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A single bullet zipped past over my head. My ears twitched as the fur on my head ruffled in the wind. I lay in a trench, four feet deep and mired in muck and dirt. My hind paws were covered in mud-stained boots. We had taken over these trenches from the enemy. More about them in a minute. When we showed up, the rest of the dogs and I had used our Mark 22 Trenching Tool to make the hole deeper. When bullets were flying you didn't want any part of your anatomy exposed, especially your brain pan. And what is this Mark 22 Trenching Tool? It was a shovel. Why did it take them 22 attempts to get it to dig correctly? It was a folding shovel that was part of the 130 pounds of gear carried by soldiers like me, when on an operation. Don’t get me wrong, twenty-seven pounds of that weight is personal protective equipment like body armour and the helmet that protected said brain pan. It was a good helmet, automatic night vision in the googles for when it got dark and a 700 channel comm unit that I could use to link into any internet on a planet, if one existed in a war zone.
But back to that bullet. We had not fired that bullet. The shot had come from behind us. Behind us, yeah you heard me. We were not too happy about it but behind us were RFH soldiers, or what loosely passed as soldiers. You may have heard of the RFH, the Royal Fusiliers of Harmony. Supposed holy soldier zealots tasked by the little “g”, god emperor his holiness Deymatee Vauchu to protect his people. Perhaps you have heard of him in the Star News. You know, “all the news that is news that matters in the galaxy”. His holiness was the emperor of Va'tet, a small nation on the planet Crillon 85M. So named due to the eighty-five million people that lived on its surface. Unfortunately, these slimy snipers and cheap shot artists were the people we were tasked with helping on this mission.
“They are at it again,” said Corporal Zalltull who was lying to my left.
“Yeah, gonna get us shot,” growled Private Rranaedhrurr.
You see across from us on the other side of an open field and in a grandly forested area sat what we were told was a battalion of Stra'ok-aelan soldiers. My snout wrinkled as their smell hit my nostrils. They stunk of filth and smelled like smoke and fresh earth. They currently occupied a five-mile salient around the city of Chiclina, which was a Va’tet city. The Stra’ok-alean soldiers had pushed the Va’tet out of Chiclina and across the plateau and now occupied the whole area. That is except for the five or six hundred civilians that didn’t agree with being displaced from their homes.
The Stra’ok-aelan soldiers had hit the dirt due to this latest gun report. They had been harassed all day by the VFH, off and on like this with sniper fire. The Va'tet were not supposed to be firing at the enemy soldiers, but they did. The action had got hot and heavy a few times so far today.
You see the Stra’ok-aelan were of the same species as the Va’tet but an altogether different ethnic strain of human genealogical scrap, or so they claimed. Both these ethnic groups used to get along, they used to have a country together. It was called Vastra’ok. Yeah, I know, these folks seemed to love their hyphens, I can’t explain it. It all came apart when they were given self-government. Sometime later we got the call. The call to be a barrier between these two warring tribes.
Why us you might ask me?
Well, the easy answer is that we are paid mercenaries, and we will take any job if the money is right. The real answer, from my perspective as a grunt in a mercenary regiment, so take it for what it's worth. The real answer. We are not human. We hail from the planet Sirius Three. That’s right you know us. One of the closest planets to earth and the first to be terraformed and genetically populated with us, the Hounds of Sirius.
Some smart scientist playing a joke on everyone, I think. You must be starting to think I am a very opinionated being. When you are a Sergeant in Spencer’s Barkers and you have survived five tours of more planets than you can count, you get to be very opinionated. Some call it bitter. You can be the judge of that. For now, this is my story so I will tell it how I damn well please.
A voice came over the comm net and into my ears. The channel was one of the high frequency ones that the Barkers, my unit, used at times when we were among races that couldn’t hear on the higher frequency spectrum. We could. We were engineered from dogs, it was natural to us.
“Sergeant Orzoe, the top wants to see you,” Corporal Gersgaegharr said to me.
“On my way,” I replied. I barked at the other dogs in my squad, “I am off to see the big boss. Hold the fort here until I get back.”
I backed up and out of the trench, pulling my overstuffed pack with me. Once I was out the back of the trench, I squatted low, moving away facing the enemy. I didn’t think the enemy would shoot at me; under the conditions of the cease-fire, they weren't supposed to be shooting at anyone. However, the Barkers were a particularly off-limits target, and everyone knew it. As I turned to go, I ran into Specialist Rhyhleh. She was the company medic and a damn fine-looking bitch. Her coat was an astounding shade of cream with just the right amount of tan fur in all the right places. I had seen her in the shower one time and when her fur was matted down by the water, you could tell she was a real vixen.
“I will go with you Sarge; I need to check with stores for some Stim Cones. I was told they were coming in on the next shuttle run.”
