Ch 17
“Stay close Jack.” The air was cool and sweet smelling as the sun slowly set in the far distance. There was no way to tell how much daylight they had left. Riddick held his hand up to the horizon and noted the distance; he didn’t know what it meant, and missed Imam again. Imam would have known. He would have watched the sky for a short while and been able to tell them how long the days were, how much daylight they had. ‘Blue sun, blue water.’
They had walked a short distance from the ship across the long grass, flattened and burned black in the wake of the Odyssey as she crash landed, to look around them. Jack had squirmed free from Riddick’s hand and he didn’t want to go after her, but he didn’t want her to stray past the scorched grass either. He didn’t feel anything out there, yet, but he didn’t want Jack to get too close to the wall of high green grass that surrounded them. The wind had picked up, as the sun set, and carried a strange scent with it, of forests and water and wildness. There was no threat, he would have felt it, but he had lived so long on the lookout for danger that he couldn’t change it, even here where he didn’t feel anything was wrong. Maybe it was the lack of a threat in itself that he found strange.
Shazza squeezed his hand once before she let go, to stay at Jack’s side. There was something here, some strange almost electrical feel to the air. A gentle breeze rustled the grass again and made all the fine hairs on his arms stand up, he wanted to breathe in that clean air until his lungs burst. He wasn’t the only one it had affected either, he noticed. Jack was nearly giddy, with a dangerous goofy grin that promised some sort of mischief. Shazza, well, Shazza was another story. Riddick didn’t know if it was the air, or the breeze, or the strange electric charge, but Shazza seemed more real somehow, she glowed. Her hair, which normally fell down her back in a dark flood of waves, stood out now, each tress of it almost distinct. He watched her throat flush as he reached out to play with her curls; he had almost expected to feel the charge through her hair. She flashed a radiant smile at him before she turned in pursuit of Jack, to keep the young girl out of the tall grass.
Theo stood and faced the sunset and smiled happily as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He stood still, and rolled a long strand of grass between his fingers. “So what the fuck happened, Theo?”
Theo didn’t jump or startle when Riddick walked up behind him silently and asked the question. There was a time when he would have taken great pleasure in another’s unease, when he would have sought to frighten, simply because he could. There was no fear in Theo, just that quiet calm, and for some reason the man’s trust pleased him even more. “All I can figure is some sort of electromagnetic interference. Do you feel that?”
He held his hand just over the grass, and said nothing else. Riddick watched him a moment, before he put his own hand out over the grass. The breeze had picked up all the hairs on his arms but this was different. He didn’t say anything, but held his hand at the barest edge of the slightly warm current of air. It tingled across his skin, and he pulled his arm back when his skin started to itch. He muttered the word ‘electric’ under his breath and turned to look at Theo.
“I didn’t understand it until it was too late to do anything about it; until I felt it with my own hands. So much of the text was hard to decipher…” Riddick watched as Theo’s voice trailed off and he looked skyward to follow the path of another group of the graceful black birds they had seen when they had first exited the ship. From where they stood, the birds flew directly overhead, and in a direct line across the grassland. His hand brushed through the long grass until he felt the strange electric thrum, and wondered if the birds felt it too, if they followed it. He turned back to Theo, his curiosity piqued. “I had deciphered it as ‘roads of power’. It didn’t make any sense to me until right now. They’re ley lines, Riddick. ‘As above, so below’. The same electromagnetic fields that brought us down are right here, at ground level.”
“That makes sense…” Riddick muttered it under his breath as he stepped forward into the tall grass and dropped down to touch the ground below his feet. It was stronger the closer he got to the ground; it didn’t hurt, and he didn’t feel threatened in any way. His skin came up in goosebumps as all his hair rose at once, not just his hair either; the feeling was almost sensual and the pit of his belly tightened in response. He turned back to watch Shazza as she walked along the edge of their downed ship. Jack had said something that made her laugh, and he watched her as she broke into another dazzling smile, her head flung back as she laughed. He didn’t know how long he stood and watched her, but she must have felt his gaze, and turned back to look at him. Everything else around them vanished in the space of that one spark that left him giddy and light headed. ‘Is it this place, or is it her …It’s her.’ He shook his head to clear the vision of her naked beneath him in the long grass and reluctantly turned back to Theo. “We’re not going to get the ship off the ground again, are we.”
Theo looked over at Riddick and knew it wasn’t really a question. “No. We could take forever repairing the electrical and computer systems in the ship, and there’s no guarantee that these fields wouldn’t short them out, even if we could fix them. I suppose we could try to adapt them, but there’s no guarantee that what would work here would work up there.” His voice trailed off, as with Riddick’s question that wasn’t really a question, Theo knew the answer he had given wasn’t really an answer. At some other time that would worry him greatly, but as he watched the sky bloom into pink and gold, he just couldn’t seem to care about something like being able to leave this place.
Riddick took in another deep breath and looked around him, with an eye towards encampment. “We should go back to the ship for weapons, maybe do a little recon. If we’re going to be here a while.” Theo dropped his head and tried not to grin like a little kid at the idea of Riddick and his plans to stay. He listened on for a while as Riddick talked about food and water, and the need to find out what sort of predators, if any, they faced. It was strange the way everything had happened, but Theo was profoundly grateful for the hand of fate that set his path across Riddick’s. He wouldn’t be here otherwise.
Shazza shuddered as Riddick’s hand brushed over her back. He leaned in to nuzzle her ear, and told her what they intended to do. His words said one thing, but the sound of his voice, that low purr against her skin, the soft brush of his lips over her ear and down her neck said another. It said in touch what his expression had said earlier, and it made her tremble, and it made her wet. Neither of which was lost on him, as he inhaled the scent of lust from her. “Later.” Shazza felt naked before him at that moment. And she didn’t care.
The ship was dark, which wasn’t a problem for Riddick, as they filed back into the closed space. It seemed so much smaller and constricted after they had been outside. “Can I…” Riddick had handed weapons to Theo and Shazza, and he felt Jack’s hand on his waist as she leaned in to get a better look. His first thought was to say no, he could almost feel the words push out of him. No way was he about to let her shoot herself in the foot or something else. There was a dart gun at the bottom of the weapons locker, and he gave her that, and a flashlight. He watched Jack grin as she put them in the pocket of her oversized cargo pants and had to suppress a grin himself.
Riddick and Theo pushed the large bay doors closed again, and they followed the tree line for a short way. Riddick took the lead, followed by Jack and Shazza, with Theo in the rear. They hadn’t discussed the order; it just seemed natural to them. Riddick scanned the ground ahead and kept an eye on the wall of the forest on their left side. He still felt no threat.
They came across the stream about a mile from the ship. The water was clear and cool but he crouched down to check by smell and lastly by taste. He wouldn’t swear to it, and he told Theo that they would have to test the water first, but somehow he knew that those tests would come back clean as well. Even in this he looked for a threat and found none. It went against everything he had ever known, against every instinct that had kept him alive for this long.
His hand lingered across Shazza’s waist as he helped first Jack and then Shazza over the small stream. He broke into a chuckle as he held his hand out to Theo, who had just watched the affectionate short embrace between Riddick and Shazza. “I don’t want to cuddle with you, Riddick.” Theo took the offered hand nonetheless and returned the favor as they scrambled up the other side of the stream. He had almost been killed by Riddick earlier, and now he joked with him, as though they had been friends for years.
They looked up ahead at an outcropping of stone that walked out from the forest wall and decided that it was a good place to stop and turn around. Riddick looked back behind them and caught the glint of the ship far in the distance now, about a mile and a half, he guessed. The sun was a fiery ball on the horizon; it would likely be full dark when they returned. He looked over at Jack and was glad that she had bugged him; that flashlight would come in handy for the others.
Riddick sat on one of the rocks and reached out for Shazza to sit down with him; there was that spark again as their hands touched. He had never had that before either and he wasn’t willing to write it all off to the electromagnetic fields on the planet. He squeezed her hand and tore his eyes from her, although it wasn’t easy, so that he could keep an eye on Jack as she played on the rocks.
The quick gasp from above them caught his attention and he turned to look up at Theo, who stood frozen on the rocks. “Are you…”
Riddick didn’t get a chance to finish, but dropped Shazza’s hand to scramble over the rocks to stand beside Theo as the other man spoke. “Just get up here Riddick, and tell me what you see.”
It was hard to make the shape out, but it wasn’t a natural line; whatever it was, it had been crafted. Riddick looked back at Shazza, and at Jack; a silent command to beware. Shazza unholstered her weapon and crept up the rock pile, with Jack a step behind her, pressed against her hip. Riddick motioned with his palm down, a signal to stay, as he moved down through the rocks at a low crouch. He stood still, his head tilted to the side, and felt. He still felt no threat, which wasn’t the same thing as there being no threat present.
Whatever it was, it had been here a long time, and Theo and Riddick crept closer. The vines and weeds had nearly buried it, but they couldn’t hide its shape. Theo felt himself go pale at a dimly remembered image. ‘No. It could not be’.
Riddick held his weapon up as he carefully pulled some of the vines away, and revealed more of the elegant shape. One hard tug and the green canopy was pulled loose, to reveal the shape of what looked like a ship’s bow. Theo’s hand ran over where her name would be; he didn’t really expect to find anything, customs weren’t likely to be the same everywhere, but he did it anyway.
The letters swam in front of his eyes, and broke apart in the stars and white spots that formed there in his shock. ‘Theo!’ Riddick’s voice sounded across a far distance, and he had to shake his head to clear it when Riddick grabbed his arm. He didn’t know where to begin, so just swept his arm up and cleared a little more of the dirt away from her bow.
‘The Moorglade.’
Copyright © October 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx