A Thousand Shades Of Black

Prologue

Riddick jerked the restraints irritably and sighed. He hated being tied up and he especially hated being at anyone’s mercy. He was splayed against a wall with chains holding him down, a bit in his mouth and cuffs securing him to the bulkheads. Not his favorite position to be in. It was hardly the first time though and he had yet to see the inside of a prison that he couldn’t get out of. Still, he’d prefer not to go inside again if he could help it. He would like to be free of the restraints sooner rather than later.

The Merc had trussed him up in the rear cargo hold of the ship with his other prisoner and then left him there to his own devices. At least this Merc wasn’t the type to taunt prisoners. Probably scared shitless of Riddick – if he was smart he was anyway.

The cargo hold wasn’t huge; he doubted that the ship could carry more than four or five people. It was an older model – ugly and functional of design, the exact opposite of a luxury model. Rusted metal struts, filthy stained floors and a sour odor permeating everything made it even more unappealing. He had been in worse places and he knew it but he’d been in far better ones as well.

Across the way, he saw his new roommate shifting in her own uncomfortable bondage. She was pretty but looked around her in a darting, alert way that warned a man he could lose bits of himself if he said the wrong thing to her. Her muscles were hard and well-defined but her breasts and hips were very decidedly feminine and he felt a pulse in his groin that reminded him how long it had been since he had had a woman.

Not that he thought that the other prisoner exactly counted as such; she looked a little too much like trouble to him. She had short spiky hair, black as night. Several tiny braids with colored wires holding them closed at the end stuck up from her head. It should have looked stupid as hell but it didn’t. On her it looked dangerous, like some kind of ritualistic shit; remembrances of people she’d killed or something. Small round face – almost sweet looking, if it weren’t for the way she set her jaw. She was a stubborn woman - you could always tell from the mouth. Her skin had a slight golden hue to it, lighter than his own but still similar. He wondered what her ancestry was.

That she was chained up with much the same elaborate precautions that held him in place told him that she wasn’t being dragged back by the bounty hunter because she had a few elapsed parking tickets.

She turned her eyes and met his stare – well, looked him in the goggles anyway. The Merc had left them on him, a small mercy. They protected his light-sensitive eyes from the glare of the too-bright cargo hold. The woman had eyes so dark they looked as black as her hair and they were as flat and expressionless as a cobra’s.

He admired the effect, mentally applauding her game face. Had he not been the biggest badass in the place he might have felt intimidated by her dead gaze. As it was, he merely grinned at her around the bit in his mouth. The bounty hunter had forced it between his jaws after Riddick had nearly taken his ear off.

The woman merely kept staring at him, as though he wasn’t there. It was just starting to piss him off when the sound of approaching feet caused her to turn away and a look of dark hatred flashed across her face. Riddick felt much the same way about bounty hunters so he could sympathize.

The Merc, his boots clanking on the metal grating that served the ship they were on as decking, came striding around the corner and looked nervously back and forth between his two prisoners. They both stared back at him, Riddick with utter loathing on his face.

The woman’s face was expressionless again by the time the bounty hunter showed up and Riddick was forced to concede that it was quite effective on the other man. He looked wholly unnerved. His chiseled features were rather pale as he evaded her gaze.

“Riddick.” His name in the bounty hunter’s mouth was foul sounding but the woman looked at her fellow prisoner with interest flickering in the cold black eyes. Nice to know his reputation preceded him.

“Athhole,” Riddick slurred around the bit.

“I hope they fry your ass when we get back, you fucker,” the bounty hunter growled, his face screwed up in a grimace of distaste. “You too, Sturm; I hope you both fry.” Sturm, Riddick thought with interest; that name sounded familiar. Where had he heard of her? The bounty hunter was a big man, almost as big as Riddick was, with dirty blonde hair and hard blue eyes but he looked small and vulnerable between the two prisoners. He checked their restraints carefully, making sure that they hadn’t worked anything loose. Riddick noted with interest that he didn’t try to cop a feel on the woman – he was that unnerved by her.

Riddick behaved himself as the man inspected his bonds, knowing that his patience would be repaid when he finally had a chance to kill the bastard. The Merc finished his work and departed. Sturm was watching Riddick now with a look of calculation in her eyes. She had been quiet so long that it startled him to hear her finally speak.

“Rumor has it that you’re a pilot. Is that true?” She had a smoke and whisky voice entirely at odds with her looks. It was sensual-sounding even when she kept it clipped as she did now. Or maybe he had just been without for way too fucking long.

He nodded at her. Talking around the bit was too hard. She wasn’t wearing one; guess she didn’t bite. Now that was a pity.

“If I get us both unbound, can you fly this thing?” she asked and he wanted to laugh. She was trussed up as tight as he was and neither of them was going anywhere anytime soon. Her eyes stopped the chuckle in his throat though. She was deadly serious and he thought carefully about his answer. A quick glance around the room told him this ship really was old, probably older than the skiff he had piloted off of that godforsaken hellhole two years ago. He nodded again at her, knowing he could do it.

She smiled and it made his blood heat. He hadn’t seen a smile that deadly since he had last looked in a mirror.

She began to wriggle in her chair, stretching and twisting, and her actions baffled him. She was trying to get to something in her hair he guessed finally, and a suspicion formed in his mind. That jackass Merc couldn’t have been so negligent as to not search her thoroughly, could he? Apparently he was just that stupid, Riddick mused, as she pulled a thin wire from where it wrapped around an end of her hair. One of the braids came loose and he found himself grinning. He was dealing with a real professional here. The wire was lumpy like maybe there were some added electronics to it. He remembered one of the other inmates in the Slam talking about something like this: very high tech stuff. The other man had called them “jackers” – he’d never bothered with them himself; too much fuss. Why pick a lock when you can blow open the door?

With more wriggling, which kept dragging his mind towards other far more interesting activities, she worked the jacker down to her cuffs. He figured that she must be double-jointed to be able to do what she was doing or maybe she was able to dislocate her joints as he was. Whatever the reason, it was damned interesting.

The cuffs were magnetic clamps with a code punch to release them but they depended on having current run through them at a specific point. He watched with no small amount of amusement as she maneuvered the wire so that it cut off the current in just the right place. The clamps around her wrists popped open and she quickly began using the emergency release clasps to undo the rest of her bonds. She stood and twisted a lock of hair up and wound the wire back into it. He wanted to applaud but he was still pinioned.

She moved with economical grace and went to work freeing Riddick as well. She had to be as sore and stiff as he was but she gave no sign of it. He cocked his head at her as she bent forwards over him. She smelled really good – both spicy and sweet, like cinnamon and apples. He breathed in deeply, finding it almost soothing, as if the smell of her was somehow familiar to him.

She took the bit out first, pulling the strap through the two years’ growth of hair and beard that had accumulated, with deft ease. He had an excellent view of her chest while she worked. She was wearing a black tank top and cargo pants so the view down her shirt was quite nice. My my, no bra; the view was very nice indeed.

“Besides the Merc, what are we up against?” Riddick asked softly, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. He could see where his breath stirred the hair on the back of her neck as she leaned into him to get at another strap behind him. His mouth was sore and he worked the jaw a little to ease the cramping.

“I’ve only seen one other guy but that doesn’t mean anything,” she murmured back. Her breath by his ear as she spoke sent a spark down into his belly but he controlled it. They had to get free of the bounty hunters first but then... He looked at her and licked his lips, thinking lascivious thoughts that he knew showed in his face. Her eyes shuttered and the cold dead expression was suddenly back. She was not interested. He sighed and thought, ‘Too bad, it could have been fun.’

“Let’s go.”

With a feeling of anger, Alia controlled the small shiver that went through her as Riddick ran his tongue across his lower lip. They were in shit up to their necks and all she could think about was touching him. He was big – much bigger than she was, but he moved with a controlled power and grace that triggered all her buttons. He smelled extremely edible and she felt warm electricity washing over her. His ragged hair and beard were less appealing but a shower and a shave would change all that.

She knew who he was, of course. She doubted that anyone in the civilized universe didn’t know about him. She doubted most of what she had heard about him was true but she wasn’t going to take any chances. Becoming intimate with the galaxy’s most wanted felon was most assuredly tops on the list of Really Stupid Things to Do.

She settled back into the Void with an internal groan and watched him back off of her with a twinge of regret. It was a pity because she hadn’t responded to anyone in this way for years but she had too much shit on her plate to add him to it. She had to get away from this ship and back to her little sister. Kava would be vulnerable without Alia around to protect her. Still, she wondered what it would be like to be with someone as dangerous as she was, someone who was quite obviously not intimidated by her.

Once he was freed they slipped out of the cargo bay. Alia was wishing she had found something that could be used as a blade; however careless as the Mercs might have been about her jackers, they were not entirely stupid. The room was sadly barren of anything that could conceivably be turned into a shiv. The Mercs were taking no chances with their prisoners.

Riddick took point and she watched his back as they moved silently through the ship, studying the layout as they went.

The inevitable happened as they were turning a corner: The other Merc – not the dirty blonde one but the washed-out redhead she had seen earlier – was coming the other way. The Merc spotted them a fraction of a second too late and Riddick leapt with blinding speed to grab him by the head and shoulders, twisting each in the opposite direction until his neck snapped with an audible popping noise.

Alia ignored the smell of death as she moved past the corpse and caught up with Riddick. The stench of mingled shit and urine was one she was inured to.

“Nice,” she complimented Riddick and he flashed her a predator grin in response. She had been impressed by his speed; guys as big as he was weren’t usually that fast. She patted down the Merc and distributed the weapons she found, feeling a rush of pleasure as she fondled the sleek pulse gun in her hand. She preferred knives but it would do nicely, she had no leisure for finesse here. Riddick grabbed the other gun and they exchanged smiles that were not at all pleasant.

Had he wanted to kill her, now would have been the moment, she knew. The fact that he didn’t told her that much of his reputation was bullshit. Still, she wasn’t about to make him her enemy either.

They eased farther down the corridor in the direction that the bounty hunter had been coming from, looking for the other Merc. The chattering and whining that were the universal noises of a starship’s bridge came from ahead of them and she looked at the pulse gun regretfully. If the blonde was on the bridge she couldn’t risk firing and damaging the equipment. She also couldn’t risk severe injury to the only person capable of flying her out of here.

“My turn,” she whispered to Riddick and to her surprise, he executed a bow and gestured her forward.

“Ladies first.” The low gravelly voice intoned with due solemnity but contained the lurking hint of laughter.

She let the Void wash her deeper, reaching for that part of her where each event was crystal clear and intent was everything.
Stepping into a patch of darkness, she shut her mind down and became the Void. Whisper-soft she moved towards the bridge.

Riddick watched her go perfectly still and then glide forward like a shadow detaching itself from the wall. It was eerie, like she suddenly wasn’t human anymore. He wondered if he looked like that when he was hunting and had a suspicion that he did.

Sturm – he remembered in a flash of illumination where he had heard her name before. One of his cellmates in the Slam had spoken of her. Said she was a demon of darkness, a real killer, utterly merciless. They called her the Void Walker. He recalled the look of terror in the prisoner’s eyes with a smile. He had discarded most of what the other man had told him. After all, he knew how much of his own legend was embellishment.

Still, watching her as she slipped through the hatchway onto the bridge, no weapon in her hand and no humanity in her eyes made him warm all over. She was just like him.

There was a strangled chopped-off gasp, a crunch and then a thud. He strolled onto the bridge and she was deftly removing the body from the pilot’s chair. The man’s neck was cleanly broken and Riddick grinned.

“Nice,” he returned her own word to her and watched as life came back into her eyes. She shot him a thin smile of her own and finished removing the corpse. She waved him to the pilot’s seat and he made a face at the stench.

“Sorry about the mess,” she shrugged and there was a small smile teasing at the corner of her mouth as she settled into the co-pilot’s chair. He liked this woman. He liked her a lot and he really hoped he wouldn’t have to kill her at some point.

“Where to?” He gestured at the vastness of space.

“Anywhere the fuck away from here,” she snorted, that supple voice sending his thoughts back to their previous lewd images. He checked their coordinates and sucked thoughtfully on his lower lip.

“Well, we are near Parlance so the farthest away from here we could get in a reasonable time frame would be Ryder or Sinestra…” He glanced at her and she shrugged.

“My social calendar is wide open, Mr. Riddick.” The ironic reply was not lost on him and he chuckled.

“Just Riddick will be fine,” he tossed back and she nodded.

“Sturm,” she returned with a feral grin. He was intrigued by her attitude; she was curiously relaxed around him. He usually scared the living shit out of people and yet she was sitting there without a care in the world, apparently without any fear of him. He wasn’t sure if this was a sign that she was insane – always a possibility – or that she trusted him, which amounted to the same thing, he conceded. Either way, she was quite the riddle.

His laugh had a gravelly quality that made the hair on her arms stand up. She watched his big hands move with practiced accuracy over the ship’s controls and tried hard not to think of him in any context other than pilot. It didn’t help that she was always horny after she killed someone.

Speaking of which…

“I should go dump the debris,” she grimaced as she got up and headed for the back of the bridge. He merely nodded and bent over his board, calculating the route out of there. It occurred to her that she had walked behind him armed and he hadn’t so much as twitched. Interesting.
It took only a half an hour to drag the bodies to the nearest airlock and dump them into the vacuum. The place smelled better after they were gone but not by much.

The ship was a cramped and ancient rattletrap that should have been sent to the breakers an eon ago but it was a route to freedom so Alia wasn’t about to complain.

She took a quick tour of the place: two bedrooms, a head, a mess room and the bridge – not exactly a luxury liner, but serviceable. She decided to take the room farthest from the bridge since Riddick would have greater need to get there fast if a klaxon went off. The rooms were filthy and filled with dirty laundry and porno mags. She really didn’t regret that they had killed those two. In fact, it could almost be considered a public service. She wrinkled her nose at the rankness of the laundry.

She stalked back onto the bridge being careful to make noise as she did so. She wasn’t stupid enough to sneak up on him. The last thing she needed was to get murdered by him accidentally. The very fact that he hadn’t already killed her told her that much of his reputation as a mad-dog psychopath was exaggerated. Not, she thought, looking at him sitting in the pilot’s chair, that she would ever think him as a safe and tame creature. More like a carefully leashed tiger: under control for the moment but not to be treated with anything but respect.

“All done?” he asked idly and she nodded. “This place still stinks,” he muttered and she rotated her neck, letting it crack.

“Yeah well, that wasn’t the bodies, that was the Mercs, fucking pigs,” she retorted and he laughed again, which she was finding very appealing. She reminded herself once more that she had enough shit to deal with without adding a lover – any lover, but especially one Richard B. Riddick to the equation. She shifted in the seat and reached for the comfort adjusters.

“Hmm, I suppose we could just space their garbage.” Riddick was chewing on his lip again, something she found distracting but she kept her voice cool. She also didn’t need to bed the tiger and get scratched up in the process. Though the idea was incredibly appealing.

“Well, I was hoping to get some clean clothes out of this but I will have to find a scrubber first.” Just what she always wanted to do, somebody else’s laundry. “Plenty of porn though, should keep you busy for the flight.” She kept her tone light. The last thing she wanted to do was piss him off.

“Sure you wouldn’t rather sample the wares?” he asked in a low tone that made her heart race and her skin heat. She decided blunt honesty was the best option here, because misunderstanding was not an option with someone like him.

“I’d love to, but you are trouble on the hoof, Riddick, and I have enough shit to deal with right now.” She let her regret color her voice and allowed her eyes to roam hungrily over him but kept her hands in her lap.

“Suit yourself,” he replied amiably but the look in his eyes told her that he wasn’t done asking.

So she was interested, he thought with smug self-satisfaction. She was right though, life was complicated enough right now. His lovely plan to keep Jack safe was shot to hell at the moment. The idea was to keep the Mercs off of her, not to let himself get captured. He was going to have to ditch this ship at some point and find another hidey-hole. Frye had trusted him to take care of Jack and he was damned well not going to let her down at this late date.

He finished punching in their destination: Ryder was nice this time of year – rainy, cold and foggy… a perfect place to get lost in. There would be lots of people wearing lots of clothes. They wouldn’t stand out there, even swathed head to toe in concealing garments.

Still, they had a week before they got there and Sturm had a nice mouth. She could clamp her jaw and look menacing all she wanted but those lips were a dead give–away – she had some softness in her somewhere and he was curious as to whether he could find it.

“Anything to eat on this bucket?” he asked absently, his mind more on her mouth than his stomach.

“Rations,” she retorted with a bitter twist of her lips.

“Cocksuckers,” he spat back. “Cheap sons of bitches weren’t they?”

He found that she hadn’t exaggerated the muck that their captors had lived in. the place was filthy. Nothing but a thorough hosing would ever get all the dirt and stench out of this ship. The porn mags weren’t even very good and most of the pages stuck together. Even in his worst moments Riddick hadn’t fallen this far. He would never understand how people could live this way by choice.

He kicked a pile of trash out of his way and with a sweep of his arm cleared off a bed. The sheets and blanket were disgusting so he stripped the bed, tossed a rain poncho across the grimy mattress and collapsed upon it. He was tired and this was the first bed he had touched in two years. He was asleep almost before he was fully horizontal.

Alia paused in the doorway and regarded him idly. He had a quality about him, even sprawled untidily in sleep, which was compelling. He still had his goggles on and the lights were bright. He seemed familiar to her somehow but maybe she just wasn’t used to being around someone as deadly as she was.

She studied him, trying to figure it out: the ragged mane of hair, the huge body lying half-draped on the bed, the beard. He looked like he had been picked up out of the woods – his clothes were in camouflage greens and browns and he still had some mud and dirt smeared on his pants. He looked half-wild and entirely dangerous. It made her wonder but no, he couldn’t be. She shook her head and sighed.

“Lights off,” she murmured and shut his door for him, leaving it open a crack so he wouldn’t wake feeling trapped. She looked around at the litter and debris and frowned. Even if it was for only a week, she couldn’t live like this.

Riddick woke in darkness and pulled the goggles off of his face with a sigh. The warm shadows were old friends to him now and he listened to the shipboard noises, the hums and clicks that told him they were flying free and clear. Another noise reached his ears and he stilled, listening.

She was singing.

It was beautiful.

He lay back and listened as her voice ran up and down the notes of the song and tried to make out the words. He realized after a while of straining that the song was in some language he had never heard before. He swung silently to his feet and stalked up to the door, making no noise.

He slipped the goggles back down and peered out. She had her back to him. She was scrubbing the tabletop with a sander and the soft rasping was mingling with the unfamiliar syllables she was singing. That whisky huskiness was only part of it, there was a ringing sweetness to her voice that tugged at him. The song had a melancholy sound and it made him wonder why she was so sad.

He watched as a woman he thought he might really like to get to know replaced the cocksure killer. He knew that the minute she knew he was awake she would revert however, so he stayed silently in the shadows watching. That he had fallen so deeply asleep in her company without concern or worry surprised him. It was unlike him to trust someone so completely. That she had turned off the lights and left the door cracked for him spoke of kindness. There were depths to her not immediately observable.

She had cleaned up the joint he noted, but most of his attention was on her ass as she scrubbed. It was a very nice ass and he could have remained viewing it for some time without complaint. When she was done scrubbing, the song faded away and she turned. She saw something that alerted her. No doubt his goggles had caught the light, he thought regretfully. He stepped out to face the cold-eyed killer again.

“Looks better,” he acknowledged and she shrugged.

“I hate living like an animal.” She had the clipped tones back again and he wondered what her voice would sound like screaming his name. A tightening in his groin made him aware of how her mere presence could arouse him. He either needed to convince her to let him have her, or he needed to get over this fixation.

“You should avoid the Slam then,” he muttered and she flashed him that feral smile that he found so damned attractive. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t give in to him and it was irritating him a little.

“So far I have,” she paused. “This time thanks to you. I owe you, Riddick.” He nodded back at her, acknowledging the debt. He owed her too, he thought with a grumble, and besides he’d never been a rapist, no matter what the news blurts said. He knew he could collect his debt with her the old fashioned way, but he’d never taken an unwilling woman yet and he wasn’t about to start now.

“You could have escaped at any time,” he said it as though it was a statement but it was really a question. He knew that those jackers could have had her out of there fast as lightening.

“Yes, but I can’t fly,” she shrugged back at him. “I would have had to wait until we landed somewhere and then I would have been fucked.” It was funny how when the swear words came out of her they sounded almost elegant. Her language was crude, but her delivery had a delicacy that made it sound almost high class. He wondered where she was from.

“I think you would have found a way,” he grinned and she returned it.

“Yes, but it would have been messy.” Another shrug, just a roll of the shoulders but it drew his eyes to her chest. Damn, two years was a long time to go without.

“We can ditch this ship at Ryder and be off on our separate ways.” He would regret parting from her. He hadn’t been in a pretty woman’s company in so long that he felt like a starving man in a bakery. She was also the first person he had met – since Imam, Fry and Jack – that he actually liked. She gave him a long look as though she wanted to say something but then she simply nodded.

She moved to the cooker and pulled out ration packs, steaming hot. He grimaced at the smell but what could you do?

“So, where you from?” he asked idly, wanting to keep the conversation going.

“Nowhere you’ve ever heard of,” she replied and there was that undertone of sorrow again. He squelched his curiosity. There really was too much shit in both their lives. Still, they had a week… maybe he could get some human contact out of it even if she wouldn’t sleep with him. After all, once he was back in hiding it might be a long time before he talked to another human being again.

“How did they catch you?” he asked next. There was a long pause that he thought meant she wouldn’t answer and then she spoke.

“They threatened my little sister, Kava,” she growled and he frowned angrily. These fuckers had been real pieces of work.

“How old?”

“Fourteen.” She shoved a forkful of gray goop into her mouth. “They threatened to rape her first then kill her.” Her fury at the dead bounty hunters became clear. Fourteen, that’s how old Jack was, he thought with a sick feeling. He really hoped Imam was keeping her safe.

“Fuckers,” he retorted and finished his food.

“How about you?” She raised her head and those dead black eyes now sparkled with interest. She was curious about him too he guessed. Not in the morbid, fearful way most people were, but the way Carolyn Frye had been: one human being to another.

“There was a settlement on the planet I was hiding on – farmers, miners.” He could feel his helpless rage clawing at him as he remembered. The farmers had liked Riddick. He hunted food for their pots and they wouldn’t give him up, even with their children under the guns of the bounty hunters. It was a matter of principal. Settlers stuck together. He couldn’t do it though. “They put the settlement’s kids against a wall and said they would shoot them one after the other unless I gave up,” Riddick shrugged. Sturm nodded in understanding.

“And they call us the monsters,” she murmured disbelievingly. Riddick snorted in response.

“Next time I will find a planet without any people on it,” he assured her. He knew which one he was going to. But he had hoped he wouldn’t have to. He’d hoped that Bison’s World was remote enough. He’d been wrong.

A week later, they parted on Ryder. As he moved away from her she turned and gave him a strangely formal bow.

“My name is Alia Otoran Sturm and I owe you one, Riddick.” Then she was gone, one more shadow in the night. He knew if he removed his goggles he could watch her glow retreating but he kept them down. He didn’t want to watch her go.