52. Alpha
Both ships were gone. Hypatia couldn't have flown them both off; she would have had enough trouble just getting her own ship to turn over. Riddick hadn't though to lock down the frigate with a sequencing code. The bizzies must have decided they needed more to do than let good ol' Captain Cooper go about his business. Riddick sighed in the coming dark and set Don down.
"Thirsty…"
"Ship is gone."
It seemed to take Don a long time to digest this bit. "Gone?"
"The rent a cop busybodies must have decided it's evidence."
Don nodded at the words but clearly didn't understand them. His eyes rolled up into his head and his body shook. The tremors had died down from the horrific spasms that rocked him from head to toe. His pallor was still gray from blood loss and likely dehydration.
Riddick checked Don's wounds. The stub of his missing arm looked silvery from the peculiar nanos Hypatia hit him with but some pinkish scar tissue covered his other wounds. If he survived them the nanos really would heal him. The tremors stopped and Don's breathing returned to normal. Riddick didn't want to consider what else the nanos might be doing to his friend.
He looked out over the tarmac, debating if he should go around it to avoid any other bofias that might have been left on duