He finally remembered to breathe and took his hand from her hip; he had sat there for about another half hour just lost in thought, about Shazza. Specifically about him and Shazza, he didn’t know where he stood, he didn’t know what he meant to her and he didn’t even know what he wanted, just that he wanted her.

Jack was easier and left him less confused; all Riddick had to do was look at Jack and he felt the smile pull hard at him from the inside. It was like that almost right from the beginning. He crouched down close to her bedside and listened to her sleep. Jack sprawled all over the bed at some point in the night and it made him happy that she felt safe enough to relax, even in the skiff she hadn’t done that. Her arms and legs took up the whole bed, flung out at all angles. He pulled the blankets back over her before he slipped out of her room again.

The ship was quiet as he moved out into the hallway; he stood against the door and listened for any sound of movement, for anything that was wrong, before he tested the door lock one last time. Nothing had been touched on the bridge but that was to be expected; he had done a thorough job when he checked Theo’s room. He looked back down the corridor to where Theo’s room was, near the end. Riddick tilted his head to the side as he thought about Theo. He was a merc, true enough, but there was something else about him.

Theo’s hand reached out automatically for the bedside lamp when he heard Riddick open the door to his room. He wasn’t exactly awake, but he was alert enough to stay his hand at the quiet warning that came from the dark outline that loomed in his doorway. One word, “Don’t.”

Riddick watched Theo as he pulled himself together. He could smell fear on him but that was to be expected. Theo had no idea that he wouldn’t kill him; even Riddick wasn’t sure he wouldn’t kill him. If he did, he wanted to make sure it was done and cleaned up before Shazza and Jack woke.

Theo got dressed in the dark and stood; he wouldn’t beg or cower for his life. If he was about to die then he would die, at least he would die well. The two men stood in front of each other and time stretched out in the distance.

There was a day when Riddick probably would have killed him without a second thought, that Theo was a merc was enough to make that certain. Now, after Imam, things were not so certain anymore. “Breakfast. Lights twenty percent.”

The lights came on in the corridor as the two men walked towards the galley. Riddick didn’t put his goggles on but left them to rest on his forehead after he gave Theo a hard look. It was almost as if he dared him to turn up the lights or do something else so that he could justify Theo’s death. Theo wasn’t about to push that button if he could avoid it and just went about the business of coffee and breakfast. He made enough for all of them, Shazza and Jack as well, after a quick look at Riddick. Theo wasn’t a stupid merc, and he wasn’t a stupid person either; he wouldn’t push Riddick. Theo passed him a cup of coffee and pointed to the fridge, “I don’t know what you take in it.” The two men moved warily around each other. Riddick leaned in the doorway with his cup of coffee. ‘Blocking the exits’, Theo noticed; even here with just one other person to worry about, and he still put himself between Theo and the other two, his woman and the child.

Theo froze, the pan in one hand and a container of eggs in the other. The hard look on Riddick’s face seemed to pull all of the heat from the kitchen. Theo ran through what he could have said when it dawned on him; he had simply asked how the other two guests had liked their eggs. Theo had thought last night that he dealt with a man in love, and that was dangerous enough, a man that didn’t know if his love was returned was even more dangerous, the uncertainty and tension clouded all reason. He would have to be more careful, Shazza’s reaction to Riddick’s affection might very well be the difference between life and death for him. “Scrambled it is then…”

Riddick drank his coffee quietly and watched Theo. He had to suppress the urge to kill the man, and for what, because he asked how Shazza wanted her eggs? He had gotten angry not only because he didn’t know the answer to what should have been a very simple question, but because it shone a spotlight on the fact that he hadn’t known them long enough, hadn’t known Shazza long enough; he wanted her so badly and hardly knew anything at all about her. He wanted to. He looked at his coffee and wondered how she liked it, if she even drank it. The growl was tightly controlled and eased some of the tension in him; no one else would have heard him anyway, not even Theo as he stood on the other side of the kitchen. He tracked Theo with his gaze as the man crossed the galley to put breakfast on the small counter there; he wondered again why he hadn’t just killed him.

“I usually eat on the bridge, do you object?” Theo had made him a plate of breakfast and held it out to him, much as he had done with the coffee before it. A plate of breakfast, the cup of coffee, the shotgun that Theo put down last night, everything was an extended hand, a gesture, in its own way. Riddick didn’t answer, he just stood out of the way and let Theo pass him and continue down the corridor towards the bridge. He was locked out anyway, there’s nothing he could access on the bridge, and Riddick didn’t think he was stupid enough to make a move on him. Theo looked longingly at the charts, still unfurled on the desk, before he walked up and sat up at the front to look out at the stars as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe he didn’t, and Riddick found that interesting.

Riddick walked up and sat in the co-pilots seat and ate some of his breakfast. The two men sat in silence for a little while longer. If it weren’t for the strange situation they were in and a person walked in on them, he would assume the two men were old friends, comfortable in their silence. It was Riddick that spoke first, “Why Trieste Nine?”

Theo continued to stare out of the window for a moment, as he tried to think of what to say that Riddick would understand. There was something about Riddick that spoke to him, and the fact that he was still alive right now meant that perhaps that was true for Riddick as well; he just had to make him understand. Riddick almost thought that Theo wasn’t about to answer him, or that maybe he hadn’t heard him, when he finally spoke in a quiet voice as he continued to stare out at the stars. “I have never been anything else but a merc.” On another day, Theo might not have wanted to mention that fact again to Riddick, but today was not that day.

“My father was a merc, and his before him if I’m not mistaken. When I was younger it wasn’t that there were no other choices, there just were no other choices I knew to make.” It was expected when he was younger, he didn’t get asked, the papers just showed up one day; he signed them, his father signed them and that was it. It was the same with his brother. Theo took another sip of his coffee and continued; he didn’t need to look over to know that Riddick watched him. “Before I could even walk, the Mercenary Guild knew everything about me. They had my DNA on record, retinal scans, fingerprint scans. The family doctor was a merc recruiter, so were my teachers.” Theo turned in his chair and grinned at Riddick before he let out a small self depreciative laugh, his hand waved in the air in the direction of his charts. “You know, when I was in school, what I really wanted to take was art. I wanted to draw, can you believe that?”

Riddick thought again of the meticulously drafted charts and wasn’t at all surprised by this revelation, but he didn’t say anything; Theo was somewhere else right now. “I signed up for it. It didn’t matter though, because when I started classes again, all the courses had been changed. I was to be a mercenary. I was always to be a mercenary.” His voice grew quieter still as he looked out at the expanse of black. “I’ve never been free, Riddick. Not once in the thirty five years I’ve been alive. The Merc Guild got a hold of me before I had any say in the matter, they own me, Riddick. Fees, credits, surveillance; they never let you go. And then there’s the Company.” Both men sat in silence for a moment, nothing further needed to be said about the Company. “I hate this life, I hate everything about it. Trieste Nine might just be a dream, hell, I don’t know if it even exists or if what’s said about the place is real, but if I can disappear, then I’ll die trying.” Theo realized that was another thing he probably shouldn’t have said in front of Riddick, but at this point he didn’t care. He might not have control over this ship, but he was still her captain, and he’d say what he liked on his own bridge. If Riddick wanted to kill him for it, so be it, he wasn’t about to beg.

Riddick tilted his head and peered intently at Theo, the man still smelled of fear, but his fear didn’t rule him. What he wanted ruled him, and what he wanted was the same thing that had made Riddick an escaped convict. He wanted his freedom, at any cost, even if that meant he had to set aside his fear to do it. He would take that chance; seize that opportunity, when it was offered. “How long will it take us to reach the Trieste system?”

Theo turned his head and grinned at Riddick, and then glanced behind him at Shazza and Jack as they walked onto the bridge. He made a point to keep the look neutral; he had already seen Riddick unsettled once already, he had no desire to do so again. Theo continued to speak, a little louder, as Riddick got out of his chair and walked towards the two women. He grinned at Jack, and turned to Shazza. He felt awkward all of a sudden as her eyes caught his and he would have looked away but he couldn’t. He regretted that he had gotten out of bed; he would have liked to have had her wake up beside him. Shazza’s hand rested on his side and she looked up at him; he knew right then that she wouldn’t have wanted to leave afterwards, that she wouldn’t have wanted him to either, that last night had meant something to her too. He kissed her softly, hesitantly at first, as though he still expected her to pull away from him. She didn’t, she just leaned into him and kissed him back. “Mornin’ Riddick.” Her voice was still sleepy, the night before had wiped her out, and she tasted of coffee; she took it black, with a little sugar.

He murmured her greeting back to her, unsure of what else to say, and turned back to look at Theo, who had stopped talking at some point after Riddick got up; if he had watched them, he was turned around now. Theo glanced back before he began again. “If we jump, it should only take a couple of days or so to reach the Trieste system. The trouble is in finding Trieste Nine when we get there, it’s not listed on the star charts.” Riddick watched as he tapped the Odyssey’s navigation console in disgust. “It could be a week or it could be a month after that, there’s no way to know.”

Riddick and Shazza shared a puzzled glance, before they turned to Theo again. Theo noticed that neither one of them had taken their hands off the other since Shazza entered the bridge; Riddick stood close enough for his body to touch hers and his hand rested on her lower back; Shazza still held his hip. If Theo had thought Riddick was a man in love last night, that thought was all the stronger now, as he watched them. They still looked puzzled, which was understandable. The Odyssey was a star jumper but even at that it should have taken about a month to reach the outer edge of the system.

Theo felt his heart swell with pride as he stood and walked towards the charts again. He didn’t ask that anyone follow him, he was still the captain after all; if they wanted answers, they would walk with him and they would listen. His voice was clear when he spoke again, his hands held behind his back as he described what was in the charts the others looked at. Occasionally he would point quickly at something and then continue. A wormhole. He had found a wormhole. He had explained that he had never been through it, and in fact he had only ever read of one occasion when anyone else had and that was over six hundred years ago, but it didn’t make him any less sure.

Riddick had his doubts, as did Shazza. Jack looked from the face of one adult to the next to try and sort out what was going on, because no one said anything. “You sure this is going to work Capt’n?” Riddick said it quietly as he leaned over the charts and tried to see them in the same light that Theo saw them. Riddick didn’t strike Theo as a man that said things by accident, so he knew that Riddick had intended to call him captain; neither of them said anything more about the title as Theo answered. “I’m positive Riddick.”

Shazza had no idea what was going on; she had heard of wormholes, but they were thought of as science fiction, as impossible. Riddick’s breath caught in his throat when she looked at him; she should have looked at the captain, he was the one that knew what was going on, but she didn’t; she looked at him, and put her trust in him. The smallest of nods was enough to put her at ease.

It wasn’t to last though. Jack had taken her last piece of toast and walked up to the main blast shield and peered out at the starry sky. Riddick almost didn’t hear her the first time she said his name, but he felt her panic like an alarm bell in his head. He said her name silently as he crossed the space in rapid strides to follow Jack’s hand as it pointed out the window. The others quickly followed; Shazza’s hand rested on the small of his back as she too leaned over to peer out into the black. He glanced over at her and their eyes met as she turned to him; he liked being touched by her. Theo’s face grew hard and he looked over at Riddick, “Mercs…”
Copyright © September 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx