Chapter Text
Riddick was in his quarters on the Inferno. They were opulent, fit for a king - or a Lord Marshall. The bed was rich and soft, covered with a thick, blood red comforter, and fabric paneling disguised the metal walling of a ship at space. Arranged at varying degrees around the room were pillars displaying statues and artwork; each was a portrait in suffering, each was a picture of pain.
He despised the entire thing.
He sat on the floor, at the foot of the bedroll he’d slept in for the last year, staring absentmindedly out the glass wall in front of him as he tapped the stylus against the handheld vid viewer. Over the journey, the stars had changed: different patterns, different compositions, but he’d never been interested in the sky other than a means of escape, and so the panorama before him meant just as little to him as the scenery in the ship.
He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing slightly. He’d been staring at the viewer for hours now, scrolling through the massive amounts of information the previous Lord Marshall had collected and collated. It was the same task he had engaged in almost every day for the entire journey, beginning as soon as they’d made the first leap beyond the known galaxies, as soon as they’d had to return to more normal speeds in order to begin their search, planet by planet, solar system by solar system.
The sheer amount of documentation on Furya was overwhelming. Oh, he’d known his origins before Aereon had made her mumbo jumbo, hoodoo proclamation, had heard the nuns whispering the words behind their hands in the orphanage, rags tied around his eyes to keep the burning light out. Heard it screamed at him as the priest had tried to flog the devil from him, all the while smelling of stink and perversity and far too much arousal for a man beating a child. But that was all it had been to him. A word, so many meaningless syllables in the face of survival.
To the previous Lord Marshall, though, it had been everything. In his desperate bid to outrun fate, he’d collected libraries worth of information, hundreds of data disks filled with everything he could find on Riddick’s people, from the trivial and mundane (A Furyan State Dinner required four forks on the place setting) to the legends and myths (Furyans believed they were descended from one of the four gods of Hell) to the Scientific (the fact that Riddick’s eyes were the result of a recessive gene - left over from the days before the Furyan’s had conquered the surface - an oddity that showed in 1 of every 100,000 Furyans born).
All that effort, all that death - and in the end, all for nothing. All the genocide and knowledge in the universe hadn’t been able to stand between him and a blade through the brain, hilt held by a Furyan.
After the shock had worn off, Riddick’s initial impulse had been to run, to push himself off that throne and abandon the Furyans to Vaako and the Universe to its fate. He had no interest in saving worlds, no interest in leading men; he’d only come back for Kyra.
For Kyra, for Jack. For the girl who had become a woman when he wasn’t looking, for the girl he had apparently destroyed just be trying to do the right thing for one goddamn time in his life.
He wondered if the nuns had been right, if he was destined to ruin everything he touched.
He dropped the viewer to the floor and threw himself down on his back, starring at the images of Necromonger carnage painted on the ceiling above him. He thought he would have bedded Kyra eventually. It had been some time since he’d taken a woman, and she was the closest he’d come to caring for someone in years.
But Fate had stepped in, the Bitch that wore three faces, and instead she was sitting with the cargo, in a hermetically sealed coffin, looking like she’d only died yesterday instead of over a year in the past. And truthfully, what he’d felt for her had been nothing like the Furyan Hunger, so in the end he probably would have disappointed her again.
Sitting there, in that chair, the Necromongers kneeling at his feet like so much war fodder, his every instinct had screamed at him to get out, to move, to slice a few throats as he went out the door. But actually holding the future of star systems in his hand was a different thing than just contemplating it, and in the end he’d been unable to tip his palm, let it come crashing down and shatter on the tile.
He wondered when that had started, when he’d stopped being unable to let his choices slip off his shoulders as he made tracks to the door. Probably the second he’d killed Johns to prevent him from using Jack as bait, the moment he let Carolyn keep him from abandoning them all to their fate.
Carolyn. Another women to die for him.
He didn’t particularly care about women dying; he’d killed more than his fair share. The familiar, angry bile rose in his throat at the thought of Beamer and he pushed it down out of reflex. He didn’t even mind people dying so that he could live. But someone choosing to die for him? It was an alien concept; it confused him in ways he didn’t like.
The intercom crackled to life. ‘Lord Marshall,’ the disembodied voice was tentative. ‘We’ve found another possibility.’
He snarled, angry at the interruption, and he could almost feel the air freeze. ‘You know the routine. Scan it, analyze it, report. Don’t bother me for possibilities.’
For two months he’d worked; ordered troop withdrawals from occupied territories, ended the practice of forced conversions. The commands had sent shock waves through the Necromonger population - all except for the priests, the small sect that had ‘anointed’ him, using some kind of ancient ritual and rite that had made his skin crawl and the animal want to lash out. They had only exchanged sideways glances and quiet nods before instructing the people to obey.
And once he had survived half a dozen assassination attempts, and put down a dozen insurrections from his under Lords, they had. Surprisingly, the only under Lord who hadn’t challenged him had been Vaako. Instead, he had been the first to offer him his loyalty, the first to offer his life.
But Vaako was a good enough sort, once he got a handle on his bitch bride. Riddick hadn’t been lying when he said she smelled beautiful, but she also smelled treacherous, deceitful and murderous. None of those things particularly bothered him; it was the scent of naked ambition that roiled his stomach, made him turn away from the blatant invitation in those eyes, fiery and defiant, scheming still, even with that thick band of iron around her neck. Her furious screams had filled the halls of Crematoria the day Vaako had soldered it on. Like he said: a good man.
So, his loyalty Riddick had taken. His life he had not. He could recognize an asset when he saw one, and for those first few weeks, Vaako had stood back, watched him, reported to him, advised him. And by the end of the first month, his loyalty had been real. Riddick trusted him at his back as much as he trusted any man; which meant he trusted him with the People, if not with his life.
Riddick trusted no man with that.
The withdrawal from occupied territories had predictably created a power vacuum, and wars had sprung up across the galaxies as opposing parties had rushed to fill it. But at least they were honest wars, fought with honest weapons. Riddick would let the dogs divide the scraps.
Even with the cessation of the previous Lord Marshall’s policies of violent expansion, the Necromongers were still the most powerful force in the system, and the worlds were divided on their new leader. Some feared him. Some loved him.
Some saw him as the same devil in another guise, and they planned to give the devil his due.
The orphanage he’d spent his childhood in had been burned to the ground within the first week, all the occupants still inside. Imam’s widow and child had been attacked as they’d gone to buy food and now the Necromonger nurseries had one more parentless child to raise.
It had only been luck that had kept Kyra’s first burial place from being upended, and only guards had protected her second and third. In the end he had been forced to concede she’d never be safe on these worlds, where she would always be connected and blamed for him, and he’d had her coffin returned, loaded her into this ship and set out to find her a final home, a place where she’d be protected in death as she had never been in life.
He’d left Vaako to manage the natives, taken the man’s promise of fealty or death, and, turning his back, walked into the ship.
Aereon had stood and looked coolly down her nose as scores of Necromonger troops had saluted in ceremony. ‘Running won’t save you, you know. No man escapes his fate.’
He’d turned his lip up in a wordless snarl before sealing the hatch behind him. He made his own destiny.
It’d been a year since they’d dropped out of AltDem, into the uncharted territories; a year of a needle in a haystack search for habitable planets to make Kyra’s home. They’d found dozens, but none had been quite right. There had always been something off, something that had set his teeth on edge. He didn’t know what it was, but he followed the drive to continue looking, the drive to push further. He would know the place when he saw it.
‘Apologies, Lord Marshall,’ the voice broke into his concentration again, not heeding his unsubtle dismissal. ‘But there’s something…different here.’
‘What?’ he roared out.
‘There appear to be -’ the voice stuttered out momentarily before continuing, ‘cities.’
Riddick was out the door and heading to the bridge in seconds. They were far, far out of the the known systems. There should be nothing here; at least nothing of the human variety.
The Necromongers stepped out of his way as he approached the viewscreen. There was a medium sized planet filling it, and the Navigator leaned over and punched a button sequence, causing several areas of the planet to expand and light up.
‘These are places indicative of manmade structures. And not small ones; these are giant cities. Everything points to an advanced civilization. Perhaps we’ve found the AmeriChin expedition?’ Riddick ignored the speculation. There were more important concerns than Earth's mythical lost delegation.
‘Then why haven’t we been stopped? We should have at least been hailed.’ His hackles were rising; no planet would let a ship of this size approach unchallenged, even one as minimally armed as they were.
‘That is the other reason we disturbed you, my Lord.’ The captain of the vessel, a man who had, before his Conversion, led the Armada of a small world, folded his arms in front of his body. ‘Other than vegetation, there doesn’t appear to be any life forms at all. Any. It’s like it has been abandoned by the living.’
The implications of that worked its way down Riddick’s spine and his adrenalin spiked. He had a very, very bad feeling, and the last time he’d ignored his gut, Johns had collared him. He’d just opened his mouth to tell the Captain to get them the hell out of there when there was a loud boom, and the entire ship shuddered. It had the unmistakable feel of being fired on.
‘What the fuck?’ None of the proximity sensors had so much as dinged and he shoved the pilot out of the way in order to flip the viewscreen to the outside visuals. The screen split into sixteen different squares and Riddick hissed.
‘How the goddamn hell did this happen?’ Every square was filled with one or more ships. They were surrounded.
One of the ships glowed red and spit fire, and another tremor rocked the bridge. The lights dimmed and went red. Necromongers jumped into battle mode, manned stations. Riddick grabbed the back of a chair to steady himself as the Navigator punched buttons and babbled. If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have appreciated the fact that there was something that could disturb the emotionless state of his crew.
‘We should have detected them miles out. They can’t have gotten this close! I don’t…how…They must be powered by something other than hydrogen, something not programmed into the system!’ The under Captain had been squinting at the screen, and then pointed to a trail of vapor off one of the ships. ‘Underverse! They’re using a radiated core. It’s like looking at an antiquated history chip.’
Riddick had tuned the buzzing conversation out. He was less interested in what was coming off the ships than what was on the ships themselves. Every one of them looked ancient, beaten; like they had been cobbled together from scraps cannibalized from other vessels. There were odd and out of place lumps and protrusions intermingled with splashes of red paint. He zoomed in on a ship and realized all at once what was strapped on those hulls. That red wasn’t from any paint.
‘Get us out of here NOW!’ he roared. Of course it was too late. They weren’t equipped for this kind of fight; they were an exploratory ship, not a war vessel. Within minutes their defenses were gone. Minutes after that, an iron harpoon went screeching through the engine, and they lost right side control.
The Inferno listed, creaked, and then began to fall.
* * * * * * * * *
There was chaos; afterward, Riddick would remember that. Flickers of light, loss of power, red glows from emergency runners. Screams and the smell of fear. Turned out Necromongers could feel pain after all. Running, strapping in; at some point in the seconds before the crash, Riddick found himself at the co-pilots chair, pulling up hard on the rudders.
Atmosphere…fire…earth approaching too quickly…impact.
One heartbeat…two heartbeats…
With a gasp he roared back into consciousness. The air was too silent around him, like a canon had exploded beside his ears. He unstrapped himself and pushed cautiously to his feet, heard the small sounds of others doing the same. He stumbled his way out of the cockpit and into the topsy turvy wreck of the ship, fumbling toward the cargo bay.
There was the sudden noise of metal screeching and a portion of the ceiling ripped away. A man - or what had once been a man - dropped down in front of him, face studded and torn, grinning fiercely as he licked blood stained lips and hefted an ax. A dozen more like him followed behind, and somewhere to the back of the ship, Riddick heard the screaming begin.
He ducked to avoid the swing of the blade before pulling his shiv and taking off at a run. He had to get to Kyra before they did.