The Chronicles of Riddick (11 page)

Despite the warning, the leader of the mercenaries lingered amid the rubble. As was his style, he wanted to crow a bit before running. But this time he kept his distance, remembering the little trick his quarry had pulled at their last meeting.

“Two things you coulda done better: first, find and trash the locator beacon inside the ship you jacked. But that woulda meant taking the time to locate the locator, wouldn’t it? You musta been in one shit-fired hurry. Second—and this is really the more important part—you shoulda dusted my dick when you had the chance.”

Reaching beneath his appropriated cleric’s robes, he brought out a pair of cuffs and tossed them to Riddick.

“Let’s do this one more time. One last time. Any questions?”

Riddick considered the four sets of weapons aimed in his direction. He could take out Toombs and one or two of the others, but not all four. They might be edgy, but they weren’t unskilled.
Wait for the
opening.

“Yeah,” he said flatly as he started putting on the cuffs. “What took you so long?”

VIII

T
he surface of Helion Prime fell away beneath the accelerating merc ship. From space, it was impossible to tell that the dominant society on the planet had been battered and torn, that devastation and destruction on a massive scale had occurred at all. Oceans still rolled, clouds still scudded, plant life still stained multiple continents with swathes of muted green. At a distance, the works of man, whether benevolent or malign, shrank to insignificance.

Aboard the ship, the last lingering vestiges of concern had given way to preliminary celebration. There was much whooping and yelling. Despite the unusual challenges and dangers, they had pulled it off.

“In and out, unsuspected and undetected by either side!” one of the mercs was hollering. “Damn, I love a good smash and grab!”

While equally pleased, the copilot was busy carrying out essential piloting functions. They might be out of the woods, but they weren’t out of the system.

“Stand by, stand by,” she muttered earnestly. “Picking up fields here. Frequencies all over the place.” Her fingers worked the instrumentation, her eyes darting from monitor to monitor.

Seated alongside her, the pilot worked his own necessities, methodically analyzing readouts and totaling up what the numbers meant. “Shit, here it comes. . . .”

The copilot was shaking her head dubiously. “Some kinda scan. Readin’ our drive spit, maybe.” Her attention was riveted on half a dozen readouts. “I dunno, I dunno. . . .”

Toombs didn’t hesitate. He who hesitates was one dead motherfucker, as the ancient saying went. Or something like that. “Don’t wait for detailed analysis. Let’s drop one.”

The pilot complied, assaulting the appropriate instrumentation.

As the ship continued to accelerate, a portion of its exterior appeared to break away and spin free. It tumbled only for a moment, until independent internal self-guidance and operations systems took over from the master control on board the mother vessel. As the merc ship sped spaceward, the liberated engine’s own internal backup drive kicked in. This was a particularly messy, undisciplined drive that spewed indications of its presence all over the immediate spatial vicinity. Kicking off at an angle to the merc ship’s course, it sped away at its own impressive speed. It did not possess the onboard resources to do so for very long, or to enable it to reach another star system, but that was not its purpose. Its purpose was to make fools of whoever happened to be tracking.

Aboard the mother craft, the merc crew held their breath as they watched the tracing field indicators on their respective screens dropping, dropping—and finally going dead flat line. Both pilots sagged in relief. Whether it was a scanner or missile or inertialess projectile that had been tracking them, it had changed course in pursuit of their clever decoy. In a very little while they would be able to make the jump to supralight speed, and should be safe from any pursuit.

Satisfied that they were not going to be boarded or blown out of the rapidly darkening, star-filled sky, Toombs made his way to the lock-up located directly behind the cockpit. It had been designed and built with enough strength to contain a pack of rabid Sinurians. As such, it ought to suffice for one human prisoner. Even one named Richard Riddick.

Tightly bound, secured to the wall, and pretubed for jump, Riddick did not look up at Toombs’s approach. His attitude remained one of languid indifference. Someone other than Toombs might have been infuriated by the prisoner’s attitude. Not this time. The mercenary leader was not stupid. Riddick was static and serene in the same way as a coiled snake. Having been badly bitten once, Toombs had no intention of repeating the mistake. Despite the prisoner’s bonds, the merc kept his distance. His opinions, however, he was always ready to share.

“So,” he began conversationally, “where do we drop your merc-killin’ ass?” He feigned thoughtfulness. “Maybe Butcher Bay, darkside.”

