The Chronicles of Riddick (20 page)

Or Riddick.

Being in prison often damages the mind but frequently improves the body. Diet may suck, but overeating is rarely a concern. So the fugitives stayed together pretty well as they made their way through the twisted, bizarre hoodoo towers and frozen cataracts of black stone. No one fell behind. No one dared to. It was unspoken but understood by all that if someone fell and twisted an ankle, or proved unable to maintain the pace, they were on their own. There would be no improvised stretchers, no willing carriers, to help them along. Even if any of the convicts were inclined to help a comrade in such a situation, everyone knew there would not be enough time. Better one should perish than two more trying to help him.

And all the while, they were being pursued. Not by something as mundane as guards or even hellhounds, but by a danger infinitely more threatening. Implacable, remorseless, and lethal. Dawn.

Hints of it began to show themselves back the way they had come; flecks of illumination, suggestions of sunshine. Innocent enough in themselves, but in reality the advance scouts of an approaching Hell. Survival depended on their remaining within the terminator as they ran on; within that tiny stripe of tolerability that divided Crematoria’s fading, freezing night from its namesake approaching day. Meanwhile, the planet continued its slow but steady rotation, stalking them with a pursuing sun.

Mere thoughts of what was advancing steadily behind them were sufficient to keep them from freezing. That, and the heat of their own bodies as they burned calories to keep running. And always out in front, Riddick leading, searching, scanning with glittering eyes that could see better in the continuing dark than any instrument. Eyes that saw only the immediate future, backed by a mind sharply focused on the moment, and not the morrow.

While the dawn, normally a bringer of life but on Crematoria a burning, fiery angel of death, continued to gain on them.

The thing about the man leading them, was that nothing seemed to slow him down. If the fissure yawning ahead was too wide to jump, he angled left or right until it narrowed sufficiently. If the hill ahead was too steep or too slick with volcanic glass to climb, he would race around it. Where they might have stopped to argue and discuss, he just kept going. For men who had spent much of their lives leading others, it was a relief for a change to follow someone else. Especially someone who clearly knew what he was doing. They knew without having to discuss it what would happen if he did not. So they sucked oxygen and water from their respective suit units and sent to their legs the energy that normally would have been spent on complaining.

They had a bad moment when the big man seemed to have vanished into thin air. Anxiety rising, they searched their immediate surroundings in vain. There was no sight of him to right or left. As for straight ahead, that was blocked by an impossible rock face.

On top of which Riddick stood, waiting when he said he wouldn’t wait. He continued to wait for them to scramble up to join him. No place to fall here, each of them knew. No time to slide back down and try again. No one looked downward, not because they feared the heights they were scaling, but because none of them wanted to see a place where they could never set foot again, and still live.

First one, then another, then Kyra and another, until almost all of them, panting hard, had joined the big man at the top. Slowed by his size, the Guv was last up, but he made it. As he did so, he shot a relieved look behind him. Something was tickling his shoulders, his upper spine, the back of his neck. Something persistent and creeping. It was the glow of the coming dawn. A rivulet of sweat coursed down his cheek.

He knew it would only be the first of many.

XIV

T
he escapees were not the only life-forms pantingly venting carbon dioxide into the thin atmosphere of Crematoria. Spread out within the transport tunnel, the fleeing guards were double-timing it up a rise, flanking the now useless sled rails. The ascent brought the tunnel, and those within, nearer to the actual surface.

It was the guard Anatoli who, after stepping around an unexpected headless body lying between the sled rails, noted the mole hole. Spaced along major and minor transport tunnels alike, capped with tough, heat-resistant alloy, these shafts allowed engineers and service techs to carry out the occasional quick and easy manual check of the terrain above the conduits. There was no reason to bother with one now, of course, but . . .

Anatoli hadn’t survived as a prison guard for as long as he had without taking every precaution in his work, even when precaution seemed superfluous. Now he slowed slightly, frowning at the shaft. No real reason to bother with it, of course. No reason except that years of experience had told him that the best way to keep one’s head on one’s shoulders was to use it when everyone else was ignoring theirs. Besides, carrying out a quick check couldn’t hurt anything, and those were the best, most reassuring kind to make.

“Boss,” he muttered, nodding in the direction of the shaft. Wordless agreement passed between wary superior and valued subordinate. Douruba spoke curtly to the man on his right.

“Malak, grab a look. Check out the flowers.”

The guard protested. “What the shit for? There’s nothing up there. All the slugs are boxed up back in slam. Why waste the time? Because Anatoli says so?”

The slam boss was in no mood to argue. “Because his
nose
says so.”

Grumbling under his breath, Malak turned to comply. Douruba ignored his muttered curses. In a job like this, in a place like this, a man needed to be able to let off steam. Let off steam on Crematoria, he thought. That was pretty funny. Nothing much funny had happened ever since that last fuckin’ quick-tempered merc crew had arrived at his place with their one unsettling package.

Well, it would all work out. They had all the payoff money on hand and the mercs would get blamed for the destruction. The assorted powers that be who needed and funded a shit hole like Crematoria would bitch and moan about the cost of replacement. Then they’d sigh, suck it up, stick their constituents with some artfully hidden special tax, and come in and rebuild. He wouldn’t be around to see it, though. He intended to take his share of the money and retire. To someplace cold. Where it snowed.

Still complaining, the guard at the bottom of the shaft activated the self-powered lift mechanism. There was a grinding sound as the metal cap elevated on screws that were miniatures of the ones that raised and lowered the slam control room. Punching through accumulated crust and dust, it hummed to a halt half a meter above the surface.

Resigned to the work, the muttering guard climbed up and cautiously positioned himself beneath the cap. From there he had a more or less 360-degree view of the surface terrain. A check of his chronometer showed that the sun was still below the horizon. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be up here. No sane person would.

But someone was.

His jaw dropped as he spied the moving shapes. Their movements too loosey-goosey for machines, they had to be human. While their sanity remained a matter for conjecture, there was no question that they were advancing, and advancing fast. They shouldn’t be advancing anywhere, he knew. They should be dead.

That was a correctable anomaly. Bringing up his rifle, he started to level it with the intention of sighting in on the first figure. But just before he could lock on, the advancing column made a sharp turn and disappeared into a fissure. Had they seen him? That seemed impossible. Nobody could spot ground-level movement at such a distance. Or could they? Malak’s thoughts turned, unwillingly, to a certain recently arrived inmate to whom Douruba had referred repeatedly.

“What the hell’s going on up there?” came the impatient voice of the slam boss. Malak looked down.

“Better see for yourself, boss!”

In a moment, Douruba and Anatoli had made their way up to join the first man. Crowded together at the top of the molehole and at first seeing nothing in the still dim light, it took a moment for their eyes to focus and register on the figures that reemerged from the distant fissure, still moving forward but on a tack that kept them well out of range. Only one of them was readily recognizable, and the slam boss wished it wasn’t.

“Riddick . . .”

“No way,” mumbled Malak. “No way. He was down in the tiers when we broke out. How in the hell . . . ?”

“This
is
hell, remember?” snapped Douruba. He started hurriedly back down the shaft.

At the bottom, the new and unexpected development prompted a hasty conference. Various suggestions were mooted, some more hopeful than practical. Those Douruba ignored. If nothing else, he had always been a practical man.

“No chance do they get to the hangar first,” Malak declared vehemently. “No chance.”

“Nothin’ but rock between here and there,” another man put in. “They’re in the crap zone. Black lava everywhere. They’re toast.” On Crematoria, such an assessment was not metaphorical.

“I dunno,” the man standing next to him exclaimed. “That one guy, that Riddick—I don’t like the idea of walkin’ into the hangar with him maybe hangin’ from the ceiling, waiting for us.”

“And he’s not alone,” Anatoli pointed out. “Couldn’t get a for-sure count, but maybe half a dozen total. All armed.”

This revelation spurred more concern. When the uneasy chatter had died down, the slam boss stepped in. “All right. We make
sure
they don’t get to the hangar first.” His expression was hard. “We make sure they don’t get to the hangar at all. Move out.”

They did so, wordlessly and faster than before.

Up above, it was raining. On Crematoria, that meant ash: sometimes brown, occasionally white, but most often black. Where the crust was weak or thin and swirling magma came close to the surface, distant volcanoes and cinder cones erupted from the volatile ground, spewing hot tears of feathery-soft rock. Like black snow, it drifted down to layer the uncompromising ground with shards of shroud.

It also draped the fast-moving escapees in speckled cloaks. The freshly vented volcanic material was always hot. Fortunately, this particular ash fall was not searingly so. Under assault by falling ash and accumulated perspiration, the fugitives found themselves discarding bits and pieces of clothing as they ran. The ash clung to damp, sweaty skin, but it was still better than overheating inside attire that had not been intended for outside use. And there was at least one ancillary benefit: themselves covered in ash, the escapees blended in astonishingly well with their now ash-covered surroundings. Having unintentionally acquired the look of ancient tribal warriors, they ran on, following the big man in the lead.

Except he was no longer in the lead. Or at least, the Guv decided, squinting into the dense ash fall, he was no longer in view. He started to slow, only to be jostled from behind. Angry, he readied a choice couple of words for whoever had bumped into him. Unexpectedly, it was Kyra, the ferret of a girl no one had been able to get close to. Running steadily, smoothly alongside, she communicated without words. A nod forward, a quick shake of the head, and then a lengthening of stride as she moved into the lead. He understood her meaning perfectly. He just wasn’t sure he accepted it.

But there was nothing else to do. Out here, on the surface of hell, he was no longer the Guv. He was just another batch of bound-together carbon molecules, another sack of animate water, waiting for the sun to come up and evaporate him. While it was not an end he looked forward to, it was an end he anticipated and was prepared to suffer. It was one he would probably meet, too. Unless the soft-spoken newcomer who had now vanished into the ash fall could pull off some kind of miracle. The Guv was not confident.

Miracles tended to elude convicts.

Directly ahead of them and still some distance away, the ground shuddered and cracked. Not from tectonic forces, but to allow for a thick cylinder of metal to rise above the surrounding stone and accumulating ash. It was the cap to a second molehole. As soon as open ports appeared below the cap, the lethal tube shape of an assault rifle eased forward out the opening.

The slam boss might move slow at times, the guard behind the weapon thought, but he knew his business. Estimating the best speed the escapees could make over the difficult, tricky terrain, he had chosen this shaft as the site for the ambush. Even so, the guard noted, they were almost too late. The fleeing convicts were really hoofing it. The key word, he knew, was “almost.”

He saw them through the ashfall; not clearly, but well enough to count individual shapes. They were just silhouettes moving toward him, but that was enough. A hand whacked his lower leg and he looked down and whispered.

“We’re just in time. They’re right here. Three o’clock and moving fast.”

“Tough bastards,” another guard muttered from where he was squinched in below the first.

“Be dead bastards in a couple of minutes.” The guard who had spotted the fugitives adjusted his electronic scope. Below him, his companions busied themselves chambering ammunition. A few bursts would be all it would take: death erupting unexpectedly from the ground.

The guard’s view through the gun scope cleared as internal electronics resolved the view. He sighted in on the lead runner—and hesitated. Puzzlement was evident in his voice as he looked up and over the gun barrel.

“Hey. Where’d the big guy go?”

Standing atop the molehole lid, Riddick swung the metal spike around and down, its tip describing a perfect arc through the ash. Formerly an anchor loosely attached to the top of the molehole, it had been pressed into duty for which it had not been designed, but for which it proved more than sufficient. Proof of this arrived in the form of a loud crunching sound as it made direct contact with the startled guard’s face. The face lost.

Finger convulsing on the trigger of his rifle, the already dead guard slipped backward. Stance lost, life lost, he tumbled down the molehole shaft like a rag-doll casually tossed aside by an uncaring child, bouncing and bumping off his stunned comrades who had clustered below. The single spontaneous shot from his weapon alerting the fugitives to the molehole’s position, they unlimbered their own weapons and charged into the fray, firing at the pop-up target Riddick had already abandoned. After years of misery and abuse, the thrill of finally being able to strike back at their tormentors reinvigorated each and every one of them as effectively as a Spring shower.

Man-made chaos complemented the natural state of Crematoria’s surface as the convicts attacked from several directions, careful to keep from spreading out too far lest they catch each other in a dangerous cross fire. Frozen lava provided plenty of cover that they used to good advantage, working their way ever closer to the molehole. Within, guards scrambled to bring their own weapons to bear. But they were constrained by their tight surroundings. With shells exploding on the ground and sending flesh-cutting splinters of rock flying through the port, and others exploding with ear-shattering force against the metal of the molehole itself, it was almost impossible to line up a decent shot.

Meanwhile, the convicts were closing in. As the guards went down the chute, the jubilant escapees crowded around and began emptying their weapons into the narrow shaft. For their part, the guards fired frantically upward, no longer even trying to take aim, just trying to hold off the rain of death that was being poured in on them from above.

Inside the molehole shaft there was no place to hide, no cover to be had. One guard went down, then another. Men kept firing, slamming into one another, bouncing off flesh and walls as they fought to get out of the shaft that had become a cylindrical metal coffin. When the last survivor, wide-eyed and frantic, finally spilled out of the bottom of the shaft like a panicked gerbil, the grim-faced boss slammed the control lever hard over.

Above, the molehole cap began to descend, ratcheting downward until it was once more level with the surface. Elated, the convicts stepped back to savor the small triumph over their despised tormentors. Only one did not. Unsatisfied, her face crazed with hatred, Kyra immediately attacked the edges of the cylinder with the barrel of her weapon.

“Gonna go down there,” she was growling ferociously. “Find ’em. Just cut ’em up, gut ’em up, into little bite-size pieces. Wolf ’em down and shit them over the nearest cliff. C’mon, Riddick. Let’s get nitty-gritty on their asses!” She looked up, frowned. “Riddick?”

There was no response—unless one counted the sight of a broad back and pistoning legs, moving fast and still picking up speed as they shrank steadily into the distance.

She wasn’t sure if the adrenaline flowing through them after their triumph over the guards allowed them to catch up, or if he had subtlety slowed his pace. If the latter, he wouldn’t have admitted to it. Irregardless, the escapees, now five, caught up to him atop an east-facing ridge. Between the ash and the creeping dawn that still thankfully lay behind them, the ambient temperature was well up above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Everyone was grateful for the fact that the ashfall had nearly ceased.

Drenched in sweat and wiping volcanic spew from her face, she drew alongside Riddick as they ran together along the ridge top. Having to reserve oxygen for breathing kept any conversation brief.

“Blasted the crap out of ’em.” She chortled. “Been waiting a long time to do something like that.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “You?”

There was a pause as they pounded along side-by-side, the others keeping pace behind them, before he finally responded. “You even care if you get out of this alive?”