Mnemosyne
They're tracking me. It's a sick realization as the two men come to flank me at the console. It has to be me. I shove curls back out of my face, as I give way to the two Furians. My father spits blood off to one side, a low rumble filling the room. He's growling. I take another step back, pressing my fingertips into my eyes, as if I could scrub away this whole situation. This is wrong. So very, very wrong. My father should be overjoyed to see me; not going to war with Riddick
"What weapons are on this rig?" Riddick asks, only to be answered by more silence. I can feel the ripple of anger that washes through him as a stirring in my own gut, an answering ripple from the darkness inside me. "Does this have any juice left?"
Riddick grabs his arm, but my father yanks away, snarling something undecipherable while he punches buttons on the nearest console. Riddick draws himself up to his full height; I can hear his knuckles crack as he clenches his fists. I've learned enough of him to know that's a bad sign. If I don't intervene, my father will dealing with much more than a bloodied lip.
"You aren't my father." My voice cuts low and soft, but Vayne looks sharply up. My eyes are mirrors of his, a green so intense it seems to glow. "My father wouldn't be so... so... petty.. so damned childish. Let it go." I gesture to Riddick, whose jaw is working under tension. He's giving me the time I need though, trusting me to handle this without more bloodshed. Vayne is staring at me, as if willing me to continue with my thoughts. "It was a ruse, a play... I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for Riddick."
"Mnemosyne... he's..." Vayne starts to protect, but I step forward, filling the space between the two of them. My father stops mid-thought, clearly unaccustomed to being challenged like this over the last thirty-odd years.
"He's what? A criminal? A murderer? A Furian.. like you?" I take a deep breath, trying to quell the urge to smack him. "I owe him my freedom, Papa. The least you can do is help him keep his."
He's taking too long to decide. The Andromeda rocks under our feet as those four red blips manifest as Company Corsairs.
"Fuck... Fuck!" Vayne swears, the second time, more vehemently than the first, as if he can't believe he's going to do this. "There's a turret mount up top, hatch is twenty meters back. Not you." Riddick had started to move and he pauses with a raised brow to level Vayne with a glare. "It takes two to pilot this beast."
Riddick grunts an acknowledgment, keeping his feet easily as another volley of fire from the Corsairs rocks the giant prison ship. He catches my arm as I stumble, rocked off balance; Riddick holds me upright for a moment.
"You got this?" rumbles the question as he leans in close. My heart is in my throat, and I don't trust myself to speak, so instead, I nod, trying to flash him a confident smile. I have a bad feeling about this, but I can't put it into words, so instead, I bolt down the corridor.
The ladder to the hatch is easy to find, and quick to scale. The hatch itself is an iris-closure that remains open, beneath my feet, once I settle myself into the turret control seat. The Andromeda shudders, but this time, it's because the massive engines are firing. Power surges into the controls, HUD flickering to life and the joysticks becoming responsive in my hands. There's a brief burst of static, and then, a speaker hidden somewhere reminds me that I'm not alone in this.
"- copy, Nim?" Riddick's voice is calm and steady. And just what I need to hear. I let loose with a nervous laugh. "I'll take that as a yes." I can even hear the faint smile in his voice, as I start to test out the controls.
"Corsairs are fast, and nimble.. you have to lead them. Like the doves." That's my father, sounding infinitely more stressed out than Riddick does. "Remember the doves, Nibs? On Hesta?"
"I do." I promise, hoping I sound more confident than I feel. But I do remember, learning to hunt those doves with my father was one of my treasured memories of him.
The asteroid outside my viewport is starting to move. Rather, the ship is underway, like some giant, cumbersome beast, besieged by gnats. The first Corsair zips by my field of view, and I redirect my attention to the targeting system. It's old. Antique, I would guess. Moving red pips on a field of black... and my targeting reticule is nothing but a set of open brackets with a line. A glance out the viewport shows me that the asteroid is actually starting to crumble around us, rocks and boulders and debris raining down as the Andromeda scrapes the sides of the chamber she'd been parked in for who knows how many decades.
I miss my first dozen or so shots at the Corsairs as they zip by. My turret is peppered with weapons fire, but the Andromeda apparently has some pretty thick skin for an antique. Nothing gets through; nothing sounds like it has a chance to breach the hull. My father's advice echoes in my head. Lead the Cosairs, like the doves we hunted on Hesta. If I can't, we surely die.
I'd be nice for that thing inside me, that angry, focused thing to wake up right now. But instead of anger there is only the heavy weight of expectation. I need to strike true, and quickly, or else we die. I haven't survived to this point, just to die in an rusty turret on an oversized prison transport. The internal comm system has been quiet since that initial exchange. However, when the first Corsair splinters and shears apart upon a successful hit, I hear Riddick chuckle.
"That's my girl." I feel the purr deep in his chest as if he were standing beside me. Encouraged by that, praised even, just drives me to focus harder.
The Andromeda breaks free of the asteroid's surface, chunks of rock and debris floating free around us. We emerge into the greater battle at hand; ships beyond count spiraling and spinning through the darkness of space. Laser fire, EMP bursts, and all other manner of war-like projectile slice through the vacuum. Ships with hull breaches crack open like eggs, as all the air explosively exits through puncture marks.
"I can't tell who's who!" I realize in a panic.
"Who cares? Shoot them all!" Riddick's answer is the easy one, but I can't. The turret is silent as I swivel back and forth, hesitating each time the reticule lights up to confirm a target lock.
"We'll be out of the fray soon. Just... just... keep them off our backs." Vayne's directive doesn't give much more help. Except now, I suppose I can just shoot the ones that shoot at us, right? I squeeze the trigger a few more times, but nothing connects. I keep turning, cranking the turret around until I'm pointed at the aft of the huge vessel. He's right. We're leaving the dogfight behind. The Andromeda steadily picks up speed. Two ships split off from the fight and attempt to follow, but as the prison ships drive engines speed up, they're incinerated in the resulting blast back of heat and exhaust.
In between one blink and the next, the star begin to blur at the edges. For a few long moments, I stay where I am, watching the curls of light streak past. Sub-light engines like these were obsolete decades ago. I have remind myself just how old this ship is. Carefully, I lock down the turret and start climbing back down the ladder. The iris hatch above me whirs closed as soon as I let go of the final rung. When I get back to the bridge, the two of them are on opposite sides of the room.
Riddick, to my right, leans against a dark panel of displays, with his arms crossed over his chest. The goggles cover his eyes, so I can't tell what he's looking, or glaring at. My father leans over a console to my left, busily poking at screens and swiping through holographic schematics of various star systems. I stop somewhere between then, unsure of who to go to first, or what to even say. Riddick makes no movement to acknowledge my hesitation, so I turn towards Dante Vayne first.
"Where are we going?" That's the first matter at hand. Where are we running to? The Company is going to follow us. They'll follow me. Without thinking anything of the action, I rub my collarbone, feeling the barely centimeter-long scar there.
"Somewhere safe, where we can lay low, and figure out our next actions." Vayne talks to the console without looking up. I know that isn't the answer Riddick wants to hear. Honestly, it's not the answer I want either. Now that I've found him, I'm not sure I want my father around. I'm chewing my lower lip, watching him through narrowed eyes when Vayne looks up at me. "Don't give me that look, Nibs."
"Don't call me that." My visceral reaction to the childhood nickname takes me by surprise. "You don't have that right anymore."
"Excuse me?"
"You don't have that right. You let me think you were dead. This entire time. Since Durango. Not once did you let me know you were out there. Not once." Now that angry thing is stirring in my gut, coiling like a snake ready to strike. I can feel it getting tighter and tighter. "So, Reaper, my name is Mnemosyne Grant. And your next move is yours alone. We have other plans."
I feel, more than hear, the fact that Riddick has closed the distance between us. He looms behind me, tall and imposing, and radiating confidence that seeps into my bones and helps me keep my head held high.
"Oh, and what are those other plans?" Vayne turns to us. The sneer on his face further separates him from the man I thought was my father. The decades in between have not been kind to him. "Are you going to stick it to the Company, huh? Make them pay for using you as an insurance policy? I've already done that, Mnemosyne. There's only two names left on that list."
He moves a step closer, and an automatic instinct pushes me one step back. Right into Riddick's chest. I feel his chest move as he takes a deep breath, but Riddick remains silent. He's letting me handle my own father. I don't want to rise to the bait that Vayne's offering. He doesn't need to know the tiny, inkling of a plan to take down the Necromonger regime. But maybe I can get him to tell us one thing.
"No. No, see. We're going to go home."
Vayne hesitates, blinking at us. In the silence, Riddick slides one hand around my hip, blatantly claiming possession of me. It's a macho thing. I can't figure out if the male posturing is needed, or wanted. Vayne grunts under his breath.
"Home?" comes the repetition of the word. He either doesn't believe me, or doesn't know what home I could be talking about. "Why would you want to go back to Hesta? It's dead."
Riddick has that answer. "Not Hesta." My heart stutters at the low rumble of his voice. "Furya. And I think you know how to find it."
Vayne's face drains of all color at the sound of his homeworld. Our homeworld, I remind myself. Vayne looks distraught and uncomfortable for all of five seconds, then the scowl returns.
"I was young, and stupid when I left Furya. It is best left dead. And forgotten."
I shake my head. I've covered Riddick's hand on my stomach with one of my own, to let him know that this is welcomed and wanted. "That's not what Phillip Menko thinks."
This time, my father has a need to sit down. The navigator's chair is handy for the purpose. He wasn't expecting to hear that Menko was still alive, or perhaps, that we found him first.
"Menko told us the stories." I prompt quietly, trying to jar anything loose. "He's alive, living on Discovery. Waiting for you."
Vayne might have smiled before turning to the nav system again. "Then we're going to Discovery." He starts punching coordinates into the system, leaning over to the next console a few times to confirm data. "I will talk to Phillip first, then, we'll talk about Furya."
I draw breath to counter him, ready to ask for the coordinates first, to offer a parting of ways, but Riddick's grip on my hip tightens. I'm silent as the deal is taken as spoken. I guess we're going back to Discovery after all. I'm distracted from my dismay when Riddick bends his head to nuzzle the base of my neck. He has other things on his mind.
Author's Note:Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. While I cannot promise any manner of steady, consistent or routine updates, I have not given up on this fic. It took me years to figure out how to write myself out of the blind corner I put myself in.
