Love scene warning! Love scene warning! It's short but my characters would never forgive me if I didn't include it. LOL Marked by (( )) breaks.
THE MOTHER LODE BY ABRAXIS
Chapter 46 – All Or Nothing
Riddick was counting off the hours of his fourteenth day in the cell with the reps of his exercising. Slowly chinning himself on the rack of the double bunk, he once again reviewed the slim group of clues he had to work with. It made no more sense than it had the several hundred times he had already gone over them. If the fake IDs had failed, as many of the 'voice's' questions implied, and they had any way to prove who he was, he should have already been long gone in transit back to slam. If they had held and the problem was only the challenged ownership of the colony and all the illegal weapons and equipment they had, he should have been released back into the general population of the colony days ago. With the Patrol in control of all of their ships the colony was as good as a slam without the Patrol having to bother with the care and feeding of the inmates and no one would be 'officially' under arrest until the Court got around to making their decisions and issuing warrants. The most that should have been done was tagging the major players, the leaders, with trackers so that they couldn't get themselves 'lost' in the unexplored territory outside of the settlement.
That he couldn't figure out what was going on didn't worry Riddick much as far as it concerned him. Sooner or later, he would find his way out just as he always had. What bothered him was that it gave him no clue as to what was happening with the rest; with Jenna and Jack, in particular, but also Syrus, Jeeter, Ben and even Rafferty and the other leaders among his people. From what little the Patrol Commander had said, it had sounded like they might be basically on the side of the resident colonists but, the longer Riddick sat in his cell, the more likely it seemed to him that all the rest were probably in the same situation. He was beginning to become really pissed at himself for not following Jenna's orders and making a run for it in the BC. He would have had a lot better chance of getting both of them out of this if he had.
The first clue Riddick had that something was changing was the sound of the bolts on his cell door being drawn. Though he simply stopped his exercise and seemed to lounge idly against the frame of the bunk and no one looking at him would have seen it, he immediately went into fight mode. It was a shock when Jenna walked through the door and held out her hand to him. Three things hit him immediately. She was armed, wearing Jeeter's beautiful but deadly gift and her earrings. She was dressed in her own clothing but 'off duty' clothing, without the cheater boots to give her extra height, and looked very deceptively petite and harmless. Last, while she was smiling, her eyes were as hard and serious as he had ever seen them. She didn't say anything, just begged him with her eyes to trust her. Fuck! What choice did he have? He took her hand and let her lead him out of the cell.
He wasn't surprised to find them surrounded by Patrol guards but found the presence of an officer wearing Commander pips something to question. It had to be the Sikes who had identified himself during the confrontation with the Forces ships. But Patrol Commanders didn't trouble themselves with people like Riddick. They just ordered some lower ranked schmuck to ship them back where they belonged.
The little time that he had heard Sikes' voice over the BC's com had given Riddick an image that didn't match the reality of the man. Shit! Riddick didn't think that they came that big in the Patrol. The man wasn't what you'd call 'hatch size'. He also looked like fluid granite walking. But he wasn't granite, just flesh that would slice and bleed like any other man. Riddick had taken bigger. He marked the man as a possible challenge but nothing beyond doing.
When the Master at Arms in charge of the guard detail slapped a set of restraining cuffs on him, Jenna's hiss of disapproval at Sikes and the man's warning frown at her but subsequent request for the control for the cuffs was another puzzle for Riddick. Added to it was the fact that Riddick now identified Sikes as the 'voice' that had questioned him over the com in his cell. Patrol Commanders didn't do interrogations.
Riddick's suspicions got even deeper as he saw that they were headed out of the ship. When, at Sikes' command, the guard dropped away and only Jenna, Sikes and himself continued on across the colony compound, Riddick's senses reached a painful level of sensitivity. Whatever Jenna was up to, he wanted to be ready to back her instantly.
He took note that the sun was just beginning to set. Until Sanctuary's large moon rose, it would soon be the unbroken dark, that he and Jenna could both utilize so well, everywhere but in the compound proper. He was more than satisfied when their destination turned out to be a housing pod well toward the outer limits of that compound. Closer to the landing pad where the BC was berthed would have been better but he had no doubt that he and Jenna could manage to get to her anyway. Now, it was just a matter of waiting patiently until Jenna cued him in on what was going on or made her move.
He didn't have to wait long. As soon as the door to the pod was closed behind them, Jenna commanded, "Shutters, down and lock; doors lock; lights, two percent." He watched as Sikes cried out to a light control that didn't answer to his voice and then went into a defensive stance, making it even easier for Jenna to lift the cuff control out of his outside uniform-coat pocket. The man spun at this, trying to catch whoever had touched him but Jenna easily evaded him. Riddick kept his eyes on the big man, now backing away from where he could see Riddick's shined eyes, a deadly little sting-laser appearing in his hand.
Sikes' first shot went wild as Riddick ducked and rolled. Seeing Jenna circling the man with one of those damned dangerous earrings of hers in her hand, Riddick hit the man low, taking him down. He felt the body under him jerk as Jenna wrenched Sikes' head back and shoved the drug dispenser up his nose. A barely audible hiss and Sikes struggles quickly faded and he went limp. Riddick raised up off of the body to find Jenna holding the cuff control out to him.
"I don't know how this thing works. Use them to cuff Sikes to something that's bolted down. You don't have to gag him. This pod is basically soundproof. Then you can change clothes. I had some of your own brought down. They're in the bedroom chest. Orange just isn't your color."
Riddick took the time to leer hungrily as Jenna swirled off into the bedroom. Then he threw his lust back into its cage and got down to business. As he dragged Sikes' considerable weight across the pod, cuffed the Patrol Commander to the living room side of the kitchen bar and searched him, a weight lifted from Riddick's mind that he hadn't realized was there until it disappeared. He discovered that he was relieved that Jenna hadn't killed the man. It took him a few minutes of thought, as he stripped the man of his com and checked him for other weapons, to understand why.
As they had walked across the compound, while they hadn't spoken and the majority of Sikes' attention was on watching Riddick, it hadn't taken long for Riddick to know that the man found Jenna interesting, very interesting, in a very personal way. Riddick could smell the challenge rolling off of the man, a challenge as primal as it could get between two males interested in the same female. Since Jenna had obviously made some kind of deal with Sikes to get Riddick out of that cell, the thought that the man's attraction to her might have had something to do with that deal made the prospect of bleeding him all that much sweeter.
The idea that Jenna would play someone that way to give Riddick the chance to escape, with the possible consequence of the man dying, didn't bother him. That she might have done so knowing that she was going to kill the man herself from the very start of it did. One of the things that had most fascinated Riddick about her was her hard, if weirdly individualized, base line of integrity. To have seduced Sikes with the intention of murdering him wouldn't fit with that, not when Jenna had the option of not killing. That was something that Riddick didn't want to be responsible for having caused to change.
Of course, if Sikes had forced her past anything but promises, Riddick was going to gut him like a pig right where he lay.
Walking into the bedroom, Riddick found that Jenna had stripped and was in the shower. Skinning out of the jumpsuit and prison slip-on shoes, he slipped in behind her and began helping her rinse shampoo out of her hair.
"Jack?"
"She's in the infirmary. Still critical but Syrus swears she'll be fine in a couple of months. Her crew made it down without a scratch. She made them strap down in the bunks and brought it in on her own. Jeeter's been by her side since he was released from questioning. Both she and Jeeter are clear as far as the Patrol is concerned. Too small to bother with."
Riddick had a hundred other questions but with that one answered the others would wait. Once the soap was gone, he began to nuzzle her neck, taking in the wonderful smell and taste of her. Turning in his arms, Jenna molded herself to him and pulled his mouth to hers. Several moments later he was forced to come up for air.
"How long we got before he wakes up, sweet thing?"
"A man of his size, about forty minutes but another ten or so before he will be clear-headed enough to talk to."
"Talk to? Then why jump him and drug him?"
"He pissed me off. I thought he needed an object lesson." She tightened her arms around his neck and slowly raised herself off the floor until her legs were wrapped around his waist. "Damn, I've missed you. Now, how about keeping that threat you made in that dark alley behind G's about taking me up against a wall?"
"I haven't done that yet?"
"Nope."
"Well, damn."
((Love Scene)) ((Love Scene))
The lights were still at two percent. In the steamy, wet heat of the shower cabinet Riddick's world shrank to the simplicity of the primordial era it mimicked. To shined vision there was only the shimmering energy aura of the woman in his arms meeting and merging with his own. He kneaded the softly sheathed muscles of her buttocks as he lifted her, sliding her higher up his body until he could nuzzle her breasts and capture hard, nubby nipples to tease and suck.
As her breath became broken and filled with sweet little moans, his already painfully hard cock demanded its share of the fun but he made it wait. He slipped his hands further under her, the fingers of one slipping inside of her while those of the other found her clit. Not until her moans had become sharp cries pleading for him and his fingers were soaked with her arousal did he press her hard against the wall and sheath himself to the balls in her with one violent thrust.
Her panted, "Yes, oh god, yes.", and her fingertips digging deep into the muscles of his back sent him over the edge into a frenzy, pillaging her with brutally powerful strokes.
He watched as her lips snarled back, exposing sharp, even white teeth; mirroring his own feral expression. The litany of her sharp cries of, "yes, yes, harder damn you, yes" reached a crescendo as his body began to spasm, demanding its own release. Then her orgasm hit, clutching him, milking him and he came with a strangled howl.
(( End Sex)) ((End Sex))
As he slowly sank to the floor of the shower, carrying Jenna gently with him, his only thought was, "Fuck heaven when life can be this good." An amused snicker, smothered against his chest, told him that he had said that out loud. He patted a bare butt cheek through the still warm rain of the shower.
"Up, woman. I want to shave before the meat in the living room wakes up."
Another smothered snicker, that he was sure he didn't want to know the reason for, and Jenna was up and gone and the shower was pelting him in the crotch. Climbing to his feet, he shut off the shower, toweled dry and went about the business of shaving two weeks' growth off of his face and scalp. Exiting to the bedroom, he found Jenna dressed in the all black ship's dress uniform and laying the same out for him on the bed.
Their long, hooded, black cloaks were there; as were the two satchels that had a good supply of clothing but also their shares of G's best jewels, extra sets of fake IDs and the cards to access the money accounts that went with them hidden in their false bottoms. He wondered if Jeeter wasn't also sitting on top of his and Jack's quick-escape satchels as well, waiting for the instant that Jack could be removed from the infirmary, or if they were as sure as Jenna was that the Patrol had no interest in them.
Checking the belt Jenna had laid out for him and finding that its shiv sheath was empty, he open another secret pocket in his satchel and chose one of the shivs hidden there to fill it and a couple of stickers and a stunner for his boots as well. Then he began dressing.
"Do you want to tell me what's going on now?"
"I'd rather you hear it from Sikes himself, make your own judgment about what he says." She started to leave the bedroom then stopped and turned back for a moment. "And Rick, whatever you decide is what we'll do."
Then she was gone, leaving Riddick staring at the empty doorway. Shit! That sounded too much like that fucking 'it's whatever you want it to be'. Well that wasn't going to be the way it was this time! This was looking to be the bottom line and the devil laughing his head off. No more dead and forgotten. No more chance for a righteous life. The hunt would be on again and the mercs would be crawling out of the woodwork, drooling for the bounty on his ass. There would be bleeding corpses left behind wherever they went. If she wanted a part of that, she was going to have to say it.
As he finished dressing, Riddick slammed his feet into his boots a little harder than necessary, made a final check of his blades and then stalked out of the bedroom. As he stood staring at Sikes, Jenna walked out of the kitchen and handed him a mug of what his nose told him was good strong coffee laced with whiskey. As he took a long swallow, he couldn't think of any drink that had ever tasted better. Funny how even that short of a time in a cell could make even the smallest things so damn much more when you were out again.
Suddenly something went cold and hard inside Riddick. He pulled Jenna tight against him and sealed his mouth to hers. Tasting the life in her, breathing it, using it to push back the icy darkness that had been growing in him for the last two weeks. As if she could read his thoughts, when he finally released her mouth, she whispered softly against his cheek, "There's still a chance." Then she turned in his arms and leaned back against him. Riddick knew that his arms were a little too tight as he held her hard against him but she didn't protest, only leaned her still slightly damn curls against his cheek as they continued to watch Sikes.
When the man finally opened his eyes, it was clear that either Jenna had misjudged his ability to recover or he had been faking unconsciousness until his mind was clear of the drugs effects. He almost immediately focused on their combined, shined stares. Riddick liked the man's reaction. There was no weakness, no real fear; just the realization of his really fucked situation and a feral determination to make them pay something for killing him. When he finally spoke it was only one word.
"Why?"
Jenna waited for a long moment before she answered him.
"Because cuffing Rick wasn't in the proper spirit of our agreement. It makes me doubt your sincerity; makes me wonder if all of this wasn't just some ruse to provoke him into something that would allow you to fulfill your orders with less damage to your conscience; something like 'killed while attempting to escape'. I thought that you needed a demonstration of how that would turn out. Also, I told you that you would have to meet him on his own ground. Well, this is it."
