Title: Deus Ex Memoria

Author: LadyElaine

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of "Pitch Black" belong to USA Films and David Twohy. Ishmael and other original characters are mine.

Rating: R for language and violence

Summary: Fifty years after the events of "Second Sight", Jack and her twin sons receive unexpected visitors.

Note: I have a terrible weakness for well-crafted original characters. On that note, Jules and Ardath--the twins are for you.





Deus Ex Memoria



Prologue

Ishmael sunk its talons into the soft, moist earth above Kat's grave.

It had been three decades since the colony ship from Janus had landed on the unsettled world known only as TH11X38; they had named it Darklin, and they called it home. Now Ishmael could look forward to a month in faster- than-light time, a jump of twenty years in real time, as its people once again left their home to search. Thirty years in this new place: for Kat, it had been thirty years of bearing children to Moshe Ibrahim--Moses--her chosen mate. The marriage had been a practical one, a union only for the sake of offspring.

The knowledge that Kat had died worn out and in pain stirred a long-ago memory in Kat's old companion. Dark wings stirred in Ishmael's soul, whispering of agony and anger and fearful challenges. Its physical wings rustled against the remembered torture of being ruined by its older opponent. Three decades had gone by on Darklin; how many years since Ishmael had last thought on that ancient battle?

The soil around its talons was cold and damp. Even if it had meant to dig Kat's body up, Ishmael wouldn't expect to find anything. The deep, black jungles of Darklin were always hungry.



I. Eclipse

It was Jack who found him--or, rather, found his body. He had wandered down from the pueblo sometime in the middle of the night; the bruises decorating his skin said he'd tumbled a good part of the way. Riddick was collapsed against the cliff face, stuffed behind a stone. Flecks of spittle glistened on his lips and chin. The rock wall bore a crimson stain from where Riddick had been repeatedly thumping his head against it for who knew how long. Jack barely even glanced at the matching crimson wound on his scalp--she'd seen more than enough of his blood in the years they'd been together.

It took three hours for her to drag his body all the way back up to their house. It took much longer for her to realize that he was never coming home. She never told anyone what had happened, but before long, the whole pueblo knew that Richard B. Riddick was gone. She was happy to let the rest of the galaxy remain in ignorance, to let them search the hundred worlds for a man they would never find.

Jack didn't mind the stories that quickly sprang up around her family. Like greenery after the rains, the rumors were gone almost as soon as they'd appeared, only to be replaced with the dry silence no one wanted to break. His absence was almost as tangible as his presence had been. Afterwards, the water from the Riddick family condensers was said to be bitter, and few would trade for it.

* * *

"...And Marko Lihari is still bitching that his shipment was three weeks late."

"So he's refusing to pay again?" Jack watched her son nod, an angry glint in his eyes. "If that son of a bitch thinks he can use his family name on me, he's got a surprise coming. We've got to remind him just exactly what his reputation means around here." She typed a set of numbers into the calculator and cursed silently. The boys didn't need to know just yet how badly they needed that Lihari money. She'd have to find a way around this before Reg got back from Al-Walid City; she was tired of the boys complaining about her supporting too many other ventures on Eclipse.

"You don't look so good, Mom."

"Don't start with me, Martin."

"When Reg gets back--"

"I said don't start." She rose to her feet, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Put a hold on our Lihari accounts. They don't see a single bolt more of glow silk till they pay up." Jack smiled tiredly at her son. The twins looked so much like their father. "And make me up a plate, please. I'm eating downstairs tonight." Too much like their father.

* * *

The wind always came in from the southeast, as if the planet were heaving a perpetual sigh. The day Reg came home, though, the constant breeze had stopped. Anyone who'd lived long enough on the desert planet knew what the still air promised.

Eclipse.

It never failed to give Jack the jitters. She had always tried to be off planet with her family when the darkness came, even before Riddick was gone. This time would be different.

The door burst open as though the silent wind had roared up into a gale. The man who stepped in could have been Riddick himself, twenty or thirty years younger--except that close-cropped dark hair grew from a head that should have been shaven clean; except that the chest was broader to accommodate lungs built to bleed every molecule of oxygen from the thin air; except that fifty years, real time, had passed since he last stood next to his father. Playing tricks with relativity had become a family tradition. His mirror image looked up from the table and grinned.

"Where's Mom?"

Jack came in from the other door. "Mom's been turning off the condensers so they won't overload once the rains start," she said. When Martin and Reg had grown too old to put up with maternal affection, she'd stopped giving them the hugs and kisses she'd once showered on them. Somewhere along the line, though, she had missed the fact that they'd gotten old enough to want that affection again. "You're late. Shut the door." She never liked that shade of blood the sky turned just before the third sun was hidden.

"There's a delegation coming in from Darklin," Reg said.

"When?"

"Now. And they're not coming through Al-Walid spaceport."