by Kacey Ezell
“It looks a lot like a Sirra’Kan.”
“We thought so, too, when we met them,” Susa said. “Panthera Tigris is a member of family Felidae, which is one of the most prolific families on Earth.”
The picture of the solitary predator blinked out, replaced by a collage of several animals. Large, small, shaggy, and sleek, they all carried an unmistakable family resemblance, and every one was unmistakably a predator. After a moment, Susa tapped the interface again and the pictures began to wink out of existence one by one, until only a solitary photograph remained.
“This,” Susa said, tapping the interface to zoom in on the remaining specimen, “Felis catus, the most successful feline species on Earth. They live on all continents, including Antarctica, and even on ships at sea. They are the domestic cat.”
“Ahhh,” Death said, her ears perking up in interest. “These are your pets.”
“Yes, some of them. But ‘domestic’ is something of a misnomer, because a statistically significant percentage of their worldwide population is feral or semi-feral. In other words, for the most part, cats can take us or leave us.”
Death turned to look away from the screen and study Susa’s face. Her calm expression seemed normal, but something in her voice had changed.
“We would never leave you, Susa,” Death said, not really sure why she did. “You are a part of us.”
“I know that, sweetling,” Susa replied and caressed Death’s ears. “And I would never leave you. Bonds of love cannot be broken.”
Memory stabbed through Death like a blade. She gasped and felt her ears flatten in sudden misery.
“Can they not?” she whispered.
“No,” Susa said, her voice taking on a stern note. She let go of the view screen interface to cup Death’s face in her hands and stroke her ears. “They cannot. Not when the love is real, Death. Not when it is true and strong and returned.”
“My love was real,” Death’s voice was small and mewling as she spoke. She hated it, but she couldn’t seem to help it.
“I know, kita. And he was always undeserving of it. But you are strong, and not alone. And you will survive this and return stronger than ever. What doesn’t kill you—”
“Just pisses me off,” Death finished in a whisper. It had been a joke between them, a corruption of one of Susa’s Human proverbs. It had always made Susa laugh in the past, but she wasn’t laughing now. Instead, she just nodded.
“That’s right. The domestic cat is not the largest or the most powerful of the felines on Earth, but they’re the most successful because they’re smart enough to ally with humanity. So are you, sweet Death. You pretend to be my cat, and we’ll blend in long enough to get your litter born. Then, when they are grown enough, we will take all of that anger, that ‘pissed off-ness,’ and we will find those who have hurt our family…and the one who hurt you. And we will see to it that they will never, ever harm our family again.”
“Yes,” Death whispered. “Yes, we will.”
* * *
Humans were disgusting.
At least, that was Death’s first impression.
The shuttle touched down on a primitive landing surface that looked as if it were held together with inert wire and scrap metal, but it seemed to do the trick. In her role as Susa’s animal companion, Death made the journey inside a closed box whose sides were made of a mesh fabric. It wasn’t ideal, and seemed a lot like a cage, but Death knew how to swallow insult and embrace her cover identity. She wouldn’t be much of a Hunter if she didn’t.
So, she curled inside the carrier and watched through the mesh as Susa carried her past rows of blocky buildings stretching up to a steel-grey sky. The air felt close and wet, but lacked the healthy green scent of home. Throngs of Humans streamed this way and that. Death had seen them before, of course, but never so many in such a small area. It was a bit overwhelming, especially when she considered that each one of these beings was an individual thinker with their own will and thoughts. Typically, when she’d encountered a species willing to live packed in such close quarters, they tended to be non-predatory and herd like. Some even had a fully-fledged hive mind construct. But Humans were different. They had the numbers, but they also had their individuality. That made them interesting…and possibly dangerous.
Despite herself, despite everything, Death slow blinked a smile and began to relax. She could understand a dangerous creature. She was one.
Susa walked out to an area where grimy, primitive-looking machines rolled up on inflated tires and excreted clouds of noxious gasses out the back. The stench was overwhelming and made Death’s eyes water. She shunted some of her attention away from her baryonic senses, just enough to blunt the reek of the vehicle’s fumes, and dialed in to her quintessence field to compensate. She didn’t bend the light, but it made it easier to function while being effectively nose-blinded.
“Where to?” the vehicle’s driver asked as they approached one. He stuck his head out the window and grinned at Susa in an aggressive manner. Susa’s smiles had always been sweet and love-filled, but Death quickly saw how the Human bearing of teeth could have other, more sinister overtones.
“Downtown.”
“You got cash?”
“I’ve credits,” Susa said pleasantly. The driver’s eyebrows went up, and his leer deepened. Susa smiled. “I’ve also got an energy pistol and a very large knife. As well as off world weapons you wouldn’t recognize. I advise you to deal straight with me, and I’ll do the same with you, got it?”
The leer faded into a frown, then a snarl.
“You’re a bitch.”
“Perhaps, but I’m a busy one. Will you be taking me to my destination, or shall we escalate our confrontation further?”
“A full credit.”
“Done,” Susa said without hesitation, despite the outrageous price. “Go now, please.”
She handed over the tiny chit, and as soon as the driver had it in his dirty fingers, the vehicle lurched into motion. Death’s carrier slipped backward and bumped up against the upholstery, jarring her so that she nearly lost her footing.
“He is unpleasant,” Death said, speaking in her native tongue. “I would like to kill him.”
“That would draw too much attention,” Susa murmured. Death saw the driver’s eyes in the mirror ahead flick up at them.
“He is listening.”
“Probably, but I think it’s fine. Humans sometimes talk to their cats. He probably thinks that I’m one of those.”
“Does he understand our language?”
“Highly doubtful,” Susa said with a smile. “As far as I know, I’m the only one who ever studied it, and you remember how well I spoke when I first came to you.”
“Like a lisping kitten with a damaged brain,” Death said, blinking slowly at the fond memory. She sighed and laid herself down in the carrier. “Very well, then. I will suffer his rudeness. I would like to kill him, though, so do but say the word and it is done.”
“I will keep that in mind, Little Dama.”
Death shoved down the pain that title brought and slow blinked at Susa once more. She then turned her attention to looking out the grimy window at the cityscape. More buildings stacked one on top of the other loomed over the streets like the trees back home. Earth seemed to have cultivated her own artificial canopy built by the hands of her Human children.
The view shifted several times as the carrier slid and skidded with the driver’s abrupt changes of direction as they careened through the streets. Though sound, like scent, was somewhat muted by Death’s shunting of the baryonic inputs, she could hear a kind of mechanical wailing sound that seemed to coincide with the driver’s maneuvering. Someone protesting, perhaps, as he aggressively threaded through the streets and stacked concrete?
Finally, they lurched to a stop. Death felt the carrier skid and nearly fall to the grimy floor of the vehicle. Susa shot out a hand and caught her at the last minute, for which Death let out a grateful mrrow.
&n
bsp; “Thank you,” Susa said as she opened the vehicle’s door with a thick ker-chunk sound. The driver grunted something unintelligible to Death’s ears, and Susa let out a sigh. Then she grabbed the carrier’s top handle and stepped out into the stinking air once again.
“Are all Humans that unpleasant?” Death asked.
“No,” Susa said. “We run the gamut. You’re just more likely to find the unpleasant ones in densely packed territory like this.”
“That’s right. Individuals. Law of averages. Etc.”
“Exactly. Let us hope that these next ones are rather more agreeable.”
“Indeed. Who are they, exactly?”
“They,” Susa said as she started walking toward an unassuming building, “are The Golden Horde.”
