Chapter 3: GUEST OF HONOR
A proximity sensor on the pilot's console blinked a fiery red hue. The wait had ended. Their guest arrived. Kearyn leaned forward, staring at Toombs as if to say, I hope you're ready for this. He opened the comms channel and said in a welcoming tone, "I trust you found us easily enough?"
An all too familiar voice responded from somewhere out in the icy darkness. "Not a problem, really." Riddick said.
"Shit!" Toombs blurted, "You've got to be kiddin'! Him! He's the one we've been waiting for? Kearyn. You asshole!"
"Skittish Toombs. Still skittish." Riddick said. The tone in his voice was like a sarcastic slap to the face. Riddick laughed.
Toombs flicked on the exterior hull lighting and did a double take out the side window. "Crap!" he screamed, staring into the sunken dead eyes of a desiccated corpse drifting inches on the other side of the thick glass. "I told you, this place isn't safe." Toombs raged, starting a scan on the body floating in the black void.
"Is that necessary?" Kearyn asked, gesturing out the windscreen. "Our friend out there is in no condition to warrant your attention." He pointed out the other window. "Besides, we have a guest to prepare for."
"I wanna know how long he's been floatin' out there. Toombs explained, gesturing to the naked upside down corpse staring in the window. "In case whatever did that is still out there." He hastily scrolled through several computer readouts, stopping on a cellular scan that determined time and cause of death.
Kearyn let out a maniacal laugh and said, "But what if the thing that did that is in here, Alexander?"
"Guy," Toombs replied, waving off his attempt at levity, "The bad jokes really aren't helpin'."
Riddick pulled alongside the starboard airlock, extended a mooring boom to connect the two vessels, and watched as the ship's gantry moved along the boom until it contacted the Rapier's docking hatch with a loud thud. The sound of large pneumatic pistons closing tightly around the heavy metal collar filled the Rapier's cockpit as the two ships came together with a groaning thump. The hiss of oxygen filling the catwalk made Toombs rub his ears.
"Well," Kearyn smiled ominously, "It would appear, the time for a speedy escape has come and gone."
"Oh... ha... ha..." Toombs said, continuing to run his scans on the freeze-dried corpse, ogling him through glazed over milky pupils frozen in terror.
Kearyn flicked the comms-switch open again. "As guest of honor, the choice of meeting place falls to you. Your ship or mine?"
"I'll be right over. My environmental controls are on the fritz. It's as cold as..." Riddick paused for a moment, "Hey merc, what was the name of the frozen planet I dumped your sorry ass on?"
"Nice," Toombs answered, shaking his head in disgust. "I see you're still a comedian."
"Come on, buddy. What was it?"
"The first time was planet UV; the second time was Crematoria." Toombs replied, making a childish face at the monitor. "One cold; one hot. Both sucked. Can't you ever hide on a resort planet?"
Kearyn rolled his eyes at Toombs and laughed.
"Well," Riddick said, "That has to be some kind of record for me. Two times... Hold it, I almost forgot about our first meeting; you remember your psycho boss, Antonia Chillingsworth's ship, the Kublai Khan? I don't think I've ever given anyone three chances to walk away before."
"No."
"No," Riddick repeated, "Usually when I say goodbye, it's for good."
"I'm sure," Toombs replied.
An ominous silence filled the speakers for a moment, and then Riddick warned, "And Toombs, as far as chances go. I can promise you this... if this is a trick. The next time I say goodbye... it will be for good."
A couple of minutes passed, and the sound of docking hatches opening and closing filled the Rapier. Toombs' eyes remained glued to his scan as Kearyn turned to the hatch, preparing to welcome their guest. "I believe the time has arrived for our unorthodox family reunion."
"Reunion, my ass." Toombs turned to Kearyn, shaking his head, pointing a warning finger. "Listen, this guy has no family, and he's already tried to kill me three times."
"Doubtful, Alexander." Kearyn said, staring at him from the depths of his hood. "If Riddick had actually tried to kill you. You would be dead."
"Funny," Toombs said, flipping through several screens. "I don't know about you, but none of this says reunion to me. It says come on in, have a seat and cut our throats."
"Perhaps, Alexander. But if we are going to succeed in what is coming next, we will need Riddick's help." Kearyn explained, facing the hatch as heavy steps approached from outside.
"What comes next?" Toombs asked.
"We take the fight to our enemy." Kearyn answered, hearing the lock on the bulkhead door opening and signaling Toombs to stop talking.
The hatch swung outward and Riddick stood in the darkness beyond, eyes glowing. His shadow filled the hatch. "Kearyn," he said, stepping through the access hatch and looking around.
"Richard," Kearyn responded.
To Riddick's surprise, Kearyn's eyes glowed in the shadows of his hood. The two men stood facing one another; each of their eyes mirroring the other's. They both had eye shines.
Riddick squinted at Kearyn suspiciously, taking in the surroundings and said, "Please, no one calls me Richard, except the Nuns at Saint Mary's."
"It's OK." Toombs said, finishing his scan of the void surrounding the Rapier. "Kearyn does that to everyone." He turned to Riddick and added, "He thinks being on a first name basis builds a foundation of trust."
"Really." Riddick said, stepping further into the cockpit. He studied the two men for a moment. "Then trust this, he does it to everyone, except me."
Kearyn looked from Toombs to Riddick and replied, "As you wish, but take my word, someday... sooner than you think, you will ask me to call you Richard."
Riddick regarded him thoughtfully for a quick second and replied, "Unlikely."
Kearyn smiled and nodded to signal his willingness to comply with his guest's foreboding request. "Perhaps you would prefer it if I addressed you as Prisoner 5421135-2."
"My old Butcher Bay cell number, it would seem you have me at a disadvantage." Riddick said, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu as he regarded Kearyn. "There's something familiar about you. Have we met before?" Riddick stepped in closer. The face of a withered mummy emerged from deep within the hood. Whoever Kearyn may have been in his youth had faded long ago. "You smell familiar."
"Well," Kearyn replied, lifting his arm and smelling himself, "That certainly is a first."
"I know we've met somewhere before."
"It is possible. I have a tendency to run into quite many people in my travels. And at my age, the number of people I have encountered would stagger the mind."
"Have you ever been to Helios 4? A back alley behind a pharmacy, perhaps?"
"Is there a specific reason you would like to know?" Kearyn asked as the corner of his leathery mouth twitched slightly.
Riddick studied the shadowy face partially obscured by a thick woolen hood. Kearyn's ancient face looked like aged leather stretched over a gaunt skull; his withered lips and shrunken eyelids receded long ago, leaving behind abnormally yellow teeth and bulging eyes. He resembled an Egyptian mummy Riddick had seen in a picture when he was a boy.
"Problem," Kearyn said, watching Riddick inspecting his unusual appearance. There were few who could see through the glamour Kearyn cast. But Riddick saw right through it. He saw… and smelled him, for what he was, a corpse.
"You'd better hope not." he replied, thinking about the obelisk and how long it had waited for his arrival. Could Kearyn have put it there? Riddick's mind wandered through a barrage of unsettling questions that flashed across his face. "Just how old are you?" he asked, although the tone of his voice suggested he was fishing for more than the trivial.
Kearyn gestured towards the mass of stars beyond the windscreen and said, "In 3 days' time, you and I shall celebrate my 24th birthday... and on that day, this universe will never be the same."
Riddick folded his arms in front of him, cocked his head to the side with a raised brow, and studied him with no small regard. "Really, 24. I wouldn't have guessed you were a day over... 21."
"To kind," Kearyn replied, gesturing to a gunmetal grey data pad lying on a nearby shelf. "Perhaps you would be happier with the answers I give, if you ask the questions you want."
Riddick stared at the data pad as if seeing a ghost; He knew it was Martin's, but couldn't fathom how it now came to be in Kearyn's possession. "Why the fuck does everybody have that?"
"Martins datapad." Kearyn said. "It seems to make the rounds."
Riddick saw Kearyn's pupils flash deep inside his hood. It was obvious he had a similar eye-shine. "Nice shine." he said, studying Kearyn's eyes closely. "When did you do them?"
"I've never had my eyes shined. They are a genetic anomaly passed down to me by my father." Kearyn answered, pointing to his own face. I
"Genetic anomaly." Riddick thought aloud. "Are you certain?"
"Absolutely." Kearyn said. "My father passed many of his traits to his children. In fact, your eyes are a genetic anomaly," he answered, pointing to Riddick's eyes.
"I wasn't born like this."
"Yet, they are a gift of your heritage, as are mine."
"That shows how little you know about me."
"Or perhaps... How little you know about yourself."
He pointed at his face and said, "This happened at Butcher Bay."
Kearyn placed a gloved hand on his chest. He stared at it as if aligning with something below his shirt. "I hear that's not all you left Butcher Bay with, is it?"
"Do you have any siblings?" Riddick asked, ignoring Kearyn's undoubted knowledge of his encounter with Shira and the handling she left on him. "Are any of them 24?" Riddick continued, stepping further into the cockpit.
"I have a twin sister, and no, she is not 24. Like my father, she died long ago."
"It's better that way." Riddick replied, showing no sign of empathy towards Kearyn's loss. "Family ties only get in the way."
"How true you are." Kearyn said, pressing a few buttons on the console beside him. "Look here," he continued, gesturing for Riddick to turn towards the monitor on the inner hull. "As you can clearly discern from this vid, standard chemical shines only last a short while. And, more often than not, result in a partial loss of the recipient's vision. Have you experienced any loss of vision?"
"No."
Toombs laughed as he typed away at the console in front of him. "Know it all." He said, looking over his shoulder.
"You seem to know your way around this science stuff pretty well." Riddick said, studying the screen. "I didn't think science and religion played well together."
"They do not," Kearyn said, taking a flamboyant bow, "For scientists and clerics, the debates surrounding divinity and the creation are all about who is in the right, who is wrong and ultimately, who is in control."
"And what about you?"
"For me." Kearyn replied, "Science and religion are just different methods used to arrive at the same answers."
Riddick laughed and said, "A devout scientist in search of God? That'll be the day."
Kearyn held up the ancient Necromonger cloak that had faded to the point of barely being recognizable. "And that day... is today."
"Necromonger Priest robes." Riddick said, looking at the fabric. He placed a hand on the hilt of his knife and said, "You're a Necro."
"I was... long ago. When I was young and foolish."
"Long ago," Riddick repeated, "I didn't realize the Necros had been around that long."
"They haven't," Kearyn replied, "But I have."
"So," Riddick began, pointing at his face. "If you were a young Necromonger long ago and the Necromongers are young today. How is it you're..." he gestured at his emaciated form? "24? The math doesn't add up."
"It does if you know temporal displacement physics."
Riddick's eyes flashed blue. "Time travel."
"A concept I hear you have recently become acquainted with yourself."
Riddick calmed his mind, reeled in the countless questions casting from his mind and asked, "What changed."
"l met a man who helped me see the Universe in a different light."
"No one can change Necro conditioning?"
Kearyn looked out the window, pondering the statement as Riddick studied him. "You have little faith."
Riddick laughed at him and said, "Holyman. I have no faith."
"Pity."
"We have met before." Riddick said, walking to the window, standing beside Kearyn and peering out at the void. "It was you in the alley on Helios 4. You brought me back in time."
Toombs abruptly stopped typing and Kearyn replied, "I'm certain I do not know what you mean."
"Tell me, holy man." A bluish tint of anger contorted his features. "What do you see when you look into the darkness?"
Kearyn pointed out the window and replied, "The holy man sees, God. But the scientist sees a systemic cancer destroying everything in its path."
Riddick covered his eyes with his hand, shook his head and replied, "God and cancer. Oh yeah, I didn't just waste a fucking month of my life getting here."
"I can assure you, you did not. This is exactly the time and place we were supposed to meet."
"Then admit your God and cancer speech is nuts."
Kearyn laughed and said, "No, it is a fact and if you come with me, I shall prove it."
Riddick turned to the window, stared out at the center of the galaxy and said, "Science or Religion, it's all the same shit to me. They're just different ways for the few to control the many. I choose the path I walk. Not you, not God; not anyone."
Kearyn shrugged his shoulders and said, "You are not at all what I had expected."
"I get that a lot."
Kearyn turned to Riddick and asked matter-of-factly, "I heard you said they found you in a dumpster with your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck like a piece of garbage."
"I was."
Kearyn placed a hand on his shoulder and replied, "That is not true, your mother was a loving woman who would have never done such an abhorrent thing to you."
Riddick reeled on him, grabbed his cloak and shoved him against the hull. He pushed his face in so close his nose disappeared inside Kearyn's hood and said, "What's your game, Holyman? The nuns at the orphanage told me they found me in the dumpster out back."
In an instant, Riddick was standing in front of the window, holding nothing but air. Kearyn vanished without a trace. When Riddick turned, he was sitting in a nearby seat. Riddick made a move to grab him again, and Kearyn vanished once more.
"I can keep this up all day." he said, standing back in front of the window.
Toombs jumped from his seat, reached down to draw his sidearm, and came up empty. He removed his sidearm two days earlier.
Riddick pointed at him, eyes wide with rage, and said, "It's a long fall from way up here, merc. Don't try that again."
"Sit down, Alexander." Kearyn said."This is between... Riddick and I."
Riddick turned to Kearyn and said, "Explain yourself or this is going to get ugly."
Kearyn gestured for Toombs to return to his seat and for Riddick to return to their conversation. "I knew your mother long ago and you can believe me when I tell you she didn't put you in a dumpster."
Riddick pointed at him and said, "If you know so much, who did?"
"I did."
Riddick stood in the aisle, fists balled, eye squinted tight, skin charring, looking as if he was about to tackle Kearyn at any moment. "Why did we never meet when l lead the Necros we never met?"
Toombs looked over his shoulder and said, "You told everyone he was dead."
"What?" Riddick asked with an expression of disbelief. "I've never met him before."
Kearyn moved closer, giving Riddick the opportunity to get a good look at the face beneath the hood, and said, "We met on Crematoria just before you returned to face Lord Marshal Zhylaw. I went there with Commander Vaako."
"Were you on one of the teams he brought?" Riddick asked, as a puzzled expression gripped his features. "You were one of Vaako's men."
"I have never been one of Vaako's men. Nor have we ever met in battle."
"Lucky you."
"Undoubtedly," Kearyn admitted, "I have never been good in a fight."
"Apparently not," Riddick replied, looking him up and down. "You look like you burned to a..."
"Like I said," Kearyn said, seeing the memories of his own death playing in Riddick's eyes, "I met a man who helped me see things in a different light."
"Purifier." Riddick thought out loud. "I watched you die."
"You watched me burn. But I did not die in the flames. Fire cannot destroy my body." Kearyn admitted. "That too, is a gift my father passed to me."
"How did you survive?"
"Come with me and I'll show you how to control the flames." Kearyn answered. "Or get back on your ship and return to your cushy life on Pegreno 3. That is, until it goes up in flames around you. But… as you walk a path of your own choosing, I'll leave that decision to you."
A large monitor above the pilot's seat flickered on and Toombs said, "Look." He pointed at the monitor, trying to defuse the situation, "I just ran multiple scans on the floater outside."
"Must you, Alexander? Now is not the time."
Toombs held up three fingers to stress the number of times he had performed the same scans and stated emphatically, "Using pre-established rates of decay, I estimated those bodies have been floatin' out there for at least a couple hundred years."
Riddick stared at Kearyn. His expression was unreadable. He turned to Toombs and said, "I take it, it wasn't here when you arrived?"
"Not likely. We would have seen it." Toombs replied, pointing at the monitor. "But these scans say they've been out there for 2 centuries."
"Bullshit. Run a diagnostic on your sensors," Riddick replied, studying the screen. "We've only been able to come out this far for fifty years."
"Guy," Toombs replied, gesturing wildly at the monitor, "Check the damn readout for yourself. I ran the scan three times and calibrated the sensor array twice."
Riddick scowled at Toombs, walked to the closest console and said, "Let me try."
"Hey guy, I know how to run a fuckin' scan?"
Riddick pressed several buttons and said, "There, your friends have been floating around for 183 years, 2 months, 23 days..."
"OK, OK," Toombs admitted, begrudgingly. "You can run a more accurate scan."
"Although," Riddick said, ignoring Toombs. "I don't know why you didn't notice them when you arrived?" Riddick turned to Kearyn for confirmation. "With no atmosphere or gravitational influences to move the bodies around, they should have been here when you arrived." He peered out the front windscreen at the corpse floating in the near distance and thought aloud, "Strange."
"That's because they weren't there upon arrival." Kearyn replied, waving around matter-of-factly. "As unlikely as it may sound, that body arrived after we did."
Toombs cut in, "I told you we shouldn't have come out here."
Riddick stepped away from the computer screen, returned to his original spot and said, "As fascinating as the floater in the window is, I don't suppose you'd like to regale me with the tale of how you acquired the Lord Marshall's private transport?"
Kearyn gestured towards a seat and Riddick shook his head in decline and said. "I'm fine where I am."
"As you wish," Kearyn said, stopping just a few inches away from Riddick's shoulder. "As to our somewhat dubious possession of the Rapier, Toombs and I, with the help of someone I'd like to introduce you to now, stole this vessel while making our escape from the armada."
Riddick cocked his head slightly to one side as if sizing Kearyn up and said, "I'm sure the Necros were real unhappy about losing a ship as advanced as this one."
"I'm counting on it." Kearyn answered, opening the hatch leading into the cargo hold. "In fact, I know they are giving a great deal of thought to how to get it back at this very moment." He gestured inside the cargo hold and added, "Now, if you would accompany me to the aft med bay, I would like to introduce you to Alexander's wife, Eve."
Riddick turned to Toombs with a smirk and said, "Wife huh... and you didn't even invite me to the wedding."
"As if," Toombs replied to himself in a whisper.
Riddick thought about the woman Toombs had been with on Crematoria and said, "No matter, I believe we've already met. She was that tasty little gunslinger with a nice set of six-guns. Yeah," he paused for a moment, grinning malevolently at Toombs, "the five-man crew. If I remember correctly, she was pretty banged up when I left Crematoria. Too bad about what they did to her, she had nice teeth."
"Hey guy, screw you." Toombs seethed, stepping out into the aisle way to go with them.
"Touchy, touchy." Riddick countered, staring him down. "Where is the old ball and chain, anyway? Do have her out back in a bucket."
Riddick peered into the darkness of the cargo bay, looking for Kearyn, and saw nothing In the darkness. "Now that's something I don't see every day," Riddick said, straining his eyes. There were no signs of body-heat, no traces of blood flow or any other telltale signs of life. The only thing he could make out was a talking suit of clothing walking off towards the aft med bay door.
"What's that?" Toombs asked.
"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud." Riddick answered dismissively. "Oh, did I ever tell you your wife used to grind her teeth in her sleep?"
Toombs shot him a furtive expression, clearly showing he should watch it.
But Riddick just couldn't help himself. He enjoyed pressing people's buttons. "I really think women who grind their teeth in their sleep are..."
"Perhaps," Kearyn interrupted from the darkness. "Before you continue down that path, you might consider a modicum of self-control. In the event, you may say something you find awkward or embarrassing at a later time."
The doorway to the aft med bay opened, filling the cargo bay with an eerie bluish/green light, and Kearyn stood in the doorway like death beckoning unwitting souls through the gates of purgatory.
"I wasn't aware I could feel embarrassed," Riddick scoffed, walking towards the open door. "Or awkward."
"Well, these are strange times we live in Riddick. It might surprise you at what you can feel. Now, hurry along." Kearyn replied as he disappeared through the med bay door.
Toombs mindlessly shoved his way through the doorway, almost knocking Riddick off his feet, ran through the murky cargo bay and disappeared into the med bay beyond, leaving Riddick standing alone at the edge of the deep cargo bay.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone