Sight Unseen

Sight Unseen

 

A Chronicles of Riddick Alternate Universe

 

Chapter Nine

 

Basilica

(Vaako)

 

He knelt on the steps before the Lord Marshal’s throne in his new armor.  The promotion alone was enough to rattle his nerves, but the formal, public elevation made it worse.  Only sheer willpower kept his inner shakes from showing.

 

“I have lost a Purifier, but I have gained a First Among Commanders.”  Zhylaw’s voice boomed through the massive hall.  “It is overdue, isn’t it, Lord Vaako, that we acknowledge your many accomplishments, your steady faith, and above all, your unflinching loyalty.”  The lavishly sculpted and gilded helm was extended toward him, and Kyrus raised his hands and eyes to accept it.

 

“Obedience without question.  Loyalty ‘til Underverse come.”  The ritual response to any military promotion rolled off his tongue without a thought.  But he had plenty of questions these days…

 

“Well done, Vaako.  This is a day of days.”  The Lord Marshal swept past him, trailed by two of his ever-silent concubines.  As the rest of the audience left, he stood, quickly joined by his wife.

 

“Look more pleased, Vaako.”  She plucked the helmet from his hands to examine the decorations.  “You have killed his enemy… and his suspicions.”

 

“I should have brought back their heads.”  It nagged at him, this feeling that the dwarf star’s effects hadn’t burned the pair to a crisp, as he’d assumed at the time.  And the girl they’d taken prisoner just before entering the ship still fought conversion with everything she had, even after the month-long journey.

 

“You saw them unbreathing, you saw them both dead on the ground.”

 

“Riddick was no common breeder!”  Nor was the woman, though he wouldn’t grind Zinna’s nose in that.  “In a heartbeat, he dropped twenty of my men.”  He’d never seen anything like the blue shockwave before, which came close to scary…  Not an easy feat for a Necromonger veteran like him.

 

“All mysteries are not miracles, not even in this religion.”  Zinna visibly calmed herself.  “If you say it is certain, then it is certain.  And we’ve already said it, haven’t we?”

 

“We have,” Kyrus snarled as he took his new helm from her and stalked off.

 

Icarus Station

(Marcus)

 

He paced slowly across the living room and back, feeling the eyes of five-year-old Alexis on him.  Slowly, because Chillingsworth’s damned drugs still hadn’t entirely left his system.  Marcus cursed the dead psychopath with every breath.

 

He’d seen the report of Jacquelyn’s capture, recognizing her face despite the single name given in the report: ‘Kyra.’  It had to be a pseudonym, created to protect her legal identity.  And Lady knew mercs didn’t give a shit about running a payday’s DNA to check and make sure they had the right person, not as long as the appearance matched their target.

 

Every time he saw the young woman, she looked more like Nalia, and he was sure that Jack was his niece.  She’d even taken to calling him ‘Uncle Marcus.’  It helped, knowing that he wasn’t the only surviving member of the Crested Eagle Pack.

 

Finding more Furyans would be an even greater relief.  But Eileen still felt that someone was watching, waiting for searches to pop up in cyberspace relating to their race.  They couldn’t afford to lose her or the Riddick scion.

 

And that was what really worried him at the moment.  He could sense that something huge was happening with the pair of Prime Alphas, and prayed to the Lady that they would prevail.  That they came through whole and hale.

 

Please, Lady, keep them safe.

 

Helion Prime

(Aereon)

 

The door ground open, letting light and fresh air into her cell, and Aereon idly blew on her fingers, watching them go translucent.

 

“Tell me it’s true.”  Ah, Zhylaw, the arrogant fool.  “Tell me the Furyan and his woman are gone, and I can close this campaign without hearing their bootsteps.”  At least he’d decided to acknowledge that the slim female posed as much of a threat to him as her mate did.

 

“If they are dead, I sense I am not far from the same fate, being of no further use here.  Shouldn’t I tell you that Riddick is still alive?”  The odds said he was, along with the young Seer.

 

“Don’t try me, Aereon.  I could plow you under with the rest of Helion Prime.”

 

Threats, threats.  Testy today, aren’t you, Zhylaw?

 

“No one really knows the future.”

 

“Then tell me the odds.”  The vile creature’s voice grew heated and angry.  “That Vaako met with success, that I will now be the one who can carry His people across the Threshold and into the Underverse, where they shall begin true life.  Tell me what I want to hear, Aereon, and maybe I’ll save your homeworld… for last.”  The Elemental tensed, thinking of her family.

 

“The odds are good.”

 

“That?” the Lord Marshal prompted.

 

“That you will reach the Underverse.”  She heard him turn and begin to leave.  “Soon.”  He paused for a second, and then she was left in darkness again.

 

(Ziza)

 

The black dress was hot under the bright sun of Helion Prime, but she wore it anyway.  Mama had explained that the color told others that she missed her Papa.  And she missed him terribly.

 

Mama was carrying a basket with the few bits of food they’d managed to get at market today.  Ziza followed close behind, looking all around in case any of the nasty, mean soldiers were near.  If Riddick and Eileen had been around, she wouldn’t be worried, but they weren’t.

 

As Mama went into the house, she noticed something shiny on the broken front door.

 

Papa’s talisman hung from the dull brass handle.

 

They’re back!  As she took hold of the chain and lifted it, Ziza glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see the pair.

 

Riddick and Eileen would take care of those awful strangers.

 

(Zhylaw)

 

“Ascension protocol,” he demanded the moment he reached the bridge.  Aereon’s last word had been suspiciously smug.

 

“We still have numbers out there, Lord Marshal.”  A soldier approached him.  “Sweep teams, recon ships.  They would be hard pressed to make it ba—”  With the monumental strength of his Half-Dead soul, he threw the man across the chamber to slam into a wall and crumple.

 

“Get my armada off the ground!”

 

Added to his fear of Riddick—something he’d never admit to—was a fear of what the woman would do if she was, as he suspected, also Furyan.  If Riddick had died and she survived…  He’d seen what Furyan females could do in grief and rage when their mates were killed.

 

(Dame Vaako)

 

The sirens recalling all Necromongers to their ships startled her, and Dame Zinna Vaako joined the crowd rushing up the Basilica’s steps.  Usually, at least an hour’s warning was given for Ascension, so that all the Faithful could avoid the holocaust of the Icons.

 

What is going on?!

 

Near the top of the stairs, a soldier rudely struck her shoulder as he passed, and another brushed against her other side.  Shocked, she tried to spot the pair in the throng; no Necromonger warrior would breach etiquette in such a manner, even now.  She pushed men aside as she searched.

 

Then they looked back at her, mirroring each other’s stance despite the differences in height and build.  Silver orbs gleamed in the otherwise dark helms, and she gasped.  A clump of soldiers passed in front of her, and the pair vanished.

 

She had to tell Kyrus about this.  Immediately.

 

(Niklas)

 

He couldn’t help the fidgeting as he sat in the undercutter’s command couch, wondering what the pair of Prime Alphas were doing.  They’d included him in their planning, of course—he knew the Basilica’s layout as well as he knew the back of his own hand—but the ancient Law of Murphy still applied.  However, each time Niklas decided to get up and do something, either the scale-wolf cub or the spine-cat kit was there to demand attention and rumble soothingly at him.

 

As an additional incentive to stay put, the dominant female and her mate had laid down so they blocked the hatch.

 

He wanted to see their vengeance unleashed on Zhylaw, wanted to be witness it first-hand.

 

“What are they, really?”  The question from the surviving convict startled him.  He’d almost forgotten the man’s presence.  “We always called them hellhounds, but there’s obviously two different species.”

 

So he found himself explaining Furyan totems to this near-stranger.  It took his mind off Lord Riddick and Lady Eileen—she’d trusted him enough to give him the name she’d used all her life—for a while, as the conversation expanded into other aspects of Furyan society.  The ‘Guv’ showed genuine curiosity toward the subject, pleasing the teacher in Niklas’ Omega nature.

 

Soon, his mind all but forgot about the Alphas and the danger they’d headed into.

 

(Vaako)

 

“You mean on Helion.”  He prayed that his wife was mistaken.

 

“I mean here, on this very ship!”  She spoke in a low, frightened hiss.

 

“Could you be wrong?” Vaako demanded, grabbing her arm as she paced and forcing her to look him in the eye.  “The mind fabricates fear.  Could you be wrong?!”

 

“Not so wrong as you when you left them alive.”  Zinna wrenched free of his hold.  “It’s twice the mistake; not only your failure, but now, the report of success!  How do we salvage this?  How?  How?”

 

“The Lord Marshal’s got to be warned.”  He turned to leave.

 

“You will never see the Underverse!”  That stopped Kyrus in his tracks, and he looked back at her.  “He will kill us both before our due time.”  Then she paused thoughtfully.  “I say we give them their chance.  If they are half of what you think, they could at least wound the Lord Marshal.  And that is when you must act.”

 

“Just to take his place.”  He frowned.  “Just to keep what I kill.”  The thought did not satisfy him as it once might have.

 

“That is the Necromonger way.”

 

“It is not enough!”  His control over his temper nearly snapped.  To cheat someone of a kill that rightfully belonged to them…

 

“Then you do it for the faith!”  Her hands came up to stroke his jaw.  “If he has fear, he has weakness.  If he has weakness, Vaako…”

 

“… he is unworthy of lordship.”  Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

 

“We do it for all Necromongers.”

 

“Protect the faith.”  It would have to sustain him through the next few hours.  However long it took to finish this.

 

“This can still be a day of days,” Zinna murmured, echoing Zhylaw’s earlier words.  “But the timing must be flawless.”

 

(Zhylaw)

 

“Final Protocol.”  He watched Helion Prime recede on the massive viewing globe set in the floor.  “Execute on my order.”

 

“My Lord!”  A shipboard patrol leader saluted as the other two members of the patrol hauled in a limp body.  “We found this Lensor, dead.”  The corpse landed on its side, the throat a dark, gaping maw that had been cut almost to its spine.

 

“Show me his last sights.”  The destruction of the planet would have to be put on hold for the moment, if someone on the Basilica was killing Lensors.  A cable quickly connected the body to the main viewer.

 

The Lensor and its handler had been in one of the ship’s many smaller corridors, its heat-sensitive vision casting everything in normal, cool blues and greens.  Two armored figures walked by, one much shorter than the other, both radiating warm yellows and oranges.  Breeders, masquerading as his troops!

 

The pair looked at each other and then lunged, the smaller one going straight for the Lensor with a long blade against its forearm.  The second flashed by, presumably after the handler.  For just a moment, he could see both intruders’ silvery eyes, then the display filled with snow as the Lensor had died.

 

“Commander Toal…”  Zhylaw struggled to keep his voice level and calm-sounding.  Vaako had either lied to him or been deceived; Riddick and his female still lived, and they had come for him.

 

“They won’t escape twice.”  The dark-skinned commander saluted before leaving the bridge.  He hoped the man was right.  Otherwise, he’d have to face and kill them himself.

 

And that worried him.

 

(Lyra/Eileen)

 

Niklas Agnar had been able to give us a detailed route to the Quasi-Dead Grotto that kept us away from the majority of the massive ship’s traffic, and once we got to the back room, my lover made entry simple.  One knife planted in a Quasi-Dead’s chest made its pod rotate into the hexagonal room, and we climbed over it.  I began shedding pieces of our purloined armor immediately; we hadn’t found a patrol with anyone close to my height, so I’d been acutely uncomfortable.  Rick kept some of his on, as I had ceded the right to fight Zhylaw personally to him.  The man had killed Rick’s mother with his own hands and torn him from her womb.

 

As we crouched behind the doors, I stole a brief, fierce kiss.  One of his eyebrows arched in curiosity.

 

“For luck.”  That got me a small, lopsided smile.  Then our attention turned to what we could see through the pierce-work doors.  Beyond the two soldiers guarding the entrance, a line of hooded, black-clad women passed.

 

My mate slid a stolen blade across one bracer, creating a soft, shimmering chime that would be difficult to ignore.  On the second stroke, the guards shifted a bit.  The third made them turn, and I drove a knife into one’s face.  We flung the doors wide, and Rick took three long steps before leaping at the throne.  A foot on its back propelled him farther and even higher.  As I hopped up to crouch on one of its arms, I saw him drop right on top of the Lord Marshal… and go right past him, sliding across the floor.

 

“Stay your weapons!”  Zhylaw held up a hand, and the warriors who’d just started to move froze.  “He came for me.”  His focus narrowed on the convict climbing to his feet, and I could practically sense him utterly dismissing my presence at his back.  “Consider this: If you fall here, now, you’ll never rise.  But if you choose another way, the Necromonger way, you’ll die in due time, and rise again in the Underverse.”  He held out his left arm and was joined by one of the shrouded females.  She turned her head slightly as he pulled away the hood.

 

I drew a sharp breath, recognizing the brief glimpse of profile.

 

He has my sister.

 

“Go to him, child.”  As she moved toward Rick, I could see none of Jack usual exuberance and zest for life, nor even Kyra’s stubborn focus, in the stiff, groomed creature.  Her beautiful, riotous curls had been straightened, the hair laying down her spine like straw, and her slightly golden skin was an ashy white.

 

And beyond that fundamental wrongness, I remembered what the former Chief Purifier had told us about conversion.  The marks on her neck blended into her skintone, rather than being inflamed as Niklas said a new convert’s marks should be.  And it looked like something was peeling just a tiny bit near one of the puckers.

 

“It hurts, at first.”  No emotion colored the brunette’s voice as she approached my lover.  “But after a while, the pain goes away, just as they promise.”

 

“Are you with me, Kyra?”  He shot me a troubled glance over her shoulder.  Apparently, even as limited as his color vision was, he could tell there was something majorly wrong with her from the front.

 

“There’s a moment when you can almost see the Underverse through his eyes,” the shell of my adopted sister continued blithely.  “He makes it sound perfect, a place where anyone can start over.”

 

“Are you with me, Kyra?”  Rather than answering, she glided past him and disappeared into the crowd.  Carefully avoiding the bladed column next to me, I dropped to the floor and slipped between the gathering Necromongers, intent on finding her.

 

“Convert now, or fall forever.”  Zhylaw’s voice boomed in the hall.  I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something scathing about the ultimatum.

 

“You would kill everything I know.”  Suddenly, most of the people around me gasped, and I peered between two soldiers for a glimpse of what had happened.  The Lord Marshal appeared to have been knocked back by something, half-turned with a knee on the steps up to the dais.  He stood slowly and deliberately, the pierce-work dagger in his hand and a line of blood along his cheek.  Zhylaw looked at the blade.

 

(Vaako)

 

He stepped toward the railing, only for Zinna’s hand to grab his arm.

 

“Not yet,” she warned.  True… the injury appeared to be little more than a scratch.

 

(Riddick)

 

“It’s been a long time since I saw my own blood.”  I smirk inside at my enemy’s admission; the bastard probably won’t be consciously defendin’ his own weaknesses.  Th’ hand holdin’ th’ knife motions th’ soldiers back t’ make room for a fight, then drops th’ blade.

 

I barely glimpse th’ man’s flat, colorless image rushin’ at me before a blow throws me back against somethin’ big an’ solid.  Prob’ly one of th’ fuckin’ columns all over this damned place.  Need t’ watch for that.  I stand back up, a little unsteady, an’ get hit with one punch after another as th’ gray blur surrounds me.  Manage to block one fist, but th’ next catches me so hard I see stars.

 

Th’ shadow goes over me, an’ I spin, half on reflex, leadin’ with a backhand.  Th’ Necromonger pauses long enough for me t’ see that th’ near-miss was a surprise, then accelerates again.  But now I c’n make out th’ man’s shape in th’ haze of his speed, an’ more of his hits meet my blocks.

 

(Lyra/Eileen)

 

I’d nearly managed to catch up to Kyra when my mate was thrown to the floor.  He didn’t try to get up immediately, which worried me.  But instead of pouncing, the Lord Marshal decided to gloat.

 

“These are his last moments!”  I watched him strut around, showing off his freaky abilities by raising one arm of his soul, then the other, and letting the flesh follow a moment later.  Zhylaw knelt next to his foe and reached out.  “Give me your soul!”

 

My throat seized up as a grayscale version of Rick’s face emerged, and the palmprint on my breast flared into intense pain.  But the image only went a dozen centimeters or so, the Necromonger struggling with it for a moment before it snapped back where it belonged.

 

“Fuck you!”  My lover’s roar came with a beautiful uppercut to the bastard’s chin that threw him a good five meters.  The first real, solid hit the Lord Marshal had taken.  The moment he landed, though, his half-dead soul zipped up onto the shoulder of a colossus, where he appropriated the spear that the statue had held to its own ear.

 

Glimpsing my sister out of the corner of my eye, I moved closer to her and the dais.  Most of my attention, though, stayed on the fight.  Zhylaw returned to the floor, swinging at his opponent.  But his newly-acquired weapon kept missing until Rick caught a jab with his elbows.  He held on to the spear just long enough to try to backhand the madman.  The blow missed, freeing the brassy length enough for the freak to spin it around, landing a solid strike across his enemy’s shoulders.

 

The Furyan rolled and barely managed a crouch before the spear-point drove toward his stomach.  He caught hold of it in time to keep it from piercing his purloined armor.  Zhylaw then used it to lift my mate and propel him halfway across the room.  Suddenly, he pulled the point away and used the other end like a bat before my mate touched the floor.  Over a meter broke off as Rick ended up sprawled near the dais, the rest of the spear casually discarded.

 

I heard metal wrench and break, but ignored it.  The Lord Marshal took a spiked staff from a nearby warrior before he knelt.  The shaft was pulled across my lover’s throat.

 

“You’re not the one to bring me down.”  Kyra moved out of the crowd, stooping to grab the sharpened end of the abandoned metal.  The moment I realized what she meant to do, I headed for her at a run.

 

The point drove into the small of Zhylaw’s back, and he roared in pain.  The staff fell from his hands, relinquishing his hold on Rick to turn and backhand my adopted sister, launching her into the air… right toward one of the blade-studded columns flanking the throne.

 

“No!!”  The denial ripping itself out of my throat, I jumped, using every gram of energy I had.  My arms locked around the younger woman’s waist, turning us enough to let me aim my feet at the potentially deadly decoration.  Pain tore up my left calf as I hit and pushed off.  We tumbled onto the dais, and, winded and hurting, I watched the end of the fight.

 

My mate grabbed the forgotten pierce-work blade as he distanced himself from the maniac.  Said maniac yanked the spear-point out of his flesh.  A killing anger radiated from both men.

 

“Now!”  I glanced up to see the coffee-skinned bitch on a balcony above as the man I could now name as Vaako vaulted the second-level railing, holding a triple-headed poleaxe.  “Kill the beast while he’s wounded!”

 

“Help me, Vaako.”  The Lord Marshal struggled to get his feet under him.  “Kill him.”  The polearm rose above the other Necromonger’s head.  “Vaako?!?”

 

“Forgive me,” the dark-haired commander whispered.  His eyes closed as he brought the weapon down.

 

Zhylaw’s ghostly image came forward, running away from his treacherous subordinate.  He headed for the discarded spear tip, but Rick got there first, his boot keeping it on the floor.  Body and soul alike wore a shocked, distressed expression.

 

“Flawless.”  The self-satisfied statement from the woman who’d directed the Necromonger commander was premature.  The Lord Marshal’s physical form slid away from Vaako, the pale man’s blade ringing as it hit the floor.  My lover slammed the ornamental knife through the top of the madman’s skull as he materialized, the force behind the blow turning his head to the side as the hilt snapped off.

 

Enemy eliminated, he rushed to my side, ignoring the dismayed howl of Vaako’s bitch.  Rick began tearing strips from my sister’s dress to bind the matching cuts on my leg and Jack’s.  I sought out the peeling I’d noticed earlier and picked at it.

 

A moment later, the entire ‘conversion scar’ came off in my hand, revealing unblemished skin.

 

“They didn’t get her.”  My whisper brought one corner of my mate’s lips up.

 

“Now, what would be the odds of that?”  The sudden appearance of the Elemental drew a glare from me.

 

“Shut up.”  The eerie stereo of Rick’s bass voice and my own mezzo-soprano made Aereon step back, blinking.  I looked back down at my sister, who had begun to return to the land of the living.

 

“Are you with me, Kyra?”  Her eyelids fluttered as my lover spoke.

 

“Wh… where are you?” she muttered.  “Where am I?”  She opened those green peepers, only to snap them shut again.  “Ugh. Who th’ fuck dosed me, an’ what’d they use?”  I chuckled faintly and squeezed Jack’s shoulders, glad to hear the sass in her words.

 

Vaako approached us, still holding that three-headed poleaxe as the other soldiers made way for him.  Rick and I both stiffened, expecting an attack.  Instead, the Necromonger dropped to one knee and bowed his head.  Others around him copied the action.  Soon, every person in the hall but the Elemental had knelt, and I realized why.

 

“You keep what you kill.”  I covered the new Lord Marshal’s hand with my own as his shoulders slumped wearily.  “All hail Lord Riddick,” I whispered into the silence.

 

“All hail Lord Riddick!”  The cry resonated through the hall, voiced by hundreds, maybe thousands, of throats.

 

Aw, hell, I thought.  Now what?

 

End