Chapter 1: All Our Yesterdays Have Lighted Fools
He found the cave system about two months after he got out of the mountainous area filled with bad water, and things that would rather eat him than not. Riddick set Dog down and pointed a finger at him, it was still pretty small but better Dog learn to behave and obey now. Not following orders could get it killed. For a half a second he wondered why he was worrying about an animal. Then he shook his head, he'd started to take care of Dog. If he just stopped when it got a little annoying he was no better than a merc. There was something he'd heard, in another life when he'd been just a kid. Something about a rose and a prince and a fox. About when you tame something, you're responsible for it.
Riddick shrugged and looked at Dog again. If he tied him to something, he was bait for any predator that came along. If he didn't and Dog followed him the little animal could get hurt. Although Dog was growing up pretty quick, he'd heard animals in the wild had that tendency.
Maybe that was why foster kids like him tended to grow like weeds when they hit their teens? Once the cute and innocent stage passed and no one gave a rat's ass about them anymore they had to grow or die? It made a skewed sort of sense and he looked at Dog again. "I'm serious. You stay here. Dunno what's down there. You're snack size right now. Let's not tempt anybody, right?"
Dog cocked his head and looked at him curiously and Riddick sighed. Here went nothing. He moved forward into the cave and relished the darkness, pushing his goggles up so he could see clearly.
Dog had not learned to stay. It was a good thing for it that there weren't any of those mud creatures in the caves. No other predators that he could see either. He guessed the animals on the savanna preferred dens in the scrub or against hillocks. It wasn't a true savannah, more like a cross between prairie and tundra. It was all hardy scrub grass that drew moisture from the ground, rocky outcroppings, and miles and miles of miles and miles.
So he set up what could laughably be called housekeeping in the caves. A few animal skulls for dishes, skins for bedding, though dog was surprisingly warm for such a small thing. And of course, his shiv making supplies. If there was one thing he was good at that didn't directly involve killing, it was making shivs.
He still had the huge metal sword thing and it was handy to have against some of the larger predators that wandered the plains. But it wasn't exactly tool sized or even something he wanted to use a lot. He didn't know what it would be called technically. It didn't matter much. Not like he'd be having a discussion if he had to use it. When he pulled his shivs, the conversation tended to be over before it started.
Riddick frowned at the big weapon and set it aside. The problem with Necro metal was that it was inelastic. He'd punched through it easily with his own shivs but he hadn't had much of a choice as to materials when it came to weapons, not at first. At the time he'd still been using the leg guards as a brace for his broken shin. Bone tended to be brittle as well, but it was easier to work with and more plentiful than the Necro metal.
Necro armor was crap for armor and pounded flat, cut to shape and honed into a blade hadn't increased the quality any. So some good shivs were absolutely necessary.
Dog whined curiously and padded over to him with a hopeful look in its eyes. It was doing that sprouting thing all adolescent animals went through and was constantly hungry. He knew the feeling. It was definitely time to hunt again. But first, he needed to make a thorough exploration of the cave system. He might see in the dark, but he still didn't want anything sneaking up on him while he was resting. And sleeping under an obelisk for the rest of his time on the planet had very little appeal.
Another dream from Shirah. Another night wasted arguing in his head with a woman he wasn't even sure existed on the physical plane. She liked to bitch about things he'd learned over the years. She'd been especially unhappy with the goggles he'd forced the Necros to make for him. Corrective lenses gave him back the full range of colors he'd had before his eyes began to shine. He'd liked being able to see colors again even if there weren't a lot of rainbows on the Necropolis. Not a lot of color there at all really. It had been more of an exercise to see if he could make the Necros do something for him particularly. His vision still wasn't perfect but on a landscape like this one he wasn't completely blinded during the day. Shirah had been pissed though.
Shirah being angry was pretty much a constant since he'd started having the dreams. If she wasn't nagging at him about his destiny then she was talking about Alpha Furyans and their responsibility to their people. Like the nightmares he'd lived with for years weren't bad enough. Like the massive mind fuck of the idea that he was supposed to avenge his entire race wasn't sufficient. But even with Zhylaw dead, Shirah still wasn't satisfied. She wanted him to do something else. With him being on this planet...well. That just made her worse. She was constantly harping at him about Furya. Like he wasn't well aware that this wasn't his home planet.
The Necros had dropped him on the farthest edges of the star systems that called themselves the Alliance. His question when he'd seen it marked on the charts had been Alliance of what. History had never been his strong suit. The Necro navigator had just shrugged and Riddick had mentally made a note to find out later. Later turned out to be more than four years after his initial question. Time had a way of getting away from him when he wasn't on the run or counting the days until an escape opportunity presented itself.
It was strange the Necros hadn't pushed him to conquer all those worlds. It wasn't like they were new or unknown. It was at least five weeks travel in cryo from the Alliance systems to more populated space. It was a full two months from Helion Prime. Of course the Necros didn't travel at the same speed as the rest of the 'Verse. They moved at their own pace, methodical, implacable, and left nothing behind them but dead planets. In his time as Lord Marshall he'd put a stop to the Ascension protocol and steered the Necros away from more populated space, ostensibly moving towards the Underverse. But even taking into account the slow travel of the Necromonger fleet it had taken a while and the Necros hadn't been happy with the lack of conquering.
He'd pretty much made up his mind that he wasn't going to be responsible for the mass murder that he equated with the Necros method of conversion. That had been when the assassination attempts had really begun to pick up. And he'd made up his mind to figure out a way out. A way home. Which, had in turn, led him right to where he was. On the farthest reaches of the Alliance systems, a full weeks travel in cryo from the nearest world.
The Necros hadn't pushed forward towards the Alliance though. Maybe Vaako just wanted to go to the Underverse. Maybe the Necros had met a few of the Alliance folks themselves and decided they weren't worth the trouble of conquering. Riddick grinned, he hadn't spent much time on these planets though his name was known 'Verse wide as wanted.
According to history, these systems were the origination of the human species in this section of space. All the folks who'd settled planets outside the Alliance had started out there. They'd just kept moving further out, developed cryo ships for the longer hauls and kept on going. Pretty soon there were planets that spoke more English and had begun to leave the Chinese out of the language entirely. There were planets had adopted some other language as the second tongue, like Helion Prime, English and Arabic. English was still pretty predominant though, thankfully. He had a decent command of Chinese but his English was better. Not that his language could be considered couth in either tongue.
Riddick had smirked when he'd looked into some of the recent happenings in the Alliance. He'd been fairly well isolated on the Necropolis, and he didn't like cortex screens in his rooms. There was always a low grade buzzing noise in his ears and the light bothered his eyes. So he'd hadn't exactly been up on current events and he'd missed something huge. At least until he'd gotten bored in the six months before he'd decided to head for Furya and took to looking at the newsfeeds on the cortex.
Apparently, there'd been a huge hullabaloo some years back. A wave had gone out and taken over every cortex, every news screen and shown exactly how the monsters known as Reavers came to be. Someone had decided to mess with a newly terraformed planet called Miranda. And the results hadn't been what they'd expected.
There'd been rumors, of course as to who was behind the wave. But the 'verse gossip was strangely silent on that. He'd seen the wave, seen that woman scientist trying to get her word out, and being killed horribly for her trouble. He'd decided then and there that if a merc ever tried to compare him to a Reaver he was justified in killing the son of a bitch simply for character defamation.
It was curious that the Necros had dumped him here. Had they just picked the closest deserted planet? Or was this on the way to Furya? Had Krone decided to dump him here or had it been Vaako's plan from the start? He'd bet on Vaako, Krone hadn't struck him as particularly bright. Not really a long term planner. Not that it mattered much. The Necros were well on their way to the Underverse by now and good fucking luck to them.
Riddick whistled for Dog and stood up. Enough thinking and speculating. Time for some exploring and hunting. Action. Get his blood going and stop him thinking about that crazy blonde Furyan in his dreams.
He couldn't stop wondering though. If he managed to get to an Alliance library on a core world, one of the true libraries, would he find Furya listed as a world colonized? Would he be able to locate it on star charts? The Necros claimed they'd erased Furya from all the maps but they did tend to be...egocentric regarding their own capabilities. And they wouldn't have left the Core worlds untouched if they'd gone through and destroyed the records. The Alliance probably wouldn't even exist if the Necros had come through this space.
Riddick moved through the darkness and began to make a mental list. If he ever got off this rock, he had things to do. Definitely.
