Chapter 3
A King & His Court
Outside the Club Neutrino
A cough resonated from the edge of the steadily expanding crowd of street walkers and Riddick noticed a short haired blonde in a silver miniskirt. She was partially obscured by the crowd but Riddick thought the woman looked familiar too.
The clearly inexperienced novice removed a neatly folded napkin from a tiny sequined handbag, dabbed the sweat from her glistening face – as to not smudge her porcaline makeup – then turned to the woman next to her and whispered, "Are we supposed to subtract our cut first?" The tone of her voice made Riddick think she was purposely making a joke of Ricco's math problem.
The woman next to her shot a stern look her way and quietly warned, "You must be new here, honey? So, let me give you some friendly advice. If you don't want to keep your teeth in a glass at the end of the night, I'd keep quiet. Because Ricco doesn't like smartass."
"I was being serious." The young blonde replied, stuffing the napkin back in the bag hanging at her side wearing a glint of devil may care.
"So was I," the other woman whispered, quickly looking down at her feet when she noticed Ricco staring at them beneath furrowed brows.
Riddick smirked at the blonde who'd wandered in from the financial district during the commotion and concluded he liked her spirit.
The financial district was always overrun with off-worlders staying in garish hotels that catered to shady characters looking to broker backroom arms deals, corrupt business deals or to purchase outlawed bio weapons.
That's another reason why the area was perfect, it was filled with the galaxy's most infamous and none of them wanted to be noticed; none of them were looking for trouble or would follow Riddick into the zone. Hell, even Dyna Corp Security wouldn't go in there and they were all equipped with state of the art OCP cybernetic enhancements. They were the best police force technology could create.
Riddick looked in the direction of the zone with a slanted grin and knew the reason why the police never went in there. For years gangs had fostered the urban legend that zenomorphs still preyed on those who went to close. It was all a lie of course, a fallacy perpetrated by lesser criminals in an effort to keep the authorities at bay. It did however, have one beneficial result, it keep out the common folk. The only reason Dyna Corp Security stayed out of the zone was because city officials ordered it. The Zone was off limits; it was a safe zone for all criminal enterprise. Most of which was operated by city officials.
But none of that mattered. Riddick knew there were no zenomorphs in the zone; because if there were, there would be no humans left alive; zenomorphs didn't play well with others.
Decades earlier, a back alley deal had gone wrong and a single zenomorph had been freed into the general populous. The resulting disaster led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, destroyed nearly 400 city blocks and was responsible for the early retirement of 15,000 Nexus 6 replicants.
The unforeseen results of sacrificing so many replicants to win the battle was a replicant uprising that lasted nearly 2 decades, the sanctioning of all replicant creations from that point on and a loss of quadrillions in damages.
75 years later, the Nexus 6 program had all but faded into obscurity. Although, the originating corporation had outsourced the project to a subsidiary holding. As a result, Mega Corp tasked its leading scientists and top researchers with formulating a biomorphic serum that would duplicate the prowess of N6 replicants without raising suspicions.
Years later, A series of fruitless experiments using stem cells harvested from frozen N6 cadavers had only served to drain profits and end in disaster. That is, until a promising new research assistant stumbled upon an ingenious solution to the company's gene resequencing problems.
Soon there after, Mega Corp unveiled its newest fighting force, the N7s. During the recruitment process all candidates received a routine series of performance enhancing injections. The result was a re-sequencing of the host's DNA without anyone being the wiser, including the recipients.
The long term effects produced super soldiers with Nexus 6+ capabilities. Men and women who could easily assimilate into normal societies without the mental instability of the previous models. Mega Corp paid trillions of credits to city officials to conduct their illegal experiments in the quarantine zone.
Because of those illegal experiments, the 400 blocks lost during the initial zenomorph outbreak were left as is. The forbidden zone was a city within a city; a completely unregulated, unmonitored area cut off from prying eyes. It was a bioengineering Mecha and a galactic center for crime.
Decades after the experiments ceased, the zone was populated with thugs, criminals and society's most unwanted. Corrupt city officials used it as a base for their clandestine crime operations; operations they fiercely defended.
The zone had become the murky underbelly of corporate greed and political corruption and it was one of Riddick's favorite places. It was dark and dirty and, to him, it felt like home.
But none of that mattered for the moment, because Riddick stood in the shadows, hands balled into fists fixated on the pimps false sense of bravado. Ricco was a coward and cowards made Riddick angry. He wanted to hurt Ricco the way he tormented his girls; the way he was hurting... Shazza.
"Fucking bitches," Ricco said, glaring at the two women staring heads down. He reeled on Ginger gesturing over his shoulder with a scowl. "And if these bitches see you get away with your shit and think they can too, I'll lose more than money; I'll lose control. And that… you scurvy little bug… is never going to happen."
A shrill siren and epilepsy inducing blue strobes descended from high above the roofline and a coarse voice blared over a megaphone. "DynaCorp Security, Is there a problem here?"
In an instant, anyone caught in the blinding light shielded there eyes in pain as the audio/visual spectacle was tuned to a retinal wavelength designed to disrupt an assailant's senses leaving him temporarily incapacitated. It worked on almost everyone; everyone, except Riddick.
He managed to duck behind a smelly dumpster before the frenetic lights gave his position away. He peeked out staring up at the steaming police car hovering two stories above the street with a look of astonishment. He rubbed his eye as if there was something wrong.
Riddick hadn't been able to look into direct light since he left the sewers at Butcher Bay. But now, he stared wide-eyed into the lights of the hover cruiser and experienced no ill affect at all. His mouth fell open as the idea that yet another thing had changed since his escape from Not Furya.
If Riddick had been looking in a mirror he would have noticed the tinge of blue light emanating from somewhere deep behind his reflective pupils or seen the blue lights coursing threw his veins like fireflies swimming threw fiber optic cables. But he was engrossed in the newest epiphany.
A pebble fell from a ledge high above, hit the dumpster in front of him, bounced off and rolled to a stop between his feet. It snapped him from his trance and he craned his neck trying to see if someone was on the roof above. But after a few moments, Riddick returned his attention to the unfolding scene. Although, he never forgot about the eyes, he suspected, were watching from high above.
Ricco jammed his hand in his breast pocket, fumbled around until he felt a leather billfold and held up an entrepreneur's license for inspection.
"Fine," the voice over the megaphone said, as the lights and sirens stopped just as abruptly as they had begun. "Just take it off main street. People down the way are beginning to stare."
"Oh, I've got to get one of those." Riddick whispered to himself. "A get out of jail free card."
Long ago corrupt city officials implemented a plan wherein a not-so-elite clientele were offered unique small business licenses. The kind of licenses that let criminals skirt a number of troublesome laws as long as they were willing to donate a hefty portion of their profits to the city.
A license cost 500k and 25% of all projected yearly profits; the upfront cost could total in the millions of credits. Of course all the proceeds were covertly funneled into a number of slush funds that made city officials wealthy beyond compare. Most of the city's seedier types jumped at the opportunity to pay. Those who couldn't afford the licenses soon found themselves in the employ of those who could or, like Ricco, they were given licenses by wealthy benefactors.
Ricco put his wallet away, waved the car off and said, "I'm sorry, Ginger. It appears we'll have to finish our conversation in private." He grabbed her by the arm and laughed as she cried out in pain. "To bad for you." Ricco said, turning to the others with a glare. He pointed at the entrance to the nearby alley and said, "All you bitches, get in the back alley. Now."
Ricco shoved Ginger towards the alley laughing as she almost fell off her stilettos. "Move your ass, sweet cheeks."
"Come on," he called out, motioning for the doorman and his partner still on guard at the entrance to follow them down the street. The 2 men obeyed like well trained dogs following a brutal master.
The two doormen wore neatly pressed three piece suits that looked as though they were plucked from a bargain rack at a 1950s dime store. One of the men was nearly 7 foot tall while the other was far shorter but almost as wide. The taller of the two men had a cybernetic upgrade covering what used to be his left eye, cheek and ear, while the other guard sported hands made of shining black metal.
Ricco motioned for them to stop about twenty feet inside the alley. "Make sure no one comes in." He pulled Ginger in close and said in a velvety whisper, "We wouldn't want to be disturbed, would we baby?"
The men signaled they understood glancing over their shoulders to ensure the entrance was clear. They failed to notice the figure standing behind the dumpster just inside the corner.
Chapter 4
The Thing Beneath The Stone
Not Furya / A few weeks after Riddick's package arrived on Sigma 3
The E.S.S. Regert exploded out of the blackness of sub-space in a ball of bluish lightning. The static discharge emanating from the ship's hull was a result of skirting a subspace corridor flooded with quantum energy. The energy moved along the outside of the hull like electric eels wriggling through glass pipes.
To everyone's relief and amazement, the near suicidal maneuver had propelled the Regert into a position 8 days ahead of the Necromonger Basilica class frigate racing to get there first. The only problem now, was the ship had exited the corridor far closer to the planet than anticipated.
"Dammit," Deckard said, pounding a console in front of a portside window. "Regina, we' don't have enough time to slow down before we reach the planet. We need to change our trajectory or we'll over shoot and lose three days."
"Commander," Lt. Williams called out over the coms, "One of Dr. Chillingsworth's assistants has a plan to use the planet and its moon's gravity to slow the ship, and place us in a geosynchronous orbit above the site."
"Make it happen, Lt." Deckard replied, heading towards the door on his way to the dropship. "Your attention." He called out over the ship wide emergency coms. "All personnel, you have ten minutes to secure your yourselves before we begin emergency braking. Don't drag ass, people. This maneuver is gonna make what happened at Lupus 5, seem like hitting a bump in the road."
He switched to a secure channel and continued, "Alpha and Bravo teams, after we're in orbit, you'll have 30 minutes to get suited up and on the dropship. Regina, I expect you to collect your equipment, and meet me in the shuttle bay, as well"
He switched back to the ship wide coms, "Listen up, intel says there's an incoming Necromonger warship a little more than a week behind us. The general has allotted us 72 hours to find the artifact, secure the area, complete our initial testing, and then, move the artifact and anything else deemed worthy onto the Regert before we nuke the site from orbit."
The crew listened to Deckard, the worry in their faces becoming a mixture of shock and awe. No one aboard had ever entered subspace or heard of anyone who had survived the attempt. But they had just done it and before they even had a chance to recover from one peril, now, they learned the Necros were coming on fast.
"So," Deckard paused to collect his thoughts. "Let's all work together to make this mission go off without incident. I want everyone at the top of their game. You all knows what's going to happen if we're still here when the Necros arrive."
"Raymond," a voice called out from the hallway behind him.
"Deckard out." he said, turning around, to meet the pair of brilliant green eyes behind him. "It looks like you were right. We made it here in one piece, after all."
Regina's right eyebrow raised. "Was there ever any doubt?"
Deckard shook his head thinking Regina was, if nothing else, confident in her abilities. "I suppose not," he answered, pressing the button for the lift. "Any idea what we'll find down there?"
Regina's expression sobered, her eyebrows furrowed deeply and she stared at Deckard as the worry in her mind filled her eyes. "I was going over the data compiled from the sample Commander Fry gave us. What I pieced together is both incredible and terrifying."
When the lift arrived, they stepped inside and Regina leaned in the corner letting the walls hold her up. Deckard could tell something was wrong. For the last two days Regina had talked endlessly about the limitless potential of the artifact and how she could not wait to see it. But now, Regina was acting as if going down to surface was dangerous.
"What's the problem?" Deckard asked. "We could've been killed just getting here and now, you choose to freak out."
"I do not freak out." Regina said, glaring at Deckard in disbelief. "You don't understand. I failed to facture in a number of crucial details. And those missing calculations could change the parameters of the entire mission."
Deckard shrugged his shoulders and replied, "It happens."
"Not to me."
Deckard's mouth dropped open as a feigned look of shock gripped his face. "The mission is a complete success. We finally have what we came for."
Regina looked as if she didn't understand. "What are you jabbering on about?"
To her utter dismay, Deckard actually laughed at her. "You made a mistake. We can finally prove you're human."
"I made no mistake," she replied wearing a cross expression. "I only made a slight oversight."
"And there it is, proof you have no sense of humor."
Regina paid no attention to Deckard's attempts at levity. Instead, she just kept talking. "The sample contains an unnaturally high concentration of subatomic particles called Bosons; nearly 10,000 times higher than normal."
Deckard's eyebrows furrowed inward as if her explanation caused him pain. He didn't understand why she was so worried. "Your point?"
"In addition," she continued, not understanding why he was being difficult. "It also contains a massive concentration of Graviton particles." Regina peered through him as if reviewing a chart she'd seen earlier in the day. "I initially believed the artifact was just an advanced field generator." She explained, returning to him with a worried expression. "But now…"
"Now…" he repeated.
"I believe it has the ability to create multiple fields simultaneously."
"That's it." Deckard replied matter-of-factly. "A few bells and whistles."
Regina shook her head at Deckard as if he was purposely being obtuse. "The artifact uses a spin 2 field to draw energy directly from subspace."
"Are you saying…"
"Yes, Raymond. It draws power from the Underverse." Regina said, completing his thought.
Deckard stared towards the back of the ship, pointed in the direction of the ship following them and said, "That can't be a coincidence? The Necros must know what this thing is."
"I believe you may be right."
"What is this thing, Regina? And why do they want it so badly?"
She shook her head as if it was unclear. "I think it uses ultra dense Higgs Boson particles in conjunction with quantum tunneling and a vacuum decay field to systematically disassemble and rewrite DNA at the subatomic level."
"For what purpose?"
"To create a being unlike anything ever seen before."
"If that's true, then anybody who touches the artifact would be rewritten."
"I doubt it. That kind of power would be catastrophic in the wrong hands. You wouldn't want to give it to just anyone."
Deckard thought about the N7 program and said, "Taylor made supersoldier."
"Or God." Regina added.
"That's not possible."
"Not at our current level of understanding." Regina said. "But who knows how advanced the civilization was that created the devise."
"I suppose it's possible." Deckard replied. "The company does it all the time."
"No, Raymond." Regina explained. "They use stem cell injections to add a number of desirable traits and that takes years to complete."
"Then who created a device that advanced?"
"No idea. That technology is simply beyond human understanding or capability." Regina replied, as the door to the lift opened and one of her assistants stood in the hallway waiting for her.
He handed her a bag and they turned to leave, but Deckard said, "If Riddick touched the device and survived. Then, someone somewhere has to know how it works."
She turned to Deckard with a worried frown and replied, "I'm sorry Raymond, but you're wrong. No one from this Universe knows how it works, because its not from here; it cant be; the technology is simply beyond our understanding."
Deckard shrugged and said, "Whatever. Riddick survived."
"Did he?" She asked. The dire expression spreading across her face was a mixture of empathy and uncertainty. "Without knowing how the devise works or what it does, there's no way of knowing who, or what, emerged from beneath the artifact."