A Fistful of Credits: Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 5)

by Chris Kennedy

  Oh.

  Flashes of memory returned in rapid-fire confusion. I sat down on the floor with a thump, the coverall still in my hands. To my right, a door I hadn’t known existed slid open with a whirring sound.

  “You have awakened,” the Depik said. “How do you feel?”

  “Good,” I said, startled into answering. “Really good. Better than…what did you do?”

  The Depik long-blinked its smile at me and walked fully into the room on all four legs. It padded over to sit, cat-style, directly across from me.

  “I fulfilled my contract, then I directed you back to my ship, where I gave you a lengthy nanite treatment…and a bath. You were quite filthy.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I imagine because you’d been indigent for some time.”

  “No, I mean, why did you do all that…for me?”

  “Oh. I have claimed you. You are mine now. I am quite pleased about it, actually. I have the feeling you will make an excellent companion. And I’ve recently birthed a litter of kits. They will be very excited.” It…she slow blinked again, and I could hear a deep rumbling sound coming from somewhere within her chest. Was she purring? I never knew Depik could purr!

  The part of my brain that used to be a xenobiologist thrilled at the chance to get to spend more time with her…and to see her young! How fascinating! What a coup! Dr. Black would have been so proud.

  But another part of my brain surged to the forefront of my consciousness and spilled out of my mouth.

  “Wait, what? I’m not…you can’t! I’m not a slave. You can’t just claim me!”

  The Depik stared at me for a long moment, and then she slow blinked again. The tip of her tail twitched back and forth, and I abruptly had the feeling she was laughing at me.

  “Are you not?” she asked, her tone nonchalant. “It seemed like you had done a rather thorough job of enslaving yourself when I found you.”

  I rocked back, stung by the naked truth of her words. Shame flooded me, and I dropped my gaze to watch my hands twisting in the soft coverall fabric.

  “But if that is how you prefer it, I will respect your wishes. I am prepared to offer you a painless death…no charge,” she added, with a hint of humor in her tone.

  “Wait, what?” I asked again, looking up.

  She raised one hand/paw in an elegant gesture that seemed to equate to a shrug.

  “You know our language. You observed me fulfill a contract. You cannot be allowed to run free.”

  “I know too much,” I said, unable to keep from letting out a half-hysterical kind of laugh.

  “You know too much,” she agreed. “So I must eliminate you. I can offer you a painless death…or a place as my companion and that of my kits. You would live in my home. I would care for you. You would never want for anything ever again. But you would be mine.”

  “Why?” I asked, unable to stop my once-professional curiosity. “What benefit do you gain from an arrangement like that? Why keep me as a…a pet?”

  She blinked another smile and got to her feet. She padded toward me and rubbed her furred body along my naked arm, which caused me to shiver all over. Then she sat down beside me again.

  “Your species keeps ‘pets,’ yes? For the same reasons, I imagine. For companionship, for affection. My kits will find you fascinating and will adore you. I, myself, find you interesting, and I bear you some gratitude for your timely warning the other day. The contract would have been more difficult to fulfill without it. I would like to keep you alive for these reasons alone.”

  “What is so interesting about a strung out, half-dead Songo junkie?” I asked, feeling the words drop bitterly from my lips.

  “The fact she knows my language, for one,” the Depik replied. “The fact that she is a Songo junkie, and thus felt it when I shifted the light around me.”

  “The Songo did that?” I asked. “I could tell…it felt…furry-warm, and oddly safe. I didn’t know what it was, but I started to associate it with you.”

  She blinked at me, and yawned a silent laugh.

  “I am not often associated with safety,” she said, and again I could hear her dry humor in her tone. “But yes, that is an effect of the Malluma Songo, it allows your baryonic nervous system to sense my quintessence field, which is what shifts the proton paths as I direct.”

  “Quintessence field…you mean...”

  “I believe you call it ‘dark energy,’ she said gently, as one speaking to a not particularly bright child in the midst of making a discovery. “An impossibly quaint name.”

  I blinked several times as the world shifted around me. Depik could manipulate dark energy? That was incredible…impossible! It was completely unheard of! No other species could…

  But then, no other species could shift light the way the Depik could. Nor could they move as quickly, nor…

  “Your nervous system,” I breathed. “That’s why nerve agents don’t work on your species! Somehow, instead of chemical-electrical interactions, your nervous system employs dark energy interactions!”

  “Both, actually,” the Depik said. “Otherwise, how could I be seeing you in this light? My matter is as baryonic as yours, it is just configured slightly differently, so that we can access the quintessence around us. Just as you did, with the help of the Malluma Songo. And now that you have discovered this deadliest of facts, I really must insist on an answer to my proposition. For unless you are completely mine, within my control, you cannot be allowed to live with this knowledge.”

  I blinked, and the researcher in the back of my head howled in frustration.

  “Do you know why I became a junkie?” I asked, courting danger by answering her question with a question.

  “I am interested to learn,” she said, though her tone said she would only indulge me for so long before becoming more insistent on her answer.

  “My name is Susan Aloh. Doctor Susan Aloh, actually. Former Professor of Xenobiology at the University of Texas. I used to be one of Earth’s foremost experts in the field. I was hand-selected by Dr. Adelaide Black to accompany her team of researchers and study the Galactic Union. It was fascinating work, and I loved it…but I became intrigued by one race in particular...yours.”

  “Mine?” she asked, amusement threading through her tone.

  “Yes. We’d discovered so little about your species. You were such a mystery. A handful of writings, a catalogue of legends. That was it. Your system appeared to have only two exports. Death, and…”

  “Malluma Songo,” she said slowly.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “I first tried it because I wanted to analyze it, but I couldn’t get it through any kind of reputable source. So I had to buy it from a low-dealer, and he insisted I do my first hit in front of him…and from then I was lost.

  “Oh, I kept working for a while. Another Earth year or two. But I craved it; I had to have it. Eventually, I missed meeting up with my team and got left behind. And after that…I don’t remember. It all runs together in my head. There was only the now, and the need for more.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was designed that way.”

  “Why?” I asked, anguish flooding my tone. “Why would you put something out into the universe like that?”

  “Because the demand is there,” she responded. “Why else?”

  “But it destroyed me!” I sobbed, and only then realized I was crying. Had been for some time, if the hot tracks down my cheeks were any indication.

  “It did not appear in your veins by magic,” the Depik replied, mercilessly. “You made a choice to put yourself under its spell. As I said, you enslaved yourself. Do not blame the chain-maker when you locked the manacles willingly about your own wrists.”

  I lost it. Great, wracking sobs shook my whole body. I bent double, head in my lap, my tears soaking the fuzzy fabric of the coverall I had yet to put on. I screamed and howled for my lost life, for all the pain I’d inflicted upon myself, for the shame that I’d sunk so low…and all by my own hands. All b
ecause of my damned ambition to know more.

  A warm slide of fur against my side. I wasn’t high, so it couldn’t be the quintessence interaction again, but it had that same feeling of safety and comfort about it. The Depik had rubbed the length of her body against me. I could feel the deep rumbling sound of her purring throb through my skin.

  “And yet you live,” she said softly. “And you may live still, if you stay with me. Or you may die in comfort now. Once again, the choice is yours to make.”

  “I don’t want to die,” I whispered, not knowing this was true until I said the words.

  “Then you choose to stay with me, be my companion?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Another warm slide of fur, the feel of her paw/hand stroking my hair.

  “I do not think you will regret this choice, my Human. I think you will be very happy with me.”

  But I will never again be free, a tiny corner of my mind whispered. I ignored it. The Depik was right. I hadn’t been free for a very long time.

  * * *

  My Depik mistress had a name, of course. I couldn’t pronounce it. I settled for calling her Reow, for that was about as close as I could get to the actual sound of her name. According to her translator, the English version of her name was Deadly Night Wind. Reow just seemed an easier (and slightly less unsettling) choice.

  Reow was, it turned out, quite wealthy. The ship we travelled on belonged to her. It was fast but small, barely big enough to justify having a grav-ring. The fact that it had one at all spoke elegantly of the level of luxury she expected…and got, if my eyes were to be believed.

  The crew, though small, was clearly very well trained, both in the operation of the ship and in Reow’s personal preferences. Though they represented a mix of several species, it was obvious they’d worked together for quite a while, for they were very good at what they did.

  It took surprisingly little time to reach the Depik home system, though whether that spoke to the speed of the ship and skill of the crew, or to our proximity to begin with, I had no idea. I didn’t really know, nor did I care, where that last station had been. It didn’t matter, for it was very much in the past, along with the rest of my old life.

  As Reow made very clear to me.

  “I will not provide you with more of the Malluma Songo,” she said, apropos of nothing, as we took a meal together shortly after I’d awakened. Somehow, the crew had known to provide me with bread and salad, and a little cooked meat that tasted like beef. Reow dined daintily on some kind of raw, shredded meat of her own.

  I looked up at her, careful to keep my face blank. She slow-blinked a knowing smile at me. She really was beautiful, now that I could see her in full light…well, as full as the light on the ship ever got, anyway. Depik eyes were adapted to darkness, so the ship seemed to exist in a kind of perpetual twilight. But at least she was no longer cloaking herself in shadow all the time.

  The majority of her body was covered in black fur, but it lightened to a grey on her face and throat. Black stripes accentuated her huge green eyes, and ran up her forehead between her triangular, pointed ears. Her nose was less pointed than an Earth cat’s, but her small, quick bites showed very clearly her pointed predator’s teeth. She tended to wear very little, and that only if it had some kind of purpose, like her utility vest, or her weapon harnesses. I suspected that when we arrived at her home, she would wear nothing but her silky fur.

  “You have noticed, I am sure,” she went on after I said nothing, “that the physical manifestations of your addiction were healed with the nanite treatment. Any further withdrawal passed while we kept you sedated, afterward. All that is left is the emotional attachment you may have for the euphoria and false escape of the high. I cannot remove this from you so easily. However, I can ensure that you do not get more, and time, I am told, will do the rest.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, as she seemed to expect an answer. I could hear the raggedness in my voice. Whether it was because I missed the high, or because of this stark reminder that I was no longer free, I cannot say.

  “Also, I cannot have you impaired around my offspring,” she said. As Reow spoke, she reached out and stroked the back of my wrist with her fingerpads, claws retracted. She liked to touch me, whether for her comfort or mine, I didn’t know. But I was starting to associate her little caresses with safety and affection, and I didn’t mind them at all.

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, and held out a small box to me. I blinked in surprise and then put down my eating utensils to take the box. It opened on a tiny hinge, and inside lay a pendant on dully metallic chain.

  “Titanium?” I guessed,

  “Do you like it?” she asked. “I selected the metal for its lightness. I don’t want the sigil to be cumbersome and uncomfortable to wear, but I thought it was attractive to the eye, even so.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, lifting the pendant out. It was a sinuous shape that I didn’t recognize. It looked something like one of the letters of the Depik alphabet, but slightly different.

  “It is my sigil,” Reow said. “It is the mark of my clan. When you wear it, all who see you will know that you belong to us and are not to be harmed.”

  I ran my thumb over the shape, let the titanium chain slide through my fingers.

  “Do you like it?” she asked again.

  What could I say? It was both beautiful and thoughtful, but that didn’t change the fact that it was, at the end of the day, a collar. Another chain of my own choosing. A symbol of the way I’d abdicated my freedom in the name of ambition, then pleasure, then survival.

  “I love it,” I whispered, because it really was beautiful, and she seemed so hopeful that I would. “Will you help me put it on?”

  “Of course, my Human,” she said, and pushed up to her back feet.

  I handed her the necklace, and ducked my head while she fastened it under my hair. I’d kept it cut close for longer than I could remember, but Reow liked it long, so I was letting it grow.

  I felt her fingerpads trace the line of my cheekbone. Without knowing why, I leaned into her touch.

  “You’re such a pretty kita,” she said. “You’re going to be so happy at home. I’ll take good care of you, sweetling. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  Not long after that, we arrived on the Depik home world of Khastash.

  Before we started our re-entry, I got a look at the planet’s surface. It looked impossibly green. With the exception of some rather small polar ice caps and three relatively large oceans, every bit of landmass was deeply, violently green. As we sped toward our re-entry point, we crossed over the spine of a mountain range, and even the tallest of peaks stood cloaked in viridian up to the snow line.

  “Your world is so green!” I said to Reow, who twitched her tail in a laugh at me and rubbed her body along my shoulder as we stood looking out of the ship’s viewport.

  “It is,” she said. “90 percent of the landmass is covered in triple-canopy jungle. That is why you cannot see any of our cities from orbit. They’re all concealed.”

  “Fitting,” I said, and she twitched her tail again with a purr.

  Beautiful as it was, I didn’t get to see much of it up close, because Reow told me I had to travel from the spaceport to her home in a capsule-like container. I’d never had much of a problem with small spaces (hard to do so, when one is homeless, living hand-to-mouth on some backwater space station somewhere), but I didn’t like the capsule thing at all. It felt too much like sensory deprivation once I’d piled myself inside, and it had closed around me.

  I felt the capsule moving, and after what felt like an eternity (but was probably no more than an hour), we arrived somewhere. A hissing sound heralded the opening of my capsule, and the twilight dimness that passed for Depik light poured in. I blinked, slowly, and tentatively stepped forth out of the capsule into a long, low room furnished in brightly-colored furniture of various heights. I looked aroun
d in curiosity, wondering what this room could be.

  I was immediately attacked by four small, fierce, carnivorous assassins bent on my destruction. One leapt down from somewhere above me and landed on my shoulder, tangling claws painfully in my hair. One twisted through my feet, causing me to overextend and lose my balance. A third sprang from the ground to bury 20 tiny, sharp needles into my side, and the last waited until I had fallen, and then immediately stalked toward my face.

  Before I could do more than raise my hands to try and protect my eyes, I heard Reow’s commanding yowl, and all movement stopped.

  “Kits!” she said, her voice cracking like a whip, “Your speed and aggression was commendable, but you failed the most important test! Do you not see the sigil around this Human’s neck?”

  I risked peeking through my fingers as the last kit, the one who’d attacked my face, sniffed and pawed delicately at the titanium chain around my neck. The sigil fell free from where it had lodged under my chin when I hit, and I heard the tiny Depik draw in a sharp breath.

  “Our sigil, Dama?” he asked in a tiny, piping voice. He wasn’t wearing a translator, of course, but enough of the language had come back to me that I understood him.

  “Indeed, Cunning Blade. That is our sigil. I have brought this Human home to be a companion for you and your brother-kit and your sister-kitas.”

  Sharp, interested meeps of excitement followed, and I slowly lowered my hands and pushed up to a seated position, legs crossed in front of me.

  “Greetings, small hunters,” I said as best I could.

  “It talks!” one of the other kits said, a female, judging from what I could see. I thought she might have been the one who tangled in my hair, but I wasn’t sure.