A Thousand Shades Of Black

Chapter 21 – Merc Hunting

Alia glanced at Vaako who ran the pilot’s station with cool competence and turned to stare out the view port again. It was very hard not to stand over Vaako and will the ship to go faster, but the man knew his shit and she would just be hindering him if she did.
She could feel Riddick ahead of her, passed out in the long dark and she cursed the Mercs for making it just that much harder to track them. Had he been awake and aware, he could have been feeding her navigational data, as it was, she was stuck to pointing in the direction she could feel him and saying “That way” as her input to their course.
It was frustrating and while Alia had long ago learned to be a patient hunter, she sure as hell didn’t enjoy feeling irritated and rather helpless. Her mate was out there and she wanted him back.
Ziza had been ensconced at the house with Tara to fuss over her and make treats for her in the kitchen. Alia had hated the idea of just leaving her there, but Ziza had shaken her head and told her to get going.
“Mr. Riddick won’t need to be rescued, of course,” she had said with the supreme confidence of being nearly eleven. “But he might need a ride home.”
“True, so I better be there for him,” Alia had replied, then she had hugged the little girl and gotten moving.
She knew the Necro ship was faster than Toombs’ beat up old tub, but she wanted to get Riddick back before they made landfall somewhere, or rendezvoused with any military or Corp ships, just in case.
And once she had her mate back, she was going to toss Toombs and his people to the Furyan population and walk away with a clean conscience.
She really hated Mercs.

Kyra was using the punching dummy to take out her anger and frustration. Every time it seemed like they were all going to be okay, that things were going well for them, shit like this happened. It wasn’t fair.
How much good did you have to do to erase the bad in your past? How many times did you have to save the universe to make people stop hating and fearing you? How much did Riddick have to bleed before he was “redeemed” in the eyes of authority?
Whatever he had done in the past, he had paid for it, over and over again. He had proved himself a reformed character, hadn’t he? He saved them all from the Necros, then helped Alia save the universe from imploding, or destabilizing, or whatever would have happened if all those gates hadn’t gotten closed. Didn’t any of that count?
Well, technically the Company probably didn’t know about the gate thing, but they had to know about the Necros, that was on all the broadcasts. So, why were they still hunting him?
It hit her as she was practicing her knife technique against the dummy. Fear. The Powers that be were probably scared shitless of her big brother. An uncontrollable killing machine, who had escaped from every Slam in the galaxy, who had defeated an implacable enemy all by himself, was running around somewhere doing who knows what. That what Riddick was actually doing was trying to rebuild his home world and settle down with his family probably didn’t occur to them. And even if it did, she conceded mentally, would they even care?
Riddick, as she well knew, was one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy. If she were in charge of the galaxy, she might want him on ice too. Of course, if anyone actually tried to do that to him, she would also, as his little sister and pack member, be forced to rearrange their insides so that they were more conveniently placed for being stepped on.
Still there had to be a way to keep the Powers That Be from touching him, there had to be a way for her to keep him safe this time.

