Chapter 34 - Back From The Wars
Riddick was tired, hungry, hurt, and pissed off. Not a good combination, but there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to be done about it so no use dwelling on it. He'd been gone from D2 for 8 weeks, about a month longer than he'd had any intention of being gone, and all because of that prick, Carson Davis. His hands clenched involuntarily on the flightstick of his ship, and he almost wished it was the bastard's neck. He'd killed him once for nearly killing Jack and he wished he could kill the whackjob again for messing with his ship. If it hadn't been for Carson, Riddick would have been back to D2, back to Jack, ages ago. If he was truthful, though, Riddick's own need for revenge - vengeance, justice for Jack, whatever you wanted to call it - had played a part in his undoing.
After he'd manage to elude the A-class Cruisers, he'd gone down into the hold to make Carson tell him where he'd hidden the tracker. He knew any hope of him finding it quickly was next to impossible, especially with the computer screwed up, only able to do the most basic functions. *At least it can calculate starjumps,* he thought sourly. He had every intention when he'd gone down that ramp in making Carson tell him where the tracker was and then leaving him there to finish off later. Let Carson go through the same 3 days of hell the man had put himself and Jack through before he finally finished him off. But when he'd gotten down there, the smug look on the son of a bitch's face just made something click in Riddick's head. All he could see was red, Jack's blood, so much blood, all over him, staining his sheets. He saw her pale and drawn face as he left her in Doc's surgery. He saw her lying in the hospital bed with tubes and monitors all over the place, and he just snapped. Not even bothering with a knife or gun, he'd hit Carson and it felt so good that he'd kept hitting him.
Riddick had no idea how many times he hit Carson, but by the time he realized what he was doing, made himself stop, his knuckles were bloody and aching like someone had taken a ball peen hammer to his hand, and Carson's face was almost indistinguishable as human. When he pulled himself away, he was shaking with the anger and hatred he still held inside him, but there was something else too. Disgust. He'd done a lot of crazy shit, a lot of stupid shit, a lot of bad shit in his life that even he didn't want to think about, but of all the people he'd killed in his life (and there'd been more than a few) he'd never beaten anyone to death. Not even in slam when he was fighting for his life every day. He'd always gone for the quick kill, not necessarily clean, but quick. Sure, he'd played with some of his opponents, done his share of knife dances with people, and he'd strong-armed people for various reasons, but he'd never beaten an unarmed, restrained person before. That level of brutality he'd always figured was reserved for prison guards and sadistic bounty hunters. He didn't like being wrong, especially about himself.
Walking away from the bloody corpse, Riddick climbed the long, curving ramp that would take him up to the crew deck. He washed up quickly in the sink in his bathroom then found the first aid kit he'd used for Jack. As he poured antiseptic over the hand and wrapped it with some sterile bandages, his thoughts drifted to Jack. He thought of her lying on his bed, hovering in and out of consciousness. He thought of the sleepless nights he'd spent on the floor, hoping she'd make it through the three-day trip to D2. He thought of holding her in the shower, listening to her talk like she was certain she was going to die, and any remorse he might have felt faded. It wasn't like he hadn't planned on killing the man anyway, he'd just thought to do it with a little more finesse. But when it came down to it, Carson had hurt someone Riddick cared for, one of the few people he could call a friend. When you didn't have a lot of friends you tended to get kind of protective of the ones you had. Carson had gotten better than he deserved.
When Riddick had finally gone back down to the cargo hold, he dispassionately disposed of the body and cleaned up the bloody mess left behind without allowing himself another thought that the body had once been a living, breathing human. He disassociated himself from the situation, something he'd learned to do a long time ago. Reducing the act of life and death to problems and solutions made things simpler, cleaner. That was one problem dealt with, he'd just have to figure out the other one, the location of the tracker beacon, on his own.
He started on the search for the tracking beacon, but there was a lot of ship to cover and it could be anywhere. If he'd had the computer functioning at its peak capacity, he could have narrowed the search down a lot, but Carson had known what he was doing when he'd disabled it. It had taken Riddick three weeks to finally locate the tracking beacon, but during his search he'd found the two bags Jack had packed. He wondered how she could have possibly gotten them onto the ship and hidden them, but that was just another of Jack's qualities he admired, her resourcefulness.
Between running from his pursuers and searching the ship for the tracker, Riddick hadn't had much time for sleeping and it was starting to show. Closest thing to sleep he'd had in a while had been the catnaps he took in the pilot's chair. After the three weeks spent searching for the tracker, it had taken him another week before he felt like he could breathe again. He wanted to turn back and head to D2 right then, but he knew he had to be more careful than that. He didn't think he was being pursued anymore, but you could never be too careful. It had taken another two weeks before he felt like it was safe to turn his ship toward the Areiadne Sector.
His ship. She didn't even have a name anymore, he'd not bothered, having to change the codes almost every fucking day since he'd left New Sydney. He knew it wasn't necessary for her to have a name, but he didn't like it. A ship not having a name was considered very bad luck, had been considered so all the way back to the first seafaring mariners of Old Earth. Riddick wasn't particularly superstitious, he liked black cats and generally didn't give a shit if he walked under a ladder or broke a mirror, but his ship was a little different. He figured she had been a good ship and she deserved a name, plus he didn't need his luck to get any worse. Soon as they were ready to leave, he'd rename her.
Rolling his head from side to side, he rubbed his tired eyes and took another drink of the extra sweet coffee. At least he had coffee and sugar on the ship. That was something he could be thankful for since he hadn't had time or money to take on supplies in the last six weeks. He supposed he should be thankful he still had anything at all, but living on a diet of sugar and caffeine mixed with peanut butter and crackers had made him a little cranky. He was ready for some real food, any kind of real food, even if it was vegetarian. As soon as he and Jack were safe to leave the planet, he'd take her somewhere and buy them both the biggest steak he could find. He just needed to get somewhere to access one of his accounts and get some more cash to float him for a while.
One thing he did have to be thankful for, he'd been able to get enough fuel to get him back to where he needed to be. He could just as easily have been dead in space without fuel, but he'd been lucky and had found a few backwater planets where he could fuel up without being too suspicious, not that he could remember where any of them were. He couldn't even remember how many sectors he'd been through in the last month and a half, but at least the computer was working well enough to keep track of them so he wouldn't go back anytime soon.
Thinking of the computer sent another surge of bitter anger through Riddick. Carson had fucked with his ship's computer. That was in and of itself a crime punishable by death by Riddick's standards. He didn't have much in the way of possessions but, like his friends, he was very protective of what few he had. The ship was going to need a pretty good going over and some repairs after the shit she'd been put through, and the computer was going to have to be completely overhauled. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he remembered Jack giving him arguments as to why he should take her along with him. "I'm a pretty good engineer, and I'm a pretty good hacker," she'd told him. He hoped that was true, because he was going to need both.
Funny how there was no longer a doubt in his mind that Jack should be with him. He wasn't exactly sure when he stopped thinking in terms of "I" and started thinking in terms of "We", but somewhere along the way it had become a foregone conclusion that Jack would come with him. He still wasn't sure precisely what it was that he felt for Jack or what they would do once they left D2, but he knew that she belonged with him and he wanted her there. Provided that's still where she wanted to be.
Breathing a heavy sigh of relief as he slipped into orbit around D2, Riddick ran his hands vigorously over his face and scalp, the stubble reminding him it had been a while since he'd bothered shaving. There had been times in the last month or so when he hadn't been sure he'd ever see the lush, green planet again. He couldn't remember ever being so glad to see a planet in his life; usually he preferred space, but it was certainly a sight for sore eyes. Toggling on the comm, he hailed Doc and waited for an answer.
"Rick?" there was a mixture of relief and annoyance in the older man's voice. "Well, it's about damn time you came back. You better hurry up and get your ass down here, only two more hours before dawn."
