Chapter 37: Survival
Jefferies, J, and Rat found shelter in a shallow canyon where they stayed for nearly a week before a ship from the nearest merc guild dropped in and picked them up. This sort of thing was done often in the mercenary community; sometimes a merc was stranded by a hard catch, or like with these three, a run of bad luck. The guild would take them off planet to re-equip and then send them along their way – for a price. Jefferies knew what they were going to do after they got a hold of a new ship: find that bitch – dead or alive. If she was alive they'd get their payday…If not… He'd have the pleasure of laughing over her dead body.
For Kyra, time seemed to hold still, even as it raced ahead. Days turned to weeks, and weeks lengthened into months. She kept a tally on the wall of her cave, just like she had on Crematoria; it had been seventy-one days since she had awaked from Cryo sleep. Seventy-one days of fighting for an existence in the blistering heat from the giant blue sun.
As the time passed she became more and more adept at hunting, surviving anyway she could. She had found more wild life than the birds to prey upon and there had been many close calls from some of the more dangerous ones, but now she knew their tricks and had some of her own. Her cave was comfortable; she had her fire constantly burning just outside the entrance to ward off any unwanted guests and just inside was a small bed made from the plant life and hides she had collected. Spears and rough knives of various kinds leaned against the other wall.
All was well except for one thing. She hadn't felt Riddick's presence since the night she had felt her baby move. She had come to take for granted the connection he had forged between them when he had marked her, but now she felt a strange emptiness and it terrified her.
Kyra continued on, however, scratching out a living on this lonely rock, constantly hoping and searching for a plan; a way off this planet so she could rejoin Riddick. Her stomach was growing ever larger, often becoming a burden and a hindrance to her but she never resented it because it meant her baby was growing strong and healthy. She could feel it moving a lot now, kicking and turning restlessly, keeping her awake at night. She had begun storing food and water in prepared skins for the time when she could no longer get around and hunt. It was soon, she knew; due to her ever increasing bulk, she realized that she must have been five months pregnant when she had escaped instead of the four she had guessed previously. The thought began to haunt her, what if she was alone when the time came for the baby to be born? What if something went wrong? She pushed those thoughts back whenever they would surface. There was no choice, nothing she could do so she just fought on.
Far, far away a pair of silver eyes opened into the darkness of the sleeping ship. The only light came from the softly blinking lights on the control panel as the ship guided itself towards their destination. Riddick was awake.
He could see twenty or more Cryo chambers lined up along the wall in front of him, filled with mercs. He tested his bonds and found them tight and secure. If there was one thing that mercs knew how to do, it was to secure their targets. But these mercs didn't know that Cryo Stasis didn't work so great on him and they had made the same mistake that so many others had before them; they believed they were in control, and for that mistake, they would die.
He worked for several seconds against the bonds that held his wrists, positioning his hand just so. Then, using the pressure of the bonds, he dislocated his thumb and, making his hand as narrow as possible, pulled it from the restraint. He did the same with his other hand until both were free, popping his thumbs back into place. Next, he began to work on the door; hotwiring it until it suddenly swung open. Balancing himself with his right hand against the chamber's framework, he reached around and hotwired the keypad, bypassing the code. It sparked several times until, finally, the restraints around his ankles popped open, letting him step out of the chamber and into the belly of the merc's ship.
Riddick ran quickly up into the cockpit, checking their location. "Shit!" he said under his breath. They had been traveling in the wrong direction for nearly two and a half months. He did some quick calculations in his head, working out their coordinates and speed in regards to the heading of the under cutter he had been given on Anitra 2.
Unknown to him, as he worked at the control panel, small red lights began to blink in each of the merc's Cryo chambers as the emergency breach alarm silently went off, alerting the quickly awakening mercs to Riddick's escape. One by one, all down the line, Cryo chambers opened with a hiss and out stumbled a merc, grabbing whatever object they could wield as a weapon; regretting locking their guns in the hold.
Riddick tensed when he heard the first door open, "Well, well, well…maybe these fuckers aren't so dumb." He thought as he slowly turned and faced the quickly increasing group of mercenaries, spreading his hands apart at shoulder level. At this sign of cooperation, several mercs rushed forward and surrounded him; ordering him to kneel. Then, without any warning, one of them rammed the end of a club into his stomach, causing him to buckle forward as the air was pushed out of him. He straightened and slowly looked at the offending merc, his face unreadable. Another club suddenly bashed the back of his right knee, dropping him to the floor. The other mercs gained courage and swarmed around him, several beating his back with their blunt weapons as they jeered.
He was on all fours, supporting himself against the brutal pummeling, clenching his jaw against the pain. God, he hated mercs; they had no honor, beating a man only when he had been dropped by someone else. He felt his fury building, and he let it.
Suddenly, with a roar, he lunged upwards. Energy pulsed out from him, creating a shockwave that threw the mercs backwards. Bodies slammed into the walls and crashed into the Cryo chambers.
Riddick stood in the center of the ring of fallen men breathing deeply and slowly, relaxing his clenched muscles. His mark was glowing a soft blue again, claiming him for all to see Furyan.
As his breathing returned to normal he rolled his neck and stepped over the bodies scattered on the ground; any that appeared to be alive, he snapped their necks with his heavily booted foot. After doing that little job he turned to the control panel and reset the coordinates. Instantly he felt the ship turn, heading back the way it had come. Riddick worked with the velocity, bracing himself as they suddenly hurtled forward, the engines straining as they accelerated. It was time to find Kyra.
Riddick cleared out the bodies and sent them flying into the vacuum of space; a fitting ending for people who had devoted their lives to greed, now they would be left with nothing. Watching the last merc disappear, he returned to the cockpit and settled in the navigation chair, pouring over star charts – searching for habitable planets along the illusive under cutter's heading. It seemed to be a dark part of the universe, habitable planets were hard to come by, but finally he found something…Forty-two days out at his current speed was a small, deserted planet marked in the merc computer system as a safe transfer point: Planet Sahade; the Konis system. He entered the coordinates into the computer and sat back. It would be a long wait.