Match, point... game

Chapter seventeen:
If you don’t have something
nice to say

Another day another solar cycle spent idle and bored out of ones skull. Isolation was a cruel mistress that sought to drive you insane, turn your thoughts to things that are better left alone and make you brood until you felt like your head was going to explode. She wrapped her fingers around you, dragging you further down with each murmur and whisper in your ear of your past, making you wince and squirm in discomfort. Especially if your past was something you were not proud of, at all, and something you did not like to dwell on too much. But when you were probably the only sentient being on a planet that saw only two hours of sun light a day and the rest spent in freezing darkness there was nothing else to do. Unless, that is, of course, if you wanted to go out and try your hand at surviving the darkness and the monsters it brought with it.

He chose most of the time to just stay in the ship and stare out at the darkness, goggles pushed up his head, and watching the large beasts outside of the ships Head windows. It was not that he was afraid of them, or could not take the easily four times his size monsters that wandered within the dankness of this hole in the universe… No, it was that after a while even someone like him got tired of fighting and bloodshed; after all, there was only so much venting you could do before there was nothing left to vent. Right? Until you got time to brood and think on your past, those who had died for you and against you, and then that little seething pit in his stomach and chest was overflowing again. If only he had not gotten close to people, if only he had not changed to a certain degree, then this would not be bothering him to this point.

However, as it stood, Riddick had spent the past three years traveling from uninhabited star system to system all to keep his mind rolling and those outside of his person safe. Strange that he would want to keep strangers, those he didn’t even know, safe from the harm that followed him around like the plague. He had Fry to thank for that. Riddick blinked slowly before leaning back in the chair of his newest vessel. It was strange… when she had first died, when those bastard borne of hell on that damnable planet had carted her away by the middle of the stomach at the tip of a large barb, he had felt like his world was going to end. In those few moments he had felt like he had been ripped apart, bled out, sown back together, and then thrown into pits of wherever it was that people like him went when they died. She had forced him to see the errors of his train of thought. That people did have value and that even if it was only some brat of a kid that posed as a boy or some hoodoo holy man. She had forced him to reawaken some of his human side that the animal had long ago covered in seas of blood.

Whenever he had thought about her when he had first gotten off of that shadow planet something painful would clench his chest and twist there until it forced him to squirm uncomfortably. Never before had he experienced something quite like that, it had been a shock and for a while he was bemused as to what the fuck it was. Riddick had not been raised in a home conducive to human emotion, bounced around from foster home to foster home like some unwanted puppy, then falling into the wrong crowds and becoming a thug and thus resulting in being raised the rest of his adolescence in juvenile facilities, and then only to be upgraded to full on Slam’s when he was in his mid twenties. After the wailing wars he had truly become what he was now… he had always been wild, untamed, and excellent at detaching himself, but that had served as a great weapon when he was out there killing others for the sake of a cause he didn’t support. Then they’d turned on him; not his fault he killed quite a few of his unit mates. Fry though, Fry had made a side of him the worlds had beaten down come to the surface. He had started to doubt his methods, had started to wonder if what he did was the right thing and if he could possibly stop and settle.

Her death had proved he was wrong, that he wasn’t allowed to have the goods of life, only the bads; though the floodgates she had cracked refused to be closed again. The pain, the nagging, had gotten steadily worse over those five years after he had separated from Imam and Jack. Every time he pictured her face he winced at the images of a life that could have been, no matter how dysfunctional it would have ended up being. It wasn’t that he had wanted to marry the girl, have kids, and have a house with a dog and a white picket fence, not by a long shot. Riddick was not that kind of man, no matter how much he had ‘changed’. It was merely that maybe he had found someone to help shoulder some of his shit life. It hadn’t been love… at least he didn’t think it was. No, it had not, he wasn’t the type to allow something like that to happen and it had not felt like anything people said love was supposed to feel like.

It was a kind of lust mixed with a need to protect something much smaller than him. Obsession would be the proper term in his mind, he had seen only Fry during their time on that planet. Sure, there was Johns, and the kid, and all the others that had eventually died, but in his mind the only people that were had been him and Caroline. It was pathetic.

Now, her memory merely brought about something that felt akin to indigestion. It was eight years and some odd months in the past, it was over and done with, and there was no changing it. No use on brooding over it anymore than he already had.

The one death that still brought the sting of regret and bitterness was that of his Jack. Riddick shifted in his chair and grumbled at the surging in the pit of his stomach that thinking on her death still brought up; so much more powerful than when Fry had died. Kira had been like a pet at first, someone for him to look after but he had not been terribly attached, in face that little kid owed her life to the tenacity of the former copilot of the Hunter. Then, as they had traveled through space and he had spent more time getting to know the girl he had found protective instincts emerging. He had seen so much of himself in her, and at first it had been great to think that someone could understand him. Then it had caused fear, fear she would turn into him. She wormed her way into his heart and became the sister he never had, a little thing that needed his ominous shadow to keep her safe from the rest of the universe.

Riddick snarled and stood, rolling his shoulders. Flashes of her death ran through his head, of the blood, the small cocky smirk, and the reemergence of Jack… not Kira. It had turned out that she had needed protection from him, not by him. He had screwed her up so badly that she had ended up in a Slam and then dead on the Necropolis’ floor, he had no right to defile someone such as Jack. Some would argue that there had always been the potential to become what she had, that she had been abused as a kid, dressed up as a boy to get away from her home life, and then had the trauma of getting off that planet and watching all that death with her own eyes, that it wasn’t entirely his fault. Those people were fucking idiots.

Riddick had virtually killed Kira himself with his own hands.

Anger was swelling in his chest again and when the massive mountain of power decided that it was once again getting to the point of toxicity he grabbed his belt that held his shiv’s, bent and wicked, before setting out to the ships outwards haul door. It had been a full day and a half since he had last vented, that was plenty of time to build up yet more issues that only fighting could alleviate.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Richard B. Riddick was a troubled youth. Anyone could see that, it was written on his face and in his body stance; always loose, always ready, always prepared for a fight. His foster families had seen this behavior, the cold shoulders, and the snapping like some kind of cornered wild animal that was refusing to be tamed, and had all given up on him within months of receiving him into their homes. He fought with other fosters, sometimes to the point of where the other boy would have to go to the hospital to staunch his nose or some other weeping bodily injury. He was a brute, pure and simple, a menace to society. That’s what they all thought of him, and who was he to deny it?

The voices were growing louder with each day. They had started when he was seven, whispering incoherently in his sleep, showing him images of something that he thought was familiar but couldn’t place. Burning buildings, a man in thick, gothic style armor hovering over him like some kind of black shade, and burning cruel eyes that promised his death… Luckily he always woke up just as he was being strangled by a long and slimy thing about his small neck. The voices had gotten worse in the years and when he had sought any kind of help from his foster parents they had stared at him like he was insane, huddled the other kids away from him, and had called the Service on him. And on to another place he was shuttled off. He had learned not to ask for help on that day, all the while the murmuring and the rage that the words instilled in him was piling up. Until they reached the pinnacle that they were at now, virtually screaming in the fifteen year olds ears to commit crimes.

And not just any crimes. Violence, blood, murder… it was so easy they would say. Humans were soft, vulnerable, so many weak spots that it was ridiculous, all it took was a snap here, a slice there, and they were goners. Richard didn’t like it when the voices showed him what it would look like or the small rush that filled the back of his head, like glass shards falling on his buzzed head… It disturbed him, but interested him at the same time. What was wrong with him?

Hah… he had heard people ask him that question his entire life. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?!’ had been shouted at him almost from the start of his life in Foster facilities. It wasn’t that he cared what others thought, he had learned to push that away when he was much younger and still phased by their hateful words, it was that he too wondered just what made him different.

“Yo, Rich, let’s get it goin’! The store’s been closed for two hours, I think it’s safe, dude,” Richard lifted is head from his thoughts and turned to the head of his little gang. There were four other boys beside himself, all hoodlums that were the scum of society on New Germany, all doing what they could to survive. After all, you could live on air for only so long after slamming the door in the face of your latest Foster care parent; your body needed food eventually and he was too young to be considered for any of the jobs that were available in this part of the planet.

Pushing off the brick wall he had been leaning on Richard nodded and pulled his leather jacket closer to ward off the wicked German winter. They tramped through the snow, towards the darkened store that was owned by a guy all the locals knew was a drug runner. He supposed this way they thought they were doing an evil to an evil therefore it was somehow justified, even though Riddick knew that was a load of crap. They were all just hungry and this guy had the lowest security of all the stores in the area, the best possible chance for a meal was here. The guy in front of him, a short and stalk guy that was obviously a local borne and raised here drew out a large crow bar from his jacket and twirled it in his fingers, eyeing the glass of the main window. Two others did the same while him and the leader each took out their large sacks for taking as much grub as possible. If all went well tonight they wouldn’t have to do this for another two weeks. If all went well tonight the fuzz wouldn’t show to spoil it all like they had the last three times.

The snow was cold and biting through his boots, even now it was somehow finding holes and ways into his leather and making his socks wet and damp. Germany chill sunk into his very bones and made him shiver with the force of it, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dark around him. Shattering glass assailed his ears, making them ring loudly as the shards fell from the top of their holding and down into the waiting snow, glittering and shimmering their way down. With the pathway cleared into the shop his gang surged through the once barrier, flicking out their own bags and cheering to themselves. Richard watched with a puff of a breath floating before his face, his chocolate brown eyes narrowing and his eyebrows knitting together. Was this anyway to live? He had thought about this before, that what he was doing… what they were doing… was wrong. They were robbing some guy of his livelihood, probably getting him into trouble with his bosses, and making themselves out to be common criminals.

Was it alright to do it if it was from someone that they thought of as scum? This was no way of living… he finally concluded as he stepped forwards, listening to the cacophony of broken glass crunching under his boots; but it was his only way of surviving. That’s all that mattered; surviving was the only thing that was left. “Make sure ya get the damn bread this time,” the shaven youth shouted, launching himself into the vacant store.

He was greeted with a varieties of hand waving and shouting at him that he was stupid, that they’d remember this time. No one wanted to go back to eating only canned beans and chocolate again, their stomachs couldn’t handle it, not when they were this close to starving again. The rumbling, loudly, of Richard B. Riddick’s stomach reminded him just why he was here and he shouldered his sack before heading down one of the many aisles that littered the store. The nagging aching in his gullet was what was truly spurring him.

Finally having given up on the Foster system himself, as it had given up on him long ago, he had turned his back to a warm house and a square meal for this. But it was better, he thought as he tramped down the aisle, stopping here and there to size up what was displayed before him; this way he was free and could do whatever the hell he wanted. This way he was with people that at least somewhat understood him. The fosters never had… the hatred in their eyes, the fear, his reputation had preceded him it would seem throughout the system.

His eyes fell upon the tell tale dark packaging of interspatial food stuffs, the kind that you just stored into your containers and that was vacuumed sealed to the point where an entire meal was paper thin. Just add water and heat and you had practically a homemade meal, steaming hot with potatoes and in some of the deluxe kinds gravy. He wondered what it would be like to be out there… among the stars. To pilot his own ship, to be completely free, to be at no ones mercy but his own, it would be heaven. A snap brought his attention from the frozen food stuffs towards where one of the boys was actually snarling into several pieces of beef jerky while stuffing the rest of the bags into his sack. Watching how he ravaged into the hard meat, petrified almost with drying, brought home the stark reality of just what he had done when he had run away a year or so ago.

It was easy to just awash in the numbness that came with the cold, grey exterior and life that he led in New Germany’s Bad Land. The poor East side of the largest city on planet, desolate and hardly able to pay any bills with any job most of the people that lived down here were thieves, muggers, or drug runners. Luckily, Riddick was just the lesser of three evils. Though lately… if the voices had anything to say about it, he would be even higher in the food chain then he was now.

“Rick, hey man, what kinda beans you want this time? Baked or ranch style?” the voice of the youngest of them, a mere twelve years old, squeaked over one of the bins tops. Richard leaned over and stared down at the only five foot wonder and watched as he held both cans up for inspection. Truth be told, Riddick could go his entire life without eating another bean and it would be too soon, just looking at the cans made his stomach churn. But they needed the protein, the fiber, and just about every good thing that beans had in them, which meant that he had to chose which one would not make him vomit it back up.

“Baked,” Richard stated in an already gravely voice. He was tall for his age, much taller than the other boys in the gang, even their eighteen year old leader. His frame was already starting to become hard and larger, his muscles protruding and his entire demeanor becoming that of an animal. It was like as the years went on he became less human, became set apart, isolated, he didn’t know if he liked that or not just yet. All he did know was that in a fist fight he could crush any dudes face in if necessary, and that had its perks. No one messed with you when you were inching up to six feet already and had shoulders broader than most two men put together.

“Time until the alarm goes off, Specs,” their leader, Leon, came around the corner, his sack already filled and brimming. He looked towards the second oldest, a seventeen year old that had an even more fucked up life than Richard’s. His parents had not wanted him but he had brought in extra money with the tax returns, so instead of kicking him out on the streets or giving him up to the system, they had merely beaten the poor kid to within an inch of his life. He was a frail kid, hardly any thicker than Riddick’s wrist, with shoulder length, stringy brown hair and the bluest eyes he had ever seen, hidden behind a pair of broken black rimmed glasses.

Specs, as he was known rather than his given name David, turned and pushed up his sleeve, staring at the portable computer he had made himself with spar parts he had found around the house when he was younger. It was his parents old home that they now lived in. No one knows what happened to Dave’s parents… and Richard never felt like asking. It wasn’t his business, besides… if the stink coming from the garden was any indicator he didn’t wanna know what happened. “Three minutes. We have plenty of time, Leo,” the brain of the operations said with a waning smile. They had never seen the boy truly grin or smile, his eyes always held fear in them, and whenever Riddick so much as approached him he winced and flitted away. Richard was used to that reaction.

“Then hack the safe under the register and get the ending day cash, maybe we’ll luck out this time and be able to buy some socks,” Leon stated gruffly, pulling his coat closer. The store had been warm and nice when they had broken in but in the process of pilfering it the weather had invaded and turned the air to an icy chill once more.

Riddick didn’t say anything. It was like Leon to think about the group as a whole rather than any one particular thing. This was like his family, he’d told the bald youth that when he had first come on, this was his only tie to the Earth and he would be damned if he let something get in the way of it. Leon was here to take care of them all, make sure they get what they needed… even if it wasn’t enough. He was trying, but it was getting to the point where Richard was starting to wonder if he could do better on his own. The main concern of his life shouldn’t be about socks; he was not sure at this point what it should be, but it most certainly shouldn’t be that.

Life was still shit, even out of the Fosters. Where his twisted fate would lead him next, he wondered.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He had stayed on that planet too long for his tastes. Four months of darkness were all right, but for some reason he had begun to get a strange feeling. Something was tugging him in the gut, something unsettling was on the horizon, and it was telling him that he had to move to avoid it lest he get wrapped up in it completely. So now he found himself floating listlessly amongst the stars, staring out towards the direction his destination was plotted. He did not like this feeling, this foreboding, telling him that something was very, very wrong.

Riddick shifted in his pilots chair and let his mind fuzz over with the drugs that were pumping into his body. The cryo gauntlet was fastened soundly to his wrist, piercing into his wrist and pumping him full of the powerful medications. It was too great of a distance not to go under the cryo sleep, or the fucked up version he had to under go, this way he saved up on his food supplies and didn’t have to use the restroom. This way his body was asleep by all means and his mind was wide awake, if not slightly inebriated. It would be a along time until his next destination, a full twenty seven weeks, and if he kept letting his mind race and his inward darkness boil over he would be aware of it constantly. And so incredibly bored out of his mind.

Flashes of his life before he became known just as Riddick the animal were flashing unbidden before his eyes. Of his first kill… of his first robbery, of the first of everything that started him down this path to become what he was now. Some loner in a vessel in the middle of a nowhere system going in to get a few supplies at the closest station, get some ‘entertainment’ and be on his merry way; always moving, never staying in one place for longer than a few years. It was starting to wear on the convict to be honest. He wondered how long he could keep this up. He wouldn’t always be in the unstoppable shape he was now, someday he would grow old and feeble, just like the rest of any species, and be caught finally. Where would he end up when that happened? How long would an old man last in a Slam? Or would he merely be shot…?

The necromongers were still after his ass, that much he knew for damn sure. He could feel them coming up on him almost every second of every waking day; that small chill tickle on the back of his neck announced them better than any gunshot or shout. They changed the air around them, those death obsessed freaks, somehow, someway, they made the air colder and all the happiness that had existed in the room was sucked out like a great void. They wondered why he had run off… he couldn’t stand the sensation of being surrounded by death every single breath he took. Necromongers had a strange scent to them as well. He couldn’t pin it, even now as he reflected on it and went through all the possible pungent odors he knew of. They were decaying from the inside, or something of the like, that same sickening sweet scent of rotting flesh; only it was their souls that were festering away inside of an empty body. He would rather die than to become something like them; even if he was more like a necromonger than he would like to think.

His nostrils flared suddenly and his eyes shot open, fingers gripping into the arms of his chair. While going through the hidden depths of Dame Vaako in particular, to figure out just what she smelled like other than stink covered by spice, he came up upon one particular scent he didn’t think he would remember this late in the game. Spicy, harsh, pungent, strong… female yet so undeniably masculine.

“Georgie girl,” he grumbled out with his brows furrowing in slight confusion. Why would he think of her now? Now that he reflected on it he had not thought of the fellow assassin in over two and a half years, having pushed her out of his conscious mind to move on and out with his life. He had stuck by their agreement, had left her alone, even when in the first month after their departure he had been ready to burst and find her again. She had given him something he had not had in a while, something to feel, something to grip onto for no matter how short of a period of time.

Riddick blinked slowly when a flash went through his minds eye. Georgina Collins, with her untamable rusted hair, crouching against her co-pilots chair and staring out idly into the stars with a pensive look. That strong body, that wit, everything… had been annoying about her. Annoying and yet deeply intriguing. The complete opposite of what he usually went for in a woman, Fry being the almost embodiment of what he wanted in a mate, he had been surprised in that Slam when he had wanted the fellow killer so strongly. And he wasn’t good at denying his baser instincts when it came to women.

When he’d been having his way with her he had felt in a long time, burning, searing, consuming passion and need for a body; someone else’s body. The cheap fucks and whores he encountered at the stations that he used to slate his hunger that would go years without being fed were nothing compared to when he had been with the fiery and somewhat spastic younger woman. He had not liked to think about it so he had driven as far from her as he possibly could, leaving her on that planet in the Ihram and determined to forget her wholly. For a long time it had worked. He wondered…

Did she do the same? Did she remember him at all? Why the fuck should he care? He didn’t, to be honest, brutally honest, he just was bored and had latched onto something that would provide the most brooding time to be passed. A sardonic grin came over his lips slightly when he remembered the game they’d played in the beginning, when she had desperately tried to deny that she wanted him the same way he wanted her, had fought him tooth and nail like a cornered animal. She’d hit him, scratched him, and nearly stabbed him several times, but in the end he had won out. She was his in those months, completely and utterly she had belonged solely to him. Even still he didn’t know what it had been about her that had attracted him. Was it that same animalistic glare that they seemed to share, the way that her body moved that was graceful and smooth and yet sloppy and full of holes in her defense, or was it the way that she had actually stood up to him when she was about to shit her pants?

Whatever the hell it had been was three years in the past. George had probably already gone on to bigger and better targets, racking up yet more kills to her name and working her way up in the hit man world. Someone such as her was someone never to trifle with… he pitied the idiot that had wronged her enough for her to seek him out.

Something beeped on his left swiftly and abruptly the ship was suddenly shaking hard and fast. The Cryo, shouting in alarm and letting out a jarringly loud screech, disconnected from his wrist by him ripping it out and spinning around in his chair. Pulling his goggles off and throwing his hands into work on a series of buttons and switches he deftly began to assess the situation. What the hell had just happened?

“Left thruster engine damaged, capacity lowered to eighty percent, disengaging hyper speed,” the computers crackling voice echoed over the speakers situated next to him on both sides of the head. Sure enough the slight blurring that had been happening at the edges of the ships windows slowed to where he could make out each and every damn bolt and the ship began to let out a loud spluttering noise from the left handed side. The convict snarled and brought up charts of the damage and a schematic quickly, going over it with a sweep of his gaze and realizing with a narrowing of his eyes on the radar that there was a ship coming up fast right behind him. How had the ship not alerted him before this shit had gotten up to him??

“Fuck,” he growled and brought down the gun turret screens and activated them, swinging in his chair again and taking hold of the control handles. Gritting his teeth Riddick swung his ship around in the middle of deep space, breaking his path of navigation to face the guys that had just taken a shot at him. There was debris floating off next to the ship, bolts and shards of the former engine of the six winged vessel he had stolen from a slaver. Pulling down the targeting mask and readying for a fight he felt his heart beat speed up. He had not had a space battle in a long time, not since a few years after the wailing wars when Johns had caught up to him in his newly stolen ship. He’d shown him then and he would be shit if he didn’t do so now, no one came after Richard B. Riddick. Or shot at him. Oh, no one shot at him when he was in cryo, that only made him pissed off.

“Switch auxiler power to the remaining two engines on the left side, power up the last row and prepare shielding,” he hissed to the computer. A series of loud clacks and the added humming of beefed up shielding informed him his orders were taken to heart of the machine.

He watched with baited breath his own ion drive. It wasn’t unheard of for bounty hunters or rats to hide in the stream that followed all ships, masking their approach visual as if to confuse the captain of the vessels. This was actually common practice among many of them. However, usually the followed ship would be able to detect the enemy given a certain amount of space, and considering how close it had been on radar when he had last checked it should have pulled him out of cryo jarringly fifteen minutes ago! Riddick’s silver eyes watched the swirling of blue, gold, and red shimmer starkly compared to the inky black all about him, planets of a nearby system hulking ominously in the distance. Blood rushed through his ears and his heart was starting to hammer louder and louder with the thought of a coming fight, and yet his mind was the epitome of calm.

Riddick pulled his ship back harshly, backfiring his engines, just as the enemy came barreling out of the stream. He nearly bit his own tongue when he saw just what kind of ship it was. Pushing through the ion river of his shuttle came the long, slender, intricately detailed form of Necromonger ship. Ribbons of dying pinks and silver from the residue came floating from it while the hulking, much larger ship came at him with the dark matter cannons charging visibly.

“Double fuck,” Riddick cursed.