Masala's eyes flew open, confusion shining in them as she gazed out at the curve of the planet before her. Then she remembered. Home. She was finally headed home after so much time away. She sat forward, eyes scanning the instruments for her location. Yes, this was the right place, the right coordinates. All she had to do now was take her ship downward, through the atmosphere and land. She studied the planet before her, a tendril of doubt and worry snaking into her thoughts. She had been away a long time. Things had undoubtedly changed. The Necros had been here she had heard, slaughtered her people, destroyed her world.
And yet the Seer had called her home. It was five years ago when she started having the visions again. She tried to resist, but the call was too strong. She knew she must answer, must heed the call to return to the world she had been sent away from by that same Seer. She sighed and ran a hand over the rows of braids keeping her hair back from her face. There had been something else in those visions too, or rather someone else. She closed her eyes and tried to recall who else had been there, but it would not come. She only had the impression of silvery double moons hanging in a dark sky.
She shook her head as if to clear the thoughts and remembered visions clouding her mind. Her hands began moving over the controls, angling the ship to enter the atmosphere, programming in coordinates of the city where she once lived. The canopy darkened as the entry burn lit up the small ship. She waited until the autopilot leveled her out in the true atmosphere then resumed manual control.
There was no communication challenging her right to be there. She had not truly expected one but had hoped. She slowed her ship's speed and dropped altitude to a point to where she could see the surface. The planet itself seemed to have recovered from the Necros brutal attack even if the people had not. The ship skimmed several meters above a vast ocean then came to major land mass in the southern hemisphere. Her city was not far from its western shore.
The horror overcame her as she saw the remnants of what had been Etna, the capital city which had once teemed with life. Her fists clenched on the controls. There was one structure that seemed to remain and she aimed her craft for it. As she drew closer she saw that it was a mausoleum. She flew over it and circled, her eyes seeing the hundreds of thousands of graves. She released a shuddering breath and altered her course once more, this time towards what had been the northern limits of the city.
As she passed over the streets and decrepit buildings, she recalled how it had looked in her youth, before she had been sent away. She still remembered vividly the place she had called home. The vibrant, bustling marketplace that butted up against the spaceport and once offered goods and entertainment to travelers from across the universe but now lay silent and empty. The circular depressions where Training Centres had been, where all Furyans learned their craft from the time they could walk. The Guild Halls of the Armors and Weapons Smiths also lay in ruins, the structures obliterated. The places that had been homes were only slightly less damaged, only because their profiles were lower. Other than the mausoleum, not a single whole building could be seen.
Her chest felt tight, and her eyes stung. A deep aching, pain never before felt grew in her breast. Drawing breath was difficult. She triggered the autopilot once more and leaned back in the seat, trying to fathom the utter loss of everything she had known. It was not that she had not seen the news vids, but it had been so long ago she had not realized the extent of the destruction. It was markedly different when it was your own home world instead of someone else's. Furyans laid waste to other places. It was what they did, what they had been engineered for, to be the soldiers, to fight the battles that others could not or would not. They were not on the receiving end, and yet, here before her was absolute proof that it had happened to them.
The ship touched down at the coordinates she had fed it and began the engine shut down. It pinged at her, and she automatically entered the commands to display the status messages from the preprogrammed landing routines. She watched the data as it scrolled across the screen, everything reporting green, no issues found. She registered the information absently, still staring out the cockpit window at what had once been her home.
Finally rousing herself, she swiveled the piloting chair about and pushed to her feet. Two steps took her into the largest part of her small ship. She stretched and limbered up, checking the seat of each one of her blades, both hidden and not, as she did so. Next she adjusted the low slung quick draw hip holsters that held her twin blasters. Then she opened a long narrow compartment and pulled a disassembled long barreled rifle from it along with a bandolier of rounds. It took no more than a minute for the rifle to be reassembled and slung across her back.
Another two steps aft and she was at the hatch and palming it open. She took a deep breath before walking down the ramp and setting foot on the planet she had not seen in more than thirty years, Furya. She half expected another vision or a feeling, something, but there was nothing but the sun and the wind. Any animals that might have been present had been frightened into silence by her ship's arrival.
She walked out from the ship a ways, her boots crunching on the hard ground, eyes scanning the surrounding area. Her destination was the remains of a house about fifteen meters away. Even though it was no longer visibly marked, she followed the gently winding path to where the front door had once stood and reverently stepped over the threshold. The old stone hearth that had been the centerpiece of her family home seemed nothing more than a mound of rocks surrounded by tall weeds.
Within the week, the area that had been the main room was cleared of overgrowth and the hearth was back in working order. She had located nearby avian nests and eggs as well as taken down some small game. The garden, though untended, had somewhat survived, offering up edible ground roots and herbs. In another stroke of good fortune, the low water pump only needed a bit of grease, both motor and elbow, before it began working.
She had a stew cooking over a fire in the hearth when she saw what she thought at first was a shooting star. The supposed meteor banked in the sky then flew over her head. She watched it go by and fly over the same cemetery she had upon arrival. The other craft came back and circled her location before landing a distance away. She was set and peering through the scope of her rifle at the hatch of the ship as it opened.
Riddick had left the Necros behind to tear themselves apart with internal power struggles. He wanted no part of it and needed no army. He was on his own again, alone, the way he preferred it. Imam and Kyra were both dead, and so any ties or pull he might have felt to 'rejoin the human race', as Carolyn had put it, were gone. Aereon had lifted the bounty on him by paying it to him. Her reasoning was that he had, essentially, brought himself in. He was not about to turn down a mil-five in credits. That would take a special kind of stupid or noble, and he was neither of those things. It afforded him a decent ship and the ability to outfit it as he saw fit as well as buy a registry not attached to anything directly linked to him. That should throw off any mercs looking for the big pay day off his neck, at least for a bit. There were still slams offering bounties on him.
Aereon and the others on Helion Prime had asked him to stay, to help rebuild their army. He had laughed at that, a deep booming laugh. It was hard to say which had been more amusing, the offer or the fact they thought he would actually accept it. He declined, in no uncertain terms, "Fuck that."
He stayed around long enough to give Kyra a proper send off and get his ship outfitted. Then he segued into anonymity, at least as much as a man like him could. He maintained his relative obscurity in comfort for awhile. Then the visions and the woman in them returned, calling him home she said.
She approached him from out of the same twilight graveyard as before. "You have avenged our people. Now we need to rebuild our world. Come home to Furya. Find the Blade of Furya. The Blade will guide you. Furya will be great once again."
He sat staring out the view screen for a long time after the vision faded. He let out a growl and entered the coordinates for Furya. It was not like he had anything better to do. He put himself into cryo for the journey and woke to the sight of a planet he had no recollection of ever being on although he did have an odd sense of déjà vu.
He took the craft down into the atmosphere at a small angle and moderate speed. This gave him time to observe the topography below, his keen eyes and intellect noting everything. It would have been nice if the woman in the vision had given him coordinates or a starting point smaller than an entire planet.
His scanners picked up the presence of another ship. He changed directions for an intersecting vector. The instrumentation showed it as a small single person craft with no heat signature from the engines. He gave it only a cursory glance as a sight ahead of him caught his attention. It was the only standing structure visible. During the fly by he saw that it was mostly undamaged and stood in the center of an enormous graveyard, the one from the visions.
He turned his ship around and headed back to where he had spotted the other ship. He circled the location once, taking note of the heat signatures. One was man size and moving about. The other was stationary and hotter, possibly a fire. He landed downwind and half a click away. As he opened the hatch, the wind brought him the scent of cooking food, gunpowder, machine oil, leather and sweat. He turned into the wind and caught the glint of light of a reflective surface. He raised his arms in question.
The person stood from their vantage point, jumped to the ground and began walking towards him. He observed for a moment before walking out to meet what had to be a woman. Most men did not move like that. And he had yet to see a man shaped that way. Still, she moved with the air of one confident they could handle any and all comers.
The reflection had to have come from the weapon slung over her shoulder. He counted two more guns and a half-dozen blades and was certain there were more unseen. Her clothing was not all that different from his, utilitarian and dark. Her hair was woven into braids much like the woman in the vision but it was not her. This woman had darker skin and hair. She was taller and more heavily muscled.
