Death Before Dishonor

Zemma was shocked almost beyond speaking. 'Zemma' was not a common name in the galaxy, unless you were Furian. Then it was as common as Mary or Sue on Earth. What the hell was she hearing here?

"Your mother's name?" She started, a bit too softly. She thought she would have to repeat herself. But he heard her. He heard her just fine.

"I was born on the breeder ship. Not a fact I advertise, mind you." He turned and pointed at her with the hand holding the glass. She thought he was on his way to drunk. But at the moment he was composed, almost reflective.

"She died during childbirth."

That explains why he wasn't strangled, she thought. How much younger than her was he? She tried to guess. Certainly less than a decade, though he was the youngest Commander the previous Lord Marshal had ever advanced.

"The only thing I know about her is her name. I was raised by another woman until they caught me and hauled me out of there to military training school." He took another drink, remembering.

"I didn't know that's where the boys were taken to," she commented.

He looked at her sharply. "You were born there too, eh? People talked about 'Ferrin's peculiarity'. I didn't think much about it, but you certainly had my wife's imagination in overdrive." He took another drink from his glass and looked at it as if it held answers. "He wasn't much of a man to hold such a position of power."

She didn't remind him that he was talking about her father. He was a tech, and a politician, not a soldier; until he came here.

"What did Captain W'Rdah tell you about my father?" She spoke softly, not wanting to irritate this man, now as strange in her eyes as she was in his.

"Blasphemer and traitor. Nonsense, really; secret faction of Furian warriors looking to overthrow the Lord Marshal and prevent us all from getting into the Underverse." He turned to her. "If my Lord Marshal says there's an Underverse and we're going there, then there is and we are. If he says otherwise, then it's otherwise. What's important is honor."

That's what she wanted to hear.

"What did the Witch," she amended herself, "Aereon, say to you?"

"The Elemental?" He poured another drink. "More nonsense about destinies and her brother's madness…"

Brother!

"…And sneaking Furians off the breeder ships to fulfill the prophecy she poisoned his mind with…"

So she was the cause of the death of the Furian civilization, in order to save the galaxy from a madman.

Do I forgive her for trying to do what's right even though she caused so much death?

Did you cause Riddick's Kyra to die?

"…And duty. As if I don't know about duty." He rounded on her. He seemed full of regret she thought might be for his wife's dishonor. "Victory and duty are all I have left."

She didn't tell him how true that statement was. She didn't tell him he was one of the few surviving members of a race sacrificed to save the universe from power and evil. She didn't tell him his new Lord Marshal was a criminal who'd rather not lead them but would bend the armada to suit his own private agenda. She didn't need to tell him his wife, whom he obviously loved, she could see it in his face, his grief, would not survive the week.

"I'll inform the Lord Marshal of your continued loyalty."

"Long live the Lord Marshal," he parroted but his mind was somewhere in his glass. Whatever questions he had for her he had forgotten.

Zemma left quietly with Nor in tow.

Aereon had died to protect Lord Vaako, either because she knew he was Furian or because she knew he needed to hold the bridge for Riddick until the coup was defeated. Vaako had held the bridge because his sense of duty, in the absence of his wife's politicking, was to his Lord Marshal, whoever that was.

But she thought there was something more there, something she couldn't put her finger on.