CHAPTER ONE
A violent jarring motion woke Kylie from a sleep plagued by nightmares. She had dreamt again of him. Despite the fact she had never even seen the criminal known as Richard B. Riddick, let alone met him, she felt she knew him all too well.
Whether she was awake or asleep, he haunted her thoughts. After all, it was Riddick who was responsible for the disappearance of her sister, Kyra. Never mind that until four years ago, she hadn't even known her sister existed. But the knowledge that she had a twin sister who had been sent away at birth had irrevocably altered her life.
She had spent the past four years retracing Kyra's footsteps, trying to glean some knowledge of her sister's whereabouts. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had once gone by the name of Jack, and had traveled in the company of Riddick. Until he abandoned her, that is. Left her alone in a galaxy fraught with danger.
Kylie had heard the rumors; her sister had run away to join up with a group of ruthless mercenaries. Now she was determined to find her and bring her home to Axion, where she belonged. Where she would claim her birthright as the monarch's younger daughter.
As the drugging effects of cryo-sleep slowly loosened its grasp on her brain, Kylie became aware of a strident alarm and brilliant red strobe lights that pierced the darkness around her. She was lying in a cryo-chamber, wearing only a thin sleep suit that covered her limbs like a slick silver membrane.
It was then she remembered; she was aboard the Dauntless, a ship that had been chartered to transport herself and two other dignitaries to the planet Helion Minor. As she struggled to come fully awake, she realized the ship's crisis alert system had been activated.
Kylie fumbled for the button beneath her fingers and finding it, pushed hard. Immediately, the protective glass enclosure that surrounded her slid open. She sat up, groaning at the unaccustomed stiffness of her limbs. Without the buffering cocoon of glass, the noise of the alarm was deafening.
Kylie swung her legs to the ground and as the ship lurched sideways, gasped and flung out a hand to brace herself. Except for the pulsating red warning lights that punctuated the blackness around her, the ship was dark.
She stumbled her way along the narrow passageway, groping for handholds as the ship bucked and plunged beneath her. She reached the next sleeping pod and searched for the release button on the control panel. The glass enclosure slid open and an interior light revealed the chamber's grisly contents.
Kylie recoiled in horror.
The body of the Vice Regent was shriveled and dehydrated almost beyond recognition, and with a sense of shock Kylie realized there had been an air leak in the pod's ventilation system. She guessed the Vice Regent had been dead for most of the two months they had been in transit.
Stifling a sob, Kylie stumbled on to the next pod and pressed the release. The enclosure slid back and the interior light came on, revealing the smooth, unblemished features of the pilot. In sleep, she looked impossibly young; incapable of having enough years to have acquired the reputation of being one of the best pilots in the known galaxies.
Captain Shona Terran blinked and came awake, staring up at Kylie in confusion. Then, as comprehension slowly came over her and she became aware of the strident alarm and strobe lights, she gasped and sat up.
"What's happening?"
The ship pitched violently, nearly throwing the pilot from the sleeping pod. Kylie grasped her shoulders, steadying her. "I'm not sure. I woke up to the alarms going off. Thank God you're alive; the Vice Regent is dead."
"What?"
"It looks like his air ventilation system was compromised."
Captain Terran swung her legs out of the sleeping pod to the floor. She wore a similar suit to Kylie's, and it clung to her slender form like a second skin. Without pausing, she raced down the corridor toward the cockpit, arms outflung to steady herself.
"Check the Chancellor," she called back over her shoulder to Kylie.
Kylie had almost reached the next sleeping pod when the ship rolled steeply to the left, pitching her into the wall. She lost her balance and fell heavily to the floor, sprawling gracelessly in the middle of the aisle. Pushing herself to her feet, she crawled her way to the next pod, trying to ignore the sharp fear that was rising within her.
The Dauntless was one of the newest models in a series of small, highly intelligent intergalactic transporters; an elite craft capable of traversing light years with only a minimum of human intervention. That it should now be in distress could only mean a worst case scenario that Kylie didn't want to think about.
She reached the next sleeping pod and released the chamber, gratified when the person inside moaned softly and stirred. It was the Chancellor, a wizened man who had been in the service of the Regent for longer than Kylie had been alive. He, along with the dead Vice Regent, had been part of a diplomatic envoy to Helion Minor to negotiate trade terms with the planet.
It was to be a major coup for their home planet of Axion to finally have an alternate source for acquiring the cobalt and titanium they needed to sustain their technology. As heiress to the Axion monarchy, Kylie would accompany the dignitaries to Helion Minor as a gesture of good faith. She hadn't been keen on the idea, but when she'd heard rumors that Kyra and her pack of bounty hunters had been spotted on the planet, she had swiftly changed her mind. Now she thought she'd gladly remain on Helion Minor if they could just reach it intact.
"Lord Chancellor," she called, scrambling to her knees beside the old man's sleeping pod. "Our ship is in distress. You must come with me to the forward cabin. Can you walk?"
The old man was sitting up in his pod, blinking at his surroundings in confusion. "Are we there? Have we arrived? Why is the atmosphere so turbulent?" He gave a hoarse cry as the ship bucked violently. "What is happening?"
"I don't know," Kylie replied, "but it's not safe for you to remain here. We must secure ourselves in the forward cabin."
She slid an arm around the man's frail shoulders and together they made their way down the corridor. After ensuring the Chancellor was zipped into a survival suit and strapped into a seat, Kylie staggered toward the cockpit.
Captain Terran had strapped herself into the pilot's seat and was frantically punching coordinates and commands into the ship's control panel. In front of them, nearly filling the entire window, was a planet that was rapidly growing larger as the Dauntless hurtled toward it. The planet was almost completely swathed in a shroud of blue-white clouds that obscured the surface.
"What's happening?" Kylie gasped, clutching the overhead hand grips to maintain her balance.
"We've been struck by something; a comet, I think. We have a hull breach. Damned thing punched a hole in our rear stabilizer and I can't bring the ship back to an even trajectory. Now we're being sucked toward this planet--I've never encountered such a strong gravity pull before!"
"Can we survive reentry?"
The ship began to shudder, and behind her, Kylie heard a deep groaning as part of the craft protested the enormous forces exerted on its outer shell.
The ship's automated command center began to drone their coordinates in an eerily androgenous voice, lacking any inflection or emotion. "Approaching planet Fresion. Estimated time to impact: 180 seconds. Shutting down rocket boosters. Implementing crash sequence."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," growled Captain Terran, grasping the control stick and hauling back on it . "C'mon, you bitch! Steady!" She threw a fierce glance back at Kylie. "Strap yourself in, Your Highness. This is going to be a nasty landing!"
The ship shuddered once more, and suddenly they were engulfed in a blanket of shooting flames as they entered the planet's atmosphere. Stumbling back toward the cabin, Kylie flung herself into the empty seat across the aisle from the Chancellor and punched a button that brought a heavily padded harness down over her torso, effectively trapping her into the seat.
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the violent rattling of the ship, certain the craft would fly apart under the pressure of their reentry. She heard the captain give a hoarse cry, but of fear or frustration, she couldn't tell.
She opened her eyes just in time to see the cloud banks that obscured the planet from view break away before their hurtling descent. The surface of the planet rushed up to meet them, and in the instant before everything went black, Kylie saw nothing but the white, frozen wasteland that was Fresion, and knew they were doomed.