DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters or places associated with Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick, and from what I hear of how much those movies cost...that's all to the good.
Just By Chance
Toombs liked bars. He liked the noise, liked the liquor, liked the women. He also liked the way that drinking customers tended not to notice missing wallets—but that was secondary. His reasons for liking bars were, if not innocent, at least lawful. Just barely.
This bar looked like his kind of place. Dim, dark and loud with music and people. It was cold outside—it was always cold this far away from the nearest sunlight—but the bar was filled with the humid heat that comes of having too many people crammed into one small room.
He managed to bully enough people to get a barstool and to scare the bartender well enough that his first drink was on the house. He was just thinking about trying for a second one when he heard a name, a name that he had never thought he'd hear spoken by anyone by a hopeful merc looking for his big payday.
"…on one of those ice planets nearby. Can't remember which, but the word's going around that mercs are swarming all over the place looking for him. What's on his head these days, anyway? A thousand, maybe a thousand five?"
Toombs didn't bother being surreptitious. He saw the two men talking, decided they didn't look so tough, and grabbed the nearest one by the neck of his jacket.
"Say his name again," he said, his hard gray eyes boring into the man's frightened brown ones. "Say the name of the man you saw."
"I didn't see him, man, it's just the word on the street, you know, that somebody knew somebody who saw—" the man's slurred words fell away with a yelp when Toombs raised him higher, putting a little more force on the man's windpipe.
"Say his name!"
"Riddick," the man gasped, "They say somebody saw Riddick."
Toombs dropped him to the ground, barely hearing the man give another yelp as he hit the bar. Riddick. The biggest payday he'd ever find. He could get the bounty on Riddick.
"You're one of them, aren't you?" the man's companion said, his eyes wide, "You're one of the mercs going after Riddick."
Toombs paid no attention. Caught up in his thoughts, a slow smile began to creep over his face.
Seeing it, the man continued more boldly, "So is it true? Is there really a thousand credit bounty riding on his head?"
Toombs looked at the man for the first time, and cocked an eyebrow. "Try a million," he said, and with a grin, downed the man's drink. "A million would be closer." And he walked away.
He liked places like that. Liked them for all kinds of reasons.