A Thousand Shades Of Black

Chapter Six – A Nice Night for Genocide

The aliens had cut them off from a direct attack of the ship, driving them farther and farther from their ultimate goal. The twisting streets
and fallen rubble didn’t help either. There seemed to be no direct route to the ship tha wasn’t filled with an overabundance of homicidal aliens. Riddick led the way, continuously backtracking, trying to work them around to the ship. Alia just tried to keep them all alive.

She ghosted another alien with a swift strike, her attention divided between her own defense and Kyra’s. The girl was old enough to be allowed to fight, but her rebellious angry attacks were worrisome for Alia. She had much still to learn. However, she would never learn if Riddick wrapped her in cotton wool and protected her. Normally, she figured that he knew that, but Kyra’s death on the Necromonger ship had wounded him and he was still recovering.

Kyra was moving with great energy and some real skill. Alia approved of her brutally efficient movements, she just needed some more of the combat experience that the two Furyans had. Well, that and a little more emotional control. So Alia kept near to the girl, as Riddick did, and kept the little bastards off of her back.

The monkey aliens chattered and screamed in their own strange language as they attacked, but Alia fought utterly silently. Riddick cursed occasionally, but Kyra spewed a stream of invective that was both original and explicit. Alia was amused and somewhat impressed by the younger girl’s vocabulary. So that’s what you learned in prison, she thought wryly.

“You banana-eating, sons of buggering whores!” She shrieked as she stabbed one through the eye. “Pick on a planet your own size!” That particular battle cry was perhaps less coherent than the last but it was delivered with great passion nonetheless.

Alia spun on one heel and decapitated an alien who was trying to sneak up behind Kyra. Hearing the attacker go down, Kyra looked back over her shoulder and then looked at Alia. “Thanks,” she acknowledged the save a little breathlessly.

“No problem,” Alia answered her back with her usual expressionless aplomb and shoved her blade through another alien.

Riddick watched Kyra from the corner of his eye, but Alia seemed to have her covered. The Furyan woman seemed to have an instinctive understanding of what was important to him and simply moved herself to cover him. That she didn’t exploit what could be considered a weakness was novel for him.

He was getting a handle on her own weaknesses as well: the way she had rushed next door to rescue the children, the way she had cradled Ziza, and how she now shielded Kyra. Her maternal instincts were more those of a lioness than Lajjun’s gentle tenderness, but they were equally strong. She was unable to stand idly by while a child was endangered. He understood it completely as he had the same problem. Still, it was exploitable by those without their compunctions.

He spotted the large group of slightly larger aliens moving to cut them off at a cross street and he launched himself at them, his only thought to protect his women.

Vaako led his little band around the corner and found another group of battered refugees. Men, women and children were moving forward at a quick shuffle. They were carrying the wounded and what small items they could save from their homes. Vaako hoisted Ziza up into his arms and reached back for Lajjun. She stepped forward and he draped an arm around her shoulders before plunging into the crowd and pushing his way through. He broke a trail for the others and they moved much faster than the frightened civilians they were weaving between. A voice hailed him as he pushed a wounded man aside as gently as he could.

“Vaako?”

He turned in surprise, scanning the crowd for the source of the gruff voice.

“McCauley?” It took a moment for him to recognize the construction foreman under the blood and filth that coated him. “Are you well?” All Vaako’s newly acquired slang had departed him and he had fallen back into the speech patterns of a Necromonger, but no one seemed to either notice or care.

“Yeah, none of the blood is mine.” The barrel-chested foreman replied grimly and fell into step with Vaako’s party. “Half the crew is gone though. Paterson went down on Akkad Avenue. It’s his blood mostly.” Vaako felt a small stab of pain at the thought that the brash young carpenter was dead. “His and Regina’s.” The pain was greater now. The lanky woman had been a stolid presence beside him as he worked. He would miss them both.

His party was growing larger as he moved forward, Vaako led the survivors deeper into the catacombs.


Alia’s heart thudded wildly in her chest as Riddick leaped at a large group of the aliens. She hurdled over dead bodies to reach his side. There were too many of them for one man to fight alone, even if that man was Riddick.

Kyra pounded along behind her and Alia spared a brief prayer for the girl’s safety as she plunged after him.

He went down under a pile of the creatures and Alia screamed in fury. The aliens closest to her turned as she barreled into them, knife flashing. She didn’t bother with the Void, there was no subtlety in her attack. She just wanted them off of Riddick.

The pile heaved and Riddick threw off his attackers, emerging from them covered in blood, dirt and viscera. Alia sliced through the new batch of aliens. These ones were larger and even stronger but not as quick as the others. She stepped under a flailing limb and stabbed one in the chest, turning away to the next one before the first had even hit the ground.

She cut a path for herself and Kyra, finally making it to his side. She lopped off the arm of a particularly large creature that was threatening Riddick and then gave him a furious glare.

“Don’t do that!” she ground out.

“I had it covered,” he shrugged and then cut the legs out from under another one. The aliens paused in their suicidal charge, staring at the two blood-soaked Furyan warriors, and then broke ranks, fleeing in a panic. “See?” Riddick waved at the fleeing creatures and she frowned at him. He just shot her that cocky grin in response to her fierce expression. Alia wanted to smack him.

Something was niggling in the back of Alia’s mind. The closer they got to the alien ship, the more some sixth sense of Alia’s began to shrill alarms at her. She was missing something. She could feel waves of a strange energy flowing over her and it seemed like something she should recognize. When they had been driven off before, the feeling had remained but diminished, as though distance to the ship was somehow important.

Riddick began to move towards the craft, which was very close now. Alia reached out and grabbed his arm, holding him back.

“Wait.” She murmured, trying to figure out what she was feeling.

“Why? It’s right there!” Kyra stepped forward, weapon drawn, and Riddick blocked her way with one large arm. She shot him a frustrated look and glared at Alia. “Let’s kick some alien ass!”

“What is it, Alia?” Riddick’s growl was tired, but patient. She shook her head in confusion.

“There’s something, some kind of energy… I don’t know.” She struggled for words and looked into his silver eyes with helpless puzzlement. He drew them back into the shadow of a building and tilted her head up with his hand, studying her face.

“Dangerous?” he asked. Trying to answer him, she reached out with the senses she had honed while walking the Void. The energy stuttered and staggered about, like a drunken man. It felt off-kilter and unstable. She could feel it building up around them like a strange kind of tension. She couldn’t figure it out like this, she had to go out and see it. She leaned against Riddick, putting her head against his chest. For that moment it felt good to just lean on him.

“I’m not sure, let me go find out.” She raised her head and gave him a long, level look. “Don’t let me go,” she told him and then she shifted through the Void all the way.

Riddick felt her body go limp against him and clutched her hard before she fell. Her eyes had closed, her breathing had gone shallow and her pulse, as he felt for it, was nearly non-existent. He felt a wave of panic rush through him as he held her.

“Alia?” he whispered, but she was unresponsive. Her body was utterly limp and he was taking far less pleasure in finally being able to hold her then he thought he would. He was confused and concerned. A breeze touched him and he turned his head trying to seek out the source of it. “Aereon? What’s going on?” he asked the empty air.

“She is world-walking.” Aereon materialized beside him and peered over his shoulder to look at Alia’s face. He looked at the Elemental and saw a mixture of interest and … was that envy? She was fluttering and nearly transparent, almost not really there. He wondered how long she had been with them.

“Remember our earlier discussion, you know, the one about me being educated in the penal system?” He raised a brow in irritation. Aereon looked up at him in surprise. “Explain so I can understand.”

“She didn’t tell you she was going? She must trust you a very great deal.” The Elemental was looking at him speculatively. “She is in a deep trance. She has left her body.” Aereon finally explained.

“Why?” He leaned down and grabbed Alia behind the knees, swinging her up into his arms. Her dead weight was awkward to carry, but he cradled her protectively against his chest. He only hoped the aliens would stay away until she was back in her body – the body she had left him to protect.

“There are things that can only be seen or experienced once you have escaped the body,” Aereon murmured, her sharp blue eyes still on Alia. He looked into the still face with a touch of wonder. Aereon’s words began to sink in. Alia trusted him that much.

When had he become someone people trusted? He had never bothered to lie, after all what was the point? However, to be trusted this completely – well, it was beyond his experience. He stared down at her and felt strangely helpless yet powerful at the same time. She believed in him, with no questions. He really hoped he wouldn’t let her down through sheer ignorance of what to do.

