With Kaz’s Sheila gone, strewn across that battlefield where she’d awakened Yevhen, she was piloting a Mackay class mech. It was a hunched-over looking mech with digitigrade legs that resembled nothing more than a blocky raptor in its proportions. It sported a number of heavy missile pods over its hip joints, a remote-controlled 20mm autocannon under the wide armored “chin”, and a pair of 30mm multi-barrel Gatling-style autocannons in lieu of arms.

  Kaz hated it. The suit jerked as it “strutted”, and being mounted so far ahead of the suit’s center of gravity, in the “head”, made her feel exposed. Theoretically, Mackays weren’t supposed to get into shooting matches with other mechs; they were scouts and provided infantry support against light armor. Until command got their Perths and the full detachment of troops for them, her unit was relegated to patrols like this

  They were doing local area patrols by the score, due to a series of recent incursions by Mithrian special forces near Starymost base. The last few excursions hadn’t picked up anything more than a few discarded weapons and broken-down campsites to show that their enemies were still out there. Though Starymost wasn’t exactly close to enemy lines, it was still one of the largest Arcadian military bases in the province, so it was an obvious choice for enemy observation and sabotage.

  The fang stood stoically atop the hips of the raptor-like Mackay, looking off into god-knows-where. While he looked unperturbed, Kaz knew he was probably lost in his ennui.

  “Snap out of it. We’re here for a job,” she said out loud in her cockpit. From the time she’d shared his senses, Kaz knew he could hear her.

  “I doubt it’s a job worth doing,” was all she got back via that voice she heard in her soul. The prick always seemed to be messing with her, always having some comment that was just shy of disrespectful to say.

  “This sector is clear, Lieutenant. Swinging by the last post and we can head back,” the head of the platoon said. She was a career military woman in her mid-20s named Lieutenant Kory. Reynolds had worked with her before at another posting and had told Kaz she was good people, and Kaz could see why. Kory was efficient, her troops respected her, and she was always focused on the mission.

  Kaz always felt awkward being called “Lieutenant” by someone like her. Kory was a real lieutenant, a senior one at that, and Kaz was, at best, an acting junior lieutenant with the title exclusively because she was decent enough at piloting mechs. Before the war, she’d worked at the docks using mechanized cargo loaders and they’d been the closest thing to walking mechs the civilian world had, so when they ran out of real pilots they tossed her in a seat and started saluting her.

  Kaz hated it.

  Still, she thumbed an acknowledgement signal and followed their three HOGs. HOGs were eight-wheeled coffins with a mini-CIWS on top that served as the most recent iteration of the armored personnel carriers designed to combat the ever-present drone and mini-missile swarms of WWIII. The best HOGs could manage was getting their squads of infantry to the battlefield over shitty terrain and fend off drones or small arms fire. If Mithris decided to send mechs rather than special forces operatives out here, the HOGs would be an afterthought. Kaz too, in her lightly armored Mackay, would be an easy target if they were anything more than enemy scout mechs... but part of her wanted a fight. Ever since she’d been discharged from the makeshift field hospital two days back she’d been itching for a fight.

  “So... that fang’s really with you?” the real lieutenant asked over a private channel. Kory sounded apprehensive. Kaz didn’t respond, still keeping her thoughts to herself.

  “Yeah...” she finally said dryly. Kaz had been internally deciding how much she had to listen to her command staff. On the one hand, she was sitting on one of the most valuable military assets Arcadia now possessed but on the other, they were her countrymen and they were all fighting the same battle. She knew the right thing was to listen to them, follow orders, play by the rules, and work together as a team, but fuck did she not want to. Six months ago she had been a civilian working a dockyard, and now she was some hotshot mech pilot?

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  The rain pattered down on the ground like it always did. It was light today but the clouds were as dark and heavy as they always were as the little military convoy rolled along on their patrol.

  “Must be weird having him watch over you and whatnot.” How could Kory be making small talk about this?!

  “Yeah, Lieutenant, it is! It is weird. Really damn weird!” she shot back hotly. “I have to get my temper under control. What is wrong with me?”

  “Hey. Sorry, I was just asking...”

  Yeah, Kaz was under stress

  Yeah, she was feeling like shit.

  And yeah, she was normally hot-headed but this was more. Was it Yevhen? Was it that she had the means to end this war? Kaz didn’t know.

  “Yeah, well...” Kaz paused, almost ready to deliver another heated retort. Instead, she replied, “Well... yeah. Yeah... sorry. It’s weird. I’m just under a lot of stress. Let’s wrap up this patrol before I snap at you again. Sorry.”

  “I get you,” Kory said, though Kaz doubted that.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant. I guess-”

  “Contact,” a deadpan voice cut in. It was the observer in the second HOG named Sergeant Horbach. A schematic popped up on Kaz’s feed – a solitary observation drone. It was sleek with fat, round, oblong shapes and had a wingspan of about 3 meters. It looked like Mithris, but honestly, it could have been one of their own given all Kaz knew about drones.

  “How’d they get this far in?” Lieutenant Kory snapped back.

  “No idea, ma’am. It’s high up there. Surprised we could spot it.” The gray silhouette of the drifting drone could only be picked out by the HOGs advanced sensor package and the blurry image was piped to Kaz.

  “Lieutenant Kaz, can you get a lock on it?” Kory asked over the comms and she nodded.

  “Yeah, give me a sec.” The missile pods on her back adjusted their facing a bit and the system began to compute a firing solution.

  “Do you want me to address this, my master?”

  Kaz paused. Did she? Did she want to show the other soldiers how useless they were? How much better her weapon was? Should she stand out and prove she didn’t need them? Kaz grimaced and thought about Lieutenant Kory. Kaz wasn’t angry at her, and neither Kory nor the Arcadian military deserved her ire.

