Chapter 2: What Lies Beneath

Vaako and Riddick set everything up ready for the day when Trouble comes bounding in, covered head to toe in sand and dust. She trots over to her Mate and her pups, putting something just as dusty down and proceeds to start licking it clean.

"What have you found Trouble?" Vaako walks over, handing Talya to Riddick and sitting next to the Hounds. Shivering and whimpering a tiny puppy, one of the dingo like breeds found on the planet, lies between her paws. He looks up at Vaako, one blue eye and one brown. Trouble licks the sand and dust off his face, out of his eyes and nose, thoroughly making sure her new pup was cleaned to her high standards.

The other pups trot around them, sniffing curiously and then all start falling and climbing over each other to snuggle up to their new brother and their mother. Chuckling softly, Vaako scratches behind Trouble's ear and goes back to his own Mate and pup. "Another Hound huh?" Riddick raises his chin, making a swift nod gesture towards their pack.

Talya makes a loud cooing noise and reaches out to Vaako, interrupting the arrival of the new hound and the conversation. Kissing her head and nuzzling into his Alpha, Vaako smiles. "I know baby, later." He sighs and steps back, stretching. "Come on Trouble, time to go hunting."

Looking up at him, Trouble makes a small grumble growl at him, looking between him and her new pup. Mischief trots over eagerly instead, circling around Vaako's legs before sitting next to him and pushing his head under his hand. Have fun Beautiful, I'll be waitin'.

I'm sure you will be. Vaako smirks and sends a few teasing images to his Mate, knowing full well what his Alpha was waiting for. He clicks his tongue and runs out the cave, Mischief running after him eagerly.

#

Vaako was beginning to understand why this planet had been chosen. There was nothing around except fields, cliffs, muddy puddles and the merc base. He could see in the distance where Trouble would have had to have gone to find the young pup.

Mischief just growls in the general direction of the storm, his heckles raised and his scales darkening to their deep red colour. Reaching his mind out he touches the Hound's mind, normally they allowed the Hounds to keep their thoughts to themselves although they were part of the bond too, trying to understand what was causing this volatile reaction.

It's as he reaches out with his mind that he notices a life rhythm he hadn't noticed before. So leaving Mischief's mind alone he reaches out in a much broader scale to try and find where it was coming from.

A predator, a fierce one that was hungry but dormant (for now), was lying beneath in waiting. Except it felt like the rhythm was flowing beneath almost all of the land. That feeling of a predator wasn't coming from just one spot. Narrowing in on one particular louder spot he realises that it was many creatures all buried under the dry earth, hibernating, waiting.

Riddick… we need to leave. Vaako looks up at the clouds forming in the distance, growing and moving closer with every moment.

Mischief's growling grows louder and he backs up slightly. As the clouds build and the rain begins to pour over the dry, seemingly dead land in the distance the creatures are awoken from their hibernation and climb out of their buried nests.

Sharing what he had learned, Vaako begins running back to the caves, Riddick swearing through the bond and similarly moving things into action back at the cave. When Riddick had spied on the mercs recently he had come up with a plan for messing with them and distracting them from their real targets.

Vaako had fine-tuned it but they thought that they still had time before they needed to push it through. After all, the more information they could gather and the more frustrated the mercs got at being unable to find them would've worked beautifully in their favour.

But then, life never liked to work in their favour.

#

Santana walks out and over to his motion detector, looking at his boys that had been working on getting it set up. For whatever reason, they'd been having some troubles with the sensitivity on it and it had been set off by them inside the base and a couple of insects had set it off as well.

He wanted this bounty. He wanted Riddick's head, in his box, on his ship and on their way to getting the sweetest pay day of all.

As the other merc leader seemed to just want to talk to Riddick and said he had no interest the bounty he was happy to let them stay, for now. He trusted the old man as far as he could throw him with his hands tied behind his back. But his whore he'd brought along, she was something else entirely.

Maybe if he played this whole game out right he could get his bounties, take out the competition and get in a good fuck too.

After all, if Riddick got to bring his fucktoy to this desolate planet, why couldn't he get some fun too?

Speaking of, Dahl walks over to Boss Johns with a tablet in her hand. "Boss, quick work?" Santana watches as they go back inside the base. Johns had been sat outside watching Santana and his men work with a look of amusement stuck on his face. His eyes had conveyed a less cheerful emotion but he clearly saw Santana and his men as a joke.

He was the one who had brought the equipment and the bigger group of men, Johns had brought two guys and the bitch with an attitude. If anyone here was the joke, in Santana's highly cared for opinion, it was the other group.

Inside the base, Dahl takes her boss over to the table where they had been surveying the surrounding areas. "There's a deep cave system hidden in the cliffs to the south. If Riddick is hiding anywhere, he'll be down there."

"Dahl, you didn't just bring me in to show me this." Johns looks at his sniper, curious. "What's on your mind?"

Dahl smirks slightly, glad that she worked for someone with at least half a brain instead of some cretin like the one barking orders outside. "I know our focus is Riddick but I have concerns about his… partner… whatever he is. There's nothing up to date on the file. It's… well it's old. Older than he should be." She says indicating to the holo-picture of Vaako. "The last record of him is from a planet on one of the outer systems, fairly rich planet but kept out of the way of interfering governments so they can own slaves, do experiments, y'know the usual outer rim stuff… that's it, Amora V was where he was last seen." She brings up the file. "But that was nearly 70 years ago."

Johns nods and looks it over. "Okay, so we're going in a little blind with him. What do you suggest?"

"Well, I think that he's a lot more powerful of a psychic than his profile would have you believe. Either he's at least 100 years old and hiding it with mind tricks…" Dahl stops and frowns slightly and sighs. "Or we're dealing with a myth."

Quirking an eyebrow at that, Johns sits down, fully invested in what Dahl had to say. He needed to get Riddick and find out what happened to his son, he really didn't care about the person travelling with Riddick. But if the dossiers were wrong and Riddick had a powerful and old psychic on his side, more powerful than they could predict, then it would lead to complications. Johns didn't like complications. "A myth? He's not immortal Dahl, if he bleeds we can kill him if we need to."

"That's not what I mean. During some of our more recent travels I've been hearing more and more about the Necromongers, and not as a story to warn you about the dangers of leaving the systems and travelling to the outer rims, as actual people who have waged wars on planets." She starts typing away on her tablet and brings up a holo image she managed to dig out of some terminated systems. "This ship, it's a necromonger ship that was registered landing on Crematoria when Riddick was spending some time there, same time as the riots happened. There's also another docking registrar of the same ship docking at Crematoria a couple years later, collecting cargo."

"What cargo?"

Dahl shrugs with one shoulder. "You're lucky I managed to dig up that information. Everything else is either behind more firewalls than I could bypass if you gave me 100years, or was burned from the system. If I had to guess, I'd say it'd probably prisoners."

Johns frowns at this. "Okay, so what can we find that will help work this unknown value out?"

"Well," Dahl grins slightly, proud of the fact that she had actually been able to dig something up. "I did some more digging into the planet that he was last spotted on. It's gone. Completely wiped out, like a worldwide bomb went off, taking out all life but leaving the buildings and structures behind."

Their discussion is interrupted by a whoop from outside, the boys having finally fixed the motion detector, the massive orb swivelling around and making a quiet beeping as it scans the surrounding area. Just in time too, it was getting dark and with no sign of either man yet, the boys had begun to get jumpy. Riddick wasn't known for staying out of a fight for this long.

"Okay. Tell me what you know."

#

Mischief, Riddick and Vaako press themselves flat to the ground as they manoeuvre into position. It wasn't an ideal situation for them. They had had no choice but to leave Talya sleeping with Trouble and the pups. Unfortunately due to the new time constraints, they would need to execute two parts of the plan at the same time instead of a day apart.

Riddick and Mischief move into position, the hound silently slinking through the shadows to grab one of the sensors by the handle, in his jaw, pulling back with one violent yank and ripping it out of the ground. He then runs off with it as fast as he can to Riddick, who had found the perfect sized rock for the next part.

Vaako could hear the unpleasant white noise coming from the psychic blockers being worn by the smarter of the two merc groups. They had increased the frequency. It seemed they were beginning to learn that Vaako wasn't your standard psychic. However it still made no odds to the man. Perhaps before he and Riddick had become one with the Threshold it would have had some detrimental effect on him and the plan. But the Threshold seemed to be flowing through them more so than ever. To the point where Talya had started aging visibly faster than normal, as well as mentally. Not by much, she was still a toddler that needed constant attention, but she had aged almost a year in the time they had been on the planet.

He shakes his head to remove thoughts of his daughter for the time being. His window was about to open and he needed to be ready. Riddick was counting on him.

Now Beautiful, give 'em hell.

AN: Welp thanks guys for reading and for all the wonderful support you've given. It warms my heart to see how excited you guys were for a sequel and I hope it lives up to your expectations!

I want to give extra thanks to: krissygarza12, dragonninja20, bookworm182, WraithRaider, Lilena, HalsGal1231, PinkEll304, SweetandTangy, The No-Life Queen143, XxxCheshireCat, crazyness101 and not telling the unknown for following and favouriting! With a special thanks to XxxCheshireCat for reviewing!

And to everyone reading and giving my stories a chance, thank you from the deepest depths of my heart.