I knew she didn’t need Stim Cones right this minute. She used it to dope up soldiers who had been hit in the field, so you could move a wounded soldier without causing extra pain. It also helped keep a wounded warrior alive and pain free until someone back in the field hospital could work on them. I knew she wanted to accompany me because as a race we didn’t like to do anything alone. Pack mentality and all. You get it. So, this offer was actually to support my mental well-being.
For my part I didn’t need to have her along, but the company would be nice, and she made good company. Easy to talk to and even easier on the eyes, or at least that’s what I told myself.
“Sure, join me doc,” I answered. “The company will be nice.”
She was looking across the trench and into the trees that the soldiers were hiding in. She rumbled, “I haven't seen trees like that since hunting near my home as a youngster. It reminds me of Sirius.”
That’s right, we hail from Sirius. You know the one known as the "Dog Star". It got that name to reflect its prominence in its constellation, Canis Major which means the Greater Dog. You know all that if you know anything about the history of the galaxy, which is to say you know that we were created by scientists to populate a planet that was important to humans' colonization efforts in space, but also a planet that was deadly to humans. Both species, and our planet, have evolved beyond those days. Gratefully this includes our freedom as a separate but distinct species having full self-rule. I still think some brainiac at NASA thought it would be funny to put dogs on the dog star planet.
I could make out our adversaries moving in the brush across the field from us. What can I say, our superior breeding comes in handy especially as soldiers.
“Yup,” I replied to Rhyhleh clicking my teeth. “It’s too bad that damn road goes nowhere for us. It’s alright. Let’s go.”
To the right of our trenches was the Parcava to Chiclina road. We were scheduled to push down the road and reestablish the Mea’kad Pocket. I know another hyphen. Anyway, we were to reestablish it as Va’tet territory, which it had been previously. On the other side of the road our vehicles and Charlie Company were bivouacked. Behind those vehicles was parked Captain Rohr's headquarters APC. I headed back down the road toward the tops vehicle.
Currently the Stra’ok-aelan, didn’t want us to move down this road. Meanwhile, behind us, some Va’tet righteous holy soldier, with a scope and a sniper rifle which had more powers of observation than the idiot that was using it, was treating us as a shield to shoot at their enemy. This was some messed up shit.
This had been going on for several days. We had been pushing down the road, supposedly as an intermediary force, that no one was to shoot at, but the two sides had been using us a barrier to snipe at and kill one another. What was our response, you may ask? We shot back, with the appropriate rejoinder. This means if we were hit with small arms fire we fired back with small arms fire. If we were attacked with mortars and rockets, we responded in kind. There was a severe lack of firepower among the two combatants on this planet, so we did have more muscle than those involved.
We had two IMP Armoured Personal Carriers, one armed with missiles, the other armed with a mortar rack. We also had three recon squads, which meant we also had three ASD MkII A2 Missile Drones. These were invaluable in responding to rockets and mortar fire.
  The ASD, or Aerial Stealth Drone, was an old military invention. It had four powerful fans that kept it aloft, allowed it to move at astounding speeds and made it more maneuverable than anything else on the battlefield. It also carried a payload of six 20mm mini-missiles that could alternately tear a hole the size of a grapefruit in an armoured vehicle or provide high explosive impact that could shred a 15-meter radius area or building. It was an effective tool for reaching out and hitting those that thought they were out of effective range. It had a powerful camera lens and an intelligent AI that could process targets or be controlled by an operator. However, this wasn’t our biggest asset. That would be the missile Grav tank that we affectionately called CoCo. The Stra’ok-aelan soldiers, or just Strakes for short, had nothing that could penetrate her heavy plated armour. CoCo, along with Sally Forth, Bella Ball, the two APC’s, made our force damn near unstoppable. That didn’t stop the Strakes from trying, but it did stop them from succeeding.
 I smiled at Rhyhleh as we got to the HQ vehicles.
“I am gonna go check with stores,” she snapped back in response to my silly grin.
“I will be here grinning with the Louie for a bit. Hustle back,” I rumbled at her.
I passed the sentry and spotted the Lieutenant as Rhyhleh continued down the road to the check with the quartermaster.
Lieutenant Ghyevh spotted me and ground out, “Sergeant Orzoe, we got our orders,” He slung his SMG under his arm, clearing it to his back. He pulled a map from his jacket pocket and spread it out on the fender of the jeep that was parked in the HQ bivouac.
He looked back up at me and paused, “How are you doing Orzoe? The dogs all squared away?”
This mission had been frustrating and not without its share of casualties. At night it was worse. The Strakes seemed to think they could approach our position and try to close with the RFH warriors. Hell no, that wasn’t happening, but we had lost four casualties when a stray round went into an ammo box and detonated.
“I'm fine Sir, just keyed up is all. Me and the others, well, we just wish we could put the boots to both of these groups of fools and get on with our job.”
“Here is your chance then Sergeant, at least in part.” We started to go over the map.
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