25. The Drinking Game

They had a truce, and maybe a little better understanding of each other. Zemma didn't appear to be going anywhere soon. If she was lucky, she would sleep through the worst of it.

"Hungry?" Riddick asked as he pulled on the rest of his clothes.

Jack shrugged.

"I haven't eaten." He'd bring back some tea for Zemma. He clapped Jack on the shoulder. "Come on."

Don was in the galley already; he nodded at their entrance. "Twelve days to the next port," he commented matter-of-factly.

Jack raised an eyebrow at Don's chattiness. "A lot of time to play cards," she ventured casually.

Don nodded but his expression never changed. Neither did Jack's. Good enough. They were both going to behave. He looked at the bottle, it might change things, it might not.

"I got some fresh-frozens to offset the rations," Riddick told them as he made tea.

Jack started nuking two frozen dinners. Riddick grabbed another shot glass. "Zemma's sick," he spoke towards Don. "Looks like port-cough, or maybe the flu." He didn't comment on the already empty bottle of whiskey sitting in the sink.

"Bound to happen," Don responded without slurring. "She was never cleansed, but everyone around her was." He poured a little more and offered the bottle to Riddick.

"All the Furyans avoid the cleansing?" Riddick looked pointedly at the scars on Don's neck. He'd never asked Don about his past, they'd kept to the Now. 'Now' seemed like as good a time as any if the man was feeling… talkative.

"Brands," Don told him. "Most of us, anyway. It didn't take long to see how the battle was going. We were taking out their troops on the battlefield, while they took out our cities and rounded up our civilians. Infiltration was the only way. We had to get on the ships to get close to our people."

Don swirled the amber liquid, looking into it as if seeking something there. Riddick wondered why he was volunteering so much now… Because Zemma had chastised him?

Jack put the two dinners on the table, and found a third glass. She didn't say anything but poured for herself. No one objected, no one offered a toast. Jack and Don eyed each other.

"What about you, Kid?" Don challenged her.

"What about me?" Jack's voice was more than challenging… she was always ready for a fight.

"You ever had to do something so heinous you could barely live with yourself… to try to save the people you loved?" Don slammed his shot glass to the table, spilling some.

"I don't have any people," Jack sneered the last word.

Don looked into Jack's face, squinting a little, either to blur her features or bring them into focus, it was hard to tell. He wasn't slurring, but he was obviously drunk. "Bullshit." He punctuated that by downing his shot.

Jack barked out a short laugh. "Bullshit, huh?" She downed her own glass and poured for them both. "Do tell," sarcasm dripped. She languished back in her chair, dinner forgotten, one arm over the back of it, one leg stretched out. She'd put as much distance between herself and Don as she could without actually moving.

Riddick decided to let this play out a bit… as long as they both stayed seated. He poured for himself.

"You don't know shit, Kid. You don't know shit about suffering. You don't know shit about sacrifice. You sure don't know shit about forgiveness."

"Fuck you. You don't know shit about me."

"Do tell," Don mocked her tone.

A brief sideways glace to him made Riddick wonder if Don was even as drunk as he appeared. Zemma said talk… she didn't say how. Riddick almost wanted to laugh out loud.

"You first," she threw back the challenge along with another drink.

"I watched cities flattened. I watched my people die, or walk into ships that would be their prison. I watched my best friend's wife surrender his entire household, thinking it would save lives." Don didn't appear to be faking his anger. "I watched them turned into the living dead." He shot down his drink and poured again. "Your turn."

"I found my mother… dead… when I was nine." She shot a glance at Riddick but didn't elaborate on his part in it. "I hid in a hole for six days. When my food ran out, I stayed another few days. When…" she paused briefly. "When the merc found me, I thought I was saved. She locked me in abandoned apartments, and used me for bait. She made me watch her kill people. She made me a part of it." Jack took her shot and slammed the glass on the table. Don poured for her.

"We sent spies into the Monger horde…" Don went again. "They were cleansed. We had to kill some of those, but some retained their sanity. We learned how to mimic the Mongers, and marched in like troops." Don examined his glass, as if looking for words. "A lot of our people were cleansed." Don looked sickened. "Pumped so full of those specialized nanos and drugs: they never felt pain, and never got sick, completely sterilized… their minds ruined. We killed a lot of our own people after that."

"How many did you save?" Riddick asked quietly, drinking more slowly.

"Out of millions?" Don snorted. "Barely enough to start over if we ever got free again; less than a hundred thousand. And thirty years later, we're down to under 20 thousand, with the ratio of men to women of child bearing years something like 40 to 1." Don took his drink, his turn over.

But Riddick wasn't done, he did the math, he had questions. "You took over almost one fifth of the Monger forces and didn't finish it then?"

"Our families were hostage, our forces scattered throughout the ships, hiding their identity even from each other in case someone was caught and cleansed." Don was defensive, angry, but didn't look directly at Riddick. "It took years to get organized, weed out the untrustworthy ones, start setting up an internal organization completely invisible to the Mongers while in their very midst."

"And along the way you destroyed whole planets with the rest of them?"

Don didn't answer. But Jack nodded as if she understood.

"Watch. Wait. Be ready for…whatever," she spoke quietly, not looking at either of the men.

This time Don nodded in understanding.

It wasn't Riddick's style. He never would have put up with 30 years of waiting, watching his people die off slowly.

His people?

Jack interrupted his thoughts. "That merc… she took me to a doctor. She wanted to find out about me. She's the one who told me I was a…" She didn't finish the idea out loud. Riddick could: runaway experiment. "I don't know if he was a real doctor. He hurt me. He had this funny smile when he did it. I know about suffering." She didn't elaborate further, but there weren't any hard rules to this game. She took her drink, ending her turn.

"Jaron's wife was a good woman, a strong woman. Spoke her mind, even to me." He paused, finishing the bottle, sans the glass. "He started spending every minute on the breeder ship, after you left, trying to find out about her. Trying to find anyone with Furyan blood still alive and whole. I couldn't watch it anymore."

"That's when you found…" Riddick ventured.

Don nodded. "I don't know who he was; a leader from one of the other continents, maybe. Important enough that they socked him away in cryo for thirty years, but didn't cleanse him." Don stood up from the table. He didn't say anything more, just walked from the galley into the emptiness of the frigate.

"What did he find?" Jack asked.

"Doesn't matter now." Riddick didn't care to share the nature of his conception, though it was something else they shared. They were both created; he just didn't know what his purpose was supposed to be.

"These people… they're your family? You were born there?" Jack tried to keep from slurring her words.

"No." Riddick wasn't sure how much more soul bearing he cared to do. He looked at Jack, trying to decide what she needed to know.

"I'm Furyan, but I was born on Earth. No one knows how I got there, or what happened to my mother. An old woman raised me… when I killed her I went to prison for the rest of my life." He waited for her to ask why he had killed the only 'mother' he'd ever known, but she didn't.

"The Family was a secret military organization. They bought my way out of prison and trained me to work for them. I didn't find out 'till later they were just highly organized mercs."

"When you were sent to kill me?" Jack frowned, trying to keep everything straight in her head.

Riddick nodded. He thought about Jack saying her mother was 'Sarah.' Most of them kept their real names in the Family, it was the only part of them left that they still owned. It was the only thing the Family didn't ask them to give up. It was easy to disavow an escaped convict. They'd certainly done a job on his record after he left. They'd even credited him with the massacre of a thousand troops during some war that had become too public.

Could Sarah have been the real name of Jack's mother? Jack remembered a cord around her mother's neck. Riddick clearly remembered Carmen's neck cut open. Two different women were sent; two were warned to disappear. Was Sarah the other mule? What did that make Jack? Did it matter?

Could he make contact with the Old Man one last time to find out?

"Who was Hypatia?" He asked her.

"Evil." Jack finished her glass as if toasting that word. She seemed reluctant to elaborate, but she wasn't leaving either. "After I escaped the first time, she always seemed able to find me again."

That wasn't a good sign.

"She was at the port when I got on the Hunter-G."

Riddick raised his eyebrows at this. "Did she make it on board?"

"No," Jack seemed sorry. "I wish she had…"

"But…." He drew the word out, trying to draw her out.

"I keep thinking I see her over my shoulder."

That wasn't past tense.

"When was the last time you thought you saw her, Jack?"

"Back there." Her voice was small, the admission difficult for her.

They'd only been docked one day. No one trying to follow Jack could have anticipated their landing. Hell, she'd been on that alien ship….

"How long were you prisoner on that merc ship?"

"I don't know."

Time was funny in space. Personal time varied from planet time as people traveled. It was something you just got used to, losing or gaining months or even years. You couldn't count cryo in your personal time; 'standards' were metric years of personal time and seldom related to the time that passed outside the ship you traveled on. Pilots didn't like to go back to ports because people aged too fast. Merchants tended to run long routes that never doubled back, or stayed in system.

If Jack spent most of her time on planet instead of in cryo, they should both be five years older than when he last saw her, give or take some months.

"When was the last time you saw her for sure?"

"When she busted me off Crematoria. I wouldn't let her put me in cryo. I escaped at the first planet we landed on."

"How?"

"I got myself arrested again," she said with a sheepish grin.

"I mean, how did she bust you off Crematoria?"

"She paid the guards to dump me with the garbage. I had to run to her ship before the sun hit. Damn near killed me." She looked away from him, inwardly to that time. "Kyra couldn't make it, she'd gotten a spiral shin fracture. Gov said he'd take care of her. I think he was in love with her."

Of course Gov hadn't mentioned Jack, Kyra had established herself AS Jack and Riddick hadn't used the old name on the new beast. Gov wouldn't have mentioned the break either, never knowing if Jack lived or died. Even the guards would have assumed Jack died in the run, and not cared with the creds already in their pocket. But the Gov must have thought it possible when Riddick mentioned it, because he was willing to try it as well.

"How long ago was that?"

"Two years, standard."

Imam had assumed Jack never left Crematoria. They were a long way away from the nearest system to Crematoria now. Could this Hypatia have followed Jack's movements somehow?

Was there more than just a disease or antidote tied into this girl's DNA? Something traceable? Riddick didn't think it possible but he didn't know shit about biology beyond the basics of battlefield medicine. It had been because he was unfamiliar with the specialized nanos the Mongers used that Zemma had gotten pregnant.

He banished the thought.

"Tell me if you think you see her again. Let me deal with it."

Jack nodded, no doubt still thinking about Kyra. The relationship was obvious by her adamant reluctance to discuss it. Riddick didn't think Jack was completely lez, but he wasn't really sure any woman was.

Dana hadn't been.

Still, the girls had had a relationship, and Jack wouldn't show the pain of loss, even to him. He understood that. It was safer to at least pretend not to care, when you were cursed to anyway.

They both sat over their congealed trays, caught up in their own thoughts.