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Mark’s Introduction to:
GILDED CAGE by Kacey Ezell
Kacey is rather new to the writing game, but I believe you’ll be hearing a lot more from her, which is why she’s in this anthology. Her addition, “Gilded Cage,” is interesting in that it introduces a quite unique race to the Four Horsemen universe, and touches on the seedy underbelly of our libertarian Galactic Union; assassination for hire.
Kacey has been part of a number of anthologies, including “Sha’Daa: Inked,” and wrote the cover story to the greatly-acclaimed zombie apocalypse anthology “Black Tide Rising,” in the universe of the same name created by Baen superstar John Ringo.
Find out more about Kacey at http://amazon.com/author/kaceyezell.
GILDED CAGE by Kacey Ezell
Huh. That’s odd.
I scrubbed my hands over my face, feeling the fading effects of the Malluma Songo trickle through my skin. That had been a good hit. I’d lucked into that score. Prasser Ghat was an asshole of the highest caliber, but at least he got good drugs. Painful as his party had been, I’d probably do it again.
Not right away, though. I hurt too badly, and I’d lost a lot of blood there at the end, when things had gotten really wild. A quick nanite spray would have fixed me right up, but it was either nanites or the Songo, and there was never a question which I’d choose.
Not these days, anyway.
These days my hands shook like tree branches in a heavy wind. They looked about like that, too. Skeletally thin (because I rarely remembered to eat) and covered in scabs (from when the itching got really bad), they didn’t look much like the precision instruments I’d once trained them to be. Plus, they were dirty and covered in a crust of sweat and station dirt and filth, just like the rest of me.
I crossed my arms over my chest, tucking my wasted hands underneath my armpits, letting them hide in the nest of rags that was all Ghat’s party guests had left of my clothing. My forehead drooped to rest on my knees. Maybe I’d sleep for a while, here in this forgotten corridor. It probably wasn’t safe, right outside of Ghat’s place, but I didn’t care.
A soft, heavy tread. Like that of someone big trying not to be noticed. Not claws or hooves, soft-soled boots. Probably Human, then?
Despite the lullaby of my diminishing high, my occasional sense of self-preservation kicked in, and I lifted my head enough to peek out through the lank, greasy strands of my hair.
Two men, then two more. Dressed like partygoers, but they didn’t look like partygoers. One carried a large instrument case…a cello. My mind supplied the word, pulled from memories long forgotten. Musicians? Someone to play for Ghat’s pleasure? He liked to hire fellow Humans for his club, it was true, but classical instrumental music from Earth didn’t seem quite like his style. He was more of an old school thrash metal kind of guy from what I’d seen.
One of the other men turned to look down my corridor. I ducked my head back down again, feeling my heart rocket into thudding overdrive. Great. Now I’m paranoid and anxious as well. What the hell had Ghat cut the Songo with? Maybe it wasn’t such good shit after all.
“You going down there?” I heard.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s closed off. Prass said we’s to expect a threat coming in from outside. Not already here. Can’t get in that way.”
I tried to make myself look as small and garbage-pile-esque as possible without moving.
“It’s clean,” another voice said. “Well, it ain’t clean, exactly. But from the smell, if there’s anything there, it’s long dead. Let’s head back inside and make ourselves inconspicuous. Remember, nobody makes a move until the threat shows itself. Got it? Prass wants this ‘contract’ issue settled quickly.”
A chorus of vaguely affirmative grunts, and again, the soft sound of big men moving quietly and swiftly. Then I was, once again, blessedly alone in my fetid sanctuary.
Or so I thought.
A frisson ran down my spine. Not unpleasant, it felt like an arpeggio played out in fur over the surface of my skin. I lifted my head once more and noticed the faintest shimmer in the air, like a heat mirage under the desert sun. Though it’d been years? Decades? Since I’d seen either desert or sun.
A small figure appeared to coalesce out of the shadow of the piles of refuse by the entrance to the little alcove. With pointed ears and a sinuous, furred body, I had a moment to wonder if I was hallucinating about the cats I’d had as a kid. But then the cat stood up, and I could see its front paws featured a prehensile digit, and its pelvis tilted back well enough to allow it to walk bipedally. Memory flooded my brain with a shock like top grade Songo.
The visitor seemed completely disinterested in me. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would have said that it never even knew I was there. But of course it knew. Because this was more than some furry cuddlemonster like my childhood pets had been. This was a Depik assassin. Once, long ago, I would have given my very life to see one so close. How ironic that it should happen now, when I had no life left to give.
Before I realized what I planned to do, I called out. The sound I made was even reminiscent of the greetings I used to give my cats when I’d come home from school. Deeper, though. With more emphasis to the ‘R’ sound, which was the best approximation available with my Human vocal cords. I called out a single word in the Depik’s native language. A word of warning.
The Depik froze, then turned slowly to me. A thrill skittered down my abused nerves as I unexpectedly, suddenly, achieved what had once been a life goal.
“Why do you know this word?” the Depik asked, through the translator I could see clipped to a vest-like garment. “Though you speak it like a lisping kitten with a damaged brain.”
“I…I have studied for many years to learn your language,” I said, my words rusty and hoarse.
“You?” the Depik asked, derision dripping from the word. Despite my awe, despite my self-loathing, the disdain of the creature I’d waited so long to meet stung my long-forgotten pride. I straightened my spine and raised my chin.
“Yes, I,” I said in Depik, and then I quoted something I’d read in the few Depik writings I’d been able to get my hands on. “‘What is, is not always what was.’”
“Though lives may pass, nine times nine times ninety and nine,” the Depik responded, and its eyes blinked slowly in that species’ version of a smile.
“Hunter,” I said, using the Depik form of address, but switched back to English and let my trusty translator do its work, “I must warn you, all is not as it seems. You are expected within.”
“Am I?” the Depik asked. “That is of no consequence.”
“I do not doubt you,” I said. And I didn’t. Depik assassins had a well-deserved reputation for lethality. “But it is a foolish kitten who does not gather what information presents itself.”
The Depik’s mouth dropped open in an expression I assumed was either surprise or amusement. Had it been otherwise, I would probably have died in that moment.
“You speak words of truth and wisdom, but you have the look and scent of someone with no wisdom. How is this?”
“Yeah, well,” I said, feeling my sudden attack of pride deflate. “What is, is not always what was.”
The Depik looked at me for a long moment, then dropped to its quadruped gait and stalked slowly toward me.
“Perhaps not,” it said, speaking slowly. I could hear the burrs and rolls of its native language under the translator’s voice. “Tell me why you think I am expected.”
“I just saw a squad of mercs casing the place. They didn’t see me, but they checked the area out and talked about surprising an expected threat. They mentioned a contract issue, which, now that I think about it, could be referring to your contract.”
The Depik made a deep, thoughtful, rumbling sound. I waited for a moment to see if it had anything else to say and then went on.
“They were all dressed as partygoers—no visible armor or anything. One of the men was carrying a lar
ge instrument case. Big enough to hold rifles.”
“Ambush,” the Depik said, drawing the word out as it blinked another slow smile. “How delightful.” It focused its eyes on me and stalked closer, sniffing the air around me.
“I smell Malluma Songo on you,” it said. “Would you like more?”
Longing punched me in the gut, twisting my insides with need. I nodded, mutely. The Depik stood up and reached into its vest. “Come inside the club with me,” it said, “and I will give you more, and of better quality, than you’ve yet experienced.”
“Wha—? Why?” I wanted it. Oh, how I wanted to say yes. But…come into the club? What could I do there? Despite the worthless misery of my life, I wasn’t ready to die.
“You will provide a distraction. The mercs will be focused on you, and I will fulfill my contract. Do you want it? I will not offer again,” the Depik said, and I caught a note of impatience in its voice.
“Yes,” I breathed, before I realized I had done so. The Depik slow-blinked again, and withdrew its paw/hand from inside the vest. Light from the sign on the club glinted off the tiny metal of a hypodermic needle. I raised my shaking arm. The Depik made a face as it grabbed my wrist, which was streaked and smeared with dirt and old blood…and possibly other things. Who knew?
I felt the pinch as the Depik inserted the needle into the vein in my elbow. Then the blissful burn of the drug entering my bloodstream. I exhaled slowly, feeling the hit take hold of my mind.
Damn. The Depik hadn’t lied. This was really good shit. Euphoria soaked through me, sloughing away layers of pain and fear and self-loathing. Joy bubbled up into my brain, and I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, letting the pleasure rain down on me from nowhere and everywhere at once.
“Come,” the Depik said, and I felt it push at me, all over me. Though the Depik only held me by the wrist, I could feel the soft, prickly sensation of fur all along my skin. It tugged at me, urged me to my unsteady feet, pulled me along until I found myself walking, alone, through the front doors of the club.
A man I didn’t know stepped in front of me, so that my face impacted his chest. I felt the hardness of the body armor hidden under his shirt bruise my forehead, but thanks to this amazing Songo, I didn’t care.
“The fuck are you doing in here, junkie?” the man growled. I recognized his voice from outside. “Phaugh, but you stink!”
Once again, I felt the susurration of fur sliding along my skin, and I knew that I was not, in fact, alone.
“It’s here,” I whispered, unaware that I had done so. Adrenaline sang through the pleasure centers of my brain. Delicious entropy swirled around me, drowning me in bliss.
“What’s here?” the man said, suspicious. His hand went to his hip. A corner of my mind registered my peril as he pulled his weapon free, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the sensations enflaming my brain.
A soft wave of fur pulsed through me, and the man holding me crumpled, blood fountaining from a stab wound that appeared at the base of his neck. A bright, metallic scent wrapped itself around me as I felt his dead weight drag me to the floor, and a hot rain of iron-red liquid pattered onto my skin.
I heard a distant scream that swooped and merged into the driving beat of the night club’s dance music. Bodies, mostly Human, but a few alien forms, gyrated in time with the sound.
It was all I could do to push away from the dead merc and the sticky coolness of the dance floor. My awareness skipped, and something sour reached up and wrapped itself around my throat. I’d found my feet, but I fell back to my knees as my insides tried to crawl out of my mouth and nose. Through the tears and smoke, I could see the merc’s body in front of me. Black smoke had started to issue from the wound that had killed him, and it was this putrid stench that was causing my heaves.
Once again, I felt the invisible fur pushing through my skin, comforting me like an old blanket. Somehow I managed to climb back to my feet, because when my awareness skipped again, I tottered on gelatin legs toward the back of the club, where Prasser Ghat usually sat with his women and flunkies.
The furred wind that pushed me on seemed to reach out with an invisible hand of death. I passed another merc, who looked at me and then tried to cry out, only to find his windpipe constricted by a garrote. I turned to look at him, but the purple of his face bled out into the air around me and merged with the pulsing lights. His fall to the ground looked choreographed. He must have been a hell of a dancer.
The other mercs had their weapons out, and they’d backed up against Prasser’s table. Apparently they’d abandoned the secret ambush plan. There were four, or maybe five. I couldn’t really tell, between the shifting lights, the pounding music, and the swimming shadows that wrapped around anything my eyes touched.
I shivered and watched as one of the mercs fell heavily to one knee, blood pouring from the back of his boot. For just a moment, I could see the Depik make a fantastic twisting handspring-type leap from the floor up to land on the forearm that held the man’s rifle. A glittering line of metal flashed red and blue in the club light at me, and then the merc’s fingers sprang open as the hand separated from the wrist. He must have screamed. I would have screamed, but the music swept the sound away like water flooding a decades-dry gully.
I must have skipped again, because the next thing I knew, I was looking across the table at Prasser. The broken, wasted bodies of the merc security squad lay radiating out from us like the rays of a star.
I’d never seen the gangster look the way he looked right then. He was the perennial big shot, but now he stared at me, pale-faced and hollow-eyed with fear. I smiled slowly and shook my head.
“It’s not me,” I said, or tried to say. “It isn’t me you have to fear.”
“How did you—?” he asked. I shook my head again, and that movement nearly made me fall. The music lifted me up though, the music, and the feeling of fur running along the inside of my skin.
“Good evening Prasser Ghat,” the Depik said. I blinked, and the felinoid alien sat on the table, looking calm and unmoved by either the music, or the lights, or the iron-hot scent of blood that curled around us all.
“A Depik?” Prasser breathed. “Who—?”
“That is not your business,” the Depik replied. “What is your business is that you still breathe. I am under contract, so that is, unfortunately, a temporary condition. However, you have information that may be useful to me; therefore, you are in a position to choose whether you will die painfully, or instantly.”
“What—? I don’t…I don’t know anything!” Prasser said, sliding slowly away from the Depik along the curved seat of the booth. The music changed up, and the beat dropped down, bumping along the floor and pulsing in the colored darkness. I may have skipped again, or perhaps the Depik was just that fast, because all of a sudden it was standing on the booth seat, next to the terrified Prasser. I could taste the sudden tang of sweat in the air.
“Untrue. You knew that someone was coming for you, though not, perhaps, that they would send me. Was this a lucky guess on your part? Or did you know of the contract?”
“I…I knew that…someone…I had enemies…”
“How did you know the threat would come tonight?”
“Rumors…and... “
“And?” The Depik asked. It leaned close, and Prasser Ghat folded into himself. I could see his fear, like a living thing, winding around and around in time with the music of the club.
“Movetskin,” Prasser said, naming another drug kingpin, from a neighboring system. I forget which. “I got a message from him telling me that I’d be sorry for double-crossing him, that I had no chance of escaping. That before the next lunar cycle, I’d be dead. Tonight’s the last night of this cycle.”
“Ah,” the Depik said, nodding. “And so the client breaches his own confidentiality. Well. His choice. I thank you for being so forthcoming.”
Prasser Ghat opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a little cough an
d a spray of red that splattered over the table. I’d never even seen the Depik move. It leaped upon my shoulder, and I felt wrapped in that delicious, safe, comfortable fur inside and out.
“Come,” the Depik said in my ear. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel its weight on my shoulder. “You interest me. I claim you as my own. Let us go home.”
I tried to acquiesce. I tried to ask where ‘home’ was. I tried to say that I had no ‘home,’ that I hadn’t had one for many, many years. I could do none of those things.
My last conscious thought was that the red light in the club made the bloodstains appear black, and almost none of the club goers had even noticed we’d been there.
* * *
I woke in completely unfamiliar surroundings. The room was small and dimly lit, the grey walls curved in such a manner that I guessed we were on the grav-ring of a ship. I felt…unaccountably good. Better than I had remembered I could feel, actually. I tried to sit up, and only then realized I’d been lying in an actual bed. I didn’t know the last time I’d slept in a bed.
Time to take stock, I thought, and looked down at myself. My rags were gone, replaced by the light blanket that had fallen to my waist. Under that, nothing. I looked down and saw that someone had obviously bathed me and given me medical treatment. All the wounds from Prasser Ghat’s last party were gone, as were the constellations of track marks I’d acquired over the years. I was still thin enough to count my ribs, but I’d obviously been fed intravenously, because I wasn’t hungry.
I looked around the small space and noticed something that looked like a cupboard. I swung my feet experimentally to the floor and found it steady enough, if a mite cold. I took one tentative step toward the cupboard and pulled it open.
Shelves of folded clothing waited within. I blinked in surprise and wondered if I was to take one, then shrugged and figured that clothed was better than naked. I pulled out a one-piece coverall that would cover my feet and zip from my crotch to just below my chin. It had long sleeves and felt delightfully soft and slightly fuzzy. I almost couldn’t wait to put it on. The feeling of the fabric against my fingers reminded me of the delicious furry high of…
A Fistful of Credits: Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 5) Page 20
