Category: Song of Many ’Verses

3.
The Off-Label Path

“You’re sure they’re in the Mirach System?” It was probably the sixth or seventh time John MacNamera had asked that.

Tomlin didn’t rise to the bait. “That’s the latest intel, which is less than a week old. We wondered why they were no longer following the attack schedule Phantom, one of our top Operatives, worked out. If Riddick has, indeed, taken over as their commander, that could be why.”

The combat pilot was moving from station to station on the Kublai Khan’s bridge—there was an odd distinction between how military and civilian spaceships named things; on the Santa Clara, this room would have been called the flight deck, but aboard the merc vessel, which had most of the trappings of a military ship, that term was reserved for the massive hangar that they had docked the Dassault in—adjusting controls as he went. Toombs, cuffed and sprawled in a nearby seat, grumbled quietly to himself.

The merc ship was, from the little MacNamera had seen of it so far, a ghost ship. There was no crew to speak of, even though the bridge contained half a dozen stations that ought to have been manned. What was someone like Toombs doing with it?

“How long will it take us to get there?” he asked instead, another flutter of worry moving through him. It was now almost three weeks since Audrey had disappeared. Anything could be happening to her.

“Not long.” Tomlin moved to another panel and began punching in codes. “There’s a trick to Star Jumping that only a very few know. If, instead of plotting a course using the Star Jump database, or using one of the course presets, you supply the Isomorph Drive with your starting and ending coordinates and let it map the way…” He pressed a button on the console and looked up, a hint of a pleased smile on his face. “…you can shave weeks, or even months, off the journey. But you’ll see some very strange things outside of your windows instead of just the blank nothing of normal star jumps.”

“An’ you know this how?” Toombs growled, his expression challenging.

“I’ve done it.” Tomlin moved to another panel. “The protocol is experimental. Off-label. I was asked to test it, and my journey was successful. I traveled from Furya to Tangiers Prime, and back, in three days each way. Most of the transit time was sublight, clearing the gravity wells and dodging surveillance beacons.”

“No fuckin’ way.”

Tomlin just smiled and moved to the final panel on his itinerary. “You’ll get to see for yourself shortly. Tell me how you came to be in command of this vessel.”

“Ain’t your business.”

“Oh, I think it is,” Tomlin said. “How did you manage to inherit Antonia Chillingsworth’s property?”

Toombs grimaced. “You don’t want to know.”

“No, I really do.” Tomlin finished setting the controls on the last panel.

“System alert,” a canned female voice said over the speakers. “Star Jump commencing in T-minus five minutes. All crew report to your designated stations.”

“You’d never believe me,” Toombs grumbled.

“I’ve had a great deal of practice, in the last five and a half years,” Tomlin said as he walked over to Toombs, “believing six impossible things before breakfast. Try me.”

The two men locked eyes; Toombs looked away first.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “If you tell me how you survived the New Marrakesh Spaceport Explosion. You were its primary target. How’d you live when hundreds didn’t, without even a scratch on you?”

That, MacNamera thought, was a very good question. He’d seen the news feeds of that explosion, which had damaged everything in its path for miles, and had instantly vaporized everyone close to it. Two terrorists, Javor Makarov and Duke Pritchard, had been declared responsible for it; Makarov was dead and Pritchard was still at large. But now this Toombs guy was saying it had been an assassination attempt?

“Very well,” Tomlin said, sitting down in one of the chairs. He met MacNamera’s eyes and gestured for him to sit down as well. “After you.”

Toombs’ sotto voce grumblings had something to do with Tomlin’s parentage. “Fine. Husbands trump blood relatives in the next of kin chart, don’t they?”

Shock widened Tomlin’s eyes, and then he sputtered with laughter. “You? You’re Mister Chillingsworth?”

Toombs rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah, get it all out. Yes. That’s me. Mister Chillingsworth, for fuck’s sake. I was the fuckin’ captain of the Kublai Khan ten years ago, before that shitbird Junner showed up. Had it all worked out, too. Every move, nice and smooth. I was gonna be set up for life, I thought.”

Tomlin looked more entertained than ever. “You hadn’t done your homework where she was concerned, had you?”

“Thought I had,” Toombs grumbled.

“Not sure I get what the big deal is,” MacNamera said, looking between the two men. “You married the owner of this ship, and inherited it when she died? What’s so unbelievable about that?”

“Antonia Chillingsworth,” Tomlin said, appearing to still be fighting laughter, “was a notorious black widow who went through at least a dozen wealthy husbands. Most of her fortune came from the men she inherited from upon their untimely deaths. Her involvement in any of those deaths could never be proved. Fifteen years ago, she bought this ship, using up almost her entire amassed fortune in the process, and turned it into… well, why don’t you tell Colonel MacNamera what she turned it into, Toombs?”

“After you spill,” the mercenary grumbled. “I told you what you wanted to know. Now it’s your turn.”

“Very well,” Tomlin said. “It is, in fact, the story about how your daughter,” and he nodded in MacNamera’s direction, “saved my life.”

---

By the time Tomlin reached the doors of the pilots’ lounge, his heart had begun to race and he was having a hard time suppressing shivers. He kept his walk and body language as calm as possible, smiling at the staff and returning their greetings—they all knew him and were happy to see him again—but the growing conviction that he might die that day had begun to hit a fever pitch.

The man following him was one he had seen, on more than one occasion, in the entourage of the Quintessa envoy. Given that the Quintessa Corporation knew exactly where he was going—he hadn’t even tried to hide his plans, the more fool he—there was no need to surveil him. Which meant that the man’s intentions were a thousand times darker.

Tislilel had been right. About everything.

“We just know that they’ll do anything—anything—to cover up the existence of Threshold Syndrome and what causes it,” she had told him the very first time he had met her, not long after he had watched her swim through thin air. “So please let that part go. They have ways of making evidence disappear.”

The files he had planned to retrieve from Tangiers Station A were probably already destroyed. His knowledge that the Scarlet Matador had undergone a Level Five Incident, and his resistance to the new narrative that the crisis had been a rare pathogen on board the ship—

That lie doesn’t even make sense, he thought again. All of the passengers and crew were in cryo for the entirety of the journey, unable to infect each other, and none of the quarantine protocols for a pathogen were used when they were being kept in the hospital!

—His resistance to that lie and his awareness of just how many holes were in it made him the most inconvenient piece of evidence of all.

“Regardless of what the secret is,” Tislilel had told him when they met for the second time, “they’re willing to kill whole shipfuls of innocent people to keep it hidden. I’m really worried that you’re in their crosshairs, too.”

She had been right. The girl—half his age at the oldest she could possibly be—had made several astonishing moves to try to protect him, too. One still awaited him in a locker back in town.

I need to go to ground. Using the new ID she made for me.

“Colonel Tomlin?” Emmahin, one of the lounge’s hostesses, said after a moment. “Did you want to check your bag while you eat?”

His bag. Containing a change of clothes in case he had to stay on Tangiers Station A longer than just a few hours…

“Not quite yet, thank you,” he told her. “I need to make use of your restroom first, please.”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Would you like your usual prepared while you do?”

He gave her a smile in return. “Not yet either. But thank you, Emmahin.”

The plan was embryonic. Simple. He would change out of his uniform and into his civilian clothes, which came complete with a face-concealing tagelmust, and try to slip past his tail without the man’s knowledge. He would leave his comm and his cards behind, using the bit of emergency cash he had on him to pay the transit fare back into town, just in case his calls and financial transactions were being monitored. Then he would get the ID Tislilel had created for him, and the funds she’d said were with it. Once he had them, he would dodge the Quintessa Corporation long enough to make a few decisive moves of his own—

This could destroy the Federacy itself, he reflected as he changed out of his uniform. He’d said as much in his message to his younger brother. What I’m about to try to do could have repercussions throughout known space. If I’m right about what they’re doing, taking them down could end faster-than-light interstellar travel.

But if he was right, the monstrous crime that allowed it to occur at all was unendurable. He couldn’t stand by and allow it to continue.

Neither Tislilel nor Dihya seemed to have figured it out, even though it was their actions, and the cost of those actions, that had made the pieces fall into place for him. He had watched as Tislilel, only half conscious, had tracked the path of the two shuttles, her eyes unerringly following the route they were taking even though they were in an entirely separate uni­verse…

He had seen the waves of fatigue that had struck her as she brought each of the shuttles back from “Elsewhere” to Othman Plaza. Carried her in his arms as she had slept, and even as she struggled to regain consciousness. Kept his arm around her as she unsteadily walked, for brief periods, before she succumbed to exhaustion again. How much worse, he wondered, would it be to hold an entire starship in one’s mind, for hours or days at a stretch, and control which universe every single atom of it resonated with the whole time?

Could that kind of exertion kill? Did it, sometimes?

And who… or what… died when it did?

He finished changing, slipping the key that Tislilel had given him into an inner pocket of his djellaba and his bit of cash into another pocket. Everything else—his comm, his ID, all but one of his funding cards—went into his bag along with his uniform.

Emerging from the restroom, he took in the other diners in the lounge. Late into the overnoon hours as it was, the place was rather full. He recognized one of the crews, just receiving their food, and exchanged brief pleasantries with them for a moment. Then he took his bag over to the coat check table.

“Emmahin,” he said as he checked in the bag, “I must be sleepier than I thought. I left something important back at my house and must go fetch it. Thank the heavens I arrived so far ahead of schedule, or I’d have to rebook my flight. Can you keep my bag here while I go get it?”

“Of course, Colonel Tomlin.” She took the bag and set it on one of the shelves behind the counter. “I hope you’ll still have time to dine when you get back.”

“Hopefully,” he told her. “It shouldn’t take long. In the meantime, though…” He offered her the funding card he’d held onto. “Captain Amayas’s meal is on me. His whole table, in fact.”

Although Emmahin rang up, and he signed for, the food that the table had already ordered, he had her keep the card in case they wished to order additional courses or desserts. He’d sign for those as well, he told her, as soon as he returned. There was no real risk involved there; none of the people at the table had ever ordered such things when he’d dined with them.

But just in case things went bad, just in case he didn’t manage to shake his tail… just in case he was murdered that day… he wanted her knowing, with absolute clarity, that he had intended to return.

Even if his true intention was to disappear.

Tomlin didn’t obscure his face until he was almost through the door to the concourse, waving goodbye to several acquaintances in the lounge before exiting, his face now covered, and strolling in a leisurely fashion away from his departure gate. A reflective surface showed him his shadow, seated on a bench, pretending to read while glancing regularly at the lounge’s en­trance…

…not following him.

No one shadowed him as he left the spaceport. He was one of only three passengers to board the train back into town. He had shaken his tail.

The locker that Tislilel had rented was next door to one of the train’s stops. He unlocked it and drew out the thick folder inside before seeking out another restroom, a place where surveillance cameras would be forbidden.

The folder contained a remarkable set of IDs. Whoever his young Tislilel really was, she was a skilled professional in the Game. They identified him as Yedder Mazigh, one year younger than his actual age, supposedly a former member of his old squadron who had been forced out of combat by a spinal injury. He had a license to fly virtually any aircraft or spacecraft he pleased, documents for traveling between worlds, and a handful of bearer cards.

“There’s money in the locker, too,” Tislilel had told him as she’d given him the key. “I figured you’d need some funds to cover getting everybody out of town safely…”

At that point, all the survivors of the Scarlet Matador were on their way into the mountains and the high plains beyond them. The tribes had taken on responsibility for their care. He would, however, probably need the funds to cover his own tracks.

He pocketed his new documents, deciding that the first things he needed to purchase would be a wallet to store them in and a new comm to use, and left the restroom.

It was almost noon. The sun above him was intense, making him glad of the airy robes and protective tagelmust he’d changed into.

I need sleep, he thought. Aside from catching a brief nap in between meetings, it had been roughly forty hours since he’d slept, thirty-five hours since he had staked out Dihya’s and Tislilel’s doorstep for his second meeting with the girls, twenty-eight hours since their third, nearly-catastrophic meeting at Othman Plaza… almost fifteen hours since he had kissed both girls goodbye in a shop by the night market.

He had made sure, just an hour or two earlier when he had feared his death was imminent, that Takama and his father would step up to fulfill his promises to both girls. He hoped he’d be able to keep those promises himself, but that would depend on—

A clap of what he thought, for a moment, was thunder buffeted at him. The windows near him rattled and the leaves in nearby trees rustled.

It hadn’t come from above, he thought in confusion, registering at the same time that the sky was cloudless. It had come from the northwest.

There was no traffic on the boulevard. Tomlin walked out into the center of the wide road and turned toward the source of the boom.

A thick cloud of black smoke was rising into the sky from one of the spaceport’s concourses.

Not just any concourse, he realized. It felt like a punch to the gut.

“My God,” he gasped softly. “Emmahin… Captain Amayas…”

Light flared, brilliant as the sun, and he flung up his arms to shield his eyes.

An enormous red fireball was expanding where the black cloud had been. Its shockwave, he realized, was rapidly approaching, blowing leaves off of the trees and smashing windows further down the boulevard as it came—

He flung himself to the pavement a fraction of a second before the deafening blast hit.

When Colonel Tomlin rose to his feet a moment later, New Marrakesh was in a billion shattered pieces around him. The shockwave had broken every window for miles, ripped foliage off trees, and set every alarm system shrieking. From behind many of the smashed windows, where apartments were situated above storefronts, he heard screams of fear and pain.

To the northwest, the gory fireball was rising into the air, a column of fire raging beneath it.

The shuttle he’d been planning to board. The concourse he had walked through. The pilot’s lounge he’d used as cover to shake his tail—

---

“Seven hundred forty-two people died in that blast,” Tomlin said, his voice heavy and his expression regretful. “Another fifty-three died in the days that followed from critical injuries. More than four thousand survivors were injured. And my city was financially crippled, with billions of UDs in damage. Trillions, when the destruction of the Scarlet Matador, the Lucy Ricardo, and six other shuttles, is calculated in. All to kill me.”

“I don’t get that,” MacNamera said, frowning. “What could you possibly know that’d be worth that much collateral damage?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be that big,” Toombs grumbled. “Not according to that son of a bitch Pritchard. He delivered the bomb to Makarov. It was supposed to be just big enough to make sure nobody in the pilot’s lounge, or the gate area for the shuttle, survived, in case you were in either location. Fucker sent me a message afterward, ’bout bein’ afraid of gettin’ identified as a terrorist, but he said he found footage of you checkin’ your bag and leavin’ the lounge and decided maybe he could pin the whole damn thing on you if he found you alive, like it was really your bag that exploded. Said he had a line on you because you had some accomplices. I didn’t get the message until months later. He’d set it to be delivered to me if a warrant got served on his Merc Network account. By the time I got it, I was on Shakti Four and everybody knew what he’d done. Bastard tried to make me his accomplice after the fact.”

“Did you have any idea of his other activities?” Tomlin asked.

“I knew he was a perv with some sick kinks he had to pay extra for, but no, I had no idea what he and Makarov were doin’ to women an’ girls. One day I’m gonna catch up with that motherfucker and perp-walk him straight into the most hellified triple-max I can find—”

“You won’t,” Tomlin told him. “He’s been dead for five and a half years. The ‘accomplices’ he was going after were Tislilel and Dihya… Audrey and Kyra. They killed him.”

“They what?” MacNamera gasped. His daughter had killed someone?

…His daughter had been the target of a serial killer?

“Tislilel and Dihya…” Toombs muttered. “Goddamn, we was lookin’ right at ’em at your memorial. Your younger brother claimed they were his cousins. I had my suspicions until that vid of the two of them with Riddick on Shakti Four came out… Big Evil really wasn’t in on any of it?”

“He was never there,” Tomlin chuckled. “Tislilel—sorry, Audrey—fabricated the video. I learned about that well after the fact, long after she had left Tangiers Prime. Given what I knew about her, especially her skills at breaking security systems and creating false identities, I had no idea she was only thirteen when she did all of it. Not until I was able to get back into contact with my family, and I had to let them believe I was dead for nearly a year.”

“She didn’t break any systems,” MacNamera groaned, comprehension striking. “She knew all the back-doors I’d been required to build into them for law enforcement and counter-terrorism. She’d read all the specs. That was probably a bad thing to let an eidetic do.”

“Or a very good thing,” Tomlin mused, “given how many lives she saved with that knowledge.”

“Which brings us back to my question,” MacNamera said after a moment’s thought. “What is it that you know that was worth killing so many people to suppress?”

“Back then, it was only a suspicion I had,” Tomlin replied. “It’s been proven out since then. I know how the Quintessa Corporation’s Isomorph Drives work.”

“Bullshit,” Toombs scoffed. “That secret’s guarded more securely than the Mona Lisa.”

Just two months earlier, MacNamera reflected, news of another intrepid group’s attempt to break into the Louvre on Old Earth and “liberate” its greatest treasure had hit the beacons, detailing the gruesome deaths all but one member of the team had experienced. The lone survivor would eventually walk again, but not before years of regenerative surgeries.

“And yet I know it,” Tomlin insisted.

“Not possible,” Toombs argued back. “I know a guy, got his hands on one of those boxes. Took him six years to force it open, and he tripped some kind of destruct mechanism in the process. All that was left inside was some stuff that looked like black sand or somethin’.”

“And he believed all of the electronics inside had been destroyed, yes?” Tomlin smirked, but his eyes were, oddly, sad. “There were none inside. The ‘box’ doesn’t house proprietary electronics. It’s a prison cell.”

“Sorry,” MacNamera heard himself say. “It’s a what?”

“It’s a cage. Each Isomorph Drive contains a living creature, a member of a species we call the Apeiros. The Quintessa Corporation captured and enslaved the species more than four centuries ago. These creatures are pan-dimensional and are capable of traveling between universes with a thought.” Tomlin met MacNamera’s eyes. “Your daughter is the source of most of our evidence about this. She made contact with the Apeiros. It’s because of what she learned about them that we know the real cause of Level Five Incidents now.”

MacNamera felt like the bottom had dropped out of his world. “And… what is that cause?”

“They happen when an Apeiros isn’t provided enough energy to maintain control over a Star Jump, and ends up overwhelmed, and dies. Its last act, in an attempt to save the lives on board its ship, is to bring the ship halfway back into U1 but leave it halfway in the other universe, in the hopes that one or more of its passengers will develop a conscious awareness of the multiverse and bring the ship the rest of the way home. At some point long ago, it must have even worked, because the Quintessa Corporation is very thorough about making sure that Level Five Incidents never have any survivors. It worked, again, with Audrey and Kyra.”

“Star Jump commencing in ten seconds,” the canned voice announced over the speakers. “Nine… eight… seven…”

“An’ one of those things is about to move us through space?” Toombs demanded, looking panicked. “An’ you’re just lettin’ it pick the route it takes?”

“Four… three…”

“Yes, Mr. Toombs,” Tomlin said, his expression calm. “I’m letting the real pilot of the Kublai Khan take the helm.”

“Isomorph Drive engaging.”

MacNamera had been awake for Star Jumps before, although the trippy feeling that came with them wasn’t something he relished. Most people preferred to sleep through them. This time—

Reality inverted.

He felt, for a moment, as if every dimension unfolded and flattened, refolding itself seconds later. Outside the Kublai Khan’s viewscreens, the stars multiplied, swirled, blazed with millions of named and nameless colors, and then—even as reality folded itself back up—settled back into a normal pattern. A new pattern. They were in a different part of the sky.

“Isomorph Drive disengaging,” the canned voice reported. “New location: outer orbits of the Mirach System. Necromonger Armada detected. ETA six hours. All systems are nominal.”

“How in the blazes…?” Toombs gasped.

“As I was explaining earlier,” Tomlin told them, moving to one of the consoles to lay in a new course, “when you let the Apeiros choose the route between two points, instead of making them use one of the routes in the data­base… the journey is almost instantaneous.”

Six hours, MacNamera thought. Six hours until he had a chance to get answers about his daughter’s fate. Six hours in which he could also, he hoped, find out what else Tomlin knew about her last missing time years ago. But first…

“It’s your turn to talk, Mr. Toombs,” he said, rising from his seat. “What’s so special about this ship and why were you hunting my daughter?”

Toombs grumbled under his breath for a moment. “Her association with Riddick ain’t enough?”

“He’s ‘associated’ with hundreds of people. Why her?”

“Tell him,” Tomlin said when Toombs failed to respond, “or I will.”

“Fine,” Toombs grumbled. “Six years ago, the Kublai Khan picked up an emergency skiff with three passengers on board. Riddick, an Imam from Helion Prime, and a kid. Your kid. My… late wife… had me on ice at the time, fortunately in a regular cryo chamber and not one of the house specials. Cheaper than a divorce, I guess. I missed most of the party. When I got thawed out, Riddick an’ his friends were on the run and my ball-an’-chain had flipped her shit over it. We was supposed to find ’em and recapture Riddick. Word was she didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to the other two in the process. Or any of us. I almost got eaten by a Brax.”

MacNamera had gone completely cold. Someone had tried to unleash a Brax on his daughter?

“Things got hairy. Riddick killed the wife’s new boy-toy, Junner. Stabbed him through his eye. She was waiting for him, though, on board her little yacht that I guess she knew he’d try to hijack. She shot him in the arm. Was getting’ ready to shoot him in the head, when your little girl picked up Junner’s rifle and blew hers off.”

The atmosphere had turned glacial. His knees suddenly felt weak.

Tomlin’s hands were on his shoulders. “You’re okay, Colonel MacNamera.” The pilot steered him back to his chair.

“You’re saying my daughter killed Antonia Chillingsworth,” he managed after a moment. “And… you were hunting her for that?”

“Nah.” Toombs shook his head. “First of all, don’t tell her I said this, but no jury in the ’verse would ever convict her. If someone tried to prosecute and brought out the video of her pulling the trigger, her defense team’d make them bring out the rest of the videos. Which include my dearly departed demoness stringin’ your kid up and almost feedin’ her to a pair of Shrill—”

“What the fuck?” MacNamera started up out of the chair, hands fisting.

“Hey. I wasn’t awake yet when that happened. But look, I ain’t got anything against your daughter. Thanks to her shot, I own this ship an’ its contents, anyway, so even if my old lady had treated her like a princess and not like xeno-chow, I’d still be in her debt.”

“Then why… the fuck… were you hunting her?”

“Wasn’t hunting her. I was tryin’ to get intel on Riddick. When she and Kyra escaped from a hospital on Helion Prime half a year later, I thought she was with Riddick. I couldn’t find his trail but I figured I could find hers, an’ I figured she’d lead me to him.”

“Maybe that was true back then,” Tomlin said, his voice calm. “Why did you go after her on Deckard’s World?”

More sotto voce grumbling.

“Speak…” Tomlin chambered a round into his pistol. “…up.”

“Fine. I was plannin’ on bringin’ her here. To the Mirach System.”

“You were going to use her as bait to try to catch Riddick?” Tomlin scoffed. “The new Lord Marshal of the Necromongers?”

“Maybe that’s what I told her, but no. Word was he was lookin’ for her, had standin’ orders that all of his soldiers had to bring him anyone they encountered who looked even a little bit like her. I was gonna offer her to him. In trade.”

“For?”

“He’s got a prisoner of his own, an’ he may not know it, but she’s worth a whole lot of scratch to her people. Irena Kirshbaum, of the—”

“Quintessa Corporation,” Tomlin finished for him. “Your old boss who ordered my death. And what, exactly, were you planning on doing with her?”

“She owes me a payday. Last year she hired me to bring Riddick to Helion Prime. An’ I may not have personally delivered him to her, but I damn well got him there. So I figure, I get her out of the Armada an’ back to her people, she’ll be suitably grateful and finally pay up.”

“So you were planning on selling my daughter to Riddick…” That thought alone made MacNamera’s blood froth in his veins. “…not using her to catch him?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the Lord Marshal of the Necromongers. His bounty may be more than a mill, but there ain’t no cashing it in.”

“More than a mill?” MacNamera frowned. “Why would anyone pay that much for a convict, even a multiple-murderer?”

“That’s not what it’s for,” Tomlin said, sitting down and disarming his gun. “Nobody pays that much for a convict. But that…”

The pilot speared both MacNamera and Toombs with his gaze as he spoke.

“…is what the Federacy is willing to pay for an escaped slave.”

---

Posted on the 25^th anniversary of the theatrical release of Pitch Black, February 18, 2025.

2.
The Mutineer and the Mermaid Queen

Every few months, someone shows up claiming that they know exactly how my “tricks” work. They think they’re going to make a name for themselves proving it. None of them have ever been ready for the discovery that they aren’t tricks at all, and that everything happening on my stage is real.

—Minnie Sulis, Introduction, Magic Is Real, 2075

U1c.27358
2075.02.18
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Earth

“You shouldn’t be in here right now, you know.”

In the mirror, Howard smirked and leaned against the dressing room door frame. “Are you about to reveal a set of breasts I haven’t seen?”

Min laughed, touching up her lipstick. “You never know. It could happen.”

She’d made stranger things appear, after all…

“Not today, though.” His eyebrows went up. “This is a family-friendly performance.”

“Yech.”

“Speaking of family,” he continued, grinning, “I hear some of yours is in the audience tonight.”

Now there was a depressing thought. “My cousins, mostly.”

Unfortunately, none of them were Wittiers.

“Reunion afterwards?” He seemed oblivious to how unpleasant a thought that was for her.

“Maybe,” she hedged. “You want to meet them?”

Howard pretended to swoon, pressing his hand to his heart. “She’s finally introducing me to her family…”

Oh. So it was like that.

Min rose from her chair, aware that she only had a few minutes left to get ready. Not the best time to deal with Howard’s insecurities. She winked at him as she settled her top hat on her head and picked up the rhinestone-encrusted wand that had rested next to it.

Okay, some parts of my act are just props…

“Does that mean you’ll introduce me to yours?” she asked him, keeping her expression light and teasing as she approached him.

His smile died. “They’re a bunch of holy-roller nutcases who’ll probably think you’re a witch. Why would you ever want to get to know them?”

“I am a witch,” she laughed, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “But you’re not the only one with a horror show for a family.”

“Mizz Sulis?” The assistant stage manager appeared in the dressing room doorway, just in time to prevent Howard Collins from possibly disarranging her hair and lipstick. “Five minutes to curtain.”

“Thank you, Emily.” Not that she wanted to dodge one of Howard’s kisses, but reapplying her makeup to make sure she looked family-friendly wasn’t high on her list of ways to spend those last five minutes.

He smiled, understanding that it was time for her preshow routine. “See you after the show, babe.”

“They’re going to come swarming in here, you know,” she told him with a deliberate shudder.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” He winked and left the room.

“That makes one of us,” she muttered. Some of her cousins were perfectly lovely, especially the ones on her father’s side, but Joren always creeped her out—

Don’t think about them right now. It’s time to prepare.

She turned toward the lighted mirror, beginning to take a slow, deep breath—

And gasped instead.

Behind her and to her right, reflected in the mirror, stood a young woman. Tall and slender, in her late teens or early twenties, she had shoulder-length blonde hair, enormous green eyes, and an angular, elfin face and wore a strange, tight gown made of what looked like blue-green scales.

Min whirled, how did you get in here poised on her lips.

The room was empty.

---

U1
2522.11.29
G. Long. 127.1° G. Lat. -27.1°
Mirach System

Jack opened her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling like it had been hours since her last.

“Shit.”

At least, Lucy said from somewhere above her, she only saw you.

There was that. “She’s got a lot of power. More than I was expecting. Still only two ’verses wide in her five-shape, though.”

As you were, once. The man. I sensed that he is important to our search.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was Howard Collins. Kyra’s ‘pa.’” Jack frowned, recalling everything she’d overheard. “Seemed pretty anti-religion for someone who’d end up a New Christy Pilgrim.”

It appears that they both changed their minds about religion at some point. She repudiated her power, as well.

“Something big has to have happened to push them that way,” Jack reflected. “Probably something traumatic.”

It was her third time observing Minnie Sulis; she’d already determined that Kyra’s mother had had an arsenal of esper abilities. About the only thing that Minnie hadn’t been able to do yet was cross more than one threshold between ’verses.

And that is what we must learn more about, Lucy agreed. What happened during the months she wouldn’t write about in her books.

Jack glanced over at the three books, resting on “her” table by “her” couch. The tomes had been fascinating, the diary astonishingly helpful for honing some of her own abilities, but they had left her certain that something critically important had occurred and been left out of them—or possibly, in the case of Minnie’s diary, torn out of it—something that had derailed Minnie’s life and might even have provoked her cousin Joren’s heinous acts. Something she needed to know more about before she tried to bring Kyra back.

“Damn.” Jack climbed to her feet and stretched. “I was really hoping we could bring her back soon. Still too many variables in play…”

It will not be long.

“Feels like it’s long already. How much time has elapsed?”

In U1, it’s less than a minute after you sat down to begin.

“…the hell? How come I’m so hungry?” Jack had been sure she’d missed lunch somehow.

For you, it’s been six hours.

“Even for my shell?”

Your six-shape and your shell are linked, even when they seem separated. You lived six hours in that minute.

Jack grimaced even as her stomach rumbled a complaint. “Good to know. That means I have to limit how long I visit anywhere in the past.”

If we decide on a long journey, storing your shell in the Core Chamber will be enough. The rays will keep it replenished.

Fortunately, the ridiculous fourteen-person banquet that had been wheeled in for breakfast had plenty of leftovers, apparently only a few minutes older than when she’d gotten up from the table. Jack found herself digging into them hungrily. “So I’ll stay fed and rested in there, and hang out with a few hundred of your brothers and sisters.”

She’d have to figure out just where she’d put her “shell” in there. The Core Chamber was pretty crowded since she and Dame Vaako had orchestrated the relocation of all of the Moribund’s captured apeirochorons into it. And Jack’s head had felt a little crowded as hundreds of new Apeiros woke from their torpid states and became curious about her.

“Maybe that’s where we should do all of this,” Jack continued after a moment, after swallowing down some food. “Am I gonna get sleepy six hours early today?”

Audrey Hepburn MacNamera, I have watched you pull all-night movie marathons with your roommate Janice on dozens of occasions in the last year and a half. And other all-night activities that I have no wish to describe, even more often. You will be just fine in that regard.

That startled a laugh out of her, fortunately while her mouth was empty. “Did you just trot out my full name like my mom?”

Yes. And yes, I must concede that your circadian rhythms have advanced six hours. It is something none of us have known until now. Only three of us exist outside of the apeirochorons, and none of us have engaged in this kind of travel before. The Quintessa Corporation has strictly limited our movements to a linear progression in time. And our bodies—

“You live thousands, maybe even millions, of years. It’s not like you’re gonna notice all that much if that clock speeds up by a few hours.”

This is true. Lucy’s n-shape flickered on the edge of her vision. Jack wondered if there would ever come a day when her regular, three-dimensional eyes could see her sister and understand what she was looking at.

“So. Now what? Another run through that timeline?” She poured a glass of mint tea from the ornate berrad she’d acquired, reminding herself not to be surprised that it was still hot. The hours might have passed for her, but not for it.

Soon. Not yet. Did I understand correctly that Joren Kirshbaum was attending the performance that night?

“Yeah.” Jack rose and walked over to the small pile of books on her couch. “She signed this one ‘all my love,’” she continued, flipping to the front pages of Magic Isn’t Real, “but I heard her thinking about how creepy he was. I want to know more about that. What they really were to each other. Hey, is Joren Kirshbaum still alive? It’s been four centuries.”

Yes. Like the others of his cursed lineage, he is connected to the ’verse you like to call Hell.

“So he’s been out there this whole time,” Jack mused. “By now he has to have figured out what his ‘inventions’ are really doing to the multiverse.”

I doubt he cares.

“Yeah, that tracks. I still want to know how it all started.” Taking the book with her, she sat back down by her glass of tea and took a sip.

Jack had spent much of the last two weeks, since her… wedding… reading all three of the books written by Minnie Sulis, née Minerva Kirshbaum-Wittier, and trying to find just the right ’verse in the U1 “cluster” from which to extract an alternate version of Kyra. The more she dug into the Kirshbaum family history—something that was shrouded from the public in her time, but which Minnie had been intimately connected to—the more she became certain that she needed a ’verse where most of the events that had led to the Quintessa Corporation’s founding had transpired, enough that Kyra would still have the innate control over apeirochorons that all Kirshbaums apparently possessed. After several days, she and Lucy had settled on one that mirrored U1’s timeline almost exactly until Kyra was roughly six years old, chosen because it branched off when, for a variety of different possible reasons, she never left Old Earth.

Riddick had been busy with his own things for much of that time, making the most of his new control over the Armada and his new “insider” standing among the Necromongers. She mostly saw him at night, when he returned to her side voracious for—

There was a knock on the suite’s outer door. It opened and Lola leaned in. “Dame Riddick?”

Oh really, now? Lucy sounded amused from somewhere above her.

“We’ve had this discussion, Lola. I’m still Jack.” She smiled to take any possible rebuke out of her words. People were awfully hung up on her rank these days. But it bugged her, more than a little, that her own name seemed to be vanishing behind the cloak of his… even if it was good camouflage. The more she became Dame Riddick, the less people seemed to care who “Jack B. Badd” might have been before then, and the more thoroughly the trail back to Audrey MacNamera remained broken.

That was a good thing… wasn’t it?

“Trying to set a mood, actually,” Lola replied with a grimace. “Your Lord Husband has requested your presence in the throne room. I think the raiding parties are returning.”

Jack groaned. At least, she thought, they’d waited to come back until after she’d finished setting up the new quarters over in Eden. Hopefully there would be enough beds. And, hopefully, the Ennead Kids had gotten enough practice with the new …choreography… she’d given them. “At least I managed to get lunch in first…”

“Lunch?” Lola looked confused. “We just finished breakfast half an hour ago.”

Damn it. That was right. “Six and a half hours ago for me. Astral projecting is some weird shit.”

She drained her glass of tea and then stood up.

Lola moved to her side as she emerged from the suite. In another moment, several other people had fallen into a kind of formation around her.

All queens had entourages, Dame Vaako had told her when she’d uncharacteristically complained about it all. Audrey MacNamera loved being surrounded by people, but even she needed moments when she could sneak away on her own. The Dame’s comment had made her think of the morning, right before she’d met the Apeiros for the first time, when she’d told Takama that she didn’t want to be a queen… and Takama’s response.

A mermaid doesn’t need to be a queen to raise a tsunami, she thought as she led the way to the throne room. But if she is a queen, can she raise a supernova? ’Cause I might need to today.

---

“You got something on your mind, Vaako. What is it?”

The Lord turned to look Riddick’s way, unease on his face. It seemed like all of the would-be Firsts were still struggling to comprehend the fact that he could hear their thoughts when he chose to. Not that he’d needed to this time. Vaako’s body language was practically screaming at him.

“I imagine it is the same concern that I have,” Toal said when the silence began to drag out. “These raiding parties are accustomed to being able to take… certain liberties… with captives who have been identified as ‘breeders.’ Even now that everyone is to be converted, I worry, and I think he does too, that the liberties may still be taken by those who have chosen not to understand the reasoning behind the changes.”

It was almost like listening to one of Jack’s memories of General Toal talking. “For their sakes, I hope they didn’t.”

“And if they did?” Scales asked.

“You’ve seen what I did to the last crew who pulled that shit. Your god won’t mind. Seemed awfully entertained, even, last time.”

The three men shared uneasy glances.

“You got a specific raiding party in mind?” Riddick asked. “Some Lord who thinks he ain’t gonna die before his ‘due time’ no matter what he does?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Vaako finally said. “I assume you remember Lord Navok. From the night when you killed Lord Breslin in the Greensleeves Stew.”

“Lord Navok.” Yeah, he remembered.

“This is part of the Necromonger Way. Do you really think you can change us? Will you die trying?”

He’d wanted a good excuse to take the fucker out ever since then. But he didn’t much like what finally having that excuse meant. “We’ll see if he makes it through the day. Gotta admit, though, I didn’t know the name of the guy whose head I cut off ’til just now.”

“He was not especially missed,” Toal admitted, his lips twitching with suppressed amusement.

“And Navok?”

“An effective if unimaginative commander,” Vaako volunteered. “Profligate with his troops’ lives. He attained his rank in large part because the sixth Lord Marshal liked his company. They shared many philosophical stances.”

“Like killin’ kids? And fuckin’ ‘breeders?’”

The uneasy look passed through the three men again.

“Yes,” Scales said. “We have been hearing whispers, since you took your wife… your human wife… that Navok intends to challenge you on ideological grounds. For not converting. For keeping a human woman but refusing to allow anyone else to. For closing the stews… and for ending the killing of children.”

“You think Jack’s human?” He wasn’t entirely sure what she was anymore. Or what he was, for that matter.

Toal shook his head. “We know better. We have seen. Perhaps if more saw what she is capable of, it would help—”

“I can’t just broadcast what she is and does to the whole ’verse,” he snapped. “I’m protecting her.”

“And we wish to help you do so,” Vaako said. “But none of us know what you are protecting her from.”

Everything. Fuckin’ everything. He didn’t even know where to begin. Sometimes it seemed like there was nobody out there who didn’t want a piece of his wife. And he sure as fuck couldn’t tell them that one of the things he was protecting her from most of all was their own god.

She is in no danger from me, the Moribund spoke up in his head. I cannot eat her now that she has hatched into her six-shape. If that is what you think I still wish to do.

And yet he could still feel the creature’s hatred and resent­ment… of her.

“You’ll know soon enough,” he told the men in the meantime. “An’ she might be about to make that show you want, anyway, if the raiding parties brought any kids back with ’em.”

“There will be several,” Vaako told him. “I have spies on all four ships. Which is how we know that you will need to make an example of Lord Navok.”

“You really didn’t have to dance around that topic, you know.” Riddick felt a smile tugging at his lips. “Been wantin’ an excuse to ghost that fucker for a year now. You could’ve just said ‘Merry Christmas.’”

“He will have a plan,” Scales said, frowning. “Accomplices.”

“Sounds like a party.”

“Your Jack could end up in the middle of it,” Toal pointed out.

He kept the pang of worry that sparked in him off of his face. They’d gone over every parameter; she’d be fine. “Guess she’ll definitely get a chance to show off what she can do, then.”

He was curious to see what it would be, himself. If nothing else, the girl was inventive.

And she was so much else, too.

---

Instructions had been sent to have all four raiding parties, and all of their prisoners, brought to the throne room one group at a time, with Lord Navok’s party last. The floor itself had been cleared for them, all of the usual onlookers retreating to the upper level and side corridors. Dame Vaako, however, had staked out a convenient spot so that she could fall in with the Dame Riddick when she made her entrance.

Jack, as the girl still insisted friends call her—and Dame Vaako was relieved to still number among those—turned a sweet smile on her as she joined the group. “Good morning, Chantesa!”

“Good morning, Jack.” She glanced over Jack’s shoulder at the girl’s bodyguard. “Lola.”

“Dame Vaako.” Lola nodded at her. The former police woman was slowly thawing toward her, but took her duties far too seriously to ever be completely friendly.

Good, Dame Vaako thought. Today of all days, she needs to be as alert as possible.

Jack blinked and looked at her. “Why? What’s wrong?”

Of course. The girl could read thoughts. That made things a little simpler. She concentrated on her mental words, hoping she could communicate as clearly as possible the things she dared not say out loud. My husband believes that one of the other Lords intends to stage a coup today. She visualized Lord Navok in her head, including his main lieutenants in the image.

“Well, that’ll keep things interesting,” Jack murmured, before humming a few bars of melody.

Around and behind her, the nine performers in her entourage picked up the tune for a few more bars. Jack nodded, looking satisfied. Beside her, Lola looked more alert than ever, poised for battle.

“Where are your two other friends?” Dame Vaako asked. “Vanessa and Poly?”

“Making final preparations for the kids,” Jack told her as they approached the throne. “Which is good because they’ll be out of harm’s way. You want to duck and cover with them?”

It wasn’t even a little tempting. “When not at my husband’s side, my place is by yours.”

That earned her another of the girl’s sweet smiles.

“Things will probably get hairy,” Lola warned both of them.

“Sooner or later, an example’s going to have to be made,” Jack sighed. “Guess we’re all better off if it’s sooner, right? So we can get back to business.”

Lola shrugged, her gaze turning to Dame Vaako. “Are you armed?”

“I have a weapon or two on me,” she said, feeling a little smug… but a little worried. Her weapons were most effective as surprises, in close quarters.

Lola reached into a pocket and drew out a small sidearm. “Ever fired one of these?”

“I haven’t,” Dame Vaako admitted. “It looks like a miniature version of the guns our troops carry into battle.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Lola told her, putting it into her hand. “It can’t actually do a Necromonger any lasting harm, but it packs a punch and will at least knock one across the room.”

“Thank you.” No matter how chilly Lola’s expressions toward her might be, Dame Vaako reflected, arming her like this was a huge step.

Even as Jack and her entourage finished arraying themselves on one side of the throne, the soldiers in the hall came to attention. The heavy bootsteps of the Lord Marshal and his three top commanders sounded on the stairs behind the throne. They came into view, the commanders moving to the opposite side of the seat of power even as the Riddick positioned himself in front of it. Her husband caught her eye, a question on his face. Had she warned Jack?

She nodded and gave him a small smile. All would be well. The girl would be protected.

He looked relieved but gave her an admonishing look, cautioning her not to be too confident.

“Bring in the first group of raiders,” Riddick commanded his soldiers. “Lord Vosloo’s ship.”

In a moment, Vosloo and his platoon entered, accompanied by twice as many captives. Only a few of them looked the worse for wear, most of them men who had undoubtedly tried to go down swinging. There were half a dozen children among them… and a baby.

Jack moved forward to stand next to Riddick. “Before I take custody of the children, who are their parents? And who’s the baby’s mother?”

She’d played the right card; as cowed as the prisoners might have been, they were willing to speak up once their children were in play. Jack beckoned them to her, speaking softly with them for a few minutes. Strangely, even though the conversation should have been audible from a few feet away, Dame Vaako couldn’t catch any of it. From the looks on the faces of other nearby courtiers, including her husband on the far side of the throne, no one else could, either. Riddick, she noticed, seemed to have no trouble following what was happening.

After a moment, all of the parents filed back to join the other captives, except for one woman who remained by Jack’s side.

“My Lord Marshal,” Jack said, her speech suddenly formal, with the polish of many rehearsals, as she turned to Riddick. “I beg a favor of you. Until this woman’s child is weaned, I ask that she remain unconverted and in my care along with her baby. Will you let me claim her as mine?”

Even before Riddick could answer, though, Dame Vaako felt it: her god approved.

“Of course, Dame Riddick.” There was a hint of amusement on the Lord Marshal’s face.

“Thank you, my Lord,” Jack said, dropping in a formal curtsey before the throne. Then she gathered the children, leading them, and the mother with her baby, back behind the throne and through the doors to the Chamber of the Quasi-Dead. Strangely, Dame Vaako thought she caught a glimpse of …trees and birds?… through the doors as they passed between them.

“You’ve done well, Lord Vosloo,” Riddick said. “Followed all my commands. What reward would you like?”

Lord Vosloo stepped forward, his expression both pleased and carefully formal. “I wish to be elevated from Captain of the Green Viper to Commodore of a flotilla.”

Riddick’s smile widened. “Sure. You’ve demonstrated your command skills. We’ll discuss which captains you want under your command after the show’s over. And who else on your crew has earned rewards and promotions.”

The captives were marched out of the throne room by Purifiers who had been standing by. Vosloo and his crew climbed the stairs to one of the upper levels.

I hope he’s really on our side, Dame Vaako found herself thinking. Outward obedience wasn’t always mirrored by inward motives; hers hardly ever had been, after all.

“He is,” Jack murmured, coming to stand beside her again. “The next two crews are, too.”

“How do you know that?” she whispered back, but all the girl did was smile and tap her finger against her temple a few times.

She was right, though. The next two presentations played out similarly, although thankfully there were no more babies and only four more children. Lord Jianming wished, as his reward, captaincy of a larger and more powerful ship in the fleet, while Lord Gurn asked for permission to retire from his captaincy and join the Elder Ranks aboard the Basilica. Riddick seemed unsurprised by their requests and already prepared to accommodate them. And then there was only one raiding party left to see to.

During the prior audiences, there had been noise throughout the room, whispers and bits of chatter and gossip. Everything became still and silent as Lord Navok entered the throne room with his crew and captives.

It wasn’t absolute silence. More than one of the captive women was crying. Several of them had clearly been badly used. There were no children among them, and no men. Just more than a dozen brutalized women. All of them, Dame Vaako noticed, clad in tattered blues and greens.

The message wasn’t even particularly subtle. Lord Navok’s raiders had brought back nothing but “breeders,” all of whom had been dressed as effigies of Jack and then abused accordingly.

“Hmmm,” was all Riddick said for a moment as he surveyed the group. There was no sign that the message bothered him. “Looks like someone didn’t quite do his job to spec.”

Navok frowned. That was his cue to take offense. “I have been Captain of the Widowmaker for two decades. I know exactly how to do my job.”

“Yeah,” Riddick said, the barest hint of a smirk touching the corner of his mouth. “But see, your job changed a little, and it sounds like you didn’t understand your new instructions. Do you need them explained to you again, Navok?”

No Lord. No Captain. No Commander. No title whatsoever. It was both a threat and an insult, and masterfully delivered. In the last two weeks, it had grown easier and easier for Dame Vaako to admit just how good Riddick was at being Lord Marshal.

“I don’t need your heresies explained, Riddick,” Navok replied, trying to return the insult with the more familiar phrasing. But, Dame Vaako knew, that wouldn’t really work. Riddick, like his wife, preferred no title at all. If Lord Navok had been hoping to goad him into a rage, calling him by the name he liked better was hardly the way to do it.

“Ain’t heresies if your god’s in favor of ’em.” Riddick was smiling now. That, Dame Vaako reflected, was when he was at his most dangerous. “And he is. Ask him.”

Navok scoffed. “You are not one of us. How would you know what our god wishes?”

He can’t hear you, can he? Dame Vaako found herself asking Tokoloshe.

It is not that he cannot hear me, her god replied, filling her with the awed delight she felt whenever He spoke directly to her. He has chosen not to listen.

What slime!

It will all resolve itself shortly. There was a hint of anticipation in Tokoloshe’s “voice.”

“I know that until thirty-one years ago, the Necromonger Way didn’t involve killin’ kids,” Riddick was saying, that dangerous smile still on his face. “Seems like a lot of heresies proliferated after that. I’m just cleanin’ it all up. So lemme ask you this, Navok. Are you a heretic?”

“You pollute that throne, you and that breeder whore, and you dare call me a heretic?”

Riddick’s eyes narrowed, but Jack started laughing. The look that Navok turned her way was one of pure hatred.

It’s about to happen, Dame Vaako realized. In a moment, whether or not the Lord Marshal rose to Navok’s bait, the mutinous Lord would either have to attack or bend his knee. And Navok wouldn’t bend.

“It’ll be okay,” Jack whispered, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“You know, I haven’t actually fucked her on the throne yet,” Riddick said in a musing tone. “Great suggestion, though. Bit hard to do without drawin’ an audi­ence—”

With a roar of outrage, Navok grabbed a spear from a nearby guard and launched himself at Riddick.

Navok’s platoon went on the attack as well. Scattered throughout the great hall, other Necromonger soldiers, apparently on his side, moved to join the fray.

Not enough. Not nearly enough. If Lord Navok had thought that he had popular sentiment on his side, he had been wrong.

But, Dame Vaako thought with a chill, there were still enough to do some damage. And several of them were coming right at Jack’s entour­age… and her with them.

“Showtime,” Jack said, her voice calm.

“Thought you’d never ask,” the leader of the Ennead Kids, Antonio, murmured.

And all nine of them vanished, as did Lola.

A strange, swift pandemonium followed. Spears disappeared from mutineers’ hands only to sprout from their chests. Courtiers who had found themselves in harm’s way vanished, reappearing seconds later in safer parts of the room, staring wildly about in confusion. In moments, only Navok himself was left of the mutineers, facing off against Riddick.

I am being feasted well today, Tokoloshe murmured in Dame Vaako’s head as she watched the combatants.

None of them went to the Underverse, did they? she asked her god. Few people would be less deserving of that reward, she thought, than those mutineers.

Not a one. They will fall forever.

Riddick was toying with Navok, letting him almost get the upper hand before turning his moves against him.

“I don’t want to kill you now, Navok,” Riddick said as they circled.

“The more fool you, then,” Navok grated, lunging forward.

Riddick dodged easily, leaving a cut from his blade on Navok’s cheek. “That ain’t what I meant. See, you got some atonin’ to do before you go. You need to live out everything you put those ladies through on your flight back here. Where’s the fun in killin’ you quick?”

“Breeders are not ‘ladies,’” Navok snarled. “They are nothing!”

He launched his spear at Riddick and spun to the side. Riddick dodged the shaft easily but—

Dame Vaako heard several of the other Ladies of the Armada scream as Navok lunged right at her, backhanding her aside. As she sprawled to the ground, tucking and rolling as best she could, he grabbed hold of Jack, pulling her against him and putting a knife to her throat.

“Just like this warm breeder whore you call a Dame is nothing!”

Regaining her footing, Dame Vaako pulled out the tiny gun Lola had given her, but then groaned. It wouldn’t do harm to a Necromonger, although it might knock Navok across the room, but how badly would it hurt Jack? She would have to use one of her hidden blades in­stead—

“You know,” Jack said, as if there was no knife pressed against her skin. “If you wanted me to warm you up, you could’ve just asked.”

“Another word out of you and I’ll cut your filthy breeder throat!”

“You will never leave this hall alive,” Vaako growled. Toal and Scales, meanwhile, were circling, trying to get behind Navok. “And you will never see the Underverse.”

“Worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd…” Jack drawled, calling Navok’s bluff.

Dame Vaako heard her voice join the chorus of screams as Navok slashed his knife across Jack’s throat—

And nothing happened. Although she could have sworn the knife had bitten in deep, there was no blood. No wound. As if either the knife, or Jack, was a hologram that the other had passed through.

The tiniest flinch had rolled through Riddick’s body. He was, Dame Vaako realized, deliberately holding himself back from charging at Navok. Now he folded his arms, watching the two of them with a small, amused smile on his face, showing no sign of the tension he had to be feeling. “When exactly did you infect Lola and the Ennead Kids with Threshold Syndrome, anyway?” he asked Jack, almost as if they were alone.

“End of last week,” Jack said. “You got anything you want to say to this asshole?”

Navok still had the girl in his grasp, staring between her and Riddick in confusion and growing horror. He was trying to stab and slash at Jack, but his blade kept passing through her without leaving even a mark, like a holo-prop. Around Dame Vaako, awed murmurs were spreading.

“Nah,” Riddick told her, his dangerous smile back. “He’s still gettin’ off way too easy. But I wanna see this.”

Jack grimaced. “As you wish…”

The knife—definitely not a hologram—clattered to the floor as Navok abruptly clutched at his head. No longer holding Jack against him, he staggered back, dropped to his knees, and screamed. And kept screaming. His open mouth seemed to glow as if his head was full of red-hot coals—

It was. Fire was consuming him from the inside. Within seconds, Navok’s screams cut off, his whole body locking up for an instant before he collapsed to the floor, the fire inside him now devouring all of him.

Jack shuddered and walked over to Riddick. He put his arm around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “That,” she told him in a pained voice, “was a whole lot worse than I thought it would be.”

“I won’t put you in that kind of position again, Jack, I—”

“Not that part.” Jack gestured at the disintegrating ashes that had once been Lord Navok. “That part. I hate killing.”

But you do it so well. Why did Dame Vaako have the sense that Tokoloshe was mocking Jack?

“How did you do that?” Toal asked, staring at her in awe.

“There’s a ’verse where Mirach’s core is right here instead of a light-hour away,” Jack said, staring at the ashes. “I just needed one hydrogen atom from there. Shit. Sometimes I think maybe the Quantifiers are right.”

“Not even a little,” Riddick murmured to the girl in his arms. “Just hold on a few more minutes. We’re almost done with the show.”

They had known, Dame Vaako realized. Even before she or her husband had tried to warn them, they’d known that there would be a mutiny against them this day. And they had used it to deliver a warning of their own.

And, it dawned on her, to test the fidelity of the subjects who had grown closest to them in the last two weeks. Including her and her husband.

“Next time you want to get all theatrical,” Jack grumbled, “we’d better be doing a musical comedy.”

1.
The Wreck of the Santa Clara

There was a storm brewing miles out over the Caldera as John MacNamera approached the Tailwind Tavern. If he was lucky, he thought, it might wait to strike the base until after his launch window. But luck was suddenly treating him as a passing acquaintance, at best. After the last several hours, he wondered if it had deserted him altogether.

The inside of the pilots’ dive bar did nothing to ease that feeling.

The place was only a third of the way occupied, during what—for most bars around Caldera Base, at least—was Happy Hour and the busiest time of day. In the Tailwind Tavern, it felt more like Last Call was approaching. The bartender was wiping down the counter, carefully cleaning around a man who appeared to be taking a nap by his half-filled drink. Further down the bar, two women eyed him with suspicion. One table held a group of men playing a card game. Aside from a few lone drinkers, most with dinners in front of them, the place was empty. Toward the back, a lone diner was barely visible in one of the booths.

He took a deep breath and walked back to the booth and the man he was supposed to meet.

“Mazigh?” he asked as he approached. It was an odd name; Lady Shirah had told him to pronounce it as if he was saying Mazeer, with a hint of something guttural at the end of the r. The seated diner inclined his head in a nod and gestured for MacNamera to join him.

He sat down across the booth from his contact, studying the pilot.

Mazigh appeared to be in his late thirties. His close-cropped black hair was threaded with silver, his olive skin unwrinkled except at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His features, like his name, seemed to point to an Old Moroccan heritage. He was almost absurdly good-looking, enough that MacNamera had to wonder why he was scraping by out in this corner of nowhere and not starring in adventure vids coming out of New Hollywood. His daugh­ter—

It was hard to even think of her without something catching his heart in its fist and squeezing.

His daughter would probably have watched every vid, multiple times over, starring a man who looked like this guy. At least, so said the girl’s mother, who seemed worried that Audrey had come back from her time away more than a little strange. Her definition of “strange” made him wish, once again, that he’d never left Audrey on Deckard’s World in the first place.

“Would you like something to eat?” Mazigh asked. He had a tagine of fragrant stew in front of him, half eaten, beside a glass of something that smelled strongly of mint but not at all of alcohol.

MacNamera shook his head. “I’m fine, thank you.”

In truth, he had no appetite at all. He probably ought to eat something, but the thought of food was repulsive at the moment. His mind was too utterly consumed by the worries that the last day’s worth of messages had brought him.

Mazigh, he realized, was studying him every bit as intently as he had been studying the man. “Tell me about your daughter,” the pilot finally said. “What has happened to her, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Not exactly. She was back with her mother on Deckard’s World, going to college, and suddenly she disappeared. Her mom says she left one message, telling her to take her younger daughter and go into hiding. Audrey said something in the message about someone from the last time she’d been missing coming back—”

“This is not the first time your daughter has disappeared?” Mazigh leaned forward, his eyes—just a shade or two lighter green than Audrey’s, MacNamera noticed—intent.

“No. It isn’t.” He gritted his teeth. Before “M” and the Lady Shirah had directed him to this contact, his own attempts to recruit help had been an abject failure.

“This the same daughter who went missin’ six or so years ago and was gone for nearly two years?” one pilot had asked. “I remember you stakin’ out every transport that came in, that whole time, in case she was on board. Turned out she’d never even left Deckard’s World. Why you goin’ kitin’ after her this time?” He and his friends had laughed and had gone back to ignoring MacNamera in favor of watching a jai alai vid.

“She disappeared a month before her thirteenth birthday and was missing for twenty-two months. Her mother knows very little about what happened to her during that time, but this time, she went offworld. Booked passage to New Queensland on a ship called the Santa Clara. It vanished one Star Jump into its route.”

At the mention of Star Jumps, the other man’s eyes cut over to his.

“A long jump?” he asked with odd intensity.

MacNamera shook his head. “They weren’t even half a day out from the system.”

“And no contact since? No beacon check-ins?”

“It came out of the jump fine, checked in with that beacon, and never checked in with the next, the one that would have led into the second jump.” MacNamera felt his stomach twisting again at the thought of all the things that might have happened, might be happening.

“Whatever happened occurred in U1 space, then,” Mazigh mused. “I may see why I was recommended to you.”

“You came highly recommended,” MacNamera replied, still a little confused about that. “Both by the investigator on Deckard’s World who contacted me after Audrey disappeared, and by Lady Shirah.”

That made Mazigh blink; apparently he found that as surprising as MacNamera had. “This investigator. What’s his name?”

“Didn’t tell me more than an initial. M. Audrey’s mother told me he’s been assigned to her case for years, ever since she reappeared. I’ve never been able to find out much about him, and I have tried. He’s Federacy, but that’s all I know.”

Mazigh’s frown had deepened. He lifted his glass of—was that mint tea?—and took a thoughtful sip. Then he seemed to come to a decision. “Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

MacNamera pulled out his comm, opening it to the image he’d been looking at all too often since the news had come and turning it toward Mazigh. A young woman’s face appeared on the screen, beautiful if he did say so himself, with enormous green eyes, prominent cheekbones, a pixie-pointed chin and a quirky smile, dark blonde hair flowing to her shoulders. Audrey in her first college yearbook photo. He could still see the tiny maker of mud-pies and catcher of fireflies hidden behind the newly-adult face.

Six years ago, after coming out of cryo and learning that his daughter had become a missing person not long after he’d left Deckard’s World, he had been terrified that she’d been on her way to Furya. Even Lady Shirah’s promise to intercept and hide the girl if she arrived, before the Quantifiers could learn she was there, hadn’t eased his anxiety. The new situation was even more petrifying.

Mazigh’s breath hitched for a second. “This ‘M’ asked you to come to me, specifically? As did Lady Shirah.”

“Yes.”

The man nodded. “I understand now. I will, of course, help you. No one’s child should be alone in the ghost lanes.”

Mazigh gestured to the barkeep; a moment later, he was settling his check as his food was packed up for him.

“You are licensed to fly a Star Jumper?” MacNamera asked, aware that somehow everything had just sped up.

Mazigh nodded and slipped his payment card back into a small wallet, taking another card out and offering it to MacNamera.

It was a pilot’s license, identifying him as Yedder Mazigh, born in New Casablanca on Tangiers Prime, rated to fly most military and commercial craft.

Retired military. Like I was, before…

He shut that down, shut all of it down. There wasn’t all that much he regretted about the last six and a half years of his life, except how they had impacted Audrey… and, apparently, were still impacting her. But he couldn’t think about it without it starting to tear him to pieces.

“What’s your price?” he asked as he gave Mazigh back his license.

The pilot shrugged, slipping the license back into his wallet and pocketing it. “I’m sure your offer is a fair one. Shall we go? I presume you already have a ship.”

Feeling a little stunned, MacNamera nodded, rising as Mazigh rose. They were, he realized, exactly the same height. “A Dassault Z-437. Can you fly one?”

“I can, and I have.” Mazigh led him toward the exit. “It’s a good choice for a rescue mission.”

“You need to stop and get anything?” MacNamera asked, still trying to figure out how things had turned around so quickly.

Mazigh nodded at the bartender, who fetched a duffel bag from behind the counter and handed it to him. “I have everything I need in here.” He said something to the bartender in another language, one MacNamera didn’t recognize, and got a reply in the same language. “No need for us to delay further. My affairs are in order.”

The man, MacNamera soon discovered, was not especially talkative. The walk back to Caldera Base, less than half a mile away, was silent, but gave him a chance to observe his new companion. Mazigh moved like a trained soldier.

“Where’d you serve?” he asked as they neared the entrance to the base.

“Tangiers Space Service,” Mazigh said. “Sol Track Protective Division.”

A combat pilot, MacNamera thought. Still young enough to be serving. Can’t even be forty yet. “Why’d you leave?”

“L-4 injury,” Mazigh said after a tiny pause. “It healed, but not before I got so sick of being behind a desk that I resigned my commission. I piloted commercial ships for a few years after that. They said I was fit enough.”

People at the base seemed to know and like Mazigh, something that eased MacNamera’s nerves a little more, although it made him wonder why they had never crossed paths before. Nothing could ease his nerves completely. Every time he thought of his daughter, they jangled again until he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. But it only took an hour for everything to be settled and for them to be given a launch window. Lady Shirah had been true to her word and had smoothed the way for him with Federacy Command; he had already been placed on emergency leave and his Lieutenant was prepared to take over.

As they approached the Z-437’s ramp, though, Mazigh turned to him with a serious look.

“You do understand, I assume, that in a moment I will become the captain of this ship,” the man said.

That brought MacNamera up short. “And?”

“And in spite of your rank, you will be required to follow my orders. So I want to be clear that I will not issue orders all that often, but when I do it is because they are necessary. For your safety, and mine, and your daughter’s when we find her. The law, however, will require you to follow them when I do. I want there to be no misunderstanding.”

“Fair enough.” It was something he hadn’t thought about in his headlong rush to save his little girl—an adult now, yes, but barely—but he really should have.

Gotta do what I gotta do.

Prior to liftoff, he was surprised to see that Mazigh checked the engine area and, in particular, the Star Jump drive, resting his hand on it for a moment with an odd gesture and murmuring something under his breath. But that, he ultimately decided, was the only non-textbook thing about the pilot.

Launch was uneventful, Furya’s usually stormy skies seeming almost cooperative and the storm over the Caldera still distant. They cryo-slept in their seats on the way to the Santa Clara’s last known position, skipping over the week it took to get there. MacNamera was glad of the cryo; a week of fretting about his daughter’s fate might have driven him mad.

The space between the end of the Santa Clara’s first Star Jump and the start of the second was vast, covering fifty million kilometers in each direction. Mazigh began running a sensor sweep of the region immediately. MacNamera found it difficult to sit still, so close to answers and yet still unable to grasp them.

“So,” he observed after a while, trying to fill the silence before it could unhinge him, “your name… doesn’t sound very Arabic.”

“It’s not,” Mazigh answered, his mouth quirking slightly. “It’s Tamazight. Or, as most of your people would say, Berber.”

Huh. There was an oblique rebuke in there somewhere, he thought. “What’s it mean?”

“It was gifted to me by a good friend of my family. ‘Yedder’ means ‘he will live.’ And ‘Mazigh’ is an auspicious surname among my people. It means ‘he is free.’”

“The whole name was a gift?”

Mazigh smiled, turning back to his controls. “The most important part of it was. What do you know of the circumstances of your daughter’s first disappearance?”

MacNamera groaned, leaning back in his seat. “Truth is, not much at all. Last time she just dropped out of sight. Her mother thought she’d run away, but… when she came back…”

“Was something unusual about her return?” Mazigh seemed focused on the scans he was running, but MacNamera had the odd feeling that the man was paying closer attention than he seemed to be.

“Yeah. It turned out that she’d been in WitSec for most or all of the time she was missing. Nobody could get her tell them where she’d been or what had happened. One of the conditions of her return was that she could never talk about any of it at all. And once a week, a Federacy operative came to the door to escort her to a rendezvous with her ‘handler,’ who her mother never once got to see herself. That ‘M’ guy.”

“An extraordinary situation for a child her age to find herself in,” Mazigh said after a moment. “Is there much espionage, or organized crime, on Deckard’s World?”

“I never knew of any, but that isn’t my field anyway.” MacNamera let out another gusty sigh. “Do you think the first disappearance and this one are connected? Something from back then showing up, like she said?”

“Possibly. You said she told your ex-wife to go into hiding with her younger sister—”

“I never said she was my ex-wife,” MacNamera snapped, frowning. Who was this guy?

Mazigh smiled at him, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to. You referred to her as ‘her mother,’ not your wife, every time you have mentioned her. And this little sister… you have not referred to her as your daughter, either. A half-sister from another marriage, I presume?”

Well, damn. He’d gotten all suspicious for a moment over a good deduction. Just because Mazigh seemed more committed to the mission than he ought to be…

“Apparently, your daughter was afraid for their safety as well as her own when she disappeared. Did this ‘M’ say whether she used her own name, or a false name, when she boarded the Santa Clara?” Mazigh continued running scans as he spoke.

“Her own name,” MacNamera said, seeing where Mazigh was going. “She was laying a trail, wasn’t she? Trying to draw someone away from Deckard’s World. Away from her mom and sister.”

“It would appear so. That suggests a genuine threat, one probably connected to her prior missing time. Are you sure that she wasn’t offworld during that period?”

“Nobody’s sure of anything,” MacNamera grumbled. “Her mom told me she insisted that if she ever talked about anything that had happened while she was gone, people could end up dead, and that if everybody kept trying to get her to talk, she might get disappeared again. She never wavered from that once.”

“Interesting. And she was how old, again?”

“A month shy of thirteen when she disappeared. Almost fifteen when she came back.”

“Kids that age are very rarely good at keeping secrets,” Mazigh mused. “Except for the truly important ones.”

Maybe it was meant as a reassuring statement, but MacNamera was only feeling worse with each passing moment. If whoever had driven Audrey into WitSec had found her, and was dangerous enough to force her headlong flight off-planet—

“I have something,” Mazigh said. “A distress beacon. Very weak, but…” He began flipping switches and plotting a course.

It took another hour to reach the beacon. MacNamera’s heart pounded in his ears the whole time.

“Oh fuck,” he breathed, as the Santa Clara finally came into view.

The vessel drifted in the darkness, barely visible, no lights illuminating it. If its bulk hadn’t blocked out the stars behind it, they might not have seen it at all. As they approached and their lights touched it, a gaping breach in its hull became glaringly obvious.

My little girl…

“Tislilel…” Mazigh murmured, before maneuvering the Z-437 closer. Once in range, he deployed multiple tethers and brought their airlock within a few meters of the jagged rent in the hull.

“Let’s suit up,” he told MacNamera. The combination of determination and dread in his face was confusing, as if he was the one expecting to find the body of his own daughter within.

All power was out within the Santa Clara. There was no artificial gravity, and the only light came from their suits. The ship, it appeared, had still had at least partial power when it had begun to depressurize; bulkhead doors had closed around the breach, but one of them had only closed 90% of the way. There was no more pressure differential on the other side to prevent them from reopening now, but very little appeared to have been blown into space.

They found half a dozen corpses behind one of the bulkhead doors, floating and frozen, all shot in the chest with energy pulses.

None of the dead were Audrey.

Two of the bodies appeared to belong to an elderly couple, matching wedding rings on their gnarled and frozen hands. The other four were children.

“What kind of mon­sters…?” MacNamera heard himself gasping. He had seen far worse things, but the murder of children was something he could never possibly become inured to. Mazigh, he noticed, had bowed his head and had his fists clenched tightly.

“Come,” the pilot said after a moment. “We must see the rest of the ship.”

They spent hours quartering every level but found no more bodies. Mazigh was able to restore the artificial gravity when they passed through the engine room… and seemed oddly disturbed by the apparent removal of the Star Jump drive.

“Pirates?” MacNamera asked Mazigh as they reached the flight deck. That thought filled him with new terror. His daughter was young and beautiful enough that he feared the uses such criminals might be making of her. It was a struggle not to imagine it…

“Doubtful,” Mazigh said, shining his light around. “Pirates would not have murdered the children unless they had also murdered everyone else. The horrible truth is that for pirates in the trafficking business, children are primary targets. I’ve rescued enough to know. If whoever did this had any intention of trafficking your daughter or the others, they would have done the same with the children. This is something different.”

MacNamera watched as, turning away, Mazigh began reactivating the flight deck’s emergency power systems.

“The batteries are nearly drained, but there should be enough to let us see the ship’s final hours—”

“Good,” a strange, raspy voice said from the doorway. “Let’s take a look at what happened.”

MacNamera was impressed to see that Mazigh was an even faster draw than he was.

“Easy, guys,” the stranger said, his hands moving away from his sides, fingers spreading to show they were empty. “Easy. I’m here lookin’ for answers, too. You salvagers?”

“No,” Mazigh said. “You?”

“Nah. Name’s Toombs. I’m lookin’ for someone who was on this ship. What the fuck happened to it?”

MacNamera started to put his gun away until he noticed that Mazigh had gone completely still.

“Alexander Toombs?” Mazigh asked, danger suddenly in his voice.

“Y’heard of me?” It was hard to make out much detail of the man’s face through his pressure suit, but he seemed to be smiling. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. Give me one good reason not to shoot you right now, merc.” The tight fury in Mazigh’s voice was alarming.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’d I do to you?”

“Not to me,” Mazigh said, keeping his gun trained on Toombs as he walked closer. “Tell us who you are looking for on this ship, and perhaps I won’t shoot you.”

“Nobody impor­tant—”

“Say. Her. Name.” Mazigh cocked the gun.

Her name?

“Fine! Fine. You win. A girl named Audrey Mac­Namera—”

MacNamera brought his gun back up and joined Mazigh in aiming at Toombs. “What do you want with my daughter?”

Toombs froze, staring at him. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he drawled. “Colonel John MacNamera in the flesh? They let you come lookin’ for your girl this time?”

“You very likely will be,” Mazigh spat. “Are you the one she was fleeing?”

“Prob’ly,” Toombs admitted.

“Why?” MacNamera demanded. “She’s barely more than a kid!”

Toombs looked over at him. “You got no idea where your kid was six years ago, do ya? Or who she was with.”

“She was in WitSec,” MacNamera growled. “I’m pretty sure interfering with someone under Federacy protection is enough of a crime that we could turn you in for a bounty if we wanted.”

For whatever reason, what he’d said made Toombs bray with laughter. “WitSec? That’s a good one. I’m bettin’ that fakin’ bein’ in WitSec is an even bigger crime. Gotta say, your little Jack B. Badd has skills.”

Jack B. Badd??? How did this man know his childhood nickname? Dear God, did Audrey use it as an alias?

He’d told her so many bedtime stories about a boy with that name…

“More than you know,” Mazigh was saying to Toombs as he confiscated the other man’s sidearm.

…the fuck…?

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Toombs asked him.

“Doubtful.” Mazigh backed up to the control panel, keeping his gun trained on Toombs. “Understand that whatever fate Audrey met on this vessel will be yours as well.”

What the fuck, MacNamera found himself thinking, is going on here?

The screen flickered to life in front of them as Mazigh activated its controls. In a moment, a mosaic of images spread out, most of them entirely still. “I have begun the playback two hours before the feeds end. Now… I am deactivating any feeds that aren’t picking up any motion, until something appears on them.”

In a moment, only the feed from the flight deck itself was live, where a single crew member was killing time tossing wadded up papers at a miniature basketball hoop.

“Looks like whatever happened, it was during the night cycle,” Toombs observed.

“Lo, the Master of the Obvious speaks,” Mazigh grumbled. His gun hadn’t wavered.

Another feed flickered to life as a young woman, dark blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, emerged from behind a door and entered a corri­dor—

“Audrey,” MacNamera breathed. Near him, Mazigh murmured that strange word again. What the fuck was a tislilel?

His daughter looked around the corridor, walked over to a posted map, and then set off down the hallway. The feed followed her from camera to camera as she went. When she arrived at the galley, she read the “Closed Until 6:00 AM Standard” sign before sighing and walking over to a touch screen. A moment later she started down the corridor again.

They watched as she located vending machines and, taking a card from the bulky money belt under her Deckard Tech U sweatshirt, purchased an array of junk food that she carried to a nearby lounge. There were people in the lounge, but they had apparently been so still and quiet that the motion recorders on those camera feeds had lost track of them. Audrey settled onto a seat against one of the blank picture windows that looked out on the nothingness of Star Jump space, eating her junk food as she gazed out at it.

Odd. It almost seemed as if she could see something through the window. She looked more attentive than someone staring out at nothing.

A man walked over to her and tried to make conversation. MacNamera found himself bristling; the guy was almost twice her age. But apparently he didn’t get anywhere and retreated a moment later, his body language almost screaming discomfort. Audrey didn’t start laughing until he and his friends had left the lounge.

Ten more minutes passed, and then the empty window filled with darkness as the Santa Clara returned to normal space. A moment later, Audrey leaned forward, frowning…

…and then leapt out of the window seat and ran for the comm panel. Even as she grabbed at it, the ship rocked violently. Suddenly dozens of the feeds were active.

The shipwide pandemonium made it difficult to follow what happened next. They caught glimpses from a few cameras of Audrey trying to reach the escape pods, and—

“Well, fuck me,” Toombs gasped.

“Pass,” Mazigh replied, but both men followed his gaze to one of the steadier feeds.

Men in strange armor were climbing through the hull breach. As MacNamera watched, they spread throughout the ship, gathering up all the passengers and crew at gunpoint and forcing them back through the breach. One emerged from a darkened corridor where no cameras worked, propelling Audrey forward, his hand clamped onto the back of her neck. She looked frightened but unharmed.

“Who are these people?” MacNamera grated out.

“Necromongers,” Toombs answered. “And you’re never gonna believe who their boss is these days.”

A final Necromonger emerged from the darkness, returning to the breach carrying a smallish box trailing wires.

“Baraka,” Mazigh muttered. “What do they want with the Isomorph Drive?”

“Hey,” MacNamera growled. “Focus. This is about my daughter.”

“As is that,” Mazigh said, half to himself.

“What are they going to do to my girl?” MacNamera demanded of Toombs.

“Guess that’ll depend on her old friend,” Toombs said, shaking his head. “’Bout a year ago, word is the old Lord Marshal of the Necromongers got hisself assassinated by none other than Richard B. Riddick. He’s in charge of them now.”

Some of the tension left Mazigh’s frame. “Then she may be safe.”

“What?” Who was this guy? “You even know who Riddick is?” MacNamera knew all too well; He’d had to redesign half a dozen security systems because of the man.

“Your daughter,” Toombs drawled, “ran with Riddick for a while back when she was missin’. They were friends. Maybe more than.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” MacNamera demanded, even as he saw Mazigh nodding.

“She was one of three survivors of the Hunter-Gratzner crash,” Mazigh told him. “Riddick was another. He protected her in its aftermath and attempted to see her to safety.”

“Attempted?” Toombs demanded. “He broke her out of a hospital and took her and another girl with him to Shakti Four—what the fuck is so funny, guy?”

“She never went to Shakti Four,” Mazigh chuckled. “And Riddick didn’t break her out of the hospital. She broke out on her own.”

Enough, MacNamera thought, was enough. He turned his gun away from Toombs and pointed it at Mazigh.

“Okay, enough of this shit. Who are you and how do you think you know my daughter?”

Toombs snickered, looking both amused by this turn of events and curious, himself, as to the answer.

Mazigh glanced uneasily at the mercenary. “It’s a fair question, but I can’t give you answers in front of this man. He isn’t cleared to know them.”

MacNamera aimed for the spot directly between Mazigh’s eyes. At the very least, it would shatter the man’s face plate if he fired. “You’d better rethink your position or you’ll be taking everything you know into the black.”

For a moment, Mazigh looked affronted. He gave Toombs a weighing glance and then sighed. “Very well. On your head be it. I met your daughter five and a half years ago. On Tangiers Prime.”

“Tangiers Prime?” Toombs practically exploded. “No fuckin’ way! I was on Tangiers Prime and—”

“And she was one step ahead of you the whole time,” Mazigh said. “She and Kyra Wittier-Collins.”

Kyra Wittier-Collins? The Black Fox of Canaan Mountain? His little girl had been palling around with Big Evil and the Black Fox?

“They had stowed away on the Scarlet Matador,” Mazigh continued.

“Son of a shit,” Toombs griped. “Stowed away? No wonder we couldn’t find them among the passen­gers…”

MacNamera had heard of the Scarlet Matador. This was not getting better. “Didn’t everybody die on that ship? Some kind of exotic pathogen?”

“That’s the official story,” Mazigh told him, “but no. Only eighteen people among the passengers and crew died. Your daughter, and Kyra, saved everyone else. There was no pathogen. It was a Level Five Incident.”

A Level Five Incident? His daughter had Threshold Syndrome?

What… the fuck… had happened six years ago?

“Who are you?” MacNamera demanded again.

Mazigh glanced uneasily at Toombs again before giving him a rueful smile. “The name you know me by, Yedder Mazigh, was gifted to me by your daughter when she saved my life one final time. She made the ID you examined, and which I have been using for the last five and a half years. My real name is Colonel Gavin Brahim Tomlin Meziane, and yes, I know that’s a mouthful. You may call me Tomlin, as she preferred to.”

Toombs was staring at him, open-mouthed. “Ain’t you supposed to be dead?”

“Indeed.” Mazigh’s gun stayed pointed at Toombs as he walked forward toward MacNamera, once more indifferent to the gun aimed at him. “Your daughter, among my people, is a beloved hero. She and Kyra saved hundreds of lives five and a half years ago, including mine. I owe her my life several times over. You have nothing to fear from me. I only seek to repay any portion of my debt to her that I can.”

MacNamera lowered his gun, stunned. “And how are you gonna do that?”

“If the Necromonger Armada has her, then that’s where we will go.”

“What?” Toombs practically yelled. “Are you crazy?”

“I told you before, Toombs, you will share Audrey’s fate, whatever it is. As will I. I owe her my life, and much more than that. There is no way to truly repay the debt I owe her. For her,” Mazigh—no, Tomlin—said, locking eyes with MacNamera, “I would storm the gates of Hell itself. I will go there with you now.”

For the first time since he’d gotten word of Audrey’s second disappearance, John MacNamera felt a stirring of real hope.

“Just fuckin’ great,” Toombs grumbled, ruining a perfectly good Heroic Moment. “Held at gunpoint by a pair of suicidal do-gooders.”

Tomlin rolled his eyes, shook his head, and then grinned at MacNamera. “Let’s go rescue your daughter.”