“That’s why he worries,” she put in helpfully.
“Our lord marshal,” Vaako continued. “And that would make the man-child—”
“. . . whom he worries he overlooked killing, that child in the crib of whom this supposed seer spoke . . .”
“Our Riddick,” Vaako concluded. “Do you believe any of this? Do you believe in prophecy? It is not science.”
“I know,” she told him, “but it doesn’t matter what I believe. Or what you believe. It does not even matter if it is true prophecy or merely the ravings of an inspired lunatic.” She smiled. It was a delicious smile. “What matters is that he believes it.”
Another pause followed. Despite the immense distances involved and the lesser Quasi-Dead’s ability to relay only words, she thought she could see her companion thinking.
“What is to be done?” Vaako asked finally.
Good. He was letting her take the lead. Also the leading risks, but that was fine with her. Given her current line of thought, she was in far more danger at that moment than he was on his ship in deep space.
“You do what your lord asks of you. Find and cleanse Riddick for him. In doing so, you prove your undying loyalty to him. Perhaps then, perhaps afterward . . .”
“He’ll finally let down his guard,” the Quasi whispered, repeating Vaako’s words verbatim.
She straightened above the slab. As she did so, the Quasi’s head lolled slowly to one side, the connection broken. “Until your return, my love,” she murmured to the otherwise empty chamber. Then she bent low and, with the most extreme and grisly delicacy imaginable, lightly brushed her mouth across the gray lips of the unable to respond Quasi-Dead.
Later that night, she happened to pass the Lord Marshal and his retinue. They were deep in conversation, no doubt on some topic involving the continued pursuit of a war of occupation that had proven more troublesome than expected. The surviving forces of the Helion military were proving awkward in their obduracy. That was not her concern.
What did concern her was that as he passed by seemingly without noticing her and she automatically dipped her head in deference, a second visage did turn to look in her direction. A wraithlike face of a sort possessed only by the most exalted and highly trained of her kind. The astral countenance regarded her coldly for a moment before vanishing inside the Lord Marshal’s skull like a ghost returning to its coffin.
She did not shiver, but it was a chilling reminder of the Lord Marshal’s vigilance and of the abilities that made him so powerful—and dangerous. He was not just one man.
He was one man—and something more.
On board the distant frigate, Vaako had terminated the connection at his own end, leaving the communicator Quasi to its chamber and to its rest. His thoughts were on the future. On its potential, that now as never before seemed as promising as it was confused. How fortunate he was to have a partner as devious and clever as she was beautiful and affectionate. No other commander could boast such a companion. Great things loomed on the horizon, he was sure, if only they chose the right route forward.
Lost in thought and much preoccupied by possibilities, he exited the chamber. As such, he did not notice the solitary figure that had stood concealed in shadows at its far end. Once the commander had departed, that figure stepped out of concealment and into the dim light. It eyed the recumbent, motionless figure of the Quasi for a long moment. Apparently reaching some silent, internal decision, it moved forward.
After a quick check to make certain there was no one to see him emerge, the Purifier walked out into the corridor and headed toward the front of the ship.
XIII
It was a green planet; shrouded in thick white cloud, lush with vegetation, fecund with life. It circled its unremarkable but benign star as it had for eons, out of the way and unnoticed, its distinctive denizens living out their lives in contentment and indifference to the rest of the universe.
And then, the hand came down.
A monstrous, slick-skinned apparition, it descended without warning, plunging through space, upper atmosphere, and clouds, to wreak a devastation that was as complete as it was merciless. Singly and in groups, young life-forms found themselves wrenched from their beds, their schools, their hiding places. Holding thousands at a time, the hand drew back, tiny children oozing from between its fingers. The latter moved, rubbing against each other, shaking off the small screaming shapes. Dropping them into the vastness of space where they were swallowed up by the unrelenting cold and dark and emptiness.
The hand vanished, to be replaced by a powerful, advancing figure. It was a soldier, young and strong, perversely adorned with a helmet boasting three faces. But the single face within could not be seen.
A voice—not the soldier’s—at once innocent and wise, young and mature, frightened and frightening, whispering of a near-forgotten moment. Whispering, wondering, uncertain.
“Are . . . you . . . familiar . . . to . . . me?”
The soldier said nothing. But an armored hand reached forward, fingers outstretched. . . .
Riddick shot up from where he had been sleeping. Senses fully alert, eyes wide, it took him only a second or two to thoroughly scan his surroundings. There was only rock and junk, the distant chatter of convicts and the rotten-egg stink of sulfur. That, and a memory that would not go away. Would not go away, he knew, until it had been understood.
Between culls and feeding, there wasn’t much for a guard unlucky enough to be assigned to Crematoria to do. Either because it was too difficult, too boring, or too dangerous for humans to perform, automatics necessarily performed most of the routine maintenance. Though portions of the complex looked worn and battered, everything worked. It had to. On other worlds, in other similar facilities, if something broke down, it could wait until it was fixed. Wait to fix something on Crematoria, and there was a good chance people would die. This mattered to the staff, especially when they were at risk.
Presently, two of the guards were absorbed in a game of chess while others lazed at their stations, monitoring those functions on which machines were not qualified to render an opinion. The slam boss was there as well, busy working with a pad. One of the players moved a bishop. Utilizing shells designed to stop the biggest berserker of a convict in his tracks, the individual chess pieces maintained the size if not the exact shape of their ancient predecessors. The potentially explosive bishop gleamed as it was moved.
Toombs barely glanced in the direction of the game. Not that he disliked chess. He was an avid player, but with different pieces. One of those was the individual responsible for his trip to Crematoria. One by one, his crew filed in behind him.
Douruba greeted them effusively, his manner much more relaxed and open than previously. Toombs took it as a hopeful sign without being sucked in by it for a minute. He also noted that one of the guards had risen from his seat and was now moving in the direction of the office safe.
“Good news first?” the slam boss offered. He took the head mercenary’s silence as an acknowledgment. “Talked things over with my comrades here.” He indicated the other guards, none of whom bothered to look in the mercenaries’ direction. “Since it was such a tough run for you, we’ve agreed it’d only be fair to split some of the aftermarket expenses. We’ll cut you in for seven-hundred fifty K.”
As he spoke, the guard who had moved to the safe had punched in the electronic combination and pulled back the door. Now he was taking out universal denomination money. No credit; real currency. Electronic credit transfers were all very well and good, but u.d. cash could not be monkeyed with, si-phoned off, or put in some other fool’s name at the touch of a button. Glancing around, Toombs noted the expressions on the faces of his surviving crew. Plainly, there was no need to put the offer to a vote.
They could be a little more circumspect about it, he thought. The sight of the money had transformed them from a bunch of hardened mercs into a pack of drooling puppies. Oh well—Douruba was right about one thing. It had been a dif
ficult pickup. He had to admit he was as anxious as any of them to bid farewell to the pit-drop paradise vacation world of Crematoria—and find someplace suitably civilized and decadent to spend his share of the payoff.
There was apparently one more thing to deal with, however. He eyed the slam boss.
“What’s the bad news? They closed the local whorehouse? I hear it was really hot.”
The slam boss smiled appreciatively at the joke. By way of reply, he tossed a flexible hardcopy printout to the waiting mercs. It showed deep space. Squinting at it, Toombs and his colleagues saw nothing but star field.
“Look closer,” the slam boss advised them. “Dead center.”
Toombs did so. “Dark shape. Could be anything.” “Isn’t anything,” the slam boss assured him solemnly. “Our last resupply ship finished unloading here just before you showed. Its monitors caught that as it was system outbound. Means it must be fairly close in.” Reaching out, he touched the dark shape. The image immediately enlarged within the printout, promptly resolving into the outline of a starship of unusual configuration.
Curious, one of the guards ambled over to have a look, cracking nuts between his teeth as he peered over Toombs’s shoulder.
Ignoring the other man’s uncomfortable proximity, the mercenary shrugged diffidently. “Huh. Never seen nuthin’ like it.”
Douruba’s tone was guardedly neutral. “Almost looks like it could be a warship. But that’s stupid, isn’t it? What would a warship be doing in this system? What could it want here? There’s nothing here but us.”
Maybe it was the enlarged image in the printout. Maybe it was the slam boss’s words. Or maybe a combination thereof. Whatever, something jogged the guard’s memory. Munching a little more reflexively on his chosen snack of the moment, he backed away from Toombs.
“Didn’t someone say you guys came here from Helion Prime?”
In the face of even a veiled accusation, Toombs always assumed a belligerent stance. “Yeah? So?”
The slam boss was studying the expression on the head mercenary’s face intently. “Our cargo guy, he says he’s checked and rechecked our deep-space monitors and that this thing”—he indicated the printout—“charts back to Helion Prime.”
Reaching down, Toombs scratched his ass and said nothing. It was a visual indication of how relaxed he was, when he wasn’t. A glance showed that the guard at the safe, detached from the conversation, was still pulling out bundles of u.d. certificates.
Meanwhile, Douruba wasn’t finished. His tone was growing steadily less dispassionate. “You know, Anatoli’s got a nose for trouble. And he thinks trouble follows you here.”
It was hard for Toombs to concentrate on what the slam boss was saying while his attention was fixed on the piles of money that were rising outside the open safe. But enough of the other man’s sentiment seeped through to suggest that, like a stripper’s costume, things were starting to come apart. He hastened to reassure the slam boss.
“Look,” he grumbled forcefully, “we dusted our tracks and made a clean exfil. I don’t care what kind of tracking technology they had: there’s no way we didn’t lose them.” He indicated the gap outside the access doors that opened onto the prison below. “There’s no way. It doesn’t matter if they’re looking for something. This is my prisoner. Mine. Nobody else’s. Possession is ten tenths of the law. And I think I want my money now.”
Eyes widening slightly, Douruba took a step backward. “Them? So you stole a prisoner from them?”
For a simple pronoun, his final word packed an infinity of meanings, none of them favorable.
Toombs’s crew might be newly assembled, but they weren’t stiffs. It was the copilot who happened to notice that the chess-playing guards had called an end to their game and were removing the pieces from the board—and quietly slipping them into the weapons they had drawn from beneath the game table. Bishop’s Knight to dead merc four. She considered mentioning this unique method of storage to Toombs, but decided there wasn’t time. In the event serious discussion of the rules ensued, she intended to be the one to make the first move. She reached for her sidearm.
The explosive sounds that reverberated down the volcanic cone and off its tiered, cell-lined walls might have been celebratory, except that everyone within hearing range knew today was no holiday. Nor were the booming noises a day or two early. There were no holidays on Crematoria. The sounds of shooting and small explosives going off were accompanied by colorful flashes of light and the sporadic deeper boom as something seriously volatile was let loose. It could have passed for a showy fireworks display, except that no one was cheering.
Head back, interior lights reflected from his goggles, Riddick regarded the control room high above. Hanging halfway down the cone’s throat, the chain attached to the service and supply winch jiggled and bounced with the occasional explosive reverberation.
Moments later, the lights in the control room died. Probably not the only thing to do so, he mused. Then a blast of actinic white light erupted that was bright enough to force him, even though protected by his goggles, to look away. Even so, he was able to catch a glimpse of a single figure as it dove through the overhead aperture and plunged downward. The explosion that followed close on his heels rocked the entire prison.
When Riddick looked back and the glare faded from his goggles, he saw that the leaping figure had managed to grab onto the lower end of the winch chain. Fortunately for him, the winch had not been damaged in the last explosion. Unfortunately for him, Riddick recognized him immediately. It was Toombs.
Backing up, the big man readied himself. Putting one foot against a wall and using it like a sprinter’s starting block, he pushed off hard, accelerating with every step. As a couple of other stupefied inmates looked on, he leaped to the railing and used it as a launching pad. The arc he described had been carefully judged. He had just enough room, built-up speed, and strength to cross the seemingly impossible gap and smack into the figure clinging desperately to the end of the chain. Somehow, Toombs absorbed the unexpected impact and managed to hold on. Arms straining to maintain his grip, he found himself penduluming back and forth with whoever had slammed into him. As soon as he was reasonably certain he wasn’t going to fall, he brought his head around to get a look at the crazed fool who had almost knocked him from his perch.
And found himself virtually nose to nose with Riddick.
No gun. No backup. No heavily armed crew. No cuffs. All of which added up, in the sudden fit of near panic that threatened to eclipse Toombs’s thoughts, to No Chance. For what seemed like an eternity, the two men hung there, swinging back and forth as the end of the chain slowly steadied. Just when the mercenary was convinced his former prisoner was going to start eating cereal out of his skull, Riddick spoke. His voice was unchanged, as if they were seated across from one another in a corner café. As if nothing had previously passed between them. As if what had passed had meant nothing then, and meant even less now.
“Shoulda taken the money.”
Toombs would have gaped at him, or possibly even replied, except Riddick had started up the chain like a lemur and was using the mercenary’s skull for a step-stone. The big man went up the links so fast Toombs didn’t have time to reply even if he had been able to think of something to say. As soon as it sank in that he wasn’t going to be kicked off, dismembered piecemeal, or have his medulla oblongata pulled out through his mouth, he started upward himself. His progress was notably slower than that of his predecessor.
The scene in the darkened control room resembled a party that had been crashed by Beelzebub and a few of his drinking buddies. The only light came from those few screens and readouts that hadn’t been blasted to bits or forcibly deactivated. It was dim enough for Riddick to ungoggle, which he did gratefully. His too-constant companion, it was always a relief to be able to move around once in a while without it clinging to his face like some inescapable, symbiotic alien.
He had no trouble separating the bodies of the
mercenaries from those of the guards, because he could not. They were indistinguishable from one another —those bits and pieces that still remained complete enough to be labeled as corpses. There were plenty of limbs that had been detached from torsos by the force of the explosion, as well as sundry body parts better left unexamined. One thing was immediately apparent: there was nothing left alive within the confines of the demolished control room.
Striding swiftly toward the door that led to the transport tunnel, he tried the lever. The outer doors groaned a protest, but parted. The inner barrier, however, remained stubbornly shut. On closer inspection, he was unable to tell if they had been incurably damaged by the explosion, or had been deliberately sabotaged. The distinction was irrelevant, he knew.
A tunnel monitor lay nearby, flickering feebly with lingering electronic life. Digging it out of the rubble, he brushed off the screen and studied the image. Though maddeningly inconsistent, it provided enough information to show that no one was going anywhere soon via the prison’s internal transportation system. For one thing, the heavy travel sled had been blown clean off its tracks. As for the latter, they were in none too good a condition themselves. A quick glance was enough to tell him that fixing the system would require engineering staff, a full repair crew, heavy equipment, and worst of all, time. There was no sign of human life in the tunnel, either.
When no further detonations followed his ascent and he didn’t come plunging back down through the access aperture with significant parts of his body missing, the convicts who had been waiting and watching below began to make their way upward in his wake. Kyra was the first one up, followed by the Guv and others. Toombs took the more direct route, tentatively hauling himself up the same service chain Riddick had utilized.
Most of them had found themselves in the control room at one time or another, usually to receive a declaration of punishment or reduction in privileges from the slam boss. Now the place was unrecognizable. Someone with more presence of mind than his dazed compatriots managed to reactivate the lights. Funny, that, the Guv mused. Usually, the problem on Crematoria was too much light.
The Chronicles of Riddick Page 18
