“You made a tank.”

The cheetah’s voice was low, and his words came out in a slow drawl of sound, the lack of speed and intensity giving presence to his surprise at the words he was speaking. Ahead of him, perched on the frame of the vehicle in question, was the Garan Acolyte known as Sister Alice. The lean coyote had her goggles pushed up on her forehead and was clad in a close-fitting jumpsuit with a simple robe thrown over it and belted at the waist.

“More of an armored attack vehicle, really,” she corrected. “Not the best one, of course. I mean, she’s lightweight, to begin with. We couldn’t get the drive train to support much more drag than we put on her. The armor plate is too heavy to allow for much extra power. You’ll notice, here, too, where we put the main gun. It’s not a turret mount. The controls for those would take up more resources than we had to allot. Your driver will have to point the car at the target.”

Sister Alice was excited, and her words were spat at Captain Tarlen VonHogan in rapid streams as she ducked and weaved, climbing across the randomly-painted metal, tapping claws against one system or another on the bulky craft she was showing. Her enthusiasm brought her speech to a speed with which the cheetah was intimately familiar.

“Over here we’ve got space set aside for a mounted machinegun. Or, if you’d prefer, we can add a backblast deflector and set it for rockets.”

“I think the machinegun would be more practical,” he mused. He pointed toward the craft. “You seriously built this from discarded parts?”

Brother Vincent smiled around teeth gone yellow. “She did,” he answered for her. “Been working on it in secret. I wasn’t allowed to tell,” he added with a conspiratorial wink. At the armored vehicle, Alice was still going on.

“She has tires instead of treads, because the only thing with treads was the crawler, and we can’t scrap it. The miners need it. But we used semi-solid tractor tires with articulated axle mounts to give them more freedom, and we added shields over the tires so they’ll be harder to target. I’ve been working on individual drive assemblies for each wheel, to give you true freedom of motion with it, but she still has a standard drive.”

“Ask her a question,” Vincent prompted in a whisper. “She’s dying to tell you what she’s done.”

“What’s the range?” Captain VonHogan asked, gesturing in a vague motion toward the horizon.

“She’ll get about two hours on battery alone, three without stopping if you use the solar extenders. You’ll manage about forty kays per hour, tops. The engine will give you another hour before fueling, and that’s at double the speed of the battery drive. I would suggest you save that for when you need it, and the speed becomes your savior. Running full out with the batteries and the fuel, you’re looking at about two hundred kilometers, give or take a bit.”

“And the armor?”

“We concentrated it to the fore. Double thickness sheet there.”

“You needn’t say we, child,” Brother Vincent called. “This was your devotional.”

Alice bowed from the waist. “Yes, Brother. I also added a partial layer to the underside after your soldier Mag explained that you have been encountering mined areas. The tires will still be vulnerable to explosion damage, but their nature should allow them to function to a certain extent. Enough at least to escape to a less hazardous area for refit,” she said. Her fingers worked in a frenzy, feeding information into a wrist-mounted tablet as she spoke. Every time she recognized something that could become an issue for the security teams, she added it to the list of necessary improvements.

“All told,” she continued, “it should bounce small arms fire with ease and do a decent job against anything shy of a rocket or one of the heavy lasers. Not a true tank, you see.”

“It will be incredible against toothie infantry, though. Where did you find the plate?”

“The steel sheet came from the primary supply for the colony,” she admitted. “Probably not the purpose intended by the corporation, but Gara reminds us that we make do where we must. Reinforcements came from mining stakes, damaged prybars and the like. The window is, well, it is specialty glass.”

“Oh?”

“Transparex,” she reported. VonHogan’s eyebrow quirked and his tail rose into the air.

Brother Vincent interrupted. “It was part of the equipment that made it here from the transport ship, but was not assigned to our operational allotment,” he said.

VonHogan nodded and a wry chuckle escaped his mouth. “I see. Kinda like the shotguns that mysteriously managed to make the trip?”

“We believe that Gara added the transparex for us to find,” the aged leopard declared, tilting his head in deference.

“Well, we said with the weapons that as long as they aren’t a problem for us, then we’re fine with them. We’d be hard pressed to say anything about starship glass. How did you cut it, though?”

“Industrial laser from the mine supervisor,” Sister Alice explained. “It took a few days work, and it’s not as pretty as it could be if we spent a few more working with it, but it’s bolted up as best we — I mean I — could get it. Drilling the bolt holes took about half an hour each.”

“I’m impressed,” VonHogan said.

“The transparex won’t break,” she continued. “Even if they hit you with something that takes out the armor, you’re safe behind the window. The bolts themselves will shear away before that breaks.”

“Got it. We should be okay, since we’re not having Jinx drive the tank.”

He could tell by the expressions that his joke fell flat. The Garans probably had not worked with the lanky serval in the way that he and his Folk had. Things tended to go wrong around her, and she believed that she had somehow angered the Gods. Her claim was that the bad luck she experienced was some sort of divine punishment and that one day she would escape it.

“And the gun?” VonHogan asked. His claw made tiny ringing sounds as he tapped on the barrel. It was thicker than his muscled arm, and scarred with dozens of small scrapes. The metal was a matte gray, and any trace of decoration it might once have held had been thoroughly scrubbed away. At its end was a muzzle brake wider than the Captain’s head.

“It’s a wing cannon harvested from the scrapped remains of an Empire Rodentia space fighter,” Alice reported. “It will be horribly loud when fired, I fear. Sadly, most of the craft was damaged to an extent that prevented us from using much of it. It was part of the drop package from the Navy, along with some broken computers and other assorted bits, left for us to make use of as parts.”

“Cleaning out their bays,” VonHogan said with a snort. “Foisting off what they felt was garbage.”

“Gara provides for us in Her own ways.”

“Busted-ass fighters? Computers? Useful stuff like that? I might like to have a look at your spare parts one day, see what can be salvaged,” the cheetah said. He did not miss the gasp of shock that came from Alice, and the disapproving glance from Brother Vincent added to the effect.

“Guessing I said something wrong?” he prompted.

Tapping his staff on the ground, Brother Vincent spoke. “Once She has gifted us with parts, they are for our use. These are religious rites of which you speak. It is not the place of another to ask to view them. To do so is tantamount to questioning Her divine presence among us and the purpose to which She applies us.”

VonHogan noted with interest the manner in which Vincent eyed the knife at the Captain’s belt when he said the word, ‘another’. The blade could mark him as a Gannite, although in the case of the troops stationed on Z262, it could as easily be a simple tool of daily use. The fact that he had so casually overstepped a cultural barrier marked him in an even more certain manner, he knew.

“You demean Her gifts,” Sister Alice whispered. Her voice was little more than a shadow of sound, and she made the sign of the cog with her paw. She stepped down off the side of the armored vehicle. The excitement she had displayed only moments before was gone now, replaced with a wide-eyed sorrowful stare.

“I’ll ask you both to forgive my ignorance,” VonHogan said. He bowed deeply from the waist, exposing the back of his neck to the clerics for several seconds. “I’m a simple soldier, and I’m very much unused to dealing with Folk of faith, no matter the stripe. I have no favor with any of the Gods, nor do I expect they are especially impressed with me.”

Silence reigned for several seconds until Brother Vincent acknowledged the Captain’s gesture with a bow of his own.

“For too long have we all built our own walls to separate one from another,” he said. “Understand, Gara teaches us secrecy and at times She demands it. There are things that we simply cannot do, and we forget how some may not know of these things as we do. You are welcome to come and speak with us to discover the joy of Her teachings, should you wish.”

“I may well do that,” VonHogan said. “In the meantime, I should like to make amends for the offense I have caused you both. Back behind our headquarters building there is a shed full of things we’ve brought back after the failed rat raids. Weapons, equipment, salvaged vehicle parts, a little of everything.”

He slipped a paw into one of the many pockets in the mottled sand-hued uniform he wore, emerging after a moment with a thin coin. A design was etched on one side and the entire thing was covered in a scuffed enamel that spoke volumes about how long he had carried it.

“Show this to whoever is on guard duty and tell them I sent you,” he said. He reached past Brother Vincent, extending the coin to Alice. “I’ll tell them you’re coming. Take whatever you can use. All of it, if you need it. It’s gathering dust in there as it is, and I’d much rather you had a chance to work with it.”

The coyote’s eyes widened at the gesture, and she accepted the coin as if it came from on high.

“Gara provides,” she murmured. A few steps away, Brother Vincent made the same declaration. It was obvious even to VonHogan that the statement was both a mantra and an acceptance of blessing. He had heard the words before when near members of the Garan faith, but had never truly put them together as he did at that moment.

“Thank you for the tank,” VonHogan told Sister Alice. The tips of his fingers touched hers as he released the coin, his claws coming forth just enough to graze her own.

“The vehicle itself is our thanks,” she replied. “It is in the act of creation that we find ourselves closest to Her divinity.”

“Well, miss, you help yourself to what we have and create anything you want.”

“We shall,” Brother Vincent said, stepping closer to the pair. “We are grateful for your generosity.”

“Yes, thank you,” Alice said, shaking her head at the lack of courtesy she had displayed. Brother Vincent’s display was a subtle method of drawing her attention to it. While cloistered, she had spent little time among others, and the aging monk was reminding her that her social skills were underdeveloped.

VonHogan nodded to them both.

“Please, be sure to let me know if there is anything you need to make your creation effort more successful. I’m sure we can find a few things just laying around, here and there.”

“Living proof, Captain,” Brother Vincent said, leaning heavily on his staff.

“Of?”

The robed leopard smiled a wide smile. “Gara provides.”

 

<<<END>>>