Four of Cups: Under the Bhodi Tree. Riddick.
Riddick was pleased. He'd acquired a perfect ship; heavily armed and heavily shielded, with a near inexhaustible power source. He'd found a planet considered barely habitable, with good air, plenty of food, and large, land based predators to keep down the tourists. Just very cold.
He'd wormed the ship into a network of deep caves that seemed fairly stable, despite the hot springs that bespoke geological activity. He liked the hot springs. Warm. And they helped mask his and the ship's residual heat signatures. With the ship, ice, and rock, he was building a defensible fortress in the moist dark womb of caves, and sometimes, he could hear the beating heartbeat of a world, lulling him into a opiate slumber. And he'd figured out the right combination of filters to make reading comfortable; even to see colors again.
His dreams had become progressively more vivid. Often annoying. Like the one he was having now.
He dreamed he was dozing under a tree, his back against the trunk, a world turning around him. Some stranger wanted him to wake up. Kept offering him something to drink. The stranger offered him something sweet. He did not open his eyes. The stranger offered him wine. He did not open his eyes. The stranger offered him water. He did not open his eyes. The stranger offered him blood. He did not open his eyes.
Then his eyes were open as an achingly familiar dream woman stood over him, sneering. You were once a legendary dark warrior. Now you indulge yourself in doubts and compassion and mercy. Most fallen! Get up. Your destiny is to stand in the shadow of the setting Sun holding a naked and bloody sword. You were born to be the Scythe of the Morrigan, the Hangman of the Empress. Your destiny is to be Set, the Killer of Gods. Arise, go forth, or be forever fallen! Don't stop until the blood on your sword is the blood of a king.
He awoke with a jerk, heart pounding. Fuck that. His destiny was not going to be dictated by crappy ancient songs and crazed propaganda. He sat in the ice and the snow and the hot springs for another year. Oppositional defiant disorder is a wonderful thing.
Two of Wands: Observation. Kyra in New Mecca.
After the day of the wolf, her social net worth shot upwards. Instead of a reputation for aloof narcissism, folks thought she was just quiet. And very, very good in a pinch. The sort of girl you wanted at your back. She liked that. She even started accepting that eye contact could be something other than a threat or a come on, and started trying it out more. Started being a little less cautious.
Which might have been why, not long afterward she stared down a wolf, one of her coaches asked if he could take her to lunch. After a moment's hesitation, she'd agreed. After some inconsequential chit chat, he finally got to the point.
"You know, I was in the military for twenty years before I retired here."
"I didn't know that, sir."
"Call me Robert. You," and he fixed her with a direct look "hands down have the capacity to be one of the best fighters I've ever seen. Outside of some hard core commandoes I knew when I was a grunt, there aren't many people you couldn't wipe the floor with already. I bet you could knock me through a wall if you stopped holding back."
She blushed.
"Have you thought of a military career?"
She blinked. She really hadn't. Hadn't thought much about a career at all, she realized with a start. She hadn't thought much past preparing for . . . something. Finally, recognizing some sort of answer was required, she said "Not really. Not sure I'd be good with orders."
Robert smiled "Yeah, that part's not so much fun. But the benefits can be amazing. And generally, you are working for the good guys." She noticed his slightly pained expression, was about to ask when he rushed ahead.
"You weren't born around here, were you?" he said awkwardly.
She almost snorted. That had been all over the news, and was a large part of why she'd had so much trouble here. Everyone knew where she was from, and what that probably meant. But maybe he was trying to be courtly about it. "No," she said, shortly. "I was born on Tanstaafl."
Tanstaafl was largely a failed experiment. It had its unlikely beginnings as a radical libertarian utopian community. Her first eleven years there had been good; she'd been almost completely shielded from the brutality of the place. Pure coincidence. She had been born in a ship that had crashed on the estates of a very wealthy family. One of the daughters, a pampered idealist, had found it. That daughter had dragged the family physician out there to help the pilot give birth, closed the pilot's dead eyes, and taken her baby home. Raised her as her own.
