HELLO BEAUTIFUL

Bishop stepped out into the half light of the forest. He would never admit to himself, never mind anyone else, the relief that he felt to be free of the ship. It wasn’t death that bothered him; he had killed enough people over his span of years for any squeamishness to have long since passed. It was the randomness of it all that bothered him. Fate was not a thought he would tolerate; it destroyed his sense of order, his belief in his own control. That it could have so easily have been him dead on the floor of the ship was not a thought he wanted to toy with. Would Duncan have shot him, given the circumstances? That he wasn’t entirely sure disturbed him as well.

He glanced back at Duncan, whose eyes swept the remainder of the uninjured mercs as they fanned out in twos across the forest floor. Duncan would have given that order and of course the mercs would have followed it without question, without the slightest hint of objection.

Bishop watched the light dapple across Duncan’s frame and looked away before he was noticed. Duncan was probably the only thing in his life that had ever confused him, on more levels than he was comfortable with. He was an enigma.

Duncan’s easy camaraderie shone in stark contrast to his own leadership style he knew, and it made him uneasy to think who the men would really follow. That he might follow Duncan as well, if it came down to it, and that was something he would never allow himself to do.

The more he felt his control slip away, the angrier he became with Theopoulis. His employers didn’t care whether he brought a target home dead or alive, and now Bishop wanted him dead, along with any crew that came with him. He didn’t have to ask if they were on the right planet, he knew Duncan too well, and knew the man did not make mistakes. Ever.

Theopoulis would be here, and Bishop would kill him. There would be nothing the man could say, nothing he could offer, that would change that. He glanced back again at Duncan as he followed behind the sweep of the mercs ahead. Bishop would kill Theopoulis personally, he needed to.
—

Jack raised an eyebrow at the strange meal they had managed to cobble together out of the rest of their food stores. It was strange to think that they had eaten better on the hammerhead planet but it was true. Well, except maybe for the caviar, she could do without that experience. The energy bars were for once the more edible part of the meal. Jack looked again at the lettering on the side of the meal container. Beef stew. There was even a picture of a bowl of beef stew, right there on the outside. She muttered under her breath as she scooped another spoonful into her mouth. “It would probably taste better if I ate the damned picture…”

“There are worse things to have to eat, Jack.” She jumped, a little, when Riddick put his hand on her shoulder. That was four. Four times that Riddick had managed to startle her. They had started to keep score; she knew she did anyway, but it wouldn’t surprise her at all if Riddick did too. It didn’t strike her as something he would forget. She had only ever startled him once, and she wouldn’t even have known it if she hadn’t watched him so carefully for so long. One tiny step back and the beginning of a crouch. She had hidden her grin from him as he had blustered that it was a good way to get killed, which was probably true, but before he had shouted at her she had seen the small flash of something. She swore it had looked like pride, and they had played this game ever since.

Jack snuck another glance at Riddick and Shazza as he sat beside the other woman again. He hadn’t left Shazza’s side since him and Theo had pulled her back into the ship. He passed Shazza a coffee cup and leaned in to nuzzle behind her ear which made her grin and even blush a little. It felt strange for Jack to watch them, like she did something she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t just stop. Dropping her head, Jack grinned and forgot about the taste of the mystery stew for a moment.

“We probably should think about what we’re going to do for food soon.” Shazza looked up as she spoke, at Theo as he stood at the bow and watched the black birds fly in the forward wake. Her hand rested on Riddick’s thigh, to ask him as well.

“Those antelope looked good.” Riddick looked right at Jack as he said it. Five. The corner of his lip twitched ever so slightly at having made her squirm.

Jack looked right back at him and cracked a cocky grin. “Antelope burgers.”

“We’d have to kill it first, Jack. You sure you’re up for that?” She watched his head tilt a little as he looked at her. Anyone who listened would never hear the humor in it, but she saw it, she couldn’t miss it.

“That would make it easier on the antelope.” Her grin grew a little wider. The thought of killing one of the antelopes made her feel a little sick, and she felt her skin flush with cold sweat. She didn’t want Riddick to notice, but one look at his face told her that she couldn’t hide a thing from him. He didn’t say it aloud however, and that made all the difference. “Will you take me with you when it’s time?”

Riddick gave her a hard look; not angry, not derision, just an assessment. He turned to look at Shazza, and Jack watched the silent question fly between them. Only when Shazza gave the tiniest of nods did Riddick turn to her again and nod his own agreement. He would take her with him.
—

Jack had smirked and shaken her head before she wandered down below to her own quarters to keep herself busy. Theo stood now at the bridge, inside the ship with a clear view over the bow in the slowly falling evening light. He had grinned quietly, and lazily saluted Riddick as he walked by with Shazza held in front of him.

The smell of her made his mouth water, the electric touch of her skin, here in this place, made him ache. He had waited for what felt like forever. Normally this wouldn’t really bother him; it seemed he had spent most of his life learning how to wait, until the time was right. Jack had left to go back to her room, and Theo had grinned as they had passed; he wouldn’t bother them no matter what. “We need to finish….” His lips trailed across her arched neck and his hands reached around to cup her breasts and roam over her belly, lower. “What we started.”

Riddick felt his control slip at Shazza’s husky low moan; her body arched into his hands, her thighs parted to allow him access. With hands that trembled he stopped at the door to their quarters and took a deep breath. He couldn’t be rough with her; she was injured, and he couldn’t hurt her further. But when she turned in his arms and looked at him, when he saw the heat in her, a line of pale fire that had just started at her throat, he knew he was lost. “I don’t want to hurt you, Shazza.”

She pulled him away from the spot on her neck that had fascinated him and held his jaw. Her breath came in short pants and the line of fire deepened against the pale skin of her chest. People had asked him over the years why he had shined his eyes. There was the standard answer; that it helped him to better kill in the dark and that had been the reason originally, for survival, but there was this too. There were always ways to tell that a woman was aroused, but before the shine job he had never seen it so clearly. So beautifully. A flush of heat that looked like white fire, down her throat and across her chest, to race in a line down her belly. Like Shazza now.

Her hands traced quickly down his throat and chest, a mirror of her own line of heat, to the waistband of his cargoes, which she pulled closer to her. “Then don’t hurt me. Fuck me. I won’t break, Riddick, and it’ll take more than a knock on the head to keep me from you.”

They both tore at clothes and were barely within their room with a trail of clothes strewn behind them. Riddick kissed her gingerly at first; his hand in her hair before he took a sharp breath and pulled it out, afraid to hurt her. Shazza growled, a low, deep and dangerous sound that made him want to roar in response. Her lips and teeth fastened on him and bit and nipped at him until he kissed her back ardently, her body pressed hard against the wall.

She didn’t back down, but responded in kind. Fearless. He thought again of her as she tore ass across the desert of that strange planet with a wrench in her hand ready to kill him if she caught him. A bump on the head really wasn’t going to stop her; she wasn’t broken, and he sure as hell wasn’t able to break her.

He pressed forward against her until she was pinned flush to the wall, the hard length of his erection pressed against her belly. Shazza broke the kiss and looked up at him, the lust in her eyes as close to a shine job as a person could get. She panted and spread her thighs a little, and pressed her hips forward against him, to make it very clear what she wanted.

Riddick’s feral growl didn’t startle her, and she answered with a smaller one of her own, as he lifted her by the ass and buried himself within her. This wasn’t the wildness born of grief or sorrow or terror. Not like their first night on the Odyssey. This was Shazza at her most raw, and he liked it. Her thighs wrapped around his waist as he pulled back; he held her pinned against the wall with one hand, the other lost in her hair, and slammed back into her. So wet, her muscles rippled to pull at him on the withdrawal, her low short scream drove him forward, faster, with every thrust until his body burned with the exertion. He couldn’t stop; he wanted to make her scream for him forever if he could, if his body would let him. The sound of his name from her lips pushed him spiraling over the edge and he pinned her hard while he came, right after her.

His hands untangled from her hair and he felt a twinge of guilt; he smoothed over her sweat damp curls and kissed the side of her neck in lieu of an apology.

“Again.” He grinned and nipped the salty dip where her neck met her shoulder and carried her to the bed, to take her again.
—

Duncan trailed just behind Bishop as the mercs made their way in a sweep around the ship. The tech officer hadn’t left his side, and stayed on the side away from Bishop. He carried some computer printouts that Duncan had made before they had hit orbit. There was no way to be sure how accurate they were or even if they were what they appeared to be. Maps. It didn’t hurt to have them, and the tech officer had looked at them hurriedly once he was out of the ship. He still sought to bargain for his life, even though Duncan didn’t intend to kill him. There was nothing like the fear of death to motivate a man. Duncan looked ahead at Bishop and wondered what really motivated him.

“Wait…” The tech officer spoke quietly; only loud enough for Duncan to hear. He swallowed hard as Duncan turned to face him. He held the maps, if that’s what they were, carefully in his hands, before him almost as if they were a shield. The mercs had stopped their sweep when they came across the river; several of the mercs had waded into the foreshore. Duncan couldn’t blame them, the air here was strange, and tingled across his skin. He could only imagine what water would feel like in this place. “I think I recognize this…look…” The tech crouched down and spread the pages across his thigh. “The forest…and the river. I wouldn’t swear to it, but look at that curve down there.” The tech pointed to the bend in the river and back at the map.

Duncan nodded at the tech and took note of the man’s sigh of relief. The map had been one that was roughly drawn from one of the computer files that he had decoded. He found, not for the first time, that he really wanted to meet this Theopoulis. His hand rested on the tech’s shoulder. “What’s your name?”

“J…Johns, sir….” He looked fearful, hopeful. He was a merc, like the rest, but he was a tech specialist, not a weapons specialist or a hired gun.

“Nice work, Johns.” Duncan looked up at a shout from one of the mercs that had waded into the river. The man reached down into the water, his head turned to keep from being submerged in the clear, clean blue water. He pulled hard once, and lost hold of what he had in his hands only to go back and pull again.

A fishing net.
—

Anna reached up to take the last of the sheets in before the storm hit. It was still a ways off, but if she didn’t get them in soon she would have to chase them across the grass tomorrow. Which meant her mother would make her wash them again. She sang quietly to herself, just fragments of a song even her mother didn’t know all of the words to. No one did anymore, she thought, so she hummed the tune in the broken parts of the long forgotten song and carefully pulled in the sheets.

Her hands froze when she pulled the corner of the sheet down, the clips forgotten and dropped in the grass. The wind tore at the free corner of the sheet in her hand and ripped the fabric from her and it blew across the grass, but that no longer mattered to her.

It was like being told of dragons your whole life, or fairies, like in the stories her mother read her. What came foremost to her mind however were the songs. Even broken they had always held a power over her. She had heard the elders speak, in hushed tones, about those old stories set to song. Especially as the raids had increased.

She looked out across the grassland sea, at the prow of the ship, her sails flung out wide in the gale that blew behind her. Her heart swelled and she began to cry; she wasn’t sad, she was just so happy, so amazed, that she had no other way to express how she felt. Like dragons, or fairies. Something out of myth that she had very nearly relegated to a childish dream, on the edge of her tenth year. It was so improbable, so impossible. So real.

Anna dropped the basket of sheets and let the wind take them, to set them to blow across the grassland. She turned on her heel and ran for the small house hidden over the edge of the hill.

“Riders! Riders!”

Copyright © October 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx