Three
“I guess something went wrong.”
Shazza bent down to offer Jack a hand up. Jack B. Badd is what it had said on the side of the cryo locker before the torch had burnt through the sealed doors and the small plaque on the side.
Jack was a young boy no older than eleven or twelve, dressed like a street urchin and looking the worse for wear which was saying something even on a back lane transport like the Hunter-Gratzner. He knew something was wrong immediately, and stayed quiet as he listened to the two women as they described the crash, Johns, and the escaped convict, Riddick.
Jack was accustomed to things going wrong, and knew that to panic about it wouldn’t change anything. Even at the age of twelve he had grown cold in some respects, and calculated the odds for survival in the new situation he had found himself. He hadn’t run because he had sought some grand adventure, but interesting times is what had found him nonetheless.
He knew that this trip would be different the moment he had stolen enough to book passage on the Hunter-Gratzner, and found himself behind a bound and fighting Riddick. Jack had bought passage in the cheapest berth; they didn’t care about his name, or where he was going; only that he had the credits for the trip. When it came time to give his name, he had thought of Riddick, and without another thought, gave his name as Jack B. Badd, in honour of his newfound hero.
“Are you all right, kid?” Shazza had eyed Jack carefully, as she looked for injuries. She had called Jack a kid, but there was no cruelty in the words, just concern. Shazza’s voice was hard because she was; it wasn’t anything personal.
Jack decided that he would stay by Shazza, there was something about the woman that said he would be all right, and that he would get through it. Fry was another matter altogether. She was the captain, but something about her had Jack stay closer to Shazza, almost as if he wanted Shazza to protect him somehow.
Paris. Paris P. Ogilvie.
Shazza and Fry had thought he was dead in his cryo locker, at first. It wasn’t until Jack saw his breath fog the cracked plexi that they realized that he was just asleep. If ever anything on the whole trip was to describe Paris, it was that when others had work to do, he could be found asleep. He was absolutely shameless about it, if that helped any.
As with everyone else, upon realizing his situation, his thoughts turned to how best to survive the new turn of events. He had settled upon Fry. Not because she appeared more capable or intelligent, but because she appeared to already be in charge. The closer you were to the one in charge, the more likely you were to see your way through was his line of thinking. That, and to be honest, there wasn’t much that he could do.
He watched as Shazza knelt by another series of cryo lockers and used a cutting torch to free a man and then three younger boys who appeared to be Chrislams. All four were dressed in the long flowing robes common to those of their faith; a blending of the Old Earth religions of Christianity and Islam. Paris, like a few of the others, had boarded the Hunter-Gratzner on Tangiers 3. He guessed that the Chrislams had boarded there as well.
“Praise be to Allah.” To merely be alive was a gift from God in itself, and Abu “Imam” al–Walid put his efforts to seeing to his three charges, Suleiman, Hassan and Ali. All three boys were the sons of Sheik Abdullah on Tangiers 3, and nephews of a powerful Saudi water desalinization baron. Imam was to escort the three boys on Hajj, to New Mecca. There was a basic goodness in the man. Where the other survivors, upon waking, thought to their own survival, Imam went to the survivors in turn, to see that they were unhurt.
Imam and the others had gone outside, when no other survivors were found. Fry had remained, her face grown cold and hard again once the others had left, she said she wanted to wait and make sure that Johns was okay.
She sized up her options. There was Shazza, who she saw as a rival. Zeke, Imam, and Paris; one of whom was spoken for, for the moment anyway, and the other two weren’t really options at all, not for her. Four children. Riddick, an escaped convict, a psychopath from what Johns had said. And Johns himself.
Fry knew she would need help to get off the planet, and would need help to survive while they were stranded there, who knew for how long. She took a long look down the dark nest of broken pipes, and made her choice; she chose Johns.
—
Johns crept through the tangle of fallen metal, wire and other debris, angry with himself for his shakes, although by this point he was willing to blame it on anything but what it was, fear. There was something wrong with this planet. It was quiet. Even within what was left of the ship they should have heard something by now.
Something other than that strange sibilant whisper that you would catch and that would fade before your mind could make sense of it. He felt like a kid in a carnival funhouse, waiting for the monsters to jump out from around the corner.
Except here, the monster would slither up silently behind him and slip a sharpened piece of metal across the “sweet spot”, the abdominal aorta, tucked against the spine and just to the left, and drop him dead immediately. Some people told ghost stories, he had Riddick. He fought against the urge to run his hands over the wound.
He knew something was wrong when he entered a more open space amidst the wreckage, he could almost feel it, as if even the air had gone still. Johns reached for his sidearm and realized, too late, that he didn’t have it with him; it must have fallen off at some point during their rough landing.
A flicker of dread cut through him at the sudden whisper before the cold steel ankle restraints bit into the skin under his chin, choking him. It wasn’t anger that drove him; it was the cold stab of terror. After all the things he had done to Riddick when he hunted him down, when he captured him, kept him chained; he couldn’t imagine Riddick would kill him quickly.
He flailed at the powerful legs above him with the only weapon he had left, a telescoping baton. If Riddick had his hands free he would have taken it from him easily, but for the moment Riddick was still restrained, and in a weakened condition after being starved, after cryo, and the crash.
He had thrashed and fought under Riddick for a moment longer before he finally dislodged him from whatever he was holding on to. The fear was a living thing in him, and he hated Riddick for making him feel it. This man, bound, bitted and blindfolded, had made him whimper in terror, and he hated him for it. He would kill him for it in a heartbeat, but they both knew that he wouldn’t do it.
Not for any sense of misplaced nobility, something Johns had squandered a long time ago, but for his own reasons. He lowered the baton from the top of its arc, he knew that if he were to hit him when he was down, Riddick would smell the weakness, the fear, on him, and would use it any way he could. “One of us is gonna get hurt one of these days, and it ain’t gonna be me.”
—
“Is he really that dangerous?”
Fry had stood in the shadows and watched as Johns beat the prisoner before he dragged him across the debris of the ships’ deck and secured him with his hands behind his back to one of the few posts that was still standing.
Johns looked her over quickly, as she watched Riddick. His adrenaline raced from his struggle, and there was that deeper call, the survival instinct that drove him towards sex in a shrugging off of near death. He was a lot like Riddick in that way, he supposed. Take what you need when you need it. But not just yet, and not here. He could almost feel Riddick smiling at him, although he knew that was impossible with the bit in his mouth. It didn’t change his urge to get away from the man’s blindfolded gaze.
“Only around humans.” Johns had said it loud enough for Riddick to hear, although he was pretty sure he could have whispered it and the man would have heard him. It was also said for Fry, as he moved a step closer to her, he almost brushed against her as he made a point of moving, and moving her with him, out of the suddenly exposed bay. He felt Riddick’s gaze on him even as they left the ship, and hid his relief in a loud sigh as he held Fry’s arm to help her past some fallen pipes.
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