The two men turned as Joanne and her daughter stepped back on deck. Mother and daughter still held each other but they no longer cried. Theo watched her carefully, watched them both, as they stood nervously against the cabin, out of the rain.
“She’s lost her husband, Riddick.” There was no need for either of them to say it out loud, that Anna had lost a father. On that score they were both so in tune with each other that it would have surprised them. “I don’t know if they want to stay, but if they do…”
“Anna can share a room with Jack, for now. I’ll clear out the other room. When I get back.” Riddick didn’t say whether he would clean it out for Anna or for Joanne; that part would have to be up to Theo himself. “What if they have family somewhere else?”
Theo sighed, he hadn’t asked her, they didn’t really have time and there was a part of him that didn’t want to ask in case she said yes and left him. Riddick felt awkward in Theo’s silence and left his hand on Theo’s shoulder. “Old Thomas is gone too. He had a bunch of papers in his place. I thought they might interest you.”
Riddick reached down to pick up the sack he had dropped on the deck and handed it over to Theo. “Thanks.” It was said quietly, and Theo was touched that Riddick had thought of him, and accepted Riddick’s silent nod as acknowledgment.
‘Now for the hard part’ Riddick thought, as he looked across the deck at Shazza. He doubted they would have heard much of what was said, but one look was enough to let him know that Shazza at least had caught part of it. Her expression had hardened and she watched him carefully as he crossed the distance between them.
She was soaked to the skin and she shivered slightly in the cold rain, but it wasn’t all that made her tremble against his hand. Riddick watched her as she bit her lip, her eyes were hard but there was hurt underneath, and fear.
“Riddick?…” She hated that her voice shook, but couldn’t seem to stop it, the fear, cold and exhaustion had pushed her too far to control it.
He tried to get cold for what he had to do, to make it easier to leave, and then realized that all it did was make it easier for him. “I have to finish this, or they’ll come for us, they’ll hunt us down. All of us.” Shazza resisted a little as he tightened his hold on her, as he pulled her to him.
“I don’t want you to go, what if you don’t…”
His hand cupped her jaw and forced her to look up at him. She tried to pull away and he could feel her fight against the hold he had on her now. In another time he would have simply left her angry. At another time Riddick would have simply thought that’s all she was, angry. But she was afraid, for him, for what she felt for him. For all of them if he was gone.
He pulled her tighter, until her chest was pressed against his, and forced her to look at him. Her eyes set harder as she fought tears, furious at her own weakness and fear. His thumb pulled against her lip first, so she stopped biting it, before it slipped over her cheek as it had done before. An intimate gesture between them alone. ‘Trust me.’
Shazza swallowed against the hard lump in her throat when he pressed his forehead to hers. He didn’t hide his feelings this time, but watched her intently, his goggles raised. There was resolve and incredible strength there, but there was an indefinable quality there as well, a softness that she wouldn’t have believed if she didn’t see it now. He spoke slowly, every word clear and quiet, for her alone. “I’ll always come back for you.”
His lips crushed hers, a bruising kiss that was meant to mark, deeper than skin. To remind her of him. His tongue pushed forcefully past her lips, an aggressive kiss that overwhelmed her and left her feeling limp in his arms. The kiss broke just as suddenly and he stared intently at her, as though he willed her to hear what he couldn’t bring himself to say. The passion in his eyes went far deeper than lust, and she knew he would be back; he would always come back for her. He loved her, even if he could never say it.
“Hey!” Jack glared at him, her scowl looked all the more fierce given the fact that she was still armed. Her lips pinched as if she bit off whatever she was about to say. Riddick could imagine a string of profanity and it warmed him right to his core. He grinned at her and picked her right up off the deck with one arm. It was always easier with Jack; she was so much like him. He ignored her huff of indignation and kissed the top of her stubbled head. “Love you, Jack; try not to kill your new room mate.” He let her down gently and turned his full focus back on Shazza again, to touch her cheek once more, before he slipped over the side of the Moorglade without another sound.
—
Jack stood beside her, at the railing, until long after Riddick had disappeared into the night and rain. Shazza shivered at the touch of Jack’s hand on her arm, to try to pull her inside out of the cold, but she wasn’t about to move. “Shazza, you’re cold, you can’t stay out here all night.”
Jack felt that Shazza would; that she would stay out here all night in the rain and wait for Riddick to come back. She had heard what Riddick had said, that he would always come back for Shazza, but it had scared her too to see him vanish over the side like that. One moment he was here, and held her tight in his arms and the next he was gone.
She pulled at Shazza again and her heart broke, as Shazza turned towards her and she could tell, despite the rain, that the woman was crying. Shazza had always been so strong, even when she was frightened she was strong and it scared her to see Shazza cry. “He’s going to come back. You know he’s going to come back.” Jack thought back to her fight with Riddick up on the deck when Shazza got hurt, and what he had said to her. “He loves you, you know.” It felt strange to say it out loud like that, like she was betraying Riddick somehow to say it, but Shazza finally turned to look down at her, a spark of hope back in her eyes.
As quickly as Riddick had scooped her up before, Shazza had pulled Jack into her arms and kissed her cheek before she pulled her tight. “It’s not hard to see why he loves you so much, Jack.” Shazza smiled when she pulled back to look at her and Jack felt herself blush and grin. To be loved by Riddick was no small thing, and he loved them both.
Theo pulled them both up off the wet deck. “Inside, we need to get you something dry to wear, I’ll stand watch.” He handed the sack to Jack, and smirked at her as she groaned under the weight a little, before she gritted her teeth and swung it over her back. She nearly fell over but managed not to at the last moment. “I’ll let you get started with this; I think you’ll do fine with it. Go on.” He wouldn’t hear any argument, he just stood where Shazza had stood before, his weapon slung ready to use and stared out into the night.
