dayzejane: Thanks so much!
blissdementia: It's interesting to write him weakened. Riddick was originally a female character, so you've got that inherent weakness to contend with, and then, in PB, he's restrained for a chunk of it, having to use some other part of his make up to get by. It's as though by stripping him of the stereotypical "male" traits of strength etc, that he's back to the sneaky bas*tard I always see him as being. Needing Jack is a part of that same "weakness", I think
BatPhace: *Beam*! Flattery is always good! That you're inspired to write is the highest praise I can get, so huge thanks!
Dreaming Dragonfly: Apologies for shorter chapters. This was originally supposed to be a simple one-shot but breaking it into chapters seemed the best way to tortur, I mean, satisfy, readers! Real Jack? Whistles innocently...
Saismaat: I'm really glad the hallucinogenic quality of that came through, that's what I was going for. "If only briefly." Yes, I was wanting him guilt ridden for leaving her in the cave, even if he went back for her. In normal situations I don't think he would feel guilty but after she came for him when he was lost and sick? Yeah, he's feeling guilty. Not a big fan of hurt/comfort either, which is why the only person responsible for his hurt is himself, and why Jack never actually shows up. Lost that "tail" and yeah, there's a Serenity feel to the frontier planet. Dirty, dusty...but no Reavers!
TashaTaz: thanks, Tash!
njrd: Yep, the pursuit doesn't stop, even if he's sick. Poor bas*tard can't catch a break! Jack is the one thing he's almost desperately clinging to. Maybe that's healthy, maybe it's not, but it's getting him through it. Scary music indeed; we've seen this merc before! Gotta love Jack! (((huge monster smooches, love!)))
Thanks so much to everyone reading, reviewing, favoriting and enjoying! Next update will be out in the New Year, due to crazy holiday stuff. Now onto Chapter 3!
Chapter 3
It was less than an hour till sunset when Riddick woke. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he waited for the dizziness to stop; everything hurt, a combination of the illness and the medication and he was light headed. The weakness pissed him off and he waited for that to pass too. It served no purpose and didn't make him feel any better. Only made coping more difficult. After a few deep breaths, his head cleared enough for him to get up and look out the window.
The rain had just let up by the looks of it, subsiding to a weak drizzle. By sundown it would be gone but he didn't intend to wait. The radiator dried his robe,warming it a little as he slept. He threw it over his shoulders, pulling the hood up and hiding his features.
Looking out the window once more, he thought about the merc that had already spotted him at least twice while he had staggered, near oblivious, between his tiny rented room and the bar where he went to get something hot to stave off the chills. Twice was more than he could afford. Sick or not, he had to get on top of the situation and find out more about the man that hunted him.
From what he had observed so far, nothing in the town would move until well after sunset but that didn't mean that nothing could move. It came down to a matter of will, as so many things had in his life. To what he was willing to do that others wouldn't. What he was willing to do was walk out into the acidic rain if it gave him an advantage, if it gave him something he needed. What he needed was more information and a better vantage point.
Corrosive rain meant never having a decent canopy to walk under, nothing lasted long, so he would stick close to the side of a building, slinking along under the eaten, patchwork metal flashing until he could duck into the safety of a doorway niche. From the dark of his shadowed features beneath the robe, he'd scan the way ahead, looking for the next place to jump. In this way, he moved from building-side to niche in a haphazard way until he had reached the open terrain of the port. There would be nowhere else to hide from this point but it no longer mattered. All that mattered was getting into position where he could see who left the port, and from where. Where they were going. If they moved alone.
There was nowhere at ground level that would suit him so, beneath the lacy tin over the sidewalk, he scanned the rooftops until he found what he wanted. A high enough vantage point that would give him the cover he needed. After a time the rain stopped and darkness fully fell. The flutter of a dark robe blotted out the stars for a second and then it was gone.
Jumping from one mushy slat of wood to another, Riddick stayed out of the puddles slowly vanishing on the roof and, from the edge, watched over the battered tarmac, waiting for any sign of movement. Muffling a deep, rattling cough against his arm, he looked from ship to ship. Larger cargo freighters squatted heavily in well worn ruts near the outskirts of the tarmac, a few military grade troop transports crouched closer to the edge, alone. Most of the ships spanned in between fell into smaller classes. Pirates and scavengers. Solo vessels. And at least one merc ship. But which one?
As he watched, a hatch opened, spilling weak artificial light out into the darkness and a solitary figure took a couple of steps off the lowering ramp, before jumping to the tarmac below and hitting the switch to raise the ramp once more. It was too far off to make out the locking mechanism but that was something that had never bothered Riddick before. What interested him was the apparent lack of an attending mechanic or any other crew. Another glance and then Riddick moved on to the merc, now halfway across the tarmac.
Nothing more than another dark shape against the dimming sky, the merc strode out across the tarmac, the hood of his robe pulled up over his face, obscuring his features. It could have been anyone but Riddick ran on instinct, tracking the shape as it hit the tattered edge of the crowd that began to form on the open market square at the end of the port's tarmac, disappearing. As people came off the ships and out of the buildings, it became impossible to follow the merc in the crowd of similarly dressed people, so Riddick turned his attention to the ship instead.
A fuel tech drove up in a squat four wheeled maintenance vehicle, examined the undercarriage of the ship and left, scribbling something on a pad. Another tech came and moved on to the next ship. Still no sight of a mechanic or another merc with the ship itself. It was strange and set his instincts on edge. There should be someone else. But there wasn't.
Silent as rusted metal would allow, Riddick slipped off the roof to the rotted boardwalk below. Another few moments lurking in the deeper shadows against the building as a group of soldiers from one of the transports walked by and then he was on the move once more. Cutting a dark line across the ground, headed not in the direction of the merc ship but for the anonymity of a large grey freighter where he blended in easily with a crowd of passengers shuffling down the rear hatch. Under this cover, he traveled most of the way across the open ground, dropping off to the side and disappearing once he came alongside the merc ship.
Frozen, he stayed hidden at the side of the ship, taking a few brief seconds to look over her configuration. As merc ships went, she was nothing special; just another blasted grey starjumper, pocked with gunfire and patched over more times than he could count. Sound enough though. Just ahead, a familiar shape stood by the raised hatch where the merc had left earlier. It was only when he could see the hatch through the shape that he realized it was Jack.
"Still with me, kid?" he whispered to no one in particular.
Jack didn't answer but she did turn and smirk up at him before turning to look out across the tarmac once more, arms crossed over her skinny girl's chest and not a care in the world.
'Looking out for me.'
That didn't make any sense. He knew that Jack wasn't real, that she was a figment of his fevered imagination, pulled from somewhere inside that didn't want to lay down and die. The girl could no more alert him to danger than she could exist at all.
'Don't stop you from talking to her.'
It didn't, and Riddick had come to uneasy terms with the appearance of the young girl; expecting her presence even if he didn't fully accept it. She wasn't real and yet there she was. In any case, Jack watched over the doorway, her goggled head sweeping over the cracked ground as Riddick tinkered with the hatch entry panel, finally cracking the system with a small and unsatisfying electronic beep.
Once inside, Riddick took a last look across the tarmac and closed the hatch behind him. There was no one waiting for him once he got in and Riddick stayed stock still for a moment, listening. All that answered was the low hum of the ship's computers. He had expected to have to subdue and possibly kill another merc or a mechanic once he broke into the ship and now that he didn't, he was ill at ease.
Johns had hunted him alone but at the end, Johns was half-crazy and Riddick wasn't looking forward to dealing with crazy.
The inside of the ship was tidy, not the usual cluttered mess of a ship crowded with mercs, but Riddick went through the motions of checking the empty cryo leads and lockers, just to be sure. It didn't make him any more at ease that there was no sign of anyone else. There was no arrogance in knowing that he was dangerous; it was simply a fact. A merc shouldn't have come out into the frontier to hunt him down alone. There was something wrong.
Ducking under a bundle of wires and cables, Riddick headed for the cockpit to look over the controls. The lock out protocol for the navigation console was too sophisticated to tackle in the limited time he was sure he had so he didn't tamper with it. It was something that he expected,. A log was one thing but core controls were always closely guarded against all the people that would have access to the ship, so he moved on to see what other systems he could get into, trying to get a feel for the man that was on the hunt for him.
The log was easier, meant to be open and accessed by anyone that already had access to the ship itself and, after scanning the tarmac through the ship's external cameras, Riddick leaned over and easily opened the system. Even then, it took time, more than he could spare. At first he looked for the obvious. Registry was the most easily accessed. He skipped past the obligatory Merc Guild listing and looked deeper, pulling up the name from the logs, deeper within the directory. Granger, David, with the number he used to claim contracts and paydays listed beside that. The name was unfamiliar which didn't mean anything in the scheme of things. Lots of men had hunted him and he didn't always have the luxury of getting to know them; most of them weren't worth the trouble.
There was a small, grainy picture next to the brief and meaningless info blurb. The colors meant nothing to Riddick. Shades of dark and dark. The stats read as brown eyes, brown hair. Height and weight were already known to Riddick, from having watched the man earlier. One thing stood out: an intensity that came through even in the tiny shot. Whoever Granger was, he was hungry.
Another look outside and Riddick eased into the pilot's seat, being careful not to move or touch anything else. That he had wanted to get a better look at the ship went without saying but what really pulled him was curiosity. It had been the same with Johns; while Johns had hunted him, Riddick had spent a good deal of time watching the merc, trying to figure out what made him tick. And now here was another merc, hunting him alone when he shouldn't have been. He was curious.
Moving chronologically back through the ship's archived logs, Riddick reaffirmed what he had guessed: that Granger had been on his tail since he left Decarra 12. After he had escaped Decarra, Riddick had lost track of time but it looked as though roughly half a day after his escape, word had gone out on the merc guild's wire about the contract. It was a big payday and Riddick wasn't surprised to see the large number of bids, or the amount of the payout; he was beyond being flattered when the price meant that he had to live on the run.
What had him lean closer to the console was that Granger wasn't even close to Decarra 12 when he pulled rank and took the bid.
Mercs were greedy. The creed is greed. Even a payday as big as bagging Riddick wouldn't entice a lot of mercs to come several systems out of their way – with the cost that entailed in fuel, time and payoffs to the guild for prime bids - into the wilderness, and after someone that wasn't a sure bet. Someone that was known to kill any mercs on his trail. Not only had Granger demanded to take the contract but he had dropped the rest of his crew, an eight man team, to do it.
It didn't add up. Looking at the list of jobs that Granger had taken, at the impressive list of convicts that he had brought in, it was strange to see such a sudden change in behaviour. Especially now with someone so dangerous to hunt down. A careful man didn't suddenly choose one day to be reckless and Riddick wanted to know why.
© copyright September 2009 xxxevilgrinxxx
