TITLE: Before the Dawn
AUTHOR: Topaz
FANDOM: Pitch Black
PAIRING: Riddick/ofc
RATING: R to NC-17 for violence and sexual depictions
DISCLAIMER: All characters from movies are copyright by their respective studios and creators. I am not making a profit of any sort from these pages. Really. Tane and the idea is copyright 2002 by S.A. Hoag.
SUMMARY: Riddick and Tane are running out of time to deal with the mercs and the Marines.
Chapter 7
Tane clanged noisily up the stairs from the galley and caught Riddick reading a book. He was sitting on the bridge, feet propped up reading an Asimov novel she had bought at an antique shop somewhere. The main screen was off. "Hey."
"Hey yourself." he responded, still reading. Books just weren't available in the places he frequented . . .
"Are we moving?"
Riddick looked around. "I'll be damned if we're not . . . " he started, suddenly on his feet.
Tane beat him to the pilot's seat. "Main screen on."
"When did you voice-activate the computer?" he asked.
"When you were asleep." They were still docked to the station, but the hard-dock was warping even as the screen came on. "Oh shit, oh dear." Tane gaped. There were small flash fires all over their arm of the station, visable as blurs rather than details.
"Attack?" Riddick asked.
"No." Her fingers flew across they keys, lights all over the board blinking furiously. "Purge all uploads." she shouted at it, as if that would make it happen faster. The ship went off-line, but only for thirty seconds.
"We are losing the hard-dock." he warned.
Tane looked up, just long enough to see the walkway shred and spin towards them. "Shields forward." Tane yelled, grabbing the consol for something to hold onto as the remains tumbled harmlessly over them. No time to think how close of a call it was. "Riddick, you have voice commands." She slapped a notebook in the co-pilot's seat. "In case you lose systems, the commands and overrides are in there."
"What's happening?" he growled, the tiny hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He didn't like the looks of this one damned bit.
"Sit." she ordered. "Lunar 1010 Command. This is Cpt. Tane Cameron, patch me through to the OIC." A fuse next to Riddick smoked, popped loudly and promptly caught on fire. He grabbed an extinguisher and put it out.
"Cpt. Allen." a Marine, a Major, came on the vid.
"What did they do? Did they try to upload from the Kysian ship directly to the Stations computer?" She didn't have time for military protocol at this point.
He didn't want to answer that, but the room he was in was filling with smoke and he knew that she knew a hell of a lot more about the situation than he did. "We tried to upload from secondary system to secondary system."
"A closed system?"
"No."
Then what was the point? Listen to me, if you don't want to lose the station. Purge everything."
"All our systems will be down. Life-support . . ."
"If the worm gets into your main computer, you might as well set off the self-destruct sequence. Purge it, purge it all and reboot it after the system is dead."
"We are dead." Riddick announced.
"Reboot." she said. The lights went out.
Chapter 8
"What do we do now, 'Captain Allen'?" Riddick inquired. He could see; she was blind in this lack of light. Another result of her time in the Marines, maybe, Riddick wondered, or a genetic anomally. Nightblind definately.
"We can't purge the worm while we are still docked." Tane said quietly.
"Disengage . . ." he began.
"Wait." She sprung out of her seat, flashlight in hand. "Take it out, far enough if the reactor goes bad . . ." She didn't want to finish that thought. "Give me thirty seconds to get through the air lock. Shut it down, let it set for a few minutes and start it up. The system will purge clean. Put on your pressure suit, just in case."
"Tane." he grabbed her arm.
"I'm not a Marine anymore." She knew what he was thinking. "My security level is active, so in emergencies, they can draft me . . . I think this qualifies."
"What are you going to do?"
"See if I can reboot the Station's mainframe. I'll be back onboard as soon as I can."
"You know Cody will be here anytime. Any time."
"I know." she whispered. Then she kissed him, a blistering kiss that left him suprised by the heat of it. "Get clear. If the reactor starts an overload, I will be long gone."
***************************************************************************
They were high-profile mercs, three of them, dangerous separately and lethal together. Two of them would recognize him on sight. Bad news. Worse news. They weren't here for him; he was dead. They were here for Tane. Cody had sent them as an advance team. One of them was an ex-cop and one of them had been a Fleet Marine. The third, well, he was an unknown factor. Riddick read the passenger manifest and swore out loud. The mercs had put in at the station five hours after they did. And Tane was there, alone.
Chapter 9
There was no doubt about why he was there. No finesse, no attempt at hiding his intent. When Piper and Twist came upon the silent figure in the darkness of the shut-down construction zone, they knew, they just knew how deep the shit was they had stepped in this time. Piper would never know why. Twist, unfortunately for him, would live long enough to figure it out.
Riddick held his shiv in his left hand, relaxing against the barrier that would eventually lead up to the main levels. No goggles. No expression. No qualms about it . . .
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Piper spat, grabbing for the sawed-off blaster he wore on his hip. He got ahold of it, but he was already dead, he just didn't know it yet. Riddick's shiv opened him up right across the center and suddenly the merc was using his other hand to hold his intestines in. Blood-slicked, he dropped the weapon, crumpled to his knees and died without so much as a gurgle, a half-smoke cigarette still in his mouth.
In the meantime, Twist had a lethal looking blade in hand, brandishing it right back at Riddick. "You are supposed to be dead." he announced, trying to size up the situation.
"You are supposed to protect and serve." Riddick sneered. "So why are you here?" He didn't back down, didn't blink, didn't give a single emotion away.
"Bounty, what else?"
"Where's the other one?"
"Other one?" Twist pivoted away, trying to find a source of light he could use as a weapon.
"The third merc."
"The Kysian?" Twist smiled. "Like I'd tell you. Trying to steal a bounty when you are worth more than she is . . ." He shut up fast, not fast enough.
Riddick came at him, amazing speed for someone so damned big. Twist tried to dodge, tried to bring the blade around to hit him and anywhere would be good. Riddick swung his free arm around, getting a good left hook in. Twist shook his head and spit blood. "Is she worth your life?"
Twist grinned, seeing great irony in the question. "You'd let me walk out of here, knowing you aren't dead and eaten by aliens? I don't think so. Neither of us are stupid enough to believe that."
They danced, knives clashing together, throwing sparks in the dark. The shine made Riddick win, in the end, a pile of loose lumber catching Twist across the knees and he went down. Riddick pinned him against a trash bin, forearm to throat, knife to his throat.
"Where is West?" he growled, very close to Twist's face.
"Fug y . . ." He choked, gasped and couldn't breahte with the massive arm crushing his windpipe. The knife bit into the soft part of his throat just below his ear and Twist stopped struggling. Riddick eased up, the tiniest bit.
"He's tracking the girl." the merc managed. "Thinks she checked herself into the Med Bay. We were supposed to go up at shift change and make plans for getting her off the station. Too damned many Marines around."
"She is a Marine." Riddick told him.
He looked suprised. "She's a runaway. She belongs to Cody."
"Wrong." Riddick told him. "She is with me." He made it fast and clean, not like Piper had gone.
Med Bay. He didn't like the sounds of that, and she had seemed too eager to get stationside. More of her damned plans going to hell . . . Riddick formulated a plan of his own, and it involved dragging her back to the ship and locking her in her quarters until Cody was taken care of and the baby was born. She might be a Marine, or maybe an ex-Marine, but she had no idea about the immovable force she had run up against in the form of Richard Riddick. He was about to give her a lesson.
Chapter 10
The pulsing music drew Tane's attention to the observation deck. She could look down on to the next level, into a dance club, complete with neon lights in the floor and a couple hundred moving bodies. A number of the males were shirtless, and a couple of them were . . . interesting enough to get a second look.
I'm comparing them to him. Tane was suprised to realize that. How monogamus of me. she though sarcatically. It wasn't something that ran in the family. Wade had been married three times, Drew twice, and Kyle, well never, but he had a harem. They also had a half-brother and two young half-sisters they had never met, offspring of their mother and her current husband. But she hadn't been in love since Harlan, until now. Until Riddick. Oh, hell. Admit it. What's the use of lying to yourslef, kiddo. And he's still hanging around, even with you all knocked up . . .
Tane was not a morning person, and it was morning by her schedule. Mid-afternoon by the Station's time. Her bloodwork would be done by the time she got back to the Med Bay.
As if on-cue, her comm-link beeped at her. Tane sighed. Major Haseem with more worries about the computer systems that seemed to be running normally, if not a helluva lot slower than they should be. They had screwed up big time, messing with the Kysian ship. She had recommended they have the entire section replaced, because Terrans just didn't know all the intricacies of Kysian computer works.
"I'm here." she answered.
"I'd like you to have a look at something." Haseem spoke quietly.
"Which system is down?"
There was a brief silence. "It's not a computer. I'd still like your opinion."
Now what? Kysian renegades? "Alright." Tane agreed, suspicious about motives all of a sudden. That sixth sense Wade swore she had. Something was rotten and she could smell it.
"Meet me at my office. You'll need a pressure suit. Did you ever get your eyes done?"
Tane had the urge to laugh. Well done or rare? "No, haven't had the motivation to let a Fleet surgeon cut on my eyes, thanks. Why?"
"I'll have a pair of night vision goggles for you." He cut the message off. Obviously he didn't approve of her methods.
Twenty minutes later she found herself being escorted into the lower levels. Pressure suit and goggles made her look like any one of hundreds of Fleet personal scurrying about. Power was still running at minimums, but that wasn't because of computer viruses. "Construction workers are on strike." Haseem explained.
If he didn't have such a stick up his butt, Tane might have found him attractive. But you know who you really want. She reminded herself. The hormones were running amok again . . . still. Some interesting side effects too.
"This is a crime scene." Haseem told her. "Civilian matter, really, but you are a top Fleet Security officer."
"Which doesn't really have anything to do with civilian matters." Tane agreed plesantly. She caught the distinct scent of blood. A lot of it, and reasonably fresh. Her stomach tightened, threatened to go into full rebellion. Oh shit, let's puke in front of the Major, please.
"We suspect they are, were, mercenaries." he told her.
Really dead mercs, two of them. The second had put up a bit of a fight. He was behind a pile of debris. It looked like he had a single knife wound in the heart, but his neck was also broken. The first one, thirty feet up the alleyway, was the source of all that blood. He had gotten opened up from groin to sternum and was probably dead before he bled out. Tane turned away and threw up her breakfast.
**********************************************************************
Hassem apologized again.
"It's not the crime scene." Tane explained. "I'm pregnant."
General reaction, his eyes dropped to her abdomen. Really no way of seeing it, not in a Fleet-issued pressure suit. "I see. And I can comfirm that with Sick Bay?"
"That's why I was here in the first place."
He nodded. She knew he would check. "I thought you might have an idea who they were, because there is no ID on them, nothing on file."
"So they are professionals. If I were you, I'd check military records first. Mercenary work is profitable as hell in the boarder systems and a lot of ex-military go right into that line of work."
"Like you did?"
She grinned, and it was a look like a predator examining it's prey rather than a plesantry. "We both know you've read my files, even the sealed ones. Until you got here and saw this" she gestured towards the first body. "You thought I might have been your prime suspect." Even with her training, there was no way she could have inflicted that sort of damage.
"Rumor has it, they were here looking for you." Hassem stated.
"Wouldn't suprise me." Tane sounded disinterested.
"Do you know either of them?"
"No."
"What about William Johns?"
She kept her poker-face on. "What about him?"
Haseem nodded towards the bodies. "Records indicate you left Corbis system with him. Since he's not one of the victims, could he be the perpetrator?"
"Johns was on Corbis Station last time I saw him. I picked up a new pilot there."
"And your pilot?"
"Is on my ship."
"What are you hiding?"
"You know the mercs were looking for me. You know about the Kysian bounty and this station is crawling with Kysians. What do you think I'm hiding?"
"How long do you plan on being stationside?"
"As long as I feel like it or Command tells me to be here." She stalked off a few pace, letting her temper cool for a few seconds. "I'm sorry .." she returned. "I plan on leaving as soon as my pilot docks and we resupply a few things. So you've got me for hours."
He nodded acknowledgement. "If I thought you did this, or had a part in it, you'd be sitting in a holding cell. Command or not, Captain. Do we understand each other?"
"Perfectly." Tane said.
"Am I free to go now?"
He nodded dismissal. "Contact me when you are boarding to disembark."
She suspected he would throw a party when she did.
***************************************************************************
The Fleet people had walked right past him and never even looked up. They did that - if they didn't look at the Kysians, they might not have to deal with them. But something caught his attention, at the archway into the observation deck. A scent . . . familiar, yet . . . what?
His pupils narrowed to mere lines as he moved very quietly along the walkway. Shift change and this particular level was practically abandoned. He was beginning to think he had imagined it. There were a lot of Terran females on the base, and he might have mistaken one of them for her, because something had seemed changed.
And they came face to face as she rounded the corner. Tane and West and she was . . .
Unarmed . . . No place on a pressure suit for weapons. Tane took half a step back, planting her feet, ready to go hand-to-hand with the Kysian. He was a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier, and armed.
West pulled the big blade out of his flack jacket. "Tane." he smiled. "After all these years." It was the same smile she had just given Hassem.
"Three years." she smirked. "Don't make it sound like we're long-lost friends."
"Any 'friend' of Cody's . . ."
"Is better off dead." Tane finished. "Why do you stay with him?" He circled to ler left and she pivoted to follow.
"Can you think of a better way for a Kysian to hunt for somebody in Alliance space, than with an Alliance merc?" West saw the color drain from her face. "Oh, not you, little girl. You are just a distraction." There was something he couldn't pinpoint.
"Who then?" Question and answer time, she figured, since they both knew one of them would be dead when this little talk was over.
He comtemplated the same idea, dismissed it. He knew her secret. "My son." he answered. "He has been missing in Alliance space for well over three years."
Tane had the mental picture of a small child, separeated from his family, and Kysian or not, it pulled at her newfound maternal instincts. Not that she would let her guard down. "How old is he?"
"Twenty, now."
She was shocked. West didn't look old enough to have a twenty year old son, he looked Cody's age. Then again, she was the one always saying they weren't quite human.
"I'm sorry." she offered.
"You are carrying." he stated.
Tane's mouth dropped open and there was no point in trying to deny it.
"I don't make it a habit of killing females, and especially not ones in your . . . condition." he spoke carefully and Tane had the good sense to shut up and listen. For a change. "And I don't subscribe to Cody's type of revenge. I have no reason to give you to him. But we will have an understanding, or I will take you to Cody."
"You can try."
He smiled again and Tane suddenly wished Haseem had thrown her in a holding cell for any reason.
Chapter 11
"Tane!" Riddick bellowed as he stode onto the ship. He was pissed, and at the same time, he was so relieved he could feel it, like a huge weight being lifted off his chest. But he was still pissed. "Where are you?"
"Bridge." she called.
He strode up there, totally intent on a showdown with her. Enough was enough, and she was taking unnecessary risks. As far as he was concerned, that was his job.
She was curled up in the pilot's seat with her feet tucked under her, a blanket wrapped around her and she had obviously been asleep. There was a plasma pistol on the consol. "Jeez, Riddick, do ya think you were loud enough?" she mumbled, still waking up.
"I didn't want to suprise anyone." he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
She yawned.
"There were mercs on the station looking for you." he told her.
"I know." She turned on one of the monitors and it showed an array of ships in dock. "See the one almost in the center with the numbers '1220'? That's Cody's ship."
Riddick had the urge to go right over and strangle the bastard.
"No." Tane said, already knowing what he was thinking. "You'd never make it two steps on the ship."
He folded his arms, giving her a skeptical look. "Have you forgotten who you are dealing with?"
"Never. When we take Cody out, it's going to look like an accident."
"'We'. What makes you think I'm going to go along with your plans to get yourself killed?"
"Those aren't my plans".
"Sure as hell looks that way. Why were you in Med-Bay?"
"I'm pregnant." Tane said as if he might have forgotten that detail.
He cocked his head sideways and said "And that's it?"
"No, I mean, I'm pregnant. The drugs didn't work. The stasis didn't take." Tane stood up, dropping her blanket.
Riddick hadn't touched her in almost three weeks, since she started taking the drugs to induce the fetal stasis, because she had been so damned sick from it. She had certainly . . . blossomed, in that space of time. He wondered how in the hell she had hidden it so well. He was speechless.
"It happens sometimes." She sat back down, grabbing her blanket.
"Are you ok? And the baby . . ."
"We are both fine.
"How much time do you heve left?"
Tane sighed, stretched. "Not much.
No kidding.
"I'm at the end of my second trimester."
He regarded her with raised eyebrows. "Little girl, how many pregnant women do you think I have ever known?"
"Hmmmm, zero."
"Exactly."
"Alright. I have about thirteen weeks left."
He had been counting on a year, more or less. Now, they were out of time. "New plans, then. And I don't think they are going to include you."
"You can't get to him without me."
"Don't count on that. And you better believe I will bundle you up, drop you on Wade's doorstep and take care of this my way the next time you go off like that."
Tane knew how much he wasn't kidding. "I'm not a child."
"Then stop acting like one. Do you think you are the only person in the galaxy with problems? Damnit, Tane, the Alliance has been hunting me half my life. I spent six years in Slam City. It is a hole in the ground that used to be a mining colony. Now it's a zoo they call a prison facility. Everyone has problems, and most people have the good sense to let others help them out."
"The Gospel according to Richard B. Riddick." Tane observed, amused at him preaching to her.
"Yea, I'm a bad example. So the fuck what. You have family and resource I can't even imagine.
"I have you." she said quietly. "And I don't want to lose you. I'm not doing this for my brothers or my parents or my friends. I'm doing this for us - for you and me, and her." she put her hand on her abdomen. "You have to trust me."
"Her?"
Tane nodded. "Her."
"I don't think I'm the one with the trust problem right now."
She suspected he was right.
Chapter 12
"So we wait for someone to make a mistake." Riddick mused. "What if we leave port?"
Tane pulled up the blueprint of Cody's ship. "7.9 meter plasma cannons. We are faster, but we can't out-run those.
He rubbed his eyes. "A standoff. I don't know how much patience I have for this."
"Cody doesn't either. And he will get sloppy. He has a short attention span. That and he'll be out looking for cheap women . . ." she smirked.
"Hey, there's something to be said for cheap women." Riddick defended. He caught the dirty look from her. "I've raised my standards, tho'."
"Hmmmmmm." Tane mused.
"What about the Kysian?"
"I'll take care of that end."
"Just like that? 'I'll take care of it?' What makes you think you can deal with a Kysian up close and personal and not go ballistic? You don't have a good track record with the entire species, little girl."
"I'm trained to handle it."
"Are you still a Marine or not?"
Tane turned her seat around to look at him. "I do mercenary work for them, when the price and the job are right. You already knew that. You just wanted me to say it."
"What is the right price? The right job?" Riddick couldn't help but wonder if he had been one of those jobs, in the beginning.
"You were never on the list." she told him.
He hated it when she answered before he asked.
"The right price?" Tane went on. "I don't work for the Alliance for less than a quarter million credits. I'm not a paid assasin, I don't mess with civilians on either side of the Frontier. I don't deal in biological weapons. I don't handle personal problems or revenge."
"And this leaves what?"
"I steal military secrets on occasion. Mostly from the boarder systems that can't decide which side they want to be on. I've tried to steal Kysian ships, but that didn't quite work out the way I planned . . ."
"You and your plans." Riddick shook his head.
"I've never lied to you about it."
"Alright." he agreed. "But you are retired now?"
She nodded. "For now, certainly. Why?"
"With the station on alert and Kysian soliders running loose, what would your Marines do if they got a tip about a Kysian pilot on a merc ship that just happened to put in when they were sealing the station?"
Tane grinned wickedly. "What would they do indeed."
(Chapter 1-6, 14-19)