Riddick considered the proposal, responded immediately. “Butcher Bay? Thelriss system? Ten minutes every other day on the dog run. Good protein waffles, too. Fauna, not veg.”

Toombs acted as if whatever the prisoner said had no effect on his train of thought. He would not admit that Riddick had derailed it slightly. “Or, hey, how ’bout Ursa Luna? Nice little double-max prison. Small, secure, compact. Civilized. Penal boutique.”

The big man shrugged. “They keep a cell open for me.”

Toombs nodded as if he had expected to hear something just like Riddick’s retort. “Real predictable, you know that? You know what I’m thinkin’
now
?”

“That if your mother had known your father you’d be raising fruit on Bannkul IV?”

A muscle twitched in the mercenary’s cheek, but otherwise he showed no reaction. “I’m thinkin’ that all these joints are health clubs for waffle-eatin’ pussies. Just not right for an elite guest like yourself. Wouldn’t be doin’ you fair to let you off somewhere lotus land–like, where they might stick you doin’ somethin’ really hard time like clerical. Maybe we should think about uppin’ our game here. Someplace truly diabolical.” He stared down at the prisoner, in his own quietly sadistic way thoroughly enjoying himself. “Fine word, ‘diabolical.’ Five syllables, all of ’em totaling up to narsty.”

Up forward, the crew was listening. The copilot turned to her colleague and commented, keeping her voice down as she did so. “What the hell’s he thinking?
Now
.”

Riddick answered, since the pilot could not. But while his words were directed forward, his attention remained casually focused on Toombs. “He’s thinking triple-max. Only three of those slams left. Used to be more, but ‘civilized’ folk raised a stink, wouldn’t have ’em in their planetary backyard. NIMS—not in My System. Where there’s a demand, though, there’s always money to pay for it. Just keep it out of the sight of enlightened folk, that’s all. Out of sight, out of mind, but be sure an’ keep the minding part strong.

“Two of ’em way out in the borderlands other side of the Arm. Too far out of range for a shitty little undercutter like this with no legs. That leaves just one.”

Now Toombs did look irritated. He’d intended to shock Riddick with the destination, only to have the prisoner steal his thunder. While he dithered over how to recover the conversational high ground, Riddick finished the thought for him.

“That
is
what you had in mind, right? Crematoria?”

Toombs muttered something under his breath. “Fuck you. Feelin’ warm, yet? If not, soon enough.” Turning, he snapped an order over his shoulder. “You heard him. Dope it out.” He looked back at Riddick. “Good place to sweat some of the smart-ass out of a man. Or sweat him out, period.”

Forward, the pilot groused over his instrumentation even as his fingers were moving. “I hate this run. . . .”

“Just
do
it,” Toombs growled. The game wasn’t playing out as he’d intended. Unlike most of the runners he had tracked and brought down for the money, this prisoner wasn’t any fun.

Watching, evaluating, Riddick read the meaning behind the mercenary’s gamut of expressions. “Dunno about this new crew, Toombs,” he commented with false sympathy. “Skittish. Like they’re kinda worried about something. Need to take their mind off whatever it is they’re worrying about. Hey, I know: did you tell ’em what happened to your last crew?”

Even though it was the prisoner who was bound and he was the one walking free, Toombs had the weirdest feeling that their respective condition had somehow become reversed. He struggled to regain mastery of the situation.

“You know, you were supposed to be some slick shit—an’ here you are, all back of the bus. Don’t know how to finish. But don’t worry—I’ll handle it for you.” Turning away, he gestured to one of his crew. “Getting on time for jump. Change his goddamn oil.” Clearly annoyed, he walked to the front of the cockpit to converse with the pilots.

After making doubly sure the prisoner’s bonds were intact, the merc Toombs had given the order to begin activating the standard cryochill that had been hooked up to Riddick earlier. He did so while only occasionally meeting the prisoner’s gaze.

“So, uh,” he murmured with a precautionary glance in Toombs’s direction, “what
did
happen to the other guys?”

Tired of conversation that was to no purpose, and not inclined to deal with junior employees, the prisoner lowered his head and went dead mouth. Disappointed, the merc worked a little more roughly on the tubes and monitor lines.

“Ohhh—he don’t wanna talk to me. You know, Riddick, I’m gonna be awake a lot longer than you.”

Letting it hang in the air as a threat, the merc finished his work, concluded by leaning over to boldly give the prisoner’s cheek a firm slap-pat as if to say “Nighty-night.” Riddick might have reacted, but he was not a man to waste energy without a definitive payoff in sight.

Especially if it was not one that he favored.

T
hat there was still some sand and rock mixed with the telltale vitrification was clear indication that the ship that had taken off from the spot was designed to leave as little evidence of its passing as possible. Anyone charged with carrying out a casual scan of the area might well have missed it. The Necromonger search team did not.

Having been summoned by the team that had found the place, Vaako ran a hand over the seared surface. Satisfied, he turned to the lensor standing nearby. The creature was signaling that it had divined something from the immediate surroundings, and not necessarily just from its inspection of the ground.

The tap at the base of the lensor’s spine broadcast directly to the handheld unit in the commander’s right hand. There he saw, and read, what the lensor had computed: a suggestive lingering in the sky of a departing vessel. This had been merged with a series of reports from orbital monitors put in place just prior to the main assault on Helion Prime, most particularly a recent one that told of a fleeing, fast, small craft that had deployed a fairly sophisticated decoy to throw off any pursuit. Taken together, they were combined with reports from soldiers and citizens on the ground who had observed a small group of armed civilians traveling in this direction with a single distinctive, unarmed man in their midst.

All the replies to all the questions added up to a pretty good approximation of an answer. That, and the fact that there had been no other sightings of the singular prisoner since his remarkable escape from the Basilica added up to a reasonable conclusion: there had been a small vessel hidden here, and it had departed in a great hurry, most likely with the man Vaako was after on board. Who had taken him and why was not important. All that mattered was the probable presence on the departed vessel of the individual the commander sought.

Rising, he turned to a subordinate. “Take my Galilee team, the one with the most acute lensors, and see this done. I’ll make the composite report myself, in person.”

In the control room that was the neural ganglion of the Basilica, the Lord Marshal was consulting with his general staff. Toal, who had led the assault on Jeranda, was there. So was Scales, famed for his ruthlessness in the service of the faith. And the Scalp-Taker, who needed no addendum to his reputation.

Together, they were gathered around a malleable extrusion map of Helion Prime. At present it showed, in full and flexible relief, the central portion of that world’s western hemisphere. As fingers were pointed and words were spoken, features flowed and reformed on the map, responding automatically to both gestures and commands.

Toal was busy delineating the current bump in the Necromongers’ path to complete conquest of Helion Prime. Under his words and moving fingers, all manner of defensive weaponry was conjured up, only to vanish and be replaced by others as his hand moved on.

“. . . just south of the equator, within this central land mass,” he was saying. “They’ve pulled back from the centers of population and concentrated a good deal of their remaining primary forces and reserves here, here, and here. Defensive energy projectors, still fully powered and active. An unknown number of fighter craft.” His hand moved rapidly, efficiently. “All along this continental rift. Well protected and deeply dug in to several interconnected mountain ranges.”

Even while deeply engrossed in analyzing the situation, the Lord Marshal could venture homilies. “The body flails, even after the head’s been chopped off.”

As the field commander responsible for the area under discussion, Toal was less inclined to wax philosophic. The Necromonger forces were extensive, but they were not infinite. The quickest and most assured way to subdue an entire world was to obliterate its principal defenses as swiftly as possible and then install a converted, cooperative native administration. Otherwise, it would prove impossible to move on to the next world, and the next. Because all your troops would be tied down occupying a world or two. Local cooperation was crucial to the success and growth of the Necromonger cause. Securing that cooperation was impossible so long as significant resistance persisted.

“If we don’t act soon, this area will become a magnet for continuing resistance elsewhere on the planet. It could even reach off world and draw reinforcements from the outlying inhabited worlds of this system, the ones we hope to intimidate into submission.”

Scales grinned wolfishly. “Give it to me. I’ll go straight into their teeth. It’ll take twenty thousand converts and two warrior ships, no more. I swear it. A week, maybe ten days, and this problem will be disappeared.”

No one looked over from the map as Vaako entered. Their backs were toward him, their attention focused on the rippling and changing display. He stood there, unnoticed, watching. There was something he had long been curious about but had been reluctant to investigate. Others, especially one other, felt he had put it off too long.

Why not now?
he asked himself. When better than in an innocuous moment when the subject of his curiosity appeared engaged not only by the flow of information but also by the words of subordinates?