  “No. I’ll take it,” she replied without thumbing the comm so only Yevhen could hear.

  “As you wish, my master,” she heard as the rockets ignited and the spy drone burst into a pile of flaming debris a moment later.

  She’d have to play by the rules.

  “You think the operator is nearby?” Lieutenant Kory asked over the patrol’s secure comm channel.

  “Likely, sir,” Sergeant Horbach replied. “That is a FPV model that has a limited range. Maybe a dozen kilometers, could be twenty at the max.”

  “Probably a gift from those special forces?” Kaz offered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Horbach replied, “I’ll see if I can get a lock on where they were transmitting, though they probably cut the feed.” While Kaz was wondering why he called Kory “sir” and her “ma’am” Yevhen cut in mentally,

  “Now I know you’re doing this whole, ‘I’m a strong independent woman who don’t need no vampire’ thing, but do you want my help on this rather than making that poor man search for a signal that isn’t there? When he doesn’t find it, it will absolutely kill his confidence and he’ll never ask Lieutenant Kory out for a drink.”

  “What do you mean?” Kaz asked out loud, not transmitting to the squad.

  “I mean he clearly has a thing for her. You could cut the sexual tension in that HOG with a knife! Oh wait, do you think they’ve already hooked up? Fraternization!”

  “No, numbskull. I meant what did you mean about helping us?”

  “Oh, that.” Yevhen sounded disappointed. “Their special forces team is about 2 kilometers towards that low hill.”

  “How do you know that?!”

  “I’m a vampire. Remember?”

  “So?” It felt weird to be speaking out loud to no one but Yevhen was replying in her mind.

  “I can smell blood and they merced two civilians who came across them recently.”

  Kaz was silent for a long moment before she spoke. “Lieutenant Kory. I have new coordinates for the enemy. Our asset has provided them to me. Missiles inbound in 10. Get your people ready to scrape up the parts of those pigs to confirm the kills.”

  Of their attributes I will recount them only so that you might know them and fear them, I will not glorify them with my writings.

  Know then that they have the strength of ten men.

  Arm yourself with the knowledge that they can smell spilt blood from a mile and detect a soul from a hundred yards (200 cubits).

  Injuries that would lay a man low do naught but diminish their spiritual mass, for it is their self-image that binds their form together, not flesh and blood.

  The greater their position in the demonic hierarchy the greater their control over their spiritual mass.

  So much is this the case that the mightiest among them might make themselves as slippery as an eel, as wild as lightning, and as solid as shadow.

  Only in their crypt, their coffin, might they recover this though they refresh themselves when they drink of a man’s blood.

  -The Red Gospel

  Chapter 2, Verse 14-21

  “These were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.”

  Hellhounds are a weapon of war, a vessel akin to a mech for a vampire that is designed to amplify the destructive abilities of a fang several fold. They are vat-grown giant synthetic corpses created in industrial laboratories. The body, once fully grown, much of its physical form is replaced by synthetic parts, armor and weapons being either grafted on or affixed like a suit of armor.

  When a vampire bites a Hellhound it is “ghouled”, turning into an undead under its control. Because simply killing a hound before a vampire gets to it would just result in a corpse, they are kept alive until a hired fang can bite it. Once this has been done any fang can affix themselves to it and take control from the original vampire. Only a spiritual connection is required to control the Hellhound and being within it allows the vampire to obtain the most precise and quick control.

  The cost of creating a hound is on par with the cost of a warship and, under the right circumstances, hounds are far more effective. Most hounds are mass production jobs, though no two are exactly the same as a result of the various ways the human bodies grow. Currently, Neomerica and The Union both have the most active necrobiology labs that produce several hounds each year and the NA have begun producing bespoke units.

  There are clearly moral concerns about the creation of a hound, not least of which is the creation of a life that will be turned into a mindless weapon of war. Human rights groups have been clashing with the military over the creation of them and many religious groups oppose them on the basis of their beliefs. Necrobiology labs use strict selection criteria to only use embryos deemed non-viable, though their adherence to this has been hotly debated. According to necrobiologists, there is never a flicker of life or even consciousness beyond the autonomic functions the body needs to maintain homeostasis. Whether or not hounds have “souls” is another fiercely debated subject and the question over what happens to them when given to a vampire is a major cause for concern. Several times courts have ruled that the creation of hounds is illegal on humanitarian grounds, and as a result the Trans-Asian Alliance currently bans their creation.

  The history of hounds is said to go back all the way to the dark ages when vampires would adopt strong-looking children and raise them to be powerful warriors before ghouling them during their prime and turning them into their eternal soldiers. While this is debated, hounds as we know them today first appeared before WWIII. Their early forms were more armored ghouls that lugged heavy armored coffins around and had some weapons. These eventually formed into bio-engineered beings and by WWIII they had largely taken the form they have today.

  In extreme situations, a vampire can bite into a Hellhound and can essentially convert it from a ghoul to a vampire in its own right (or at least something similar). Rumors say the soul of the hound is sent to Hell and if the devil himself finds the vampire’s cause acceptable it “turns” the mech into a purely spiritual being. If the devil rejects it both the hound and the vampire burn to death in hellfire.

  A “vamped” Hellhound becomes feral, unbound from the conventional laws of the world, and becomes a sort of spiritual or energy-based lifeform for a short time. After “bleeding it dry” (as it is called) the suit dies and burns away. Because vamping a Hellhound destroys it, making this an act of desperation.

  Dr. Imran Kapoor

  Senior Sanguinologist, University of Chennai

  Trans-Asian Alliance