Riddick liked the sound of all that. When Jenna had talked about Sikes having pissed her off, his first thought had been that it had something to do with the attraction that Sikes obviously had for her. This didn't sound like anything even close to that. When Sikes answered her, Riddick gave him points for guts, considering the position he was in.
"Not a very effective way to convince me that I should set him free."
Jenna's warm, low laughter filled the pod.
"I would think, Commander, that the fact that you are still alive would do a great deal to convince you. However, the dynamics have changed a little. Now, Rick will be free no matter what you think about it. He will be free and alive and I have the greatest of confidence that he will be able to keep himself that way. What you need to decide now is how you wish to fit into this new reality.
"You can be discovered here, cuffed with your own equipment, to explain how the problem your superiors expected you to solve has now blown up in your and their faces, that Richard B. Riddick is once again alive and well and on the loose. Then again, you could lie to them about it, cover your ass by turning Rick into a new criminal. They will accept that, even demand it given the circumstances, but they really won't believe it, will they? Your career will be just as down the drain unofficially as it would have been officially.
"Or you can do your best to convince Rick that he can trust you to protect his secret, report to your superiors that he definitely isn't Riddick and allow him to remain with the colony without his having to worry that you, or someone else with a less well-developed conscience, is going to try to kill him the minute his back is turned."
Riddick felt that it was time that he got a little clarification of exactly what the hell was going on.
"Would you like to clue me in just a little, sweet thing?"
Jenna's smile was more a snarl as she continued staring at Sikes while speaking to Riddick.
"Due to the political complications it could cause should the integrity of the group be compromised by being associated with the infamous Riddick, the Commander has received some orders that he doesn't like. He is to see to it that Richard B. Riddick is dead, even if he isn't … yet. His problem is that he knows who you are and, while sending you back to prison wouldn't bother him in the least, he isn't happy with the idea of committing cold-blooded murder. He came to me looking for some way out of this dilemma.
"Actually, I think that he was really looking for some justification for murder in the way you had acted during our association. Since we are now standing here, I believe that we can assume that he didn't find it when I told him the absolute truth of everything that has happened since we first met as well as what I know of what happened on T2. What happens now is something you and he will have to discuss. Unless, of course, you would rather just toss it in as far as the colony is concerned and leave. We do have some time until it will be dark enough for us to do that. How you use that time is up to you."
If someone had given Riddick a thousand guesses as to what being released from that cell was going to lead to, this wouldn't have been one of them. So the cop had a problem with killing him? Since the Patrol couldn't collect on bounty, the reason wouldn't be money. That meant that Sikes was the by-the-book that he had thought he was. Too bad the ass-holes up the line weren't. Or maybe not. This 'political' thing? Riddick needed some time to figure out how what Jenna had just said could be worked to his advantage. He handed his mug to Jenna and then ran his hands over her mid-drift and belly and then her sides, marking his territory once more, before gently pushing her away.
"Make me something to eat and some more of that coffee. Something nice and greasy and unhealthy, like a shark-rat steak with all the fixings. The Commander runs a class slam but nothing but what's good for you gets old quick." Then he sat down in one of the side chairs and addressed Sikes. "Now, what's this political crap all about that has them trying to turn a Patrol straight arrow like you into Spec-Ops?"
The flush of heat to Sikes' face told Riddick that he'd hit the sore spot dead on. Jenna was right. Sikes would have sent Riddick back to slam in a heartbeat but was really pissed off at the idea of being expected to be his executioner. Sikes was a man looking for an 'out' and that was the key to dealing with him. Now, Riddick had to figure out if it was worth the risk to trust the man in the first place and, if it was, what it would take to push him in the direction he was already facing.
About half way through Sikes' explanation of the situation from his side, Jenna brought Riddick his food and coffee. As she turned to go back to the kitchen she made gestures at the coffee mug and at Sikes. Riddick gave her a short nod of agreement. He hadn't heard anything he didn't like from the man yet and a little courtesy could go a long way at this point in their negotiations.
When Jenna sat a mug down beside Sikes and, at Riddick's order, raised the lights enough for him to see it, Riddick used the control to unlock the cuffs. The Patrol Commander did a fairly good job of covering his surprise but he didn't get stupid. He seemed to realize that Riddick felt quite capable of taking him and didn't seem anxious to test out that belief, seemed to understand that those lights could go back down as quickly as they had come up. He adjusted himself into a more comfortable position but made no move to get up off of the floor as he smoothly continued speaking.
When Sikes finally finished, Riddick was satisfied that Jack and Jeeter would be ok and that the colony was almost certainly a done deal for both the group and Rafferty's people. He was even close to being comfortable with the idea of Sen continuing to breathe. He only had one question that needed answering before he finally decided on that one.
"If Sen didn't want the ID stuff to come up this quick and is denying the ID changes for anyone but the group, why are we having this conversation? Who tipped you to it?"
Sikes remained silent, unwilling to answer that. It was Jenna who did.
"It was Ben. I chose you. Jack chose Jeeter. Mira chose Casmir and I'm sure that he felt that Mr. Sen had betrayed him in someway as well. He set up the tarantula again and brought the Company mercs down on us. When that didn't work out the way he expected, he informed the Commander of the ID changes for everyone."
Fuck! That was the one that Riddick hadn't seen coming. … and it hurt! That was the worst part of it! It fucking hurt! All those years of turning it all off, of knowing that you couldn't trust, couldn't care – couldn't let yourself even want to care - … all the pain and hard lessons it had taken to get to that safe null void of not-caring … … and now … now he didn't feel much different from that snot-nosed little four-year-old kid who had stood on a sidewalk with his brown paper bag in his arms, wondering why his foster brother had blamed him for the food they had both stolen and where he was going to end up next and had first begun building that void.
But, as the wild roil of anger raged through him, Riddick realized that it was all aimed at himself; at his stupidity for letting it matter, rather than at Ben for just being what Riddick had long ago discovered people were. It didn't help when the first lucid question that formed in his mind made it crystal clear that the kid's betrayal hadn't really cured him of that stupidity.
"If they want all of this to disappear, what's going to happen to the kid? Is he slated for an 'accident', too?"
Riddick couldn't tell if Sikes' shock was at the idea that he even cared what happen to Ben or the idea that the boy-genius would be given the same swift dispatch as a criminal like Riddick.
"No! … They are planning to have him committed to a secure institution as incurably delusional, paranoid schizophrenic, but with facilities to continue his work."
Riddick did a quick mental comparison of the high-dollar, cushy institution that Sikes had to be talking about and the bowels-of-hell slams that he had known. The continuing inequities of the universe brought a sneer to his lips but it lacked the bitterness it once would have had. Riddick had to admit that somewhere in all that had happened since T2, he had developed at least a little capacity for something that no one had ever sent in his direction, mercy. Ben was one of the ones who should never have been let out of his 'gilded cage' and now he would be sent back where he belonged. That he might not be as happy there as before was punishment enough. Hell, Riddick thought, maybe he should just tattoo 'sucker' on his forehead and get it over with.
Then he flicked his gaze to Jenna and discovered an angry snarl on her beautiful face. The way her eyes gentled and filled with empathy as they moved from Sikes to him made him re-think that. Maybe the inequities weren't as deep any more and maybe he wasn't such a sucker after all. That realization brought with it an understanding of how badly he had been deluding himself with his plans for the future.
There was no way he was going to allow Jenna to join him on the run. Maybe before, when she was just as much on the lam as he was, he could have done it but not now; not now that the colony was certain to become a reality; not now that she would be able to have the life she deserved. Most especially, not now that the full understanding of what that "political crap" meant hit him.
He was no longer Riddick, escaped convict and murderer; he was Riddick, political problem. If he ran, it wouldn't be simple greedy mercs looking for him but men just like himself; men whose only hold on reality, only justification for their existence, was that they made their contracts. The dark seamy undersides of civilization that had always been his ground would now be turned against him. When they finally found the one that was better than he was, and they would find that one eventually, it wouldn't be slam, just an unmarked grave. As that reality came crashing down, it left him with no doubt about how fucking different life on the run would be for him and how impossibly short his odds for surviving very long had just become.
To this bleak future, he added in all that he had experienced in the years since T2 and, most importantly what he had been feeling in that cell and in the short time since Jenna had led him out of it. The comparison between the two left him with one ironic reality. He had finally reached that point that Imam had always warned him that he would. It was time for all or nothing. No more walking both sides of that thin line; time to make the final choice between what he had been and what he thought he wanted to become. Imam just hadn't told him that it would be a fucking cop making the choice for him.
Staring at Sikes, Riddick knew what he had to do, the risk he had to take. He released a deep rumble of laughter at this best of God's fucking jokes as he stood up and turned a hard glare on the Patrol Commander.
"I'm tired of running. If I can't keep what I've got here … then I guess it's time to spit in God's face in person."
Then, he walked over to Sikes and dropped the cuff control and the deadly little sting-laser in his lap. Stepping back, his arms at his sides, he gave the man a perfect target.