Jack wouldn’t let go of Shazza as Joanne took Shazza’s other arm and they half carried her down below. Inside, away from the rain, Shazza seemed even colder than she was outside and her teeth chattered. “I don’t know what we have that’s dry to get her into…” Jack’s voice trailed off as she dropped the sack against one of the cabinets on the bridge; she would deal with it when Shazza was warm. Theo had wanted her to look over its contents first, and that warmed Jack’s heart at least.
Joanne was soaked as well but ignored the cold as she tried to wring the icy water from Shazza’s hair. Jack ran across the bridge and down below to see what she could find that was dry. They didn’t have much in the way of clothes; it was pretty much what was on their backs. They hadn’t had much of an opportunity to get anything else. Jack stopped as she passed the door of the small room that Riddick had turned into a makeshift gym. There had been a whole bunch of trunks and other things in there that nobody had really had the time to open. It felt weird being in what she had come to think of as Riddick’s room without him being here but she went in anyway.
The trunks were several different shapes and sizes and a few had things in them that she had no idea what they could be. She kept track of them though; one thing you learn quickly as a kid, if it’s heavy, it costs money and a lot of these trunks were pretty heavy.
‘It’s always the one on the bottom’, she thought to herself as she opened the last trunk. A small girlish giggle burst out of her as she pulled things out; she had never seen anything like this before. Joanne wore a dress, and so did Anna, but the idea of Shazza in one of the dresses made her giggle again.
She held one of them up against her chest and the giggle didn’t feel as silly as it did a minute ago. The clothes were beautiful, dusty but beautiful, and it made her feel pretty just to hold it against her. ‘What the fuck do I need to look pretty for?’ That idea didn’t have as much force in her mind as it once would have, and for the first time since she had done it she regretted that she had shaved her head. Then she smiled as she thought of Riddick as he kissed her head and laughed again, her fleeting sadness gone; if Riddick loved her hair the way it was then that was good enough for her.
She rummaged again through the clothes until she saw a deep blue dress that looked like it would fit Shazza. Lots of the others probably would have fit her too, but Jack thought it was the nicest. A quiet voice in the back of her head whispered to her that Riddick would like it too.
She grabbed one for Joanne and, finding nothing that would fit Anna, raced back to her own room for her last pair of clean pants and a shirt. ‘I’ll make a tomboy out of her yet.’ Anna wasn’t sure about the clothes; her first words were that she couldn’t wear boy’s clothes, before her mother snapped at her to get out of her wet clothes right now, no room for any argument.
Jack almost felt shy as she held up the dress she had found for Shazza to wear, as though she expected that Shazza would laugh at her. Shazza didn’t of course; she just gave Jack one of those piercing looks that went right through her, as though she saw exactly what Jack had thought of the dress. Then she leaned down and kissed her on the head as Riddick had done so many times and Jack had to back away, flustered and unsure of what to say.
Jack grinned as Anna came out. The girl looked like a smaller, younger version of Jack. With hair of course. Anna wasn’t at all happy about it either and she sat in a corner of the bridge and sulked. Joanne and Shazza sat closely together and talked quietly, occasionally Joanne cried and Shazza held and comforted her as best she could. Jack knew that she could be no help there.
Jack looked out once at Theo as he stood guard outside. She laid her weapon on the table within easy reach and struggled with the sack Riddick had brought back with him. There were books, bundled sheaves of papers, and rolled up charts. Jack left the charts to the side; she was sure that Theo would like to see those. She got comfortable in her seat and opened the first sheaf of papers.
She didn’t know how long she had sat there; her rear would go numb and she would shift and the tingles would wash over her painfully until whatever had fallen asleep woke up again. Shazza had brushed up against her once, and left her with a cup of something hot to drink; she had taken a sip and forgotten it. She turned page after page; some she would set aside and others she piled neatly in a stack until she had a small pile of papers that she needed to look over again.
A lot of it she hadn’t understood; the history parts, and she had left that for Theo but this, she was almost sure that she had understood this, at least a little. At least now she got why so much of the ship had been made of wood; that had always been really strange to her, as she had spent so much time on ships once she had started to run that anything but a metal ship seemed odd and out of place.
There was metal of course, in the engine, and at a few other key places, and this explained a lot of it. The ship ran on the energy fields, but if everything was made of metal it would be amplified and any time someone touched something, they would get fried. ‘Sure would make for a shorter history.’ So the engine had metal, to hold the charge and convert that energy into motion, and things like heat and light.
Then there was the other side to it. Jack’s mind flashed back to one of the trunks she had moved in search for dry clothes. The spear tips were about a foot and a half long and she could feel the charge even then. They looked deathly sharp, with a delicate damascene scrolling that belied their deadly purpose.
The Moorglade wasn’t just a ship. She didn’t just run on the energy of the ley lines as a way to get around. She was a weapon too. All of her was a weapon, from her reinforced keel, the strip of metal that ran up the blade of her prow down to the metal clips on the deck that had baffled her before. Jack looked down at the diagrams carefully drawn out by Thomas, with their references to histories even older. The spear tips attached to chains were hung over the side, on those metal clips, and the strange metal amplified the charge as they moved across the ley lines until they burned and crackled with energy.
The part that frightened Jack the most was the picture of the figure as it stood in the prow of the ship with the spear tip attached to a long shaft. It looked like the figure was wreathed in white flames. Jack didn’t know if it was real, or a scary story Old Thomas dreamt up to scare children with, but something told her it was very real.
Copyright © November 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx