The plans had changed; up until now it had really been Bishop’s show but that was no longer the case, now that Bishop was dead. The tech officer, Johns, and the last merc that had been on their team stood quietly and looked at Duncan, for direction, any direction. He still wanted to find Theopoulis, that much hadn’t changed, but he didn’t work this way; he didn’t kill innocents. He didn’t kill women and children and gun down whole families. There may have been a time when Bishop wouldn’t have done that either. He couldn’t change what had already been done but he could stop any more damage.
That he still wanted to find the target, to find Theopoulis, interested him. It wasn’t just about the kill anymore, he was curious about the man, about what had driven him here, and he wasn’t entirely sure what he would do once he met him. That he would meet him he didn’t doubt. Duncan looked up at the sound of shouts from the other side of the village; this had to end. He turned to the merc, who listened eagerly; he hadn’t been happy with how Bishop had turned events either. “We need to stop this now. The explosives team has pretty much done everything they can do; I need you to take that side of the village and start reining those mercs in. We’ll start from this end.” Duncan pointed to a place just past where they stood now. “We’ll meet back up there and regroup at the ship and see what we’ve got to work with.”
The merc nodded and took another look at where they had left Bishop, before he set off towards one end of the village. Duncan looked over at the pale and shaken tech officer and watched as he stood against the wall; the man looked like he would just run. Like the other merc, Johns glanced at the body of Bishop first, and then he looked back at Duncan, specifically the knife wound on his hip. “Is that deep?” Duncan let him touch the wound; his hands shook briefly, but then steadied. He needed something to do, Duncan knew, something that made sense. “Bishop said that ship will be here in three days…”
Johns had let the question hang, unable to finish the thought. Duncan winced as he pressed a piece of cloth cut from the inside of his jacket over the cut; it wasn’t as deep as he had thought but it hurt like hell. He had no way to stop that ship, even with the radio he didn’t have the voice authorization to contact who he needed to contact in time in order to stop it. Bishop had never ceded that one piece of authority; maybe he had always known how things would turn out.
There was a part of him that didn’t want it to stop; he needed an airlift as well, and there were the other mercs to think of, and the wounded. The thousand Company men he could do without; they would make what had just happened to this village look tiny by comparison; he didn’t kill this way. He had always planned for a way out, and in the end that’s how he saw the Company ship, just another way out, but it was a way out he wasn’t sure he wanted anymore.
“We’ll have to deal with that when it comes up. Right now we need to get this.” Duncan waved his hand at the village as it burned. “Ended.” He hadn’t expected Bishop to call in so many people; he had thought it might be fifty, maybe a hundred. A manageable number. Now he needed time to think about what would happen next, and deal with it when it came. He looked at the tech finally before he spoke again. “Where are you on all this?”
Johns gaped, he hadn’t expected to be asked what he wanted so openly, and then he quickly composed himself. His voice dropped to an almost shy whisper as he looked out across the field they had crossed earlier and turned back to Duncan, his voice a little firmer. “There’s something here. I…I don’t know what it is exactly, but I don’t want to leave.” Duncan just nodded, he couldn’t argue with that and, like the tech officer, he couldn’t explain it either; he had simply accepted it at face value. He didn’t really want to leave here either; when he had walked through that strange field he had felt connected to this place, that it was his and that he belonged here.
He set out across the square to sweep his section of the town and felt a pang of something, guilt maybe, as a family ran across his path. They carried what they could and dodged Duncan and Johns with a small start. The sound of heavy weapons fire slowly faded away to nothing as the other mercs stopped one mission and began another. That it happened with ease pleased him, with what was about to happen they would need everyone they had, and he didn’t want to have to kill anyone else unless he had to. It also meant that there would be no struggle over the death of Bishop; they would accept his leadership.
Which is how he knew that when he heard the short scream from the low building up ahead, that his men weren’t responsible for it.
