But Laika was patient. She learned his routines. The way he took his stim-coffee black with a drop of synthesized venom (an acquired taste). The way he hummed a forgotten lullaby from Old Earth when he thought no one was listening. The way he kept his only true vulnerability—not the switch, but a data-slate containing the access codes to his entire empire—in a biometric safe behind his throne.
She wasn't a dog in the literal sense, though she looked like one at first glance—a mangy, scarred Belgian Malinois with one organic eye and one that glowed a dull, flickering red. She was a "retro-fit," a war surplus K9 unit from the failed Lunar Pacification Campaign, dumped into the city's scrapheaps and salvaged by Kingpouge's fixer. Her original programming had been for loyalty and violence. But decades of street survival and exposure to rogue data-streams had done something unexpected: she had learned to think. To feel, in her own jagged way. kingpouge laika
But even a king needs a court, and every court has its fool. Or, in this case, its hound. But Laika was patient
"Laika," he said, not looking back. "Heel." The way he hummed a forgotten lullaby from
In that instant, the Silk Worms' breaching charge blew the chamber doors apart. Kingpouge reached for his concealed plasma pistol, but Laika was faster. She didn't attack him. Instead, she lunged for the safe, her metal-reinforced jaws tearing through the biometric lock like wet paper. She grabbed the data-slate—the whole of his empire, the kill-codes, the blackmail files, the fortune—and leaped out the shattered window into the rain-slicked dark.