Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other characters not seen in Pitch Black.
"You done well, Spook, little rabbit." For a brief moment his approval, laced with a warmth and near-affection washed over the Psi where she half hung in the hard safety of his arms. The gaze of his icy eyes melted for just long enough for it to be seen by the eager stare of the girl in his embrace, and then the winter returned; the warmth of emotions cut off, the pools of silver froze over again, leaving only the chill and the heat of hard muscle.
Blood sluggishly crept along the stubbled jaw, snaking its deliberate way through the prickle of short growth beneath the near-pout of the caramel lips. It hung on the tension of its own strength, then careened down, away from the ichor-splashed face to dash itself upon the pale curve of the solemn face turned up to the precipitous visage.
The scattered spray of the droplets stained her pale cheek in a spattered ring, the touch lukewarm and salt, a mark left by a soft kiss from some specter in the gore bedecked corridor. Her pearl teeth tugged at her pallid lip; she flinched away from the tepid splash.
And then the mountain of flesh bent close, his breath a stygian blast from some fiery pit searing her alabaster cheek before his smoldering mouth touched the smudge of crimson.
A heavy hand brushed the door.
The light was dazzling.
Floodlights illuminated the shuttle bay, the barest hint of the light gleaming blinding bright around the door, immaculately glaring in even the lights of the hall. It slithered around the cracked door, reaching, groping, creeping along the marred, befouled wire finished metal of the bloodied corridor. It bubbled over the sagged, slumped, crumpled flotsam of wasted, massacred, mangled meat, gleaming dully on the rusted stains upon the paled, bluing corpse, drowning the faint glow of the smoke with the incandescent flood.
The crack of light etched into the dark-drained skin of the smaller girl, soothed over the darker, caramel gold of the killer's hide. It yearned, fighting to rush, wild as a deluge, around the damming door. Radiance slammed against the cracked door, searching, seeking, questing for the Slam paled flesh it seemed to sense just out of its fullest glory. Its feverish fingers singed, blistered into the silver eyes.
The barest hint of sound pulled itself through Spook's throat. Her hoary eyes squeezed shut; pressure lines welling up with a sudden dampness as she fought the shocking kiss of the light.
The warmth of her slight frame pressed against Riddick, and he deeply drafted in the scent of her, sharp with the twinge of pain, dark with the aroma of blood, steely with the bouquet of death, hinted with the musk of his own scent upon her.
Faint scraps of sound crept along on the tail of the light, secret whisperings and echoes, suggestions of what lay ahead. Boot soles scuffing, leather creaking. The silent swish of liquid in metal, the low murmurs of people trying to keep someone in the same room from overhearing. Cards purring as they were bridged. The groan of a chair beneath shifting weight, the creak of a table under someone's elbows. A sigh near to the door, a low sound, a young sound, from an inexperienced throat, unburdened with the passage of years.
The hushed clatter of metal chits striking one another, of chits being tossed at a pile, tagged on the heels of the sigh, a quiet song with pauses as varied and peculiar as different vocalists. Sounds that had the peculiar ring of small sounds in a large space, of sounds clustered in origin despite space to spread out in.
Sound was harried by scents of sweat, of boot polish, scuffed leather, tarnished metal and oil. The harsh lye soap used to wash clothes in Slam. The subtly, pervasively bitter-sweet scent of the standard issue soaps. The close scent of sweat. The smell of bodies pressed close.
There was a slight scent of burnt air, and stale air. The crackling smell of ozone. A not-quite charred smell. The smell of cooled metal that had been heated. The scent of chemical flame long since doused. The smell of old wiring, eaten by power, left to rot like the entrails of some gutted beast. The smell of still warm metal, newly hardened.
Spook stiffened against the burnished chest.
Beneath the stony gaze of the substantial, bloodstained butcher, her eyes took on that strangely blurred stare; unfocussed or focused on something no one else could ever hope to see. She leaned heavily against him, her frail weight pressing her warmth through the gory, blood-stiffened canvas of his shirt. Slowly her lips moved.
"Always the same," she barely breathed the words, low and sullen. "They just sit there, act like I'm the same kind of trash in there. Treat me like a bloody burden every shift, like I asked to be assigned with old codgers like them. Not like I don't know that they'd trade me for a half dead dog anyway. I'm the only one here who takes this shift seriously." There was a hint of petulance in the low pitched tones, mopish malcontent directed at whatever she could see. "Those three never take guard duty in the hangar seriously anyway. 'If anything were to get here from in there,'" she took on a nasal, superior quality, "'it'd never be able to get out. The flight deck would seize control of the shuttle even if whatever was flying it managed to get it launched.' Pah."
And then she sagged, hanging in the crush of his arm, tightened to hold her upright.
"Only four guards in there," her voice was weak, quiet, mumbled into his broad chest. "The shuttles have standard H-Seven-Zero-Eight-Q navigation on them; basic military grade shuttle. The hangar houses 6 of them, with the launch shaft at the end opened on either end by security codes. It pressurizes for launch off the asteroid."
A low snorted growl was her only answer.
"I have the code, too." She turned her face up to his, her wide, nervous, hopeful eyes meeting the dark and brooding shadows in his.