Terra Firma

Chapter Seven – Winner of the Look Alike Contest

Her hair was short, like it had been when he had first seen her after the crash of the Hunter-Gratzner…pixie like. But her face, her eyes, they were Kyra’s…but they were not.

She was older…she wore a pair of cargo pants much like his own, and a heavy knit sweater. A strap rested across her full chest and attached to it and across her back was a long sword. She was pale, paler than Kyra had been, and her hair lighter. But the scar on her chin and the way her full lips quirked…

“Explaining might take a while, Big Evil…” she said, her voice mocking and her knuckles whitening as she clutched her shiv tighter at her side.

“…the fuck…” Riddick muttered.

“Have you forgotten me so soon? I had hoped to forget you, but it seems fate is a horrible backstabbing bitch.”

Riddick slowly sat again, the Furyans watching him closely…had they known?

“Jackie…”

“Bingo…I guess. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way, but that fucking Elemental would not keep her fucking mouth shut.”

The old woman hissed and Riddick’s attention moved to the thin frame of the woman with the strangely familiar eyes.

“That is Shirah…you have dreamt of her. You’ve met Uriel, my Second and Lord Chamberlain. The red Viking is Wendell, the gorgeous green-eyed man is Yoren, and the Vaako look alike is Grien. They are my family, my brothers, and Shirah is the mother…the seer. And I am Jack, Lady Audrey, Queen of the Kurgans…”

And then she began laughing, tossing her shiv from one hand to the other…

“Shirah has been in all of our dreams, all who are Furyan…but she has been in your dreams to call you home. What was not expected was the fact that Richard B. Riddick, convict, murderer, would kill the Necro who tried to kill us all…and come home with half of the Necromonger fleet in tow,” she laughed, her eyes glittering in the half-light.

Riddick could only stare. This girl was Jack…not Kyra…Jack…not Kyra.

“I left you on Helion Prime…you went to Slam…and I found you…and I let you die…” he whispered.

“You let Kyra die…”

Riddick’s shined eyes flickered to the woman standing before the group of Furyans. He suddenly felt lost and pinned down in a position of loss… He did not like the feeling.

She stared at him passively, her green eyes penetrating his…and the beast growled. It was her scent that the beast knew. The beast remembered the scent from long ago, from the days of fighting the hammerhead predators on the dark planet. It seemed like an age ago, but the beast remembered…sweet blood, sweet sweat…and the beast struck at the bars of its cage.

Kyra had smelled like a woman…a girl who had just become a woman, sweet and bitter. It roused the beast, but not like this… Riddick felt his flesh harden as she stared at him, and he clenched his fists.

“Tell me.”

It was a demand, so deeply intoned that he caught her shiver.

“Not now.”

“Tell me!” he growled.

She smirked. “No. Not until your fleet is out of the system, the Elemental gone and your feet planted on soil…on my turf.”

He said nothing, gritting his teeth, half from anger, half from squashing his arousal.

Jack…Lady Audrey and her Furyans…

It struck him then…Jack was a Furyan, had been born a Furyan, and was the Queen of Kurgans. It was impossible…improbable. He was dreaming another strange dream for sure, and it was a nightmare…and he was losing control…

* * *

When Vaako returned to the chamber, he was aware of the silence and the nearly unbearable ambience.

Jack was standing before Riddick, staring intently at the Lord Marshal and vice versa. Vaako could not help but feel a bit of relief, no blood had been drawn from either side, but the room was tense and perhaps only one movement would bring about the shedding of Furyan blood.

Finally Vaako made himself known, only managing to divert Jack’s attention momentarily.

“My Lord, the fleet is moving to the edge of the system, the Elemental among them. I have arranged the Retrieval units to prepare to remove the Icons and the ship is now moving into high orbit… I will inform you when the fleet is stationed and the Retrieval units positioned in orbit.”

Riddick said nothing, his gaze never moving from the Lady Jack.

Vaako had known that if Jack had made herself known, it could cause trouble. Vaako had also known that Jack had not intended to reveal herself yet, but had come with the envoy to ensure that the Elemental was properly removed from Riddick’s side. Even the inclusion of the old seer Shirah had caused Vaako a great deal of uneasiness. He had learned much about the Furyans and Riddick’s role while on the planet’s surface. And a small part of him worried for his Lord Marshal…and for Jack.

After the first few days on the planet’s surface, Vaako learned that the Furyans were empathetic to Those Who Remained and their quest to return to their respective worlds. And after the second week talking and explaining himself to Lady Jack, there was mention of Furyan Converts…

‘I knew of only one…the Purifier closest to Zhylaw the Last. He died on Crematoria, after saving Riddick.’

Jack swallowed thickly. ‘His name?’

‘I never knew. He was older, but I could never say by how much. But he had eyes very much like yours…’

It was not until Jack sheared off her hair a week before the Lord Marshal’s arrival that Vaako saw the striking resemblance… He said nothing of it to Jack, knowing that it would not do any good to mention that it was possibly her kin that had become a Purifier…converting perhaps millions to a faith that meant death…

Finally, Vaako removed himself from the chamber again, barking orders to those within his visual range. The quicker the fleet was in place, the better… The quicker the Lord Marshal was free to roam his home world…the better…

* * *


When Riddick sat foot on the snowy soil, he felt no different than when he had set foot on any other world. This world, Furya, was as foreign as any other…not as bright as Helion Prime, not as cold as UV 6, and the air far cleaner than any planet he had known.

The wind whipped at his clothing and penetrated past his cloak to his bare head under a fur cowl. His goggles protected his eyes from snow glare, but the sun rarely broke through the thick clouds.

He kept his shivs on his person, as did the other Furyans who had landed with him on one of their small cruisers. Jack was leading the way through mountains of rubble, away from what had once been a landing field north of the Kurgan capital. The field was littered with hundreds of ships of various sizes and in various states of disrepair. But there were people working on some of the ships…ammunition being loaded on some of the larger cruisers…supplies… Riddick did not pay much mind and certainly did not ask.

He followed five steps behind Jack. She was heavily cloaked and walked silently over the field barely making an imprint in the snow. She had said nothing to Riddick, and any answers she might have for him were being withheld. Riddick turned his questions to the old woman, her demeanor much more open to conversation.

It had only taken a few hours for the fleet to take position outside the system, and two of the Icons had been removed from the southern hemisphere. The Icon closest to the Kurgan capital was scheduled to be removed last since it was the closest to any major settlement…arrangements were to be made to move people out of the way of any harm…and it would take time.

Shirah walked next to Riddick with the men behind them. She had taken a hold of Riddick’s arm, though nimble, unsteady on the icy field.

“It is a good two miles to the Cathedral…I shall hang to you. Ask whatever questions you like…” she said softly, her old voice so different from the voice in his dreams.

Riddick walked, his eyes never losing sight of Jack and her quickly moving form.

“Why did you call me back?” he whispered so that the men could not hear.

Shirah grinned from under her cloak, she was missing a few teeth and her remaining teeth were stained. “It is the place of your birth…we must all return home sometime.”

“I only have one memory of this place, and I’m not sure it’s real.”

“Of the Necro coming to kill you…yes, it was real…”

“But not my mother’s face or my father…not that it matters.”

Shirah chuckled. “We have been working to find out about you, Alpha…your parents, your family, your bloodlines…names and dates. We have some information for you, but whether it brings some peace to you, that is up for you to decide. But now it seems you have more pressing matters to attend to…”

“Jack…” he whispered, catching sight of her face as she turned to enter a maze of alleys and old streets. She did not look back and she did not stop.

“She harbors a great pain. She, like you, was hesitant to accept her fate…her responsibilities. She cannot decide whether to hate you completely or to let herself love you again.”

“Love?” Riddick asked…more to himself than to Shirah.

“Do you want to deny it, Alpha? You have a history with her…”

He did have a history with her…more so than with Kyra. But it was difficult to believe that Jack and Kyra were not the same. Had time so dulled his memory?

They moved quicker among the streets, past more and more people…all of them staring out of doorways and glass covered windows. There were hundreds of people, children even…playing in the snow and laughing. The children paid no mind to the group of people moving through the streets and only the adults paid attention to their queen leading a group of people.

When they came to the largest intact structure Riddick had seen since landing, they entered quickly, moving through a large room full of people and into a dark corridor that sloped downward. Riddick slid his goggles onto his forehead, his vision clearing so that he saw every stone of the corridor and the room at the end of the corridor. It was a large hall, longer than it was wide. It was a dining hall of sorts and a large fireplace roared behind the head of the table. On either side of the fireplace were doors. Jack moved through one and Riddick followed, Shirah still holding to his forearm. But as he glanced back only Uriel was following.

Through another corridor, narrower than the first, Riddick noticed dampness in the air as they seemed to gradually go deeper down. And when they came into a circular room with a large fire in the center, Riddick found Jack sitting on a bench high above the floor. She had doffed her cloak and sat cross-legged on a pile of furs.

Shirah moved to sit near Jack, just below her and Uriel stood by the only entrance.

“Sit, Riddick, there is much to talk about,” Shirah said softly with a tone of gentleness.

Riddick complied, throwing off his own cloak and sitting at an angle to Shirah, ignoring Jack’s blatant stare and Uriel’s statuesque, frozen station at the door.

“Vaako came much like you did to this room…” Jack began, and Riddick suddenly wondered what Vaako had learned during his stay with Jack and the rest of the Furyans. Riddick knew that Vaako was aware of Kyra and her relationship to him, had Vaako been as shocked to see Jack’s face as he had?

“I told Vaako everything…about me, about Kyra…everything.”

“So tell me now…I have been patient long enough.”

“You have…surprisingly.”

Riddick growled, his fingertips running over the handle of the shiv strapped to his thigh. Jack smirked, moving to pull her sword from her back, laying the strap and sheath across her lap.

“Do you remember when I killed Antonia Chillingsworth?”

He had not heard that name in years, but he could remember the mad woman’s face…and how she smelled of expensive perfume, masking the bitter and acrid smell of death.

“I still owe you one,” Riddick purred, his eyes narrowing in the firelight.

“You do. But would you believe me if I told you that she was not the first person I killed?”

Riddick had not known. Jack had been so young…and had looked so scared.

“I killed a man once before…when he tried to rape me in a spaceport a jump past Ursa Luna. I shot him in the gut with his own gun…a merc.”

Riddick said nothing, but stared at Jack’s lips and how they quirked into the coldest of smiles. Kyra had never smirked like that when she talked about killing…Kyra’s smirk was almost innocent compared to that of her shadow.

“After you left me with Abu on Helion, I have killed hundreds of people, and I was never caught.”

“Who? Who did you kill Jack?”

He was daring her, he knew.

“Slavers, ‘Golls, and mercs.”

Slavers…Kyra had said the same thing.

“You see, Riddick, you knew so little about me, and we had so little time. When we were floating on that skiff, I told you that I had been jumping from place to place searching for something…but I didn’t know what. I thought I might have been looking for a place where I belonged…and in the end, I found it.

My first memories of this life were of my mother dying on a ship somewhere…and my next memory was waking up from the longest sleep I have ever had. I found out later that my mother was one of thousands who had escaped Furya when the Necros came. My father had been killed, my older brother taken and converted, and only my mother and some others escaping the annihilation on a ship. I was just a baby when it happened…and she died of a broken heart, they tell me…just before she put me into suspended animation…

Remember Antonia Chillingsworth’s collection? Same thing… The ship floated and floated…everyone died and when a Company scavenger ship picked up the ship, I was taken out of suspended animation…a toddler…and shipped off to an orphanage in Taurs. And there I grew up.”

Jack paused, rubbing a hand over her shorn head. The mixture of pain and memory was clear on her face and for a moment Riddick could see the lanky tomboy he remembered saving from the dark planet.

“When I met you after the crash, I was technically in my twenties and my body was beginning to catch up from the time I had lost. Puberty…fucking hell if you ask me. I had run away…and kept running. After nearly being raped, I shaved my head and taped my tits down. You thought I was probably thirteen or fourteen…but when I met you I was closer to twenty-two… It’s just now beginning to catch up with me…”

Riddick said nothing. He had known so little about the kid, and what he did know had caused him to grow soft… He had grown to care about her then…but by knowing what he did now…Riddick said nothing.

“Even my name…Jack…it was the only name I could remember. It wasn’t until I came back to Furya that I learned my real name. Audrey…Audrey Gray. My brother’s name was Jack…”

She paused, her eyes moving to the fire. Jack gripped her sword tighter in her lap and slowly continued.

“You left me with Abu, after I begged for you to stay with us on Helion. You put me into cryo and I never knew where you went, Abu would never tell me. And within the first year with Abu, I left.

You see, I was having dreams…dreams of Shirah calling me to come home. I began changing, a blood lust filling my mind and an itch to find home again.

I got on with a crew of mercs who were heading in the direction of Furya when the ship was attacked by a ‘Goll ship. Fucking ‘Golls…they are scarier than any Necro. They tore into the little cruiser I was on…the Atilla, and to save their own asses, the mercs slaved me out... When they took me, they frightened me into submission. They were stitching slaves to the main body of the navigator of their ship…and would have done the same to me had I not listened to the call of my blood.

That was when I woke…woke fully into my Furyan blood. Something like that happened to you, I am sure…it happens to us all. It would explain your eye shine. ‘Waking’ manifests itself differently for everyone…for me it manifested with accelerated speed and strength…and later, with practice and time, power.”

Jack stopped again, it was clear she did not want to say more about her Awakening, but Riddick knew that his own Awakening had resulted in his enhanced vision…though he could only admit it now, now knowing what he was…

“I killed them all…and I took their ship…and sold it for two million UDs before I got to the Proxima system. I bought a small ship, and took off toward the Furyan system again. But like I said, fate is a fickle bitch, and I ran into some trouble two clicks from Tangiers. Slavers, the real ones this time…fucking scum of the universe…and I found myself with a collar around my neck again.

That’s where I met Kyra. We were put together, since we looked so much alike…to be sold as a set to a rich fuck outside Ursa. They took my ship, all my money, and locked me down with a shock collar. Every time I tried to move faster than a slow shuffle, I was jolted with juice…every time I tried to force the collar off…jolted.

Kyra was from Helion…believe it or not…and she had heard of Abu. She had been caught in Tangiers after running away from an abusive stepfather. She had killed a few slavers during her flight and she considered herself a bit of a bad ass.”

At this Jack paused to scoff, a sad smile flitting across her full lips.

“That was, until she met me…

The first time I fought her, she kicked my ass. I didn’t have much of a chance with a shock collar around my neck. We ended up talking during the long journey without cryo. I told her all about myself. I had no plan to escape…and she told me about her silly little life.

She absorbed everything I said about you, Riddick…like a fucking sponge…a sociopath, in truth. But I indulged her, slowly formulating a plan. When the time came, she disengaged the power to my collar…and I killed the whole ship, slaves and slavers.”

Riddick blinked. Kyra had said almost the same thing…back in Crematoria… But this woman was not Kyra, it was Jack, and Jack had killed innocents…

“Kyra couldn’t pilot worth a shit, so in return for her freeing me, I drove her ass wherever her little adolescent mind could think of…I dropped her at Proxima. And after that, she did her own thing…with her mind filled with you.”

“She was convincing, Jack.”

“I bet. She was malleable, and she had a bit of talent. But she’s dead now…”

Riddick growled. “She died for me…”

Jack began laughing, almost howling with laughter. “I bet she did…she fancied herself in love with you…just like I had been once…”

Riddick said nothing to this and stared into the fire.

“I killed many more times…mercs finally were after me, but not Jack B. Badd or Kyra…they did not know my name, but they knew I was lethal. I left no one alive, just traces of myself…fingerprints at some places, a bit of hair at others. I had no friends, I had no allies, and when I finally made it to Furya, I knew I had made it home…”

Riddick moved to look at Jack once more…she was not Kyra…not in the least. And the Jack that he knew was not the Jack that was sitting above the fire… That Jack had left him and moved on…and become a monster like thing, capable of killing without a thought…