“She said there was a weird energy.” Kyra commented, keeping watch as Aereon and Riddick talked. He noted Kyra’s weariness and the cuts on her. He wished she wasn’t so damned stubborn sometimes. Still, he had to admit she was handy in a fight. His little Jack had grown up to be quite deadly.

“She must have gone to find its source,” Aereon concluded.

“Any idea how long this will take?” Riddick asked the Elemental.

“Void Walkers are not something I know a great deal about,” Aereon admitted reluctantly. She was frowning a little, obviously unused to not having the answers.

“Then I guess we wait.” Riddick shrugged.

Alia slid through the twilight world that existed between all universes. She drifted, still trailing bits of the Void behind her, towards the ship. The patterns and flows of energy were strange to her but they niggled at the back of her brain. Where had she seen something like this before? The strange in-between realm she went to when she was traveling to other universes was murky and filled with swirling figures, shadows of other places impinging on this space that was really nowhere.

A figure shimmered into existence before her and Alia froze in shock. The black bodysuit, the ebony hair flowing about her shoulders, the ice blue eyes, Alia knew the face as well as her own. It belonged to her long-dead mother.

“You are seeing the consequences of one man’s fear and paranoia. The man who became Lord Marshall is ultimately responsible for this new threat as well.” Her mother’s voice was just as she remembered it: the same husky timber as her own but laced with a sweet gentleness that Alia had never achieved. Her voice rang in Alia’s mind with far greater strength and power than she remembered from the broken woman of her childhood.

“Mother?” she whispered and reached out a hand towards a woman who had died so many years ago. She was transformed by death into a strong and compassionate figure unlike the weak shattered creature of Alia’s memory.

“Hello Li.” The childhood nickname brought tears to her eyes. “Listen child, there are things I need to tell you and quickly.” Alia nodded and her mother continued. “The Furyan people were the gatekeepers of the Multiverse. We kept things like this from happening.” Her mother, long hair a shining waterfall of raven’s wing black, gestured towards the ship. “The energy you feel is from a breach in the walls between the universes. A breach that should not have happened.” Alia looked at the ship and saw the strange signature energy, the way it wobbled unsteadily. She nodded slowly. This must be what it looked like when conflicting wavelengths tried to co-exist in the same place.

“What can I do?” she asked her mother with a helpless gesture.

“You must destroy this craft and then you must go to Furya and close the gates.” Her mother’s words made her want to laugh. Go to Furya? Close the gates?

“I don’t know how to,” she pointed out with a touch of desperation.

“You must find other Furyans; they will know what to do. Your Alpha can do this.” Her mother’s calm confident voice pricked a nerve.
“He’s not my Alpha,” she ground out, knowing that Riddick was a sensitive spot for her.

“You have your father’s stubbornness, Li.” Delia Sturm shook her head at her daughter who crossed her arms in annoyance. “You cannot resist the pull forever.”

“Watch me,” Alia retorted.

“Eventually you will give in to him. He is Alpha.” Alia glared at her mother, fury replacing the joy of seeing her. How just like her mother to come back from the dead to tell her what to do again.

“I saw what it did to you, Mother. I saw how it destroyed you,” Alia pointed out with bitter venom. Her mother showed no trace of it but Alia remembered the dark nights of waiting, wondering if her mother was alive or dead, if she would be bringing a man back this time or not, if she’d be drunk. Every horror of her early childhood came from the broken bond between her parents, Delia and Otoran.

“You saw me after his death. You never saw me when he was alive,” Delia grimaced at her and reached out a hand in supplication. Alia avoided the contact and just glared back. “You do yourself a disservice by resisting. You will not win against this tide and there is little time. You will need to be united for this future task.” Great, and now her mother was engaged in giving her the sort of cryptic warnings that the Elemental was so noted for.

“No.” It was a flat monosyllable that brooked no opposition.

“We do not have time for this argument,” her mother sighed and gave her a long sad look. “Tell your Alpha to destroy this ship; it disturbs the fabric of this universe. Without it to anchor them here, the aliens should begin to fade back to their own place.”

“He is not my Alpha,” Alia insisted as she returned to her body.

Riddick saw her lips move and her brow crease with a frown as she came awake. She went from a dead weight to an armful of vibrant woman between one heartbeat and the next. He was staring into those silver-flecked black eyes and there was something in them that he couldn’t read. She tensed and then twisted herself from his grasp, landing on all fours on the ground. She rose and the walls were all back up; she was shuttered tight and he wondered what the hell had happened.