That family had been indulgent of the pets like Kyra – Audrey, back then – that their children regularly brought home. Saw too it that she was well fed, well dressed, and well educated. But when that daughter was killed, things turned dark fast. Blood mattered too much to them, and while they indulged their children's occasional socialist tendencies, they had none of their own. Like the rest of their daughter's property, she was due to be sold. She ran before it could happen. Did what she had to do to survive. Eventually snuck aboard the ill-fated Hunter-Grazner.
Robert was looking at her with that look. That mixture of compassion and fascinated speculation. She did not like that look. She looked right back with a look he would not like. If he was smart.
Finally, he looked away. "Were your parents born on Tanstaafl?"
She frowned. "I don't know. I never knew them."
An awkward pause as he thought through the confirmation that provided. Finally, he continued. "Have you ever considered getting a genetic profile to find your people? It might answer some questions." Like how you can fight like you were bred for it when most of the people who were have been systematically culled from the galaxy.
She shook her head. "No."
"I know some people who could do it . . ."
Maybe he was harmless, but she didn't like this at all. "No, Robert. What if I find them? What if they get wind of it? I'm only sixteen; if they want me back, Abu will give me back. And I don't want to leave." Plus, my mother must have been running from something . . .
Robert took another bite of his food, chewed it thoughtfully. "Interesting. Because I have the feeling," and he looked at her closely, "that you're unhappy here. That you're waiting for someone to come for you."
Kyra swallowed, looked down. "I'm not waiting," she said. "I've just . . . not had good luck staying places so far."
Robert's heart melted. This poor kid. Tanstaafl. Then that terrible night on that nightmare planet, people dying around her. Then the strange trek here, hopping from barely functional world to barely functional space station, somehow surviving some of the worst places man lived.
He knew enough to know her story was, at best, incomplete. A holy man and a young girl, even one with her preternatural fighting aptitude, simply could not have survived the trip.
He even had a pretty good idea what they were leaving out. Little Kyra came knowing fighting moves he'd seen before, once upon a time, and only once upon a time. His squad had backed up an imperial hit squad once, before the coups started. He recently put it together that one of those men had been on that crashed ship with her.
They had told everyone he was dead; had died on the planet. But it was nearly inconceivable that she would survive something he could not; let alone that he would have taught her those moves in the hours between the crash and his alleged death. Much more believable that he had survived, and spent time with her. That he might come back some day. But this conversation was clearly deeply upsetting to her. Maybe in a year or two. He let the conversation drift back to inconsequential things, paid for both their lunches, and told he would see her in class.
He did not intend to tell anyone what he suspected. About who her people might have been. About who might have taken her under his wing. About why it would have made sense that a brutal killer would have stopped to save a little girl. It would just make her a target. He did worry about whether that was the right thing to do.
Eight of Swords, Trapped. Kyra.
Not long after, in a dream, Kyra panicked. She could hear the screaming of dragons; the growls of wolves. She was skimming over that that nightmare planet in on the back of a ram, her hands buried in its greasy fleece.
Then she fell from the sky. When she hit the ground, she was running, but now was she was blindfolded, hands tied, running over slippery rocks, hitting into thin blades that hit back. Small animals were scuttling underneath her feet; she stepped on one and felt its shell crack. Something stung her. She could hear crashing behind her.
She awoke with a jerk, heart pounding. Just another nightmare. She was safe on New Mecca.
No she wasn't. She was on a ship. With no gravity.
Don't panic.
She opened her eyes slowly. She was in a cryo tube. Okay, not what she was expecting. She eyed the tube warily. The emergency override controls weren't there, but otherwise, it looked like a standard tube. The drugs were still dripping into her arm, and there was a safety harness but no other restraints.
Remove needle. Right. Done.
Now, look around. Fast. That might have tripped an alarm. A room full of cryo tubes. All full of young women or children.
Okay. Theory. Slave ship.
She'd been on one once, briefly. Before Riddick had stormed in, in full Angel-of-Death-mode, every move ending in a corpse. At the time, she had no idea what was going on except that she was being moved out of a cryo-tube, still fogged by the sedatives. Found out later the pirates had boarded the transport, pulled off anyone who looked sellable.
All she knew then was that Riddick was killing people, and trying to get between her and them. A knife was on the ground, and no one but him was giving her even a glance. She dimly remembered scooping up the blade and, just like Riddick had done once, sliding it into the nearest man's lower back. For an instant, she'd been transfixed by the blood flowing freely over her hands. That inattention cost her: she got knocked hard into a wall, rendered still, windless. Then all the strangers were all dead. She had managed not to think of that for years now; or the awful looks Riddick kept giving her as he dragged her past unspeakable things.
Funny. She had always thought he was furious with her. The injustice of that had completely silenced her, and if he had not been dragging her, she would have curled into a ball and sobbed. Now, at a completely ridiculous moment for it, she realized he was furious at everyone else. She'd forgiven him instantly, like she always did, later that night when he folded her into his arms and hugged her until they both fell asleep. He had not let her go back into cryo after that, had barely let her out of his sight until they got to New Mecca.
God she missed him.
No. Not the right time for fond reminisces about my life with the serial killer. Someone is trying to make me a character in their own psychofuck story. Editing time.
She didn't have her knife any more. A new sting of panic. The knife was a wonder; almost all carbon, it could cut effortlessly through bone. She had a sheath for it that made it feel like flesh. Worn against the body, they were nearly undetectable. Only an actual body search would find it; a pat down would go right past it. One of the three presents Riddick had given her before he left.
It was in a pouch on the outside of the cryo-chamber. Okay, that was better. They'd probably found it last minute.
With her necklace. Damn. That also concealed a blade. A tiny one, but it could cut through metal. Solve this problem, no sweat.
She looked at the needle she'd pulled out of her arm. Sharp, strong. Hm.
The latch was all external; no way to pick it from inside. But the tube didn't look like it had a second lock; they were relying on cryo and the lack of an override to keep her trapped. But she knew the plexiglass of these tubes could shatter; seen it happen. Maybe if she scored it deeply enough she could punch through and unlatch the tube from the outside.
One broken needle and twenty minutes later, she found she could. She was out, she was armed, she was in a strange ship with an unknown number of bad guys.
Okay, only so many layouts were possible. Most likely, she was in a modified cargo bay. Probably, the crew were all in the cockpit, all in cryo. Most people didn't like being awake in subspace, and it was expensive to stock ships with enough supplies to make wakefulness survivable, and gravity was expensive. If she could find them before they woke up, she had a good chance.
She made herself drift past the tubes. She was old for this group. Mostly girls, a few young boys. None of the doors were locked. Not even the cockpit door. Arrogant fucks, she thought. She slid in as silently as she could.
Seven men. Two in cryo at their stations; pilot and co-pilot. Five in slots at the back.
She started with the pilot. Slit his throat deeply. Don't think, just do. Then the co-pilot. Spherical balls of his blood swarmed her hand, and she jumped.
Damn. The alarm had been tripped; they were waking up. Not much time.
Start with the biggest threat if you want to take over, something said in her head. Riddick had said that. Well, it's a principle. She picked the biggest guy, moved on down the line. Soon, it was six down.
As she got to the seventh, he roared, leaping for her, hands towards her throat. She ducked and moved aside. He slipped right past, crashing into the dead pilot. When he came back towards her, she stabbed him in the stomach, ripping up. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and gut. All dead now.
She manhandled the pilot out of his seat, deeply grateful to Riddick for showing her the basics of flying these things. Could she turn this thing around?
Not at superluminal velocities, she couldn't. So, drop out of subspace, find the nearest safe planet, set course, punch it.
Turns out they were only about ten days out of New Mecca. She set course, punched back into subspace, sat back, and shook for a few minutes. Could she trust the computer? Could she go back into cryo? Put the needle she'd pulled out of the arm of a dead man into her own?
She decided to put off that decision. She fell into a fitful sleep, dreamed she was walking with a wolf who kept nuzzling her with his enormous head, gazing at her with adoration, purring. Did wolves purr? She didn't think so. But this one did. She dreamed she laid down under a tree with this wolf, watching stars fall out of the sky.
She woke up. The bodies were beginning to smell. She spaced them. She arrived home a hero. She'd saved 56 people, including herself, from slavery. Though law enforcement wasn't crazy about the fact she'd killed six men in their sleep, and then destroyed the bodies. She didn't say much.