Terra Firma

Chapter One – Welcoming Pain Again


Vaako had to admit to himself, from time to time, that he did miss his wife. She had been the most vile and manipulative bitch, but she had been his. After five years, the empty spot at his side had been filled with all sorts of women, none of them as intelligent or as strong as Dame Vaako. However, he did not wish for anyone like his wife to stand at his side now. Besides, he had more important things to think about than curing loneliness.

Vaako hated thinking about his wife…he hated all the feelings that his memories brought with his wife. Ever since his reversion, he began feeling more and more, and it was not only pain that had returned again to his mind. He was angry, angry with his wife; angry at what he had done in the name of a faith that was never truly his own. This anger was what propelled him, and it was his motivating force to do whatever it took to find forgiveness. Vaako had once believed in God, he believed in a man who had died for his sins and had been resurrected…before his Necro conversion…and he was beginning to believe in it again. He had read, that long ago his original faith had been one of the bloodiest in human history…but Necroism had passed beyond his original faith in being the bloodiest, the most vile of faiths.

Forgiveness was all he wanted…and he was attaining it by standing next to the Lord Marshal…a man that everyone who remained called Riddick.

Riddick was no saint, not by any means, but he was so much more than Zhylaw…Riddick did not want power, he was not a megalomaniac, and most of all, he was full of such fascinating emotion…as if he reveled in feeling pain.

Pain…Vaako had missed it.

He stood now on the bridge of his frigate, glancing at the Navigators and noting that despite being reverted, they could still use the Necro technology. These men were no longer merely tools, but men…men with feelings, men with pain, and men like Vaako who felt that they too needed redemption.

“We are fast approaching the outer planets of the Furyan System, my lord,” one of the Navigators informed Vaako.

“Good. Set your course for the main planet; scan for life. The original Icon signal should be broadcasting coordinates.”

“Aye, aye.”

Vaako gazed through the holo-screens as the frigate slowed, passing icy gas giants in a system of twelve planets. Furya was the fifth planet from the large yellow sun, a planet left for dead over thirty-five years ago. It was planet of legend now, the home world of Riddick…the planet where Zhylaw had sealed his fate by killing millions.

Vaako’s own home world had been destroyed, but after Riddick’s campaign to explore the possibility of reviving planets ravaged by Nercoism, Vaako learned that Zhylaw and his predecessors had not been so thorough. Life still existed on those planets…even human life on some. Vaako had been tempted to return to his own world, to see what was left and what there was to rebuild…but he was not ready…he had not repented enough for the horrors he had to help inflict on the universe.

“My lord, we are picking up Icon signatures, the Icons are still transmitting, but the transmission is garbled and the information corrupted,” a yeoman informed Vaako.

Vaako frowned, his hands behind his back as he began pacing before the holo-screens. The Icons broadcasted information to the Necromonger fleet. This information contained data on the planet, if there was life, if there was human life…as well as planetary conditions. Why the inventors of the Icon created a weapon as well as surveillance device was beyond Vaako. Perhaps the creators had clung to a hope that they were not part of the Campaign to conquer, convert and kill…perhaps it was device to allow the Necromongers to collect any stragglers who had escaped conversion, Vaako could only speculate. However, for the data stream to be corrupted meant only one thing…survivors.

In the years since Vaako’s conversion, he had heard reports of survivors on converted planets trying to mask their presence by tapping into the power sources of the Icons… He had also heard that many survivors had managed to infiltrate the central core of the Icons and steal the power nodes, using them to begin to rebuild their destroyed technology. On occasion, a fleet would return to such planets and annihilate the remaining life…the Necromongers had no need for such persistent Breeders. If they escaped conversion once, they would not escape from death upon second harvesting.

But times had changed, and now the life that Vaako had been ordered to search out and destroy…he now nurtured.

He was lost in his own memories, his own desires for redemption that he did not notice that the ship was ready to enter the atmosphere of a dark planet, hidden under the cover of heavy cloud.

“…picking up sporadic human life signs in the southern hemisphere. Our sensors are picking up scattered settlements within one hundred miles of several Icons…only one is transmitting a corrupted signal.”

“Where?” Vaako asked, his eyes moving across the holo-screens and the dark clouds below him from orbit.

“A large settlement in the ruins of what was once a city… The old records show that the name of the city was Kurga, the seat of the kingdom of the northern continent. Scans cannot pinpoint the exact number human life signs, but we estimate that the number is over ten thousand.”

“Technology?” Vaako asked again, masking his surprise at the number of humans amassed in what had once been a capital city.

“Our scans are being reflected, but we have picked up ion trails…ships have been on and off the planet within the last three years.”

Vaako frowned. It was possible that Slavers had come and gone off the planet…or Rykengolls, Vaako’s true God forbid… The universe feared the Necromongers, but Rykengolls were living nightmares, and in the last two years, their recruitment of followers to the strange religion had become very militaristic. It was a concern that had not passed unnoticed.

“Atmospheric conditions?” Vaako continued, shaking off a memory of seeing a Rykengoll long ago.

“It seems that after Conversion protocol, the atmosphere was depleted and the planet was racked with catastrophic storms. In the last twenty years, the atmosphere has stabilized and the planet’s seasonal cycle has returned to normal. Currently the northern hemisphere is experience a deep winter season.”

Vaako’s pale eyes watched the movement of cloud. His orders were to scout the conditions of the Lord Marshal’s home world, to scout out any life… No order had been made of what to do if he did find life, just to find it, if it existed.

He considered contacting Riddick, but he knew, after five years standing with him, Riddick would want Vaako to learn everything he could about whatever situation was presented him…this time the situation was Furya. The rumor that the planet was cursed did not go unheeded by his crew, nor did the thought of whatever life lived on the planet’s surface would not take kindly to the return of the Necromonger fleet.

But Vaako turned swiftly and barked orders…they were going to land.

* * *


When Vaako’s sleek frigate landed in a zone between thick wilderness and the ruins of what had been Kurga, he stepped onto frozen ground, his armor not shielding him efficiently from the icy wind. The sky was gray and the wind blew in strong gusts. Vaako could not remember feeling so cold…not since before conversion.

The air smelled like cold…clean, stone and faintly of wood smoke. Somewhere a fire was burning. Snow was falling in huge flakes, coating everything in over six inches of snow…and under the snow, ice.

Vaako’s dark eyes scanned the landing zone, the frozen skeletal trees that arched and whipped with every gust of snow. To the east was the ruins of what Vaako could see was once a great city. There were many structures still standing, all covered in snow. At the elevation of the landing zone, Vaako could look down and see streets, empty and white. But most of the city was rubble, overgrown and obscured. The furthest point that came to Vaako’s immediate notice was a large structure that stood many stories upward into the snowy air. The snow had fallen away from spires of reddish stone, reaching up like claws to gouge the sky, it brought a memory of his home world and a place that had amazed Vaako as a child…a cathedral.

It was then Vaako realized that he knew almost nothing about the Furyan race besides their fierce war craft, their resilience, and at times questionable morals. He wondered what Furya had been like before Zhylaw’s genocidal campaign. What god did Furyans worship? Were there writers, scientists, artists and wise men? Did mothers and fathers have children that they loved and raised to love?

Vaako wiped his eyes through his visor. His thoughts since renouncing Nercoism were often introspective and at times were marred with sorrow. He shook himself mentally as his men fanned out around him, using handheld scanners since losing the Lensors during the schism.

Vaako still carried a weapon, more out of habit than anything, and so did many of his men. But it had been rare in the last five years that he had to kill or defend himself. He did not miss killing, but from time to time, he missed the thrill of the fight.

It happened quickly, so quickly Vaako wondered if what he was seeing were real. The two point men fell, their blood arching through the icy air from gashes in their necks. When two more men fell to Vaako’s right, the alarm was raised and his men moved back toward the ship.

Vaako could not see who had attacked, but as he stood motionless, only his eyes moving over the stone rubble he began to pick out shapes…human shapes, twenty or so, dressed in heavy cloaks lined with fur, the color blending in with the rubble, trees and stone. With his men behind him, some moving back onto the ship, the attack stopped. Vaako stood his ground, staring back at the figures materializing out of the ground, out of the rubble and trees. And when one figure stood out, stepping toward Vaako, he could see a bloody sword dripping to stain the snow.

The figure stopped within ten yards of Vaako and raised its fur-laden arm outward so that the bloody sword was pointed at Vaako’s face.

“You wish for death by daring to come here, Necro. If you believe it is your ‘due time,’ by all means step forward to meet your fate,” the voice boomed across the cold, indistinct and muffled by the cowl falling low of its head.

Vaako said nothing, noting that the other cloaked figured moved in closer and his men were preparing their weapons behind him. This was not what he had wanted when he set out to scout Furya, the days of mindless, bloody battle were over.

“My name is Vaako, and you are mistaken,” he said firmly, moving so that his hands were nowhere near his dagger or his gun.

“Mistaken? Is that not a Necromonger frigate? Are those marks upon your armor not a sign that you are an accomplished warrior, the force of conversion?” the voice asked, and Vaako picked up quickly that the voice was female.

“I did not come here to convert or fight, my name is Vaako, first commander to the seventh Lord Marshal Riddick…”

“Riddick?” a voice hissed from the rubble.

Vaako paused as voices rang out from the snow, hisses and exclamations.

“This is my personal ship, with my personal crew, and you have killed four of my men. The Necromonger way is no more, the True Believers found their Underverse and Zhylaw, the man who left your world to rack and ruin, is dead.”

More voices, shouting, blades being unsheathed filled the air, as well as the sound of Vaako’s own men preparing to defend him. Vaako raised a hand, turning slightly to eye his men out of the edge of his helmet, and with proud obedience his men stood down.

“I do not lie to you, and I offer myself to your mercy. I will facilitate whatever means possible to show you the truth.”

The figure, female by the sound of its voice, lowered her sword and let it disappear into the folds of her cloak.

“You will surrender yourself, Necro, as well as your men. This ship will not leave this planet until it is deemed that your words be true. If they are not, you and your men will never leave this planet alive.”

Vaako nodded slightly, and the figure motioned to the others in the rubble, and for the first time since his forced conversion, Vaako found himself to be a hostage to another human.


TBC...

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