* * *
Wrapped in her quintessence field, Flame took advantage of the chance to evaluate each of the Peacemaker contractors and fighters Tamir interacted with on their way from their dock to the level she usually worked from. Or perhaps had worked from—given that Hrusha had hired her, it was possible that Tamir wouldn’t work on Capitol for much longer. Yet again, Flame wondered who would take the Peacemaker and Governor contracts with Reow and Hrusha so messily dead, and once more she filed the thought away as unhelpful. No matter who took those contracts, Flame wouldn’t be able to trust them, and it seemed impossible that either newly-elevated Hunter would work with someone from an interdicted clan.
Since thinking of events on Khatash served no use, Flame kept her focus on the individuals of various species Tamir did—or pointedly didn’t—speak to along the way. Fighting-shape, most of them, though there were some scurriers as well, moving to complete tasks rather than handle other bodies.
“Dek!” the Human called, with apparent affection. “I didn’t know you were back on site.”
Another Human, this one with a metal arm, picked up his pace to greet her. “Closed out my bounty in record time. Do you know that idiot had the nerve to post up two rocks away from the station he tried to blow up? Made it too easy, and now they’ll send me on some backass quadrant dusting to find some mass-swindling yahoo, and I won’t have a decent beer for three years.”
“Yeah, except you’ll bring enough beer to last you, but otherwise…” she laughed with him for a few seconds, then twisted the hand closer to Flame, loosening her wrist. Flame noted it as another tell of the woman’s, an easing of tension before she said something she didn’t especially want to. “You hear anything?”
“Uh, about Hrusha getting murdered? Or where you’re getting assigned? You don’t want the next killer kitty to keep you on your toes?”
Tamir’s spitting noise answered too quickly to be a show for Flame’s benefit. Flame studied the male anew, paying closer attention to his pulse and all the weak little joints and folds of skin that opened so easily under a Hunter’s claws.
“Unless you have the balls to say it in front of a Depik, don’t say it at all, dumbass. I mean, say it to one who’s not in the best mood, and it’ll also be the day you get to taste your own colon, but, your choice. You hear anything about me, is my question. I’m not getting involved in any Depik contract mess.”
The edge of Flame’s tail twitched in amusement. Such a simple tactic, saying the opposite of one’s intentions. How refreshing, when simplicity worked.
“Nah. I only got back two nights ago, and all anyone’s talking about is the explosion, when that level will be repaired, how far around they have to go to be sure Pelasivet of Gonorrhea or whatever gets his afternoon drug fix. You know the drill—speculation and gossip and angling to get better assignments.”
“Shit. I better still get paid for this last trip I did for Hrusha. Who’s taking point on the investigation? They’ll probably know who I need to see about credits.”
“Diaden, the Cemarap aide. You know the one, all wavy flappy edges and smart investing tips?”
Flame took her eyes off his jugular to watch the trickle of other bodies passing them, noting which ones took a bit too much notice of Tamir along the way. She hadn’t killed a Cemara, so her study of them had been brief. Blade could likely have told her the highlights of their current governing state, but she remembered they were hugely complex organisms that looked like a Human-sized single-cell paramecium. Lots of moving little globules on the inside, and countless long, sensitive strands all around their outside, digit-like in their dexterity. She remembered thinking shaving one would disorient it enough that their famed calculative powers would flounder, making them easy to kill. Unlikely that she’d have to kill this one, but at least she remembered the important parts.
“Diaden. He really loves poker, right, always gambling and then lecturing people on their cards after he wins?”
Dek nodded, glancing away as a group of loud Oogar poured out of the nearest lift, purple fur momentarily taking up all of the air.
“Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Dek—meet you for a beer before you ship out?”
“Better—you still owe me three from Piquaw.”
“You got that flipped, skinsack. But I’ll buy you one if Diaden gets me paid, then you buy the next five.”
“Inflation, huh? Picking up some bad habits out there on the run, Tam-a-lou.”
“Six then, for the shitty nickname,” she threw that over her shoulder, already moving for the still open lift. Flame cast another considering glance at him before following, wishing she could afford to drag her smallest claw against his leg as she passed, for that kitty comment. That Human needed to remember how very fragile his species were.
On the lift she brushed Tamir’s arm to let the Human know she was still there, then sat between the back of Tamir’s legs and the lift’s wall, to keep from weaving around if too many other bodies got on board. Del would find that hilarious, but Flame had always valued stillness. Besides, it gave her a moment to center herself. Which was useful, given that she couldn’t just attack the big glob they were about to see. Flame realized she’d been a hair too ready to split Dek down the middle when she didn’t like what he said. Not something that would serve her well with the Cemarap.
* * *
“I don’t know what else to tell you,” Diaden’s voice box snapped for the third time, his furry cilia waving infuriated patterns that the voice box interpreted into tone. “Peacemaker Hrusha’s records were not clear, and there are still some we haven’t unlocked. Nothing we have on record justifies payment.”
“And I’m telling you that I was sent on a job, I did a job, and now I get paid. You’ve worked with the Peacemakers long enough, you know how this works.”
“And whose account should I pay you from, bounty hunter? The Peacemaker account that’s locked until a new Depik Peacemaker is installed? Hrusha’s account that’s been transferred back to her clan? Maybe Reow’s, now that all her clan’s assets have been seized and reallocated to some jungle cave, for all I know?”
“I don’t give a shit, investigator. I don’t know what else to tell you. I did my work. Pay me. Isn’t that why you were put in charge?”
“I was put in charge because Governor Kelket is angry about the death of her friend, and wanted someone she could trust!” The throb of frustration in the Cemarap’s tone perked Flame’s ear. She leaned closer to his curved bubble of a chair, hoping for more unguarded disclosures.
“I was put in charge because all sense has left Khatash, and if the Depik are killing each other right out in the open now, we have no idea what else they might get up to, and we can’t afford to offend a race that is much more mercenary than your own, so don’t think you can intimidate me.”
Tamir took a deep breath, making such a show of it that Diaden moved back, with the instinctive distrust of anything that had to work so hard to absorb air. She visibly relaxed, making that so obvious Flame realized the Human was over-exaggerating her body language in the hopes that even a large blob could read it.
“I am not trying to intimidate you, Diaden,” Tamir said, leaning on the table between them and speakin
g in a soft, almost lilting tone. “I know you’re very well connected, or you wouldn’t be in charge of such an important investigation. I am tired, and cranky, and would like to be paid and reassigned so that I may continue to get paid, but I know none of that is your fault.” She varied the pitch of her voice, calmer, more convincing.
“Given how much time you’ve spent on this investigation, is there anything you might be able to tell me about what Hrusha did or her meetings in the time between her sending me and when she…died? Perhaps I can find someone who can corroborate the job she sent me on, so my account can be settled, and I can see about taking on some other office’s work? You are the expert here, and I need your help.” She spread her hands, sitting back in her chair, inviting his expertise.
The flattery and vulnerability mollified the Cemarap, judging by the way his cilia slowed around the top half of his body.
“I can’t share any files with you,” he said, shifting to a more opaque color and obscuring the churning motion of his inner mechanisms. “But let me look through them and see if anything catches my eye.”
Flame had taken her perch on the table for comfort and convenience, but at this she leapt lightly to the top frame of his chair. She opened the pouch belted to her hip to pull out her recorder, and leaned forward to better examine what Diaden was opening. As he toggled through files and notes, she scanned each. Nothing had been written in a legible language, but the recorder would get it back to the ship for translation. It would take more time, but she was satisfied to have at least something from this interminable meeting.
“Beyond Governor Kelket, she met with Peacemaker Essey from the Cochkala and Governor Griveserk of the Zuparti several times while you were gone, and you know they won’t recall anything. You can talk to Griveserk’s aide Karvoch, since he’s still on station and has no role in the investigation. Maybe he has something. We both know neither a Peacemaker nor a Governor are going to remember some passing talk about a bounty hunter’s schedule. Otherwise you’re on hold like everything else for the Depik Peacemaker office, until everything’s settled.”