“There has been a breach in the Multiverse. The ship is the source of the anomaly. Destroy it and the creatures will be snapped back to their own universe.” She spoke in that cold voice that he remembered from the first part of their acquaintance.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked her sharply.

“I don’t like being told what to do,” she muttered back at him, her body tense and her eyes blazing suddenly from behind the mask of her coolness.

“So, who’s telling you shit?” He leaned in closer, staring her down. They had come too far together for her to pull this crap on him now. She opened her mouth, met his eyes and then deflated as suddenly as she had blown up. There was grief and pain in her eyes and he wished he knew whom to kill to make it go away.

“I had a visitation in the Void.” Her voice was almost too low to hear but he made it out. There was a moment as she looked at him, vulnerable and open, that he thought that he might have finally cracked her shell.

“From whom?” Aereon drifted near to ask and Alia pokered up again, to Riddick’s irritation. Damn meddling Elemental, he had been getting somewhere.

“Not important, let’s go blow that ship.” Alia stalked from the shadow of the building as though she were perfectly prepared to take on the entire alien army by herself. Kyra shot him a startled glance and he shrugged back before they plunged after her. They all missed the rather thoughtful look on Aereon’s face before she faded away again.

Vaako made sure all the non-combatants were at the very back of the cave and then took his position at the narrow opening. There were a lot of refugees and not a lot of defenders. His own army had destroyed most of the people able to fight during the Necromonger invasion and those that had survived were still above, fighting and dying in defense of what was left of this world.

Looking back at where Lajjun, Ziza and the others were huddled, he knew he would die to protect them, to keep them safe. He had never felt more horror at his own past then he did at that moment. Riddick had been right; the instinct to live, the need to preserve your life and the lives of those you cared for, it couldn’t be wrong.

Freet came to stand beside him. She was clutching the knife that Alia had gifted her with when they had arrived here. She held it properly now, stood strong and ready to fight. Long skirts and corsets had been replaced with the flowing robes of this world. She was transformed almost beyond recognition by contact with the two Furyans, as he had been.

He owed Riddick everything. He could not fail him now. He looked over at the handful of armed men and women who stood with him, ready to die to protect their charges. These were his people now. They could feel fear as the Necromongers he had previously led could not and still they did not back down. He had never been more proud to stand with any band of warriors.

A group of the monkey aliens turned the corner and paused, spotting the defenders. They began to chitter excitedly in the incomprehensible noises that made up their language.

“You ready?” Freet asked him with gritty determination in her voice. Vaako looked into those blue eyes and smiled at her, thinking that in that moment she was the most beautiful woman in the entire galaxy. Covered in grime and blood, filthy and probably about to die, she didn’t even flinch from the sight of their enemies beginning to advance.

“Of course,” he replied and touched her cheek very gently. She smiled at him and they turned to face the oncoming aliens together.

Riddick followed Alia as she slid in and out of shadows, pacing right behind her, watching her back. She was obviously off-kilter from whatever had happened to her and he was worried that she would do something stupid. A sloppily executed knife thrust now would kill her quick. He took a breath.

“Alia.” She paused and waited for him to catch up, but her eyes when she turned to look at him were empty.

“Riddick.” She could put so much into his name, sorrow, pain, longing and defiance. How did she do that?

“You care if you live or die?” he asked her, searching her face for the source of her anguish.

“Yes.” She brushed a strand of hair off of her face with a weary gesture. “I’m just really tired.” She smiled then. It was only a tiny twitch of the lips, but it was a smile nonetheless.

He thought then that being tied to her forever wasn’t perhaps as unwelcome as he had once imagined. She was in some indefinable way already critical to him. He had grown used to knowing that she was at his back. He already didn’t want to lose her.

“Then be a little more careful out here, okay?” he growled out the words, taken aback by his own thoughts and her smile widened into genuine humor.

“Look who’s talking.” She gave him a pointed stare and he grabbed her chin roughly. She looked back at him with startled eyes.

“Don’t die,” he commanded her. He waited until she nodded, her chin still in his hand, before releasing her and then he moved past her headed for the ship. She dropped in behind him, taking up her usual position at his back.

Behind them, Kyra watched the exchange with puzzlement and began to really wonder.