Riddick didn't know whether to laugh or frown at the order. "Yes, sir!" If Doc had been standing there, he would have snapped a salute, if he could remember how. "I'll be landing in fifteen minutes. You going to be anywhere near the landing site so I can hitch a ride?"
"I'll be there with bells on." There was definitely laughter in Doc's voice that time.
Fifteen minutes later, Doc was waiting beside his jeep at the landing site as Riddick descended the ramp from the cargo hold, a blast from one of the A-class cruisers that had been pursuing him had rendered the airlock unusable until Riddick could get someone to repair it. The bag he'd brought from Imam's was slung over his shoulder, a little heavier than before with the addition of some of his own things. He hadn't bothered getting cleaned up on the ship since he'd had to abandon his water shower for the sonic one in what used to be the crew quarters when the water reserve on the ship had gotten too low. Thoughts of the hot shower awaiting him at Doc's house were enough to make him forget the growling in his stomach at the thought of real food.
Doc looked him up and down. "Boy, you look like shit. Like you just got back from the wars. What have you been up to?"
A wry smile touched Riddick's lips as he shook Doc's hand. "Don't ask." He had hoped that Jack would come with Doc. When he hadn't seen her in the Jeep, his stomach had done a flip that had nothing to do with hunger. "Where's Jack?" he almost didn't want to know the answer, especially when he saw the look of indecision cross Doc's face. "She's ok, isn't she?"
"Oh yeah, yeah," Doc assured him immediately. He wasn't sure how much he should tell Riddick about Jack's plans to join the HGs. "She's with Sloane and Akemi right now, a couple hackers about her age. She's been staying with them for a while." Climbing into the driver's side, he waited until Riddick had settled into the passenger's seat then took off. They definitely didn't want to get caught aboveground after the sun started rising. They'd be ok for a little bit after dawn, but it didn't take long for the radiation to build up to fatal levels. "They're all with Trevor right now," he might as well tell him, he'd find out soon enough anyway, "talking about the next mission."
"Next mission?" Riddick had no idea what Doc was talking about, but it didn't sound good. And since Jack was involved, he was going with his gut on this one. "What are you talking about?"
"Jack's got some fool notion in her head that she needs to pay everyone here on D2 back for taking her in and being so nice to her after," he'd almost said 'after you left her here' but he caught himself in time, Riddick was going to have enough of that coming from Jack and Amy, the boy didn't need him giving him a hard time over his long absence as well, "after she started recovering." Despite the seriousness of the situation, a small smile played over his lips. "I tried to tell her they just did it because they were scared spitless of you, but she didn't buy it." He shrugged and his face became once again serious. "So now she's decided to join the HGs."
"HGs?" He knew about the hunter-gatherers, the people who 'acquired' what the secret community needed, not the safest job around. *Has she just got some danger quotient she's trying to fill or something?* "Where did you say she was now?"
Doc shrugged. "She's been staying with Akemi and Sloane, so she's either at Trevor's or at their place."
"Ok. Take me to Trevor's." It wasn't a request. "If she's not there we'll try the other place."
Doc risked looking over at him while they were driving down the long tunnel. He'd driven the narrow road so many times he could do it in his sleep. "You think that's a good idea right now?"
Riddick looked over at him and frowned. "Yeah. Why?"
Doc frowned back. "I take it you're wanting to talk Jackie into not going with the HGs?" He didn't wait for Riddick to answer. "Well, right now, with the way you look and smell, you're not going to make the best argument for staying here or going with you." The Jeep bumped sharply over a large rock and Doc noticed the slight grimace on Riddick's face and, slipping into 'doctor mode' wondered how badly the boy was injured. "Not like she's going to be going anywhere now, sun's going to be up in a bit. And you look like you could do with a shower, some rest, and a hot meal before you try to convince anyone of anything, let alone someone as stubborn as Jackie."
A smile curved up the corners of Riddick's lips. Jack certainly was stubborn, about as stubborn as they came. Catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror, Riddick's smile faded. He could see Doc's point. "Well, if she thinks I look bad, wait until she gets a look at the ship. She'll turn and run the other way for sure."
Riddick was tired, hungry, hurt, and pissed off. Not a good combination, but there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to be done about it so no use dwelling on it. He'd been gone from D2 for 8 weeks, about a month longer than he'd had any intention of being gone, and all because of that prick, Carson Davis. His hands clenched involuntarily on the flightstick of his ship, and he almost wished it was the bastard's neck. He'd killed him once for nearly killing Jack and he wished he could kill the whackjob again for messing with his ship. If it hadn't been for Carson, Riddick would have been back to D2, back to Jack, ages ago. If he was truthful, though, Riddick's own need for revenge - vengeance, justice for Jack, whatever you wanted to call it - had played a part in his undoing.
After he'd manage to elude the A-class Cruisers, he'd gone down into the hold to make Carson tell him where he'd hidden the tracker. He knew any hope of him finding it quickly was next to impossible, especially with the computer screwed up, only able to do the most basic functions. *At least it can calculate starjumps,* he thought sourly. He had every intention when he'd gone down that ramp in making Carson tell him where the tracker was and then leaving him there to finish off later. Let Carson go through the same 3 days of hell the man had put himself and Jack through before he finally finished him off. But when he'd gotten down there, the smug look on the son of a bitch's face just made something click in Riddick's head. All he could see was red, Jack's blood, so much blood, all over him, staining his sheets. He saw her pale and drawn face as he left her in Doc's surgery. He saw her lying in the hospital bed with tubes and monitors all over the place, and he just snapped. Not even bothering with a knife or gun, he'd hit Carson and it felt so good that he'd kept hitting him.
Riddick had no idea how many times he hit Carson, but by the time he realized what he was doing, made himself stop, his knuckles were bloody and aching like someone had taken a ball peen hammer to his hand, and Carson's face was almost indistinguishable as human. When he pulled himself away, he was shaking with the anger and hatred he still held inside him, but there was something else too. Disgust. He'd done a lot of crazy shit, a lot of stupid shit, a lot of bad shit in his life that even he didn't want to think about, but of all the people he'd killed in his life (and there'd been more than a few) he'd never beaten anyone to death. Not even in slam when he was fighting for his life every day. He'd always gone for the quick kill, not necessarily clean, but quick. Sure, he'd played with some of his opponents, done his share of knife dances with people, and he'd strong-armed people for various reasons, but he'd never beaten an unarmed, restrained person before. That level of brutality he'd always figured was reserved for prison guards and sadistic bounty hunters. He didn't like being wrong, especially about himself.
Walking away from the bloody corpse, Riddick climbed the long, curving ramp that would take him up to the crew deck. He washed up quickly in the sink in his bathroom then found the first aid kit he'd used for Jack. As he poured antiseptic over the hand and wrapped it with some sterile bandages, his thoughts drifted to Jack. He thought of her lying on his bed, hovering in and out of consciousness. He thought of the sleepless nights he'd spent on the floor, hoping she'd make it through the three-day trip to D2. He thought of holding her in the shower, listening to her talk like she was certain she was going to die, and any remorse he might have felt faded. It wasn't like he hadn't planned on killing the man anyway, he'd just thought to do it with a little more finesse. But when it came down to it, Carson had hurt someone Riddick cared for, one of the few people he could call a friend. When you didn't have a lot of friends you tended to get kind of protective of the ones you had. Carson had gotten better than he deserved.
When Riddick had finally gone back down to the cargo hold, he dispassionately disposed of the body and cleaned up the bloody mess left behind without allowing himself another thought that the body had once been a living, breathing human. He disassociated himself from the situation, something he'd learned to do a long time ago. Reducing the act of life and death to problems and solutions made things simpler, cleaner. That was one problem dealt with, he'd just have to figure out the other one, the location of the tracker beacon, on his own.
He started on the search for the tracking beacon, but there was a lot of ship to cover and it could be anywhere. If he'd had the computer functioning at its peak capacity, he could have narrowed the search down a lot, but Carson had known what he was doing when he'd disabled it. It had taken Riddick three weeks to finally locate the tracking beacon, but during his search he'd found the two bags Jack had packed. He wondered how she could have possibly gotten them onto the ship and hidden them, but that was just another of Jack's qualities he admired, her resourcefulness.
Between running from his pursuers and searching the ship for the tracker, Riddick hadn't had much time for sleeping and it was starting to show. Closest thing to sleep he'd had in a while had been the catnaps he took in the pilot's chair. After the three weeks spent searching for the tracker, it had taken him another week before he felt like he could breathe again. He wanted to turn back and head to D2 right then, but he knew he had to be more careful than that. He didn't think he was being pursued anymore, but you could never be too careful. It had taken another two weeks before he felt like it was safe to turn his ship toward the Areiadne Sector.
His ship. She didn't even have a name anymore, he'd not bothered, having to change the codes almost every fucking day since he'd left New Sydney. He knew it wasn't necessary for her to have a name, but he didn't like it. A ship not having a name was considered very bad luck, had been considered so all the way back to the first seafaring mariners of Old Earth. Riddick wasn't particularly superstitious, he liked black cats and generally didn't give a shit if he walked under a ladder or broke a mirror, but his ship was a little different. He figured she had been a good ship and she deserved a name, plus he didn't need his luck to get any worse. Soon as they were ready to leave, he'd rename her.
Rolling his head from side to side, he rubbed his tired eyes and took another drink of the extra sweet coffee. At least he had coffee and sugar on the ship. That was something he could be thankful for since he hadn't had time or money to take on supplies in the last six weeks. He supposed he should be thankful he still had anything at all, but living on a diet of sugar and caffeine mixed with peanut butter and crackers had made him a little cranky. He was ready for some real food, any kind of real food, even if it was vegetarian. As soon as he and Jack were safe to leave the planet, he'd take her somewhere and buy them both the biggest steak he could find. He just needed to get somewhere to access one of his accounts and get some more cash to float him for a while.
One thing he did have to be thankful for, he'd been able to get enough fuel to get him back to where he needed to be. He could just as easily have been dead in space without fuel, but he'd been lucky and had found a few backwater planets where he could fuel up without being too suspicious, not that he could remember where any of them were. He couldn't even remember how many sectors he'd been through in the last month and a half, but at least the computer was working well enough to keep track of them so he wouldn't go back anytime soon.
Thinking of the computer sent another surge of bitter anger through Riddick. Carson had fucked with his ship's computer. That was in and of itself a crime punishable by death by Riddick's standards. He didn't have much in the way of possessions but, like his friends, he was very protective of what few he had. The ship was going to need a pretty good going over and some repairs after the shit she'd been put through, and the computer was going to have to be completely overhauled. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he remembered Jack giving him arguments as to why he should take her along with him. "I'm a pretty good engineer, and I'm a pretty good hacker," she'd told him. He hoped that was true, because he was going to need both.
Funny how there was no longer a doubt in his mind that Jack should be with him. He wasn't exactly sure when he stopped thinking in terms of "I" and started thinking in terms of "We", but somewhere along the way it had become a foregone conclusion that Jack would come with him. He still wasn't sure precisely what it was that he felt for Jack or what they would do once they left D2, but he knew that she belonged with him and he wanted her there. Provided that's still where she wanted to be.
Breathing a heavy sigh of relief as he slipped into orbit around D2, Riddick ran his hands vigorously over his face and scalp, the stubble reminding him it had been a while since he'd bothered shaving. There had been times in the last month or so when he hadn't been sure he'd ever see the lush, green planet again. He couldn't remember ever being so glad to see a planet in his life; usually he preferred space, but it was certainly a sight for sore eyes. Toggling on the comm, he hailed Doc and waited for an answer.
"Rick?" there was a mixture of relief and annoyance in the older man's voice. "Well, it's about damn time you came back. You better hurry up and get your ass down here, only two more hours before dawn."
Riddick didn't know whether to laugh or frown at the order. "Yes, sir!" If Doc had been standing there, he would have snapped a salute, if he could remember how. "I'll be landing in fifteen minutes. You going to be anywhere near the landing site so I can hitch a ride?"
"I'll be there with bells on." There was definitely laughter in Doc's voice that time.
Fifteen minutes later, Doc was waiting beside his jeep at the landing site as Riddick descended the ramp from the cargo hold, a blast from one of the A-class cruisers that had been pursuing him had rendered the airlock unusable until Riddick could get someone to repair it. The bag he'd brought from Imam's was slung over his shoulder, a little heavier than before with the addition of some of his own things. He hadn't bothered getting cleaned up on the ship since he'd had to abandon his water shower for the sonic one in what used to be the crew quarters when the water reserve on the ship had gotten too low. Thoughts of the hot shower awaiting him at Doc's house were enough to make him forget the growling in his stomach at the thought of real food.
Doc looked him up and down. "Boy, you look like shit. Like you just got back from the wars. What have you been up to?"
A wry smile touched Riddick's lips as he shook Doc's hand. "Don't ask." He had hoped that Jack would come with Doc. When he hadn't seen her in the Jeep, his stomach had done a flip that had nothing to do with hunger. "Where's Jack?" he almost didn't want to know the answer, especially when he saw the look of indecision cross Doc's face. "She's ok, isn't she?"
"Oh yeah, yeah," Doc assured him immediately. He wasn't sure how much he should tell Riddick about Jack's plans to join the HGs. "She's with Sloane and Akemi right now, a couple hackers about her age. She's been staying with them for a while." Climbing into the driver's side, he waited until Riddick had settled into the passenger's seat then took off. They definitely didn't want to get caught aboveground after the sun started rising. They'd be ok for a little bit after dawn, but it didn't take long for the radiation to build up to fatal levels. "They're all with Trevor right now," he might as well tell him, he'd find out soon enough anyway, "talking about the next mission."
"Next mission?" Riddick had no idea what Doc was talking about, but it didn't sound good. And since Jack was involved, he was going with his gut on this one. "What are you talking about?"
"Jack's got some fool notion in her head that she needs to pay everyone here on D2 back for taking her in and being so nice to her after," he'd almost said 'after you left her here' but he caught himself in time, Riddick was going to have enough of that coming from Jack and Amy, the boy didn't need him giving him a hard time over his long absence as well, "after she started recovering." Despite the seriousness of the situation, a small smile played over his lips. "I tried to tell her they just did it because they were scared spitless of you, but she didn't buy it." He shrugged and his face became once again serious. "So now she's decided to join the HGs."
"HGs?" He knew about the hunter-gatherers, the people who 'acquired' what the secret community needed, not the safest job around. *Has she just got some danger quotient she's trying to fill or something?* "Where did you say she was now?"
Doc shrugged. "She's been staying with Akemi and Sloane, so she's either at Trevor's or at their place."
"Ok. Take me to Trevor's." It wasn't a request. "If she's not there we'll try the other place."
Doc risked looking over at him while they were driving down the long tunnel. He'd driven the narrow road so many times he could do it in his sleep. "You think that's a good idea right now?"
Riddick looked over at him and frowned. "Yeah. Why?"
Doc frowned back. "I take it you're wanting to talk Jackie into not going with the HGs?" He didn't wait for Riddick to answer. "Well, right now, with the way you look and smell, you're not going to make the best argument for staying here or going with you." The Jeep bumped sharply over a large rock and Doc noticed the slight grimace on Riddick's face and, slipping into 'doctor mode' wondered how badly the boy was injured. "Not like she's going to be going anywhere now, sun's going to be up in a bit. And you look like you could do with a shower, some rest, and a hot meal before you try to convince anyone of anything, let alone someone as stubborn as Jackie."
A smile curved up the corners of Riddick's lips. Jack certainly was stubborn, about as stubborn as they came. Catching a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror, Riddick's smile faded. He could see Doc's point. "Well, if she thinks I look bad, wait until she gets a look at the ship. She'll turn and run the other way for sure."