn stepped into the room about then, and Moss and River soon joined them. While they ate, they planned the evening mission.

Quinn led off, “Well, they know where we are. So we will appear to remain here, but we just won’t be here.”

“No more soft bed,” Moss lamented.

“We need to find them,” Quinn said. “Same search pattern. Rally point is the bakery by the waterfront. Murphy, if you would, let the local police know we’re in town and stay with them as our point of contact. We’ll alert you after we commence operations.”

“OK,” Murphy replied. “You guys are going to ground, and you’ll surface when you engage the enemy. When you contact me, I bring the locals to back you up. I probably should alert the Marshals as well. I don’t think they have jurisdiction, but you never know with those guys.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Moss smiled.

They kitted up and left the hotel by different exits and ghosted through the neighborhood, each of them on a separate search pattern.

They knew the hotel was staked out, and capturing and interrogating one or more of the terrorists was the initial task. It didn’t take long to locate the three two-man teams deployed to watch for them. There were only so many places that provided good reconnaissance locations.

Whereas Pax was the designated empath for the team, the rest of them could read energy well enough for the simple interrogations needed. By midnight, the enemy teams were trussed up and drugged, awaiting pick up from the local police.

At the bakery, the Coyotes shared the information they gained, alerted Murphy to the locations of the unconscious bad guys, and planned their next move.

Quinn finalized that plan in an alley near the bakery. “Now that we know where their HQ is, I think we can infiltrate their operational center without much problem. My guess is they will be waiting for us.”

Moss added, “No doubt.”

River shrugged. “Let’s hope Wylie got the memo.”

“He’ll be there,” Quinn asserted. “It’s an obvious ambush scenario.”

Pax summarized the plan, “River and I come in from the top. You and Moss come in from below. We meet in the middle.”

“And it’s show time.” Moss grinned.

Inside Pax’s light armor, he had access to the full complement of League military technology. His enhanced A.I. helper coordinated information to a HUD. The armored suit fit over his flexible skin-suit and contained not only camo and heat blocking abilities, but it could also project a force field that would deflect projectile and energy weapons for a few direct hits. The power system was a kinetically and galvanically charged graphene battery, and the suit carried solar cells as well. Each of the team was equipped in a similar way. Quinn’s comm unit was wired for multiple channels, while the others were equipped with a team and a private channel.

As advanced as the armor was, however, the fact that Coyotes could manipulate the qi-field was a deciding factor.

Pax and River scaled the six-story building from opposite sides. Moss and Quinn waited for the confirmation everybody was in position. Once that was achieved, they began the Coyote version of clearing a building.

Like looking for the caribou herd Pax used as an example for Murphy, they set the intention to locate the human life forms in the building. Once their consciousness was set to that task, they easily identified the group of terrorists on the fourth floor. Neutralizing the random civilians that were also around with tranquilizer darts, they eventually met up on the fourth floor.

The layout was large conference rooms and an equally large security station near the main elevators. A long hallway bisected the space, and four hallways connected at ninety degrees to the main hallway. Beige walls predominated over a checkered tan carpet.

The team met at the corridor junction near both targets, and Quinn, their tactician, laid out the plan.

“River, you deal with security. Pax and Moss deal with the bad guys in their control room. I’m in reserve. When we hear River’s flash-bang, that’s the go signal.”

Their tech specialist was River, and she asked, “How much chaos do you want?”

“Just lock down their computer and communications.”

Pax asked, “How many tangos do you want left alive?”

“I don’t think it matters,” Quinn answered. “We’re bait, remember? Somewhere out there is an enemy strike team ready to drop on us.”

“Maybe not,” Moss smiled.

“Okay,” Quinn replied. “Stun those you don’t have to kill. We don’t need them as wild cards once the real action begins.”

River nodded and headed off to her assignment. Moss and Pax went their way. Quinn slipped into an empty room and switched channels on his comm unit.

“Wylie,” he said. “We’re going in. We should have our targets neutralized in five minutes.”

Wylie answered, “It’s all clear out here, Quinn. I’m not sure how they set this ambush up.”

“Are we sure there’s an ambush?”

“They have the opportunity to wipe out a Coyote team. What do you think?”

“They’re stupid. Who would want the wrath of Penglai?”

“Yeah. Well, dictators aren’t known for their smarts.”

“No, I guess not – just their brutal arrogance.”

Wylie chuckled and said, “I forget which play it was in, but Shakespeare called it ‘overarching ambition.’ The phrase stuck with me.”

A muffled boom echoed down the hall, followed by two more. The operation had begun.

Quinn reset his comm channel and in moments the team reported the control room and the security room were secure.

“Regroup on me,” Quinn directed.

Before they regrouped, flyers screamed in to hover outside the windows around the fourth floor. Dozens of gray-clad enemy troops entered through the windows in a coordinated assault.

“We see them,” Wylie’s voice came over their tac channel. “Stay in the middle of the building. We’re coming in through the windows behind them as soon as the flyers move off.”

“We’re in room 416,” Quinn advised him, which was near an intersection of the main corridor leading to the elevators and the hallway leading to the control room.

They hustled into the room and spread out to provide overlapping fire on the two doors for this conference room. Their weapons were close quarter rifles with stacked barrels. On top was a projectile weapon, and below it was an energy weapon. They shrugged out of their packs and laid them open for easy access to magazines and battery packs. They also laid out their melee weapons should it come to hand-to-hand combat.

The door to their right burst open and grenades flew in. The team didn’t flinch, relying on their suit’s shield to protect them. Once the grenades exploded, soldiers stormed through both doors – and were cut down before they made it two steps into the room. A half-dozen died at each door, and the assault stalled.

“Surrender now!” an amplified voice came from the hall.

Moss answered, “You picked the wrong fight, boys and girls. You might want to rethink your options.”

A frantic shout in the hall came next. “They’re behind us!”

“Told you so,” Moss called out.

“Let’s move,” Quinn ordered.

They slung their packs and moved toward the left door.

“Wylie, we’re moving north and then east down the main corridor,” Quinn said.

“We’ll be right behind you and will head west.”

The team moved quickly to the corridor junction and turned right. Quinn and Moss fired forward. Pax and River fired backward. Once Wylie’s team caught up to them, Pax and River began clearing rooms. Within ten minutes, the Imperial assault team, a dozen mercenaries, was dead or wounded and disarmed.

Quinn alerted Sgt. Murphy to bring in the locals to process the scene.

Wylie’s team switched off their camo and approached. Two men and two women grinned at Quinn’s team. Wylie was the tallest of them and sported a goatee in a narrow face.

“Well, that was just too easy,” he said. “If this is the best the alleged empire has got, they’re not going to have a long dynasty.”

Quinn shook Wylie’s hand while replying, “Not in any stand-up fight, but they seem to do a good job at subverting people.”

The teams intermingled, hugging and back-slapping for a while. Then Wylie’s comm buzzed.

He nodded to the team. “Looks like the League boys shot down the flyers, and our shuttle is in-bound. We’re got your gear from the hotel already aboard, and the locals are almost here.”

They jogged to the stairs and up to the roof as the shuttle eased into a low hover with its back ramp lowering. They piled in and headed for the space station.