—
Riddick and Shazza moved around to the back of the burning buildings; there were fewer people there and Riddick wanted to avoid any complications until they found out what happened to the girl. He reached back occasionally to make sure that Shazza was still with him; after a while he just reached back because he liked to. Shazza would reach forward and their fingers would graze over each other and then they would move on, neither said a word.
He moved quietly between two buildings, crouched low to the ground, to overlook the square. Several mercs walked down the middle of the open area; their weapons were out but they appeared more relaxed. He looked back towards Shazza; she watched the mercs too from around his hip. Her expression hardened as she eyed the mercs warily; whatever had happened here it looked to be over. Almost.
They still had no idea where Anna was or who had her, although Riddick didn’t believe the mercs had her. If they did, he would have heard it by now. There were lots of times when he was blindfolded and whether he could see in the dark or not didn’t matter, so he learned to listen. Sometimes it was just a conversation, a word. Sometimes it was the sound of a weak chain or the slightest whistle of air that gave away a weak spot. He listened hard.
The air was filled with the sound of fire, and the downpour continued, there was the tread of the mercs as they advanced further across the square. Out of this background noise they were both jolted by a short sharp scream that pierced the air. Shazza bolted in the direction of the scream and Riddick found himself racing behind her. He wouldn’t have caught up with her at all if she hadn’t fallen, a break in her stride that let him catch up with her. ‘Damn, that woman is fast, even in the dark she’s fast.’ There was no time to admire her for it; she was already at the rear entrance to a low slung building at the far end of the village, close to a river by the sound of it.
Riddick pulled her up short before she kicked the door in. He held her a little tighter when she rounded on him, teeth bared, ready to kill anything that got in her way, even if it was him. He didn’t get pissed off, he just held her a little tighter until she stilled. The anger flickered over her features and he had to remember that she wasn’t angry at him, she was just angry.
He crept catlike down the side of the building, his altered sight sought out anything in the back wall of the building that would let him see what they were about to get into. There was a shuttered window up ahead, it’s slats not quite closed. No one else would have been able to see anything, not in this blackness, but that wasn’t an impediment for him.
There were three men, that he could see and all of them looked to be armed, or had weapons close enough that they as well have been. He could feel the growl deep in his chest as he recognized one of the faces of the men; he had been the one that had leered at Shazza. There was no sign of the girl, which didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Riddick just got hotter as he thought of the little girl in their company.
He moved back towards Shazza; she hadn’t moved but he could tell it was a struggle for her. Everything about her was tense in an effort to contain the anger that was evident in her expression, in the way she held the weapons she held. ‘She’s going to rip them apart when she finds out who took the kid’ he thought with that same flush of pride.
Before he managed to get to her another short yelp came from within the low structure itself. There was no way to stop her this time when she kicked the door in and flung herself into the building, all he could do was follow her and defend her back.
All Shazza could hear was the girl’s scream; in her head, her heart, it never stopped but instead filled her until it drowned out everything else. Enraged, she burst into the room and startled one of the villagers that stood by the door. She didn’t think about her actions, she just acted; the bone knife whickered out and the man fell. Not dead yet but it wouldn’t matter for long, because he would be soon enough.
She rushed into the room and Riddick followed a step behind. The speed with which she had killed the man by the door should have surprised him but it didn’t; she was furious. Beyond furious. She was like an enraged mother bear, and he had to give thought to her safety because she was beyond the ability to care. The man that had leered at her before took a swing at her, to grab her or to hit her, Riddick wasn’t sure. Either way it didn’t matter, the man’s blow was not so much dodged as it was swatted out of the way as Shazza advanced on him relentlessly.
Her blade swung and swung again and cuts opened on the man’s torso. Riddick realized that she could have killed him at any time, but that she had deliberately held back. Her voice was a dangerous sibilant whisper; terrifying for it’s tightly held control that could so easily be let loose. That he knew she wanted to let loose. “Where is she.”
It wasn’t a question and this wasn’t a conversation. Riddick looked to the other side of the room and shot a man that had come out of a doorway; he had no idea how many others they faced. This was not the way he would have done this but he was no longer in control of the situation, Shazza was, and she was pissed.
A child’s startled yell came from the room behind the villager and Riddick watched as Shazza’s face contorted in barely controlled hate. The villager she had cut backed up against the wall, his hands up, unsure who to be more concerned about, Shazza or Riddick.
“Shazza…” Riddick swept the room again; two men had come out of another room and he didn’t like the odds of this now but he didn’t think Shazza would stop until they got what they came for, or until the villager was dead, whatever happened first. Shouts came from outside the building and Riddick decided to even the odds a little; he shot the two men and scanned the room again.
A crude blanket doorway opened beside Shazza and a man came out. He held the young Anna in front of him, a gun to her head. Riddick watched as Shazza turned toward the sound of the child’s crying, like a snake about to strike. ‘Fuckin glad she’s on our side.’
They stood at a standstill. Shazza could easily kill what was apparently the leader of the villagers and Riddick could quite easily kill everyone in the room with one simple burst of weapon fire. Even if there were more men outside, Riddick was sure that he and Shazza could easily escape out the back. But there was Anna to consider. With a gun to her head she would surely die the moment any gunplay began.
In slam, Riddick had seen many victims of rape; he knew what to look for. It hurt him somewhere deep that he looked at Anna for those signs. The girl was dirty and disheveled, her clothes were torn, her hands tied in front of her, a filthy gag in her mouth. Could he be positive? No, but he didn’t believe that she had been raped; roughed up, but not raped. He hoped.
“Let her go.” Shazza’s hissed out the words, every sound a struggle against the scream that was right behind it, raging to get out. Riddick watched everything in her coil and tense as she fought for control, her lips pulled back in a primal snarl.
There was more noise from outside and he watched in the dimly lit room as the men he held pinned immobile under the muzzle of his weapon smirked at the thought that reinforcements had arrived.
A nearly inaudible creak sounded from across the room; if the floorboards hadn’t given away the presence, nothing else would have, the man was silent. This was all going to hell fast. He whispered Shazza’s name but Shazza was somewhere else, beyond reason. Riddick had rarely killed in that state; he had rarely let everything in him loose, to let instinct take over. That was where Shazza was now, and no whisper would sway her now; he had to reach Anna and hope the girl wasn’t so shattered that she was beyond reach as well. “Anna, I need you to close your eyes Anna.”
Duncan watched from his place behind the villager that held the little girl; he had heard the screams and had crept into the building himself rather than risk a full out assault. He watched Riddick first, fascinated by him again, the ultimate predator. His knife was out and he crouched, his muscles bunched in preparation of a strike. Duncan took in the fiery woman just to his left, a predator in her own right, her expression grown fiercer as she took in another threat to the young girl. He had no doubt that the girl was who they had come for; he would have known it even if Riddick had not called softly to her, so out of place with the killer Duncan knew he was.
It would be so easy for Duncan to raise his muzzle just a little more and to the right; he could kill Riddick easily. Of course, he would then have to kill the woman too; he didn’t believe she would let him live for killing her…mate? The child would also likely end up dead. This wasn’t his way; Bishop might cut down women and children, but he didn’t, he wouldn’t.
His muzzle swung up and to the left gracefully and a bloom of blood formed a halo around the villagers’ head. The man stood frozen for a moment, as though his body didn’t realize, couldn’t comprehend, what had happened, before it slid to the floor. He only hoped that the child had taken Riddick’s advice and closed her eyes.
Shazza raced forward to pull the girl away from the dead man, her hands pulled at restraints and gag until the girls arms were flung around her neck. Duncan made a point not to point his weapon anywhere in the direction of either of them. He had surmised that the woman would kill for Riddick but he had no doubt that Riddick would kill for her.
If they had each taken just a couple of steps they would have been close enough to touch. Grey eyes held silver ones for a moment in the silence, before Duncan nodded to Riddick and backed silently out of the room.
Copyright © November 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx