HELLO BEAUTIFUL

“We’re not alone it seems.” Bishop, like the others, had been frozen still by the sight of the fishing net, and what it meant to their search. He turned to watch Duncan stride over to the foreshore and examine the net for himself.

Duncan ran his hands over it; it was relatively new, and in good repair. Not only were they not alone, but this place was visited frequently. He wondered if Theopoulis was with those people now and if that was something he had planned on or if he had stumbled upon them they way that they had done.

It didn’t surprise Duncan that he thought so much about the man Theopoulis; he was surrounded by his books and papers and all the things that the man thought he had managed to keep secret. He nodded, more to himself than anyone else, as he followed the current of the river with his eyes. He glanced back at Bishop, and then at the tech, Johns. “These people are nearby, and I doubt our quarry would come all the way out here for nothing. If we find them…” Duncan held the net up again before he dropped it back into the river. “We’re likely to find Theopoulis.”

Duncan had the tech lay out some of the maps on a dry spot on the forest floor. “We need to track the course of this river, if it’s possible.”

Johns looked down nervously at the maps and then back up at Duncan. It was another offer to make himself indispensable, but he was afraid. These weren’t really maps, not in the sense he had been used to all his life. They were rough, without names or reference points. If not for the bend in the river at that precise point he would likely have not found any use for them at all. His hand shook as it traced over the pages, to follow the line of the river. “The…the forest continues for a while, and then…nothing. I don’t know what this is, but it’s big, a big empty space, whatever it is. The river looks to run along here, the edge. To here…there’s some sort of low hills I think.”

Duncan stood up to watch Bishop as the tech spoke. Bishop stood straight, with his arms behind his back, in a show of relaxation, but Duncan knew differently. He watched the muscles twitch at his jaw and down his neck, until Bishop found a reason to look away, to bark orders at the mercs as they walked out of the river. He sent one man back to the ship to alert the others. Bishop cast a quick glance at Duncan before he turned and looked downriver. “We make a sweep downriver. If Theopoulis is with these people, we’ll take him there.” He shot a hard look at the tech officer before he continued. “See that we can get a signal out. I want that pulse measured. I want more men here within the week.”

Duncan smiled coldly when Bishop had turned away again. Bishop was not a man that repeated himself; he expected you to listen the first time. That he repeated the point only drove home how desperate Bishop was, and made Duncan’s advantage all the clearer. The tech had gathered up almost all of the papers and was about to stand when Duncan pressed his hand down on his shoulder. “Don’t be too quick locating that signal, Johns.”

The tech gaped for a moment, as he watched Duncan warily. He didn’t understand why Duncan wouldn’t want him not to find the signal, and looked into Duncan’s cold grey eyes, to try to find the reason there. He tore his eyes away to look at Bishop up ahead before he looked at Duncan again, and nodded.
—

Riddick eased over carefully onto his back and pulled Shazza into his arms; his hands ran over her sweat slicked skin and pulled strands of her hair out of her face. His fingertips tickled the line behind her ear and it made him smile to hear her quiet snort of laughter, her nose buried against his chest. Eyes closed tightly for a moment, he rested back against the pillow and squeezed her tightly. “I thought I lost you.”

Shazza listened to the cold tone of his voice, and she also listened to all the things underneath that he could never say aloud. The need to be cold alone told her all she needed to know. That he held her so close, his affection, and the desire that was so powerful just now. He had shown her with everything in him how much he wanted her, not just as a woman, but as Shazza. She rested her hand on his chest over his heart and they stayed like that for a moment. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.”
—

The wooden wheel was warm under his hands. Theo ran his hands over it carefully; it had been here for about a thousand years and every one of those years could be felt through the wheel. He stood at the bridge and thought of Olias, dead all these long centuries. The king that he had spoken of to Jack, the man had stood right here where he stood. It was Olias that had originally drove off a military invasion of Trieste Nine; the details were sketchy, and he hadn’t been able to decipher much of the text.

Over a thousand years ago, “Old Earth” had taken to the stars with a vengeance. It was much like the days of the gold rush, or the westward expansion, the colonization of Earth’s moon, or Mars. Those who left first were a dangerous and hard breed; after all, they all had some reason to escape, or to exploit the escaped. As the years went by, and more and more people left Earth, people on those new settlements were pushed out further by the same forces that had pushed them off of Earth, with those that sought to exploit them always a step behind.

Some had come to Trieste Nine and decided they weren’t going to be pushed anymore. He understood that, after all he never wanted to leave this place either. The raiders had come, as they had always come before. The attacks brought the attention of a vastly expanding military force that had been created ostensibly to protect the settlers. In truth it exploited the situation to seize power, until it became “The Company”, as it was known today.

The settlers had grown fed up of running, of being forced from their homes, and stripped of their possessions. They grew tired of having their women raped, or slaved out. They had decided to stay and fight, and they united under a man from a local village, known only in the records as Olias of Sunhillow.

Theo looked down again at the wheel in his hands. There was no record that he could find that showed when they had built the ships, but they had been instrumental in driving the invaders off. Theo supposed that the same electromagnetic anomalies existed then, as now. The ships would be an incredible advantage. And now Theo stood at the wheel of the Moorglade, Olias’ ship.

‘Fate’. To be here in this place, aboard the Moorglade. To have found Riddick. Theo had thought about that since Riddick had pulled the ship, about fate.

He looked out over the bow of the ship and his heart stopped cold as he spotted the sheet as it flew across the grassland in front of them. It was clean and white, not some tattered rag that could have come from anywhere. He looked down to the mechanism to stop the ship before he turned around to shout as loud as he could for Riddick to get up here.

Riddick bolted to door and yelled out to Theo, who answered that they may have company soon and to be prepared to stop. Shazza was already dressed, except for her boots, by the time Riddick has crossed the room once more to do the same. He watched as she slipped the hand carved bone knife he had made her into her sleeve again. They had access to all sorts of other weapons, and he had expected her to replace the knife he had made for her for one of those, but she hadn’t. He had never felt that way before, and didn’t know what to say about it, so he said nothing and quickly got dressed.

Jack was already out in the hallway, dressed, and they all went up onto the bridge to join Theo, who quickly explained what he had seen and what he intended to do. Jack accepted the dart gun and the small knife that Riddick handed to her, before she went back up front to help Theo adjust the massive sails to stop the ship.

Riddick pulled Shazza to him and kissed her fiercely, a deep kiss that had her knees feel weak again, as they stood by the cabinet that had become their weapons locker. He had wanted to tell her not to get hurt, to let him protect her. There was so much he wanted to say, but he just kissed her instead. If things got bad, it was what he wanted to remember.

They could feel the ship slow beneath them, as the sails were turned in such a way that the wind wouldn’t fill them. The Moorglade slid gracefully to a stop against the low foothills that lay ahead of them. Riddick held his firearm at the ready and with a look to Theo, answered by a nod; the two men stepped carefully out onto the deck of the ship.
—

The forest was still and quiet, except for the rustling of the canopy; the cover was thick enough that they were sheltered from any harsh weather above. Duncan had taken point, with the tech, Johns, at his side. Mercs had fanned out to the flanks and some had stayed behind with Bishop.

‘He must feel real fucking safe back there.’ Duncan would have preferred to have kept Bishop in front of him, where he could see what he was doing, but that was never the way things were done. The mercs were another question, and even Bishop had to wonder on which side those mercs would fall once everything went wrong. Bishop had wanted the tech to stay behind and walk with him, and there had been a moment of tension before Bishop had snorted and had one of the other mercs carry the things that he wanted carried. He played it like a victory but both Duncan and Bishop knew that wasn’t the case.

The tech looked down at the papers in his hand less frequently as they had moved out into the vast grassland beyond the forest wall. Duncan watched him as he stared around him, at the raging storm that blew up over the forest behind them, the high grass as it whipped in the wind.

He couldn’t blame him; there was something in the air here that he had never felt anywhere else, not in the hundreds of worlds he had been on over the years. It was the tech that felt it first. He let out a gasp as the tingle began, and turned to look at Duncan, who had also stepped into the strange air of the ley line. “Electromagnetism….” Duncan looked over as he stepped further into the strange energy field. Johns had started to speak, just a mumble under his breath as he checked the readings on the handheld monitor he carried.

Duncan held his hands out to the side as he walked through the high grass. “Is this safe?” He asked the tech even though he knew, somewhere inside him he just knew, that the energy was completely safe. It danced over his skin and made all the hairs stand up. He closed his eyes and for one brief moment shut out the fact that Bishop, the mercs, this hunt, all of it, was here. For one moment he stood alone on the vast grassland as that energy moved through him. He had never felt anything like that before. He felt a part of everything; he could hear every blade of grass, and every moan of the wind. The water, the trees, all of it.

He looked over to the tech only to see the same sense of amazement on his face. “It’s not dangerous.” He turned the monitor to Duncan, its readouts swung wildly. “I have no real way to know, but I know.” The tech looked at the ground for a moment. He was a man of science, and it was strange to trust instinct that way. Johns looked up again, and Duncan knew that what the man had said was the absolute truth. It was as though he could see everything there was to know about the other man. They both nodded once, quietly. There was no need to say anymore, and how could they explain it anyway.

Bishop fought the urge to scratch his skin, to run, when he stepped into the energy field. It felt as though he had been poked full of holes, and everyone could look in and see everything that he was. He dropped his head and let his eyes cut to the left and right, to see if everyone else had felt the same. The mercs had slowed their progress and he watched as they looked at their own skin and looked around them. It wasn’t just him. He looked ahead to Duncan and his steps faltered.

He stood just a few strides from the other man, and he didn’t know now if he wanted to run in the other direction. Or if he wanted to take those few steps towards Duncan. His mouth went dry and he thought of that first hunt, when Duncan had cut a convict’s throat right over top of him. Except that in the new image his mind created, there was no convict, there was no hunt. It was just him, and Duncan. Naked. Duncan was fucking him. What was worse was that Bishop wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about it. The image burned hot in his brain and seared his skin. Bishop ran his hand over his forehead and through his hair, as though he sought to wipe the visible evidence from his face. As he watched Duncan, he knew that the other man knew, and it made him hate this place all the more. He hated Theopoulis all the more. His skin burned, not only with the energy, but with his humiliation. One he believed was plain for at least Duncan to see. It burned with anger, and hatred and rage. He held Theopoulis responsible for all of this.
—

Joanne ran out of the house when she heard her daughter’s cries, rifle at the ready. Her heart raced; Marcus, her husband, was in the village. ‘Raiders, oh god!’ Her hand ran up of its own volition to the scar on her face. Before she had been here, before she had been Mrs. Marcus Ferguson, she had been the property of slavers. And now they had come for her and her daughter.

‘Riders’ Anna hadn’t said raiders at all, she had said Riders. That couldn’t possibly be, it was impossible. Anna hid behind her, small hands knotted in her shirt as they both stared out at the sight of the ship before them stopped against the slow roll of the hillside. She had heard the stories, and had even passed them down to Anna. And now here was a ship, right on the verge of their home. She raised the rifle to her shoulder when the men came out onto the deck. Her heart pounded and she fought tears; they were terrifying, especially the huge bald man in goggles. She reached behind her and shoved Anna to loosen her from the hem of her shirt. “Run, Anna. Run to the house and get the shotgun from the fireplace, then run through the gardens to the village and get your father….NOW! Anna!” She wanted to turn and swat the girl to make her run, but it would have meant she had to take her eyes off the men on the deck, and she couldn’t. She could feel Anna behind her still, the girl hadn’t moved.

Shazza watched the woman on the ground, with her child behind her. She had been that woman once. Maybe the child wasn’t hers, but she had been there nonetheless, and knew what it was to be a woman alone and afraid, left to stand against men that she didn’t know. “Riddick…” Her voice was a whisper as she stepped up behind him. The two men had their hands up, not in surrender but to try to put the woman at ease. Shazza ducked under Riddick’s arm and stepped towards the bow. “We’re not here to harm you.” Shazza reached behind her to Jack, who had followed her out onto the deck. They stood side by side at the bow and looked down at the woman and what was clearly her daughter. Two peas in a pod; wild manes of red hair and the palest of skin. The woman had a jagged scar that ran down what otherwise would have been a very beautiful face, if her daughter was anything to go by. Jack and Shazza raised their hands in placation, like Riddick and Theo. “We crashed here; we’re not a threat to you or your family.”

Joanne looked up at the beautiful dark haired woman on the deck. She had touched the big bald man affectionately as she had passed him, and he had looked down at her with concern, a concern he continued to show as the woman spoke to her from the bow. The young boy at her side had his head shaved also. Joanne didn’t want to shoot a woman and her child. She was so frightened that her hands shook. ‘I’d probably miss, and then we’d all be dead. I need to stall, until Marcus can get here…unless…’

Joanne licked her lips and tried to keep her voice from shaking. “The village isn’t far…..”

Copyright © October 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx