"Hey Pete, you seen Bobby?" Derek Townsend asked and Pete the med tech shook his head.
"Nope, not for a few days now." He said and Derek walked away muttering thanks. He spotted Malcolm and went to him.
"Malcolm, you seen Bobby?"
"Yeah, main deck working on some Navigation Charts." Malcolm said and Derek clapped him on the shoulder.
"Thanks man." He said.
"No problem." Malcolm replied and Derek ran off for the main deck, pressing a button the wall consul the steel door slid back and he winced at the music.
"When I'm alone, I feel so much better. And when I'm around you and I don't feel. Together, it doesn't feel right at all. Together, together we've built a wall. Together, holding hands we'll fall..." Damn Avril Lavigne, Bobby loved that CD.
Roberta (Bobby) Townsend sang along the songs of her incredibly old CD. It had come out before her father was even born.
"Volume minimum!" she heard her father bark and winced slightly. "Bobby will you try not to contaminate the air with this retched music?"
"I love this CD daddy. Would you prefer Audioslave? Music archives!" she said spinning the chair around to face him. "Audioslave, self-titled, Cochise!" she said and Chris Cornell's raspy voice the room.
"I've been watching, while you've been coughing. I've been drinking life, while you've been nauseous. And so I drink to life, while you kill yourself..."
"CD off!" Derek barked and the music abruptly stopped, he sighed looking at his twenty-five year old daughter in exasperation. "I need to talk to you Bobby."
"About?"
"We're getting a D-Man at next port." He said.
"Another one? Okay I know the drill, lock my door at night and don't make direct eye contact with him."
"That's right. So how you doing on those Navigation Charts?"
"Not very good, Company doesn't give a whole hell of a lot options to check out and see if we can re-fill. I found a planet in the Chevron system that looked interesting, but it's outside of Company domain. And you know just as well as I do that if we go even a parsec out of Company's domain, we'll be figured for AWOL and when we come back we'll be blasted back to our component atoms, no questions asked. That just leaves the eight planet Tangier system, which is great for us because other merchant freighters have treated that system like it's the plague or something ever since the whole Hunter-Gratzner debacle. They were going to the Tangier system but got knocked out of the shipping lane by a comet tail. So how about it daddy-kins? Tangier system sound cool?"
"Set the course." Derek said and she smiled turning back around and started to put in the coordinates. When she was done she swung back around and banged her knee on the consul side.
"Fuck." She said.
"Bobby! Language!" Derek said and she flinched.
"Sorry dad, I've been hanging around Malcolm for too long." Bobby said.
"Malcolm, he hasn't um..."
"No he hasn't hit on me. Besides, he's not my type."
"What is your type? I want to know so I know who to scare off."
"Oh the usual, tall dark and handsome, it would be even better if he were muscular." She said smiling slightly, widening her eyes briefly at that last word.
"You know I chase these guys off to protect you." Derek said.
"I know, but you have to cut the cord sometime, I mean mom did." She said still smiling, but her smile faded and her gaze became sad. "I miss her, sometimes more than others."
"I know you do, I miss her too. But just look at it this way, before she died she was very sick and in a lot of pain, she's not in pain anymore." Derek said and a tear spilled down his daughter's cheek.
"I still miss her. I was so young when she died, I can barely remember her face." She said and lifted the collar of her dark purple T-shirt wiping the tears out of her eyes. Derek walked over and reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder but she stood and stepped around him. "I'm just going to go to my quarters and read." She left quickly; he knew that she wasn't really going to go read she was going to go cry but didn't want to do it in front of him. Derek sat down in her newly vacated seat and looked at the Navigation consul. The blinking line on the screen showing their course, as they got nearer the line behind them would become solid showing traveled distance.
Bobby sniffled into her pillow and tried so hard to picture her mother's face, but it slipped from her mind like water through her fingers. She picked at the already chipped silver nail polish on her fingernails and opened the drawer to her nightstand pulling out with looked like a short, rounded off tube. She inserted her finger into it and pressed the button, it automatically blasted off the nail polish. She did all her nails one by one and looked at the color selection screen. She chose black, the color of absolute darkness and inserted her index finger into it pressing the button; the color covered her nail in an even coat drying automatically and she looked at it, deciding that she liked it. She did all her nails and looked at the newly colored short rounded off nails that stopped just beyond her fingertips.
Bobby put the Nail Pigmenter away and closed the drawer, lacing her fingers behind her head and staring up at the ceiling. She started to sing the chorus of her favorite Avril Lavigne song, Nobody's Home.
"She wants to go home, but nobody's home. It's where she lies, broken inside. With no place to go, no place to go. To dry her eyes broken inside." She sang and closed her eyes, falling to sleep.
A few days later the ship, Dark Angel, was docked and Derek was waiting for the D-Man to be carted in. D-Men was prisoners that the Company hires to do merchant work instead of rotting in some cell in some Slam. He watched with surprise as several Company men wheeled in a cryo-tube. He could see the man inside was heavily chained, a blindfold over his eyes and a horse bit in his mouth. Usually they walk the prisoner in with just cuffs on.
This guy must be really something for them to wrap him up like this. Derek thought grimly and sighed as the Company men walked towards him with their cargo. The stopped and one of them stepped forward, holding out a sheaf of papers, Derek took them from him and looked at them.
"Richard B. Riddick reporting for duty." The man said grinning and Derek's head snapped up with a furrow between his eyebrows.
"Richard B. Riddick, that's who the Company stuck me with?"
"Yup, kept killing guards and inmates at Butcher Bay. So the Company decided he was more trouble than he was worth. Anyway, he has enough drugs in him to keep him out for at least twelve more hours, but you never can tell with Riddick. He could be awake right now and we wouldn't now it." The guard said and shuddered in real fear. "You got a daughter right?"
"Yeah." Derek said.
"Just a suggestion, lock her up tight. Riddick doesn't have any rape charges to his name, but he might start." The guards said and Derek thought he saw a muscle in Riddick's neck tense then relax. "Okay, he's all yours Captain." He handed Derek the keys to the restraints and a pair of black opaque goggles. The guards left without another word and Derek stood in front of the tube and looked at the prone killer in the cryo-tube. Sticking the papers, keys and goggles in his pocket, he walked around to the back of the tube that was on a loading cart. He wheeled it over to a service elevator and took it up several floors to the living quarters.
He wheeled it down the hall and stopped at a room, pressing a button the wall consul. The door slid back and he wheeled the tube in - the door closing automatically behind them - and cracking it open. He unlocked the restraints and half-expected Riddick to reach out and snap his neck but the man was still prone. He removed the bit and blindfold and the man started to tilt forward, making Derek catch him quickly. He turned him so he landed on the bed and looked at him, the man was huge over six feet tall and possibly 225-250 pounds heavy, it seemed that most of the weight was made by the large defined muscles that formed the mans body. Shaking his head slightly at his predicament he reached in his pocket and pulled out the goggles looking at them curiously and then back at the convict.
Derek leaned over him and pulled up one eyelid slightly, drawing back quickly as a silver iris glowed back at him. He set the goggles on the nightstand and loaded the restraints, the blindfold and bit in the tube closing it and opening the door wheeling it out and locking the door behind him. He wheeled the tube back to the cargo hold and stored it away.
Back in the room Riddick's eyes behind his lids twitched, signaling the coming awakening.
(I'm kinda iffy about this one, so please review. Thanks!)
(C. Kerwood)