Riddick was drifting in the weird between place he went to when he was unconscious. It wasn’t dreaming per se, it was more like drifting somewhere with a purpose that wasn’t entirely his.
He was back in the forest now, the forest that had once been merely a dream and was now a part of himself, a home he had known in his bones and that he now knew as real and true, the most real place in the galaxy. He turned his head and Shirah was there. He had known that she would be. She was the mother of their race, the eldest of them, the guiding spirit that would not ever abandon her children. She was Mother.
“You just can’t seem to stay away from the wheels of Destiny, can you?” she sighed, but there was affection and warmth in her gaze and he found that he wasn’t upset at her teasing.
“This time the wheels ran me over a bit,” he acknowledged ruefully.
“I think that there is some purpose for you, something that even I cannot see clearly.” Her words were serene, but even so they chilled him.
“Not sure I like that,” he admitted and she smiled at him, sweet sunshine to a world of darkness.
“Where you walk empires tumble and people rise up better and stronger for your leadership.”
“I’m not a leader,” he protested, but it was a weak thing, rather limp and without form. If being an Alpha wasn’t about being a leader than he had seriously misunderstood the job description. Even the other Alphas, the older ones, the ones he thought might be stronger than him, and they had listened to what he said with respect. They listened not because he had the faster knife, or the bigger muscles, but because he had ideas that worked.
He watched Shirah as she watched him and knew that she was letting him work it out in his own head. He thought about Helion Prime, about the rebuilding, about people who had asked him for his advice and then had actually listened and followed it.
Then he went even further back, to that Damn Planet, where even though he was a convict and dangerous and untrustworthy, they had listened to him, followed him, and trusted him.
The Slam was next, the way people had gotten out of his way, listened to him, curried favor with him, it had been more brutal, more calculated, but it had been there. People had fallen in behind him, even when he hadn’t wanted them to.
All the way back he realized, he had been leading and people had followed, he had fought it, hated it, resisted it with every fiber of his being, but it had still happened.. It was a kind of magic, he talked and whether it was the weapon in his hand, or some natural ability, people listened.
It scared the hell out of him.
Alia was there suddenly in his heart and mind. She had always been there he knew, somehow from the moment of birth to the instant of death she had and would be there with him. They were two halves of one thing inseparable and he felt whole and at peace again. His ultimate fear, that he would abuse this power, was made null by her steady presence, her unwavering love and support, she would never let him fall back into darkness, back down to the depths, where the Beast laid in wait to claim him. She would always hold out a hand and pull him up and he would do the same for her. They were each other’s salvation.
Shirah smiled at him/them and the world became stars and light and he opened his eyes.
The ship was rocking back and forth and the Merc were yelling and clinging to whatever was bolted to the bulkheads.
“No, I fucking didn’t have any idea that they had a NECRO SHIP!” Toombs was screaming at the brisk woman who had tranked Riddick earlier. She didn’t look as cool now as she did before, in fact, she looked decidedly nervous and upset.
“Well they are firing on us!” she retorted, angry and scared.
“I can damn well see that on my own! Thank you!” Toombs roared back and Riddick grinned. Sounds like his mate was making life a wee bit uncomfortable for the Mercs.
“That’s my wife out there you know,” he reminded them with a conversational air.
“You think she’d be happy to be rid of you, then!” Toombs spat back and Riddick just grinned more widely.
“She really hates Mercs.” He mentioned it absently, trying to sound unconcerned as the ship bucked under what he knew were the very precise shots of the Necro ship. “Her baby sister was killed by Mercs and she can be a trifle unreasonable on the subject.” He was enjoying the way the hard-core professionals around him were blanching and looking nervous.
“I will so fucking space you right in front of her, if she doesn’t stop shooting at us!” Toombs bellowed and Riddick shook his head sadly.
“You do that, Toombs, and you will have signed your own death warrant. The only reason this ship hadn’t been hulled is because she knows I’m on it.” He knew that Toombs had been making an empty threat, Riddick was his only hope for survival right now and he damn well knew it. He wanted Toombs shook up and nervous, but not scared to the point that he made bad decisions. Bad decisions being any that involved killing Riddick.
“Toombs, cut your engines. Give him to me and I will, against all my better judgment, let you live.” Alia’s voice was as cold as space and yet to Riddick no lover-like speech could have been as sweet to hear.
“How do I know you will keep your promise?” Toombs spat out, not happy to be on what eh saw as the wrong side of the negotiations.
“You know my rep, Toombs, when have I ever failed to keep a promise?” Toombs paled. Considering that Alia’s promises had mostly been to kill certain people and she had never failed to do so, Toombs was no doubt imagining himself on the end of one of her deadly blades. Riddick was getting horny just thinking about it and her laughter in his mind made him smile. The nearest Merc edged away from him and he wondered what that smile must look like to them.
“She’ll kill you so fast you won’t know you’re dead till your body hits the floor,” Riddick reminded Toombs of whom he was dealing with and the man’s face twisted into a grimace of hate.
“You two are perfect for each other,” he sneered.
“Yeah, we are,” he agreed and whatever was in his eyes made the other man look away hastily.

Alia was losing patience. Vaako and Kyra were running the boards, while Alia herself was targeting the Merc ship below and slightly to the right of them. She was being very careful not to hit any vital functions, like life support, but she was running out of non-lethal targets.
Vaako rolled the ship down and brought them up underneath it, so that Alia could ever so gently destroy the remaining armaments.
“Mr. Toombs, you are running out of options,” she informed him, her voice cool and modulated. She had slipped fairly deeply into the Void, keeping her hands steady, despite the urge to ram the other ship, board it, and kill everyone on it that wasn’t Riddick.
“You bitch! Back off or I will fucking space him!” Toombs yelled back at her.
“That would be unwise of you, Mr. Toombs,” she answered, fighting the red tide of fury that threatened to overtake her. “That he still breathes is the only reason I haven’t blown you out of space. Anything you do to alter that will result in your immediate death. Are we clear?”
The pause was very long after that and Alia imagined them all arguing. Riddick was amused, she could feel it clearly and she guessed the group of panicking Mercs must have been putting on a good show just then.
She didn’t feel like laughing though.

Toombs was in a quandary; at this point he wanted Riddick off of his ship. He could tell that he had, once more, bitten off more than he could chew with the escaped felon, though how he was supposed to know that his two least favorite people had hooked up he had no idea. The problem was, if he let Riddick off, Sturm was quite capable of blowing them all out of space for the sheer joy of it. Riddick was his shield and you didn’t throw away your only protection.
“Toombs, you really ought to let me go before my wife gets really mad at you.” The bastard was grinning at him. Tied up and surrounded by armed enemies he looked totally in control, it wasn’t fair.
“And what keeps her from killing us all once you are gone?” Toombs grumbled and Riddick had the nerve to look even more amused.
“Not a hell of a lot,” the big man conceded. “However, she still sounds kind of reasonable right now, you could still cut a deal with her at this point and she will honor it.” The implication being, Toombs was made to understand, that as time passed Sturm might be feeling far less “reasonable”.
“If we let him go, you let us escape?” Toombs bargained for their lives with ice in his guts.
“As long as he is alive, you’re safe,” she replied and Toombs felt something loosen in his gut.
“Promise?”
“Promise.” Her voice was still completely cold and emotionless, but he had to hope that she valued her husband over revenge.
Looking back over his shoulder he caught the eyes of his new team. They were all far too experienced with the ups and downs of bounty hunting to feel more than regret at the loss of a bounty, but they were already putting together an escape capsule for their all too brief prisoner.
“We’ll pop him out on our back trail in a pod and be outta your lives, that okay?” Toombs asked, hoping that she didn’t just shoot them for the hell of it.
“Do it and don’t let me ever see your face again,” she answered her voice, if possible, even more cold and menacing than before.
“You married that?” Toombs couldn’t help but ask Riddick as they were hauling him, still chained because they weren’t that stupid, towards the pod. He caught Riddick’s feral grin and shook his head. “Never mind.” After all, Riddick himself was unlikely to win any Miss Congeniality awards either.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. He had lost his bounty for what he realized was the last time. He was done with Riddick and his crazy bitch wife. He was going after easier prey from now on.

The long range scanners started to ping and Vaako started swearing at a rapid fire pace.
“Vaako?”
“Cruiser, looks like it’s the Company!” he answered back and then Kyra was swearing too. Alia just went deeper into the Void.
Just when it looked like things were as bad as they could be, she thought angrily, it just had to get worse didn’t it?


A/N - I am sorry it has taken me four years to get back to this story. :P Two kids and having to pay the bills is my only excuse. However, now that I have finished Devil's Bargain, I can finish this story and my other unfinished works. Thank you for your patience.