Enough like a growl, the thunder, to suggest one. Nostrils, a flare.

           "For 'sakes, cork that cunny tight your time, lest let's scrape floors from ya."

           Cheeks flushed.

           "Real?" Eyes dragged.

           Confusion, then not. "Grown."

           "Strap 'em down, keep to your bones cage close. Eaten, things stick out. Too young, lose yer tits yet."

           "Under."

           He stood. "First, you. All cocks in the kennel."

           She stood. "New rules."

           If he'd a face, a smile. Without, a skeletal horror. "We'll keep ya from gravy, girl. Come."

* * *

           She did, behind his limping grate. One cheap slag of articulated leg half skidded the flooring until claws connected. He gnawed one trunk of a finger, down past the nail to the quick red disaster where pain once flared. Hairlines from bone. The things that digit had done.

           She wondered how he'd known the rich November tide of her, the brassy leak. It wasn't a long wondering, with his history.

           Felt the ship shudder in its night. Her lateen away, leaving her to the pack.

           "So you—"

           "Ssssst."

           Enough of a response, coupled with his glare, to insist her silence.

           Flagged a gate; a room opened. "Drop it, your ruck. Sit and sleep. Scent away the blood off ya."

           "Where's the—"

           "Groomin's down the spine," indicating aft, "and we'll train the morning."

           "Thanks."

           Up, down, the look. "Night, pup."

* * *

           The night, awake with their song. He joined, the leg ratcheting its protest in his crouch, hackles spining his brushy neck. The balls were full with the war dogs, and he swallowed his anticipation of the hunt in great draughts of hunger.

           Fed some of the smaller to the siege machines.

           Petted a flank here, nuzzled a muzzle there.

           Drank in the scent of them.

           Broke away to check the systems. Was pleased with the crop, with tomorrow's victory. Checked chains and needles and the chum, the ground paste of the captured enemy. One good hand into a scenting cradle, feeling the chips of someone special. A child who'd slipped through the gears intact. An ankle that hadn't.

           The moon had gone quickly. Enough meat for fury.

           The balls resonated with raven beasts. Once: dogs. Now: cohort.

           He tweaked the vapor mix to goad their hunger. They'd feed well in battle.

* * *

           "Quite a character."

           "Sir?"

           "Fetch."

           "Sir." She allowed a subtle dimpling.

           The kennel's captain turned from the bridge eye. "Two days out. You've dropped balls before; I don't doubt your skill, but Fetch can be…"

           "A character."

           "Yes." He found an itch under chin scruff. "He doesn't have much use for…"

           "Bitches?"

           "Yes. No offense."

           "I drop balls. None taken."

           A nod. "You'll take the northern hemisphere."

           "Top down."

           "It's a small moon. Expect the run to take two days at most. We'll send the scullery to the equator in three."

           "You want this to the bone?"

           "Always." Chin. "As war requires." Neck. "What news from the dirt?"

           She shrugged. "Earth suffers."

           "That's something."

           "Can I—"

           "Anything."

           "What happened to the last keeper?"

           Something catches in a throat. "You shouldn't want to know that."

           "Still."

           "Fetch bit his throat out. A failed run."

           "Sir."

           "The lesson: don't fail."

* * *

           "This one. Port, yours. Swings'll throw both hemis anon," he wipes spit from the remainder of face, "but we'll have us a little race, pup."

           She levers herself into the control hang, down screws pads into reach.

           Fetch hangs on the seat's bars. "Likewise, these? Old boards, these."

           "I've worked older." She thumbs open the works; data lugs lazily into live. "Reading a load of five hundred thousand. Will this improve?"

           "Breed'll time. Siegers is in heat."

           "Reading two hundred thousand assault machines. Is that enough?"

           "Moon's small. Two days… They'll bear."

           "I'm not used to these numbers. Pack seems small."

           His ruined face could not convey insult. "They'll bear."

           She swung out. "Show me the cage?"

           "Come."

* * *

           "It's lazy hazy, so quiet." Between guards, he'd opened the first lock in the north ball's joint. "Nappy, pup. Need sleep, the pack."

           "Under." Her hands on weapons still stowed on her hips.

           Chagrin. "Trusting the hardware, that little even?"

           "Only takes one loose."

           He savages the locks open. She hears things hidden in metal blocks slide.

           And then they're in the cage.

           And then she's overwhelmed.

           "Fie."

           And then she's shaking.

           His teeth chatter in the only way he can express delight. "Hey, pup. You've home to a shudder glance, you. You've seen dogs, pets. Mine…"

           Her mouth works over nothing.

           The ball is floored with cages larger than her lateen transport. In each, a beast. Asleep, half a thousand hands high.

           "Yours…"

           "My dogs are better." Chatter. Eyes glitter. Wipes spittle from chin.

           "Efficiency?"

           "Ten hours, cleared the Triton advance. Ten minutes, cleared the Phobos claim."

           Eyebrows a question.

           "That one, near a million souls."

           She's Nixon on her hip guns, feeling utterly insufficient. One tooth of one beast would measure foot to lap on her.

           "What's left when they're done with a drop?"

           "Licks of blood. For bringing back, cities. Devastations."

           "Is this even—"

           "It's war, pup. Everything's."

           She approaches a nearest. The beast within wags with dream. At its belly, forty puppies suckle. Above, soothing vapor holds rage in place. The cage's bars are thicker in breadth than she is in height. Silver fields flicker through alloy.

           "Full dissolve?"

           "Ball 'pears on impact, fast. Looses 'em to blooding."

           "Injectors?"

           "All implanted. Yon bitches full up, drop batches an hour on. Litter rages in three."

           "And the assault sex?"

           "Half'n."

           "The siege machines?"

           "Nine-nine 'cent bitches, breeder boys along."

           "The smaller?"

           "Pawns, four-hun-sand. Sleek, those, and fast."

           "And hungry."

           "Gravy tonight, none. Eating tomorrow, and much."

           Her horror replaced with duty, confidence. "They'll never suspect this."

           "Never do, pup." Chatter. "Not with kennel, my one, least."

* * *

           "On target, keepers," the captain chirruped from the bridge. "Atmosphere insertion in five rounds. Lock your reins and ready."

           Her name didn't matter. Her home didn't matter. The setting in which she had been reared had been lost to the war twenty years before.

           "Ready, Pup?" And she thought his pet name a capital. Keeper, Pup.

           The politics didn't matter. The combatants didn't matter. The reasons for the conflict had been lost to the blur of outward expansion generations before she had been born.

           "Ready."

           All that mattered, all that was everything, was that she was sitting on top of a ball of half a million war machines, and they would feed. They would race to the moon's belt consuming everything in their path, and at the end of that race would be an apocalypse.

           The rhythmic scud of thin air against their belly.

           "Separation in three…"

           Her load stirred.

           "Two…"

           The barking began.

           "One…"

           And keening.

* * *

           The vessel was thin and red in that edge of breathing, the spine separating Pup's ball from Fetch's with a kilometer's distance. In each ball, five hundred thousand surging weapons, ravenous, feeling that drop, bred to throw themselves against the walls that would soon disappear. In its swing, the spine trebucheted each ball away with a snap of disconnecting umbilicals, one north, one south, arcing tangents that would equate to half a moon's hunt each.

           Fetch chattered, looking down on his charge. One hand firmly on the brakes, one gnawed nailless in his filed teeth. His remaining lid squinted over his boards.

           Pup: both hands on the brakes, left toes poised over the vapor shunt.

           In the stratosphere, rockets. The balls, farther and farther apart. Ten kilometers, fifty, three hundred, now lost to each other over the moon's curving barren, unsuspecting and asleep at points of dawn.

           What had this populace done? Neither Fetch nor Pup knew, nor did it matter.

           A perfect sphere apart, now.

           And the dogs screamed anticipation.

           Fetch, his toe over vapor.

           Pup, hers pressing.

           The balls were designed to shatter on impact, systematically spilling stories of war machines to the target's surface. The beasts knew their duty, knew it from bones reinforced with carbon filament to blood pulsing with base rage. Most leapt from where cages had been, some crushed under the ball's polar roll, the pilot struggling to maintain the right.

           Now: Fetch and Pup a thousand kilometers apart, bottom and top of the moon.

           Soon: equator.

           Each ball half deflated, twisted fiber ribbing retracting to the observation format, the pilots surveyed their cargoes' departures. Each maybe lost ten thousand beasts in the initial slap of landing. In the greater context, complete success.

           Pup released the ablative impact gelatin and snapped on takeoff rockets. Even quickly, half her cargo leapt up to eat her. Above the fray, safe, their mission situated itself firmly in reptile stems and they forgot her easy meat above them.

           From the point of impact, the dogs spread south, bands of ten thousand, twenty, a jogging at first, then picking speed, then a wall of running teeth.

           At the southern hemisphere, Fetch's dogs met the first city. It lasted seven minutes. He was pleased.

           The moon's people cried out and most lost throats.

           Assault dogs leveled city blocks. The smaller raced alleys, down side streets, through each house, each story, through everything breathing.

           The siege dogs, pumped with pungent hormones and pre-inseminated, bore litters that would in turn bear litters. The ten thousand lost on impact were regained in hours. The half million carted to the moon doubled and again. And again. And soon there were many millions.

           Cities fell under them.

           Puppies fattened on the pathetic armies.

           For every dog shot, a thousand humans were eaten.

           For every human eaten, ten thousand more were left in piles of hair and red wet.

           And the assaults lumbered on, wagging, pierced by hot light and tickled by melted lead. Over their respective planet halves, Fetch and Pup hovered and made note of cities decimated, great plains of savaged populations. Packs ten million strong running, just running, all prey consumed, every person on the surface at least partially torn asunder.

           Less than a day, no one was left to kill.

           Less than a day, those who maybe hadn't paid taxes, maybe charged too much for grain export, maybe slighted the emperor, maybe coaxed diseases into outbreak, were extinct. Another disinfected planet, the fecund plains of which would soon bear new crops of bleached bones. Birds would survive to feed, beyond the dogs' reach, some.

* * *

           His voice in her ear, words made awkward without lips, all teeth, like her cargo: "The north, Pup, how is it?"

           "They ate well."

           "South, same. Machines read empty, all the cities be. Not a problem now, this moon, these people that were."

           Under each, nervous dogs raced for targets. The assaults slowed, some sitting, looking to the moon's moons for guidance. Chops glittered with desire.

           Siege dogs dropped new litters into cities speckled with the crushed.

           Closer, drawing, Fetch and Pup, to the warm equator, their packs intermingling, sniffing and snuffling each other. And finally, each ball remnant, the piloting cores still intact, side by side for the first time, Fetch and Pup looking out ball cores to see one another.

           "You've made a good pack," she said to the ruined man in his bubble.

           "Ssst." The chuff sounded more static than human.

           "Will you keep me on?" Vessels hovered.

           "A good keeper, you, Pup." Chatter. "Work with you again, I can, some, at least."

           "Thanks."

           "A breeding stock we'll take back, the nets, the needles first."

           "The rest?"

           "Let 'em the moon till civilization comes again, here."

           "Always does come back. New people, new reasons to feed."

           Their vessels joined for the sampling and return. Side by side in their cores, merging, Fetch released controls to her.

           Some of the smaller dogs were drugged. A sieger, an assault. Two. Breeding stock. They would improve the beasts with the next generations.

           Below, the war machines wondered. Hunger spooled out in a billion bellies, confusion at the silver ship in the sky.

           "Blood's done from ya."

           "Under."

           Fetch scrutinized her as she flew them back to the spine. She wondered where his cheeks had gone.

           "We'll get you strapped down, those grown. Shields, what for your legs and fingers." He ratcheted. "We'll get in, breed a better war dog. Refit these balls, load 'em for next."

           She nodded. And clicked into the spine. And went on to the next target.

           Left behind, the billion war machines hungered. And fed, Fetch's upon Pup's. When the colonization bubs arrived years later, the moon was layered with the war dead, and people knew that once there were dogs, and as the raven hunger, they feared.