River shuddered and gasped for air as Luna pulled off the cryo cuff. Even being in the box that Si- that she'd traveled in to get onto Serenity hadn't been as bad as the cryo cuffs. They cut off sensation but her mind never stopped. She could hear the mercs, dreaming in their death sleep, knew she should be breathing but she wasn't. The first time she'd come out of cryo she'd had a panic attack. Luna had the presence of mind to keep the rest of them away from her until she'd calmed down. She'd been like a wild animal, fingers curled into claws, shrieking and wailing about death in sleep and the evil she saw in dreams.
Cryo was awful. Without physical control, she'd had nothing to help her concentrate, nothing to close off the torrent of thoughts and feelings and visions that flooded her mind. Regaining her body and being surrounded by the mercs had nearly thrown her back into insanity until she'd shut everything down and focused on breathing and only breathing.
She'd been lucky Luna was so religious. He hadn't understood what was wrong but he'd talked very seriously and calmly to Santana about none of them being around except him when she first came out of cryo. "Maybe it's 'cause she's a Seer," Luna had said earnestly. "But I don't think she's all the way under like the rest of us."
"There wasn't anything in her sheet that mentioned it," Santana had spoken slowly, his snake eyes studying her. "But then, they tried to hide she was a Seer too. Just gave the basics." He'd looked at Luna, "All right. You were right about her being easier to understand when we didn't use her. We'll try it your way with the cryo cuffs."
He'd made a circling motion over his head and the rest of the mercs had followed him. Luna had crouched next to her and offered a cup of water. By then she'd calmed down enough to take it and sip carefully, "So we're on Lilac, and then we're headed out to a skyplex and after that Aquila Major. The plan is to resupply here and pick up any new sheets with contracts we might be able to fill."
River nodded her understanding and looked at him, "The mad men, the ones who never stop screaming. Paint their ships with red and live for blood and rage. They are close here. Should not leave the system in cryo, not until we are out of range. They will take the ship; make us all wake and tear into us. They never lie down. Will make us all scream. Board us, rape us to death, use our skins for clothing and eat us. And if we're very lucky they'll do it in that order."
Luna might not have been from the Alliance worlds originally but he recognized enough of her words to go from point A to point B. "Reavers?" He gulped, "Yeah, I don't guess cryo is a good idea while they're around."
"Many killed 'round the time of the Miranda wave," River whispered, "But they are vast. And they never stop. They never rest. Like sharks. If they stop moving they die." She looked up at the ceiling, picturing the sky. "Lilac is too close to them. Get the sheets, get supplies and leave. Don't stop at the whorehouses until the skyplex. The skyplex is out of their range, far enough from Blue Sun for safety."
Luna had nodded and gotten up to use the comm system. It had been a tense fifteen minutes of conversation while he recalled all the men. Santana had gotten his sheets and Diaz had gotten more supplies while the rest of the men were grumbling about no shore leave.
"Shut it," Santana had snarled at them as the last, Nunez climbed back on to the ship. "The girl says Reavers are close. And right now, I don't know if I care how close. Any close is too close. So we're taking off. We've got supplies for two days, that'll get us far enough out that we can go into cryo until we hit the skyplex. We'll spend a longer time there."
Falco had been muttering about visiting the whorehouse and they had no guarantee that the Reavers were going to come right then. River had shuddered and wrapped her arms around her legs, grateful that Luna was between her and the merc. Luna believed in her ability to prophesy and Santana believed in Precogs or Seers. His belief had become more firm when she'd been babbling about a Judas and thirty pieces of silver and he'd been prepared for betrayal thanks to Luna's translation of her words. The rest of the men would take more time but the important thing now was to leave Lilac. Get out of range and hope the Reavers didn't come sniffing too far.
Pain.
It was supposed to be over. They wanted the visions more than the release. But the burning and the tearing was proof enough that it was happening again.
Time to go away for a while.
Won't stay here.
Won't.
Her eyes ached. They were dry as if she'd been staring at the cortex screen too long. Her mouth was dry too, her lips chapped. And she hurt, badly between her thighs...oh.
She remembered and wished she hadn't. Falco had gotten impatient. He'd lost his money in a poker game and couldn't afford a whore. So he'd sent Luna off for some supplies and uncuffed her wrist from the chair. She didn't remember anything more than the first few minutes, though in dreams the memories would come unburied and she'd be forced to deal with them.
"Girl?" Luna's voice was gentle, he was squeezing water into her mouth and she swallowed reflexively.
"She is here," River nodded slowly and focused her eyes on his young face. She blinked and drew back as Santana's grimy face appeared next to Luna's.
"Good. You're back," He nodded and set some sheets before her. "Luna, get some food in her, some water and then she looks at these," He tapped the sheets. "Need to know a good target. Something to get us some ready cash right? Easy huh?"
River nodded and picked the sheets up, "Food after. Sheets..." She tilted her head and looked at the image, tilting the sheet gave her a profile view. "Could take this one, but he has a crew that will cause trouble. Killing the crew is the only way to take him and that will likely lead to arrest."
"Huh," Santana took that one and studied it. "Maybe another time then, when he is guaranteed to be alone."
River frowned, "Visits Madam Wisteria's every seventh day. An appointment. No crew then." She looked up at Santana, "Gun check at the whorehouse. No gun check on the street though."
The boss merc's grin almost made her shudder. River wouldn't have given him that much if she hadn't seen the sort of whores the man in question favored. He liked them smaller than she was, and younger; fourteen or younger if he could get them. The 'Verse was better off with his head in a box.
"This one..." River picked up another sheet and shuddered violently. It fell from her fingers, "Death. Blood..." She shook her head. "Not now. Maybe not ever. Payday will lose you every man on the ship. Man likes bombs."
"And this one?" Luna handed her a sheet and she tilted her head curiously.
"White collar crime, wanted for embezzlement," She let her eyes unfocus and tilted her head. "Soft target. Pays for new identities. Accounting is considered lucrative. Criminals pay to keep him on staff. Territory of the Tongs. Easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle. Much layout in bribes and fees before a monetary return on investment is seen."
"Luna, can you make sense of that?" Santana hadn't understood one word in ten of what she'd said."
"She's saying we'll have to shell out a lotta money before we catch the guy. He's useful to a lotta people. So they'll pay to keep him. Might not be worth it," Luna translated for her.
Santana looked at the sheet she'd given him, "We'll go with this one for now. Try to figure out the rest later. I've got more but one job at a time right?" He strode away, "Get her some food and water. I want to be wheels up in an hour."
River had looked at Luna and tilted her head, "She is useful? She will not be..." She shuddered.
Luna hastened to reassure her, "Nah, Falco got his ass kicked for that stunt. Santana had Diaz put a hurt on him. He's had those sheets for two whole days waitin' on you to come out of it. He was talking about putting Falco's bits in a box so you'd know it wouldn't happen again. I think he was hoping that might bring you out of it sooner."
"Had to go away," River said softly. "Couldn't...not again. She can't." She shook her head.
"I'll bring you some water, you can wash," Luna had given her a cup and she'd smelled soup in it. She saw him filling a bucket with water and caught the intent in the minds of Nunez and Falco. The bucket would suffice. She would not endure them again.
The bright side of her half-hearted suicide attempt was that none of the men ever raped her again. Santana had beaten her black and blue after she'd been revived and smacked Luna around for his stupidity in leaving her alone with a bucket of water deep enough to drown in. She wasn't allowed to bathe alone after that. Luna would turn his back after presenting her with rags and a small bowl of water but he wouldn't give her privacy for another attempt.
That led her to the not so bright side. Before she'd had a wrist shackled to a chair or she was watched when she wasn't cuffed. Santana had decided that if she was going to attempt to kill herself then she couldn't be trusted with any freedom. So steel chains ran from her ankles and one wrist to a hook in the ceiling above her cryo net. She wasn't given anything she could possibly hone to an edge, wasn't even allowed a brush or comb for her long hair. Now it was a snarled mess that reached her waist and had become a convenient way for Santana to yank her around if he was feeling meaner than usual.
When she wasn't chained in place on the ship Santana had her attached to his belt like a dog on a leash. If she didn't speak quickly enough she'd get smacked. If she didn't make sense, she'd get hit. They'd stopped at one station on a world of ice and snow, and Santana had watched her closely but she'd presented nothing but a blank face. His mind had been filled with a sheet, an image of a face half covered by goggles and the hope of picking up a trail. She'd gotten impressions of mercs, three of them killed by the man Santana sought and knew this man was a huge prize to be caught. But the man wasn't on this world anymore. And even were she inclined to help Santana find a bounty, it wouldn't be this man who killed mercs as easily as he took a breath. So she kept her face blank and her tongue silent and simply looked around at the ice and snow with interest. They'd left the world after only a day.
Twice they'd come near the Alliance systems, and once there had been talk of setting down on Miranda, for salvage purposes. Santana had heard about the dead world and thought it might be worth a look. She'd looked at Luna and she'd known her eyes had been wide and her face chalky. She'd been able to feel her heart beating in her ears, pounding with adrenaline. Luna had nudged Santana and the boss had come to crouch in front of her, "All right girl, lookin' like a ghost. What's wrong with Miranda?"
She'd stared at him, "He did not see the Wave? The Miranda Wave? Heard of Miranda but not of the Wave?" There was a slow shaking of heads from all the mercs and she shook her head in amazement, "Should read up on the news feeds when out of cryo. Do a search on the Cortex. Miranda wave. That's all. Won't ever need to ask again."
Mr. Universe had been right, nothing stopped the signal, but men who traveled in cryo for months at a time, didn't care about anything except contracts and bounties, and paid no attention to newsfeeds tended to not hear things that shook the 'Verse. The Alliance had always kept to itself, not interested in the planets beyond its reach if it couldn't control those worlds. The other planets outside the Alliance seemed to feel the same way about it. They were unruly, ungoverned and liked it that way. But the wave had reached every single one of the worlds spinning.
Diaz had shrugged at her, "We heard the world was dead. Heard that they'd tried to cover it up, but never heard what happened to make it that way. Unification war? Like Shadow I guessed, bombed back to the stone age." River shook her head slowly and looked at Luna's back.
Luna had taken a seat at the terminal on the co-pilot's side and run a search. "Son of a gun," He whistled and brought the wave up. The rest of the crew crowded around the screen.
Doctor Carron's words flowed through the air, anguished and River wished she could unhear what she had memorized long ago, "…Just a few of the images we've recorded and you can see it isn't... it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax, the G-32 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It's..."
Her voice went on and on until the gunshot and her screams and Diaz cursed and fumbled to turn the screen off but they'd already seen and could not unsee it. As one they all turned to look at River and she shuddered, "Here's us." She pointed in the air as if to a ship in the sky, "Here's Miranda. And all the space in between, is Reaver territory. You wanna sail through that, you're signin' up to be a banquet."
"I'll be a son of a—" Vargas shuddered and shook his head.
River looked at them coldly, "Not from the Alliance systems, didn't understand. Never been this far into our space before. Stayed on the edges, away from Miranda. There are reasons cryo travel isn't popular here on the Rim. Reavers like cryo ships. Like 'em like a baby likes candy. Gobble 'em up, rape you to death man or woman, skin you alive and let you die. They feed on terror, on hate and rage. Make you stare at all of it until you can only become one of them, madness feeding on your brain."
"How do you know?" Luna asked, "How do you know what happens to survivors?"
River laughed, a high near hysterical sound, "Reavers don't leave survivors. They leave Reavers-to-be. Only way to survive is to not be where they are. Be silent, be still. Hide in the vault and pray they go before you run out of air. Pray you have enough bullets to give mercy to all your folk and still have one left over for yourself."
"Right," Diaz, ever practical spoke up. "I vote we not sign up to be a banquet."
"I think you are right," Santana had nodded.
Author's Note: So here we are with the actual first chapter. Are you all enjoying? This was really a lot of fun to write. Sorta dragged me into it but still fun.
By the way, the M rating is for violence and language mostly. We won't be having romance in this story, just didn't seem right.
Just as a sort of disclaimer, any errors are my own. I haven't found a lot of canon sources about Furya or Shirah so I've used a healthy dose of my imagination. We're going to see more about her in the sequel so I needed a little setup in this story for her.
So as always folks I love to hear your comments and thoughts. Hope you're enjoying yourselves and thanks for reading.
We'll get to the actual movie in the next chapter. And Riddick will get his first look at River. Wonder what he'll think.
Thanks to RCoots for all her help in looking over my crazy grammar and odd phrasing and helping me to hammer out something readable. Well...as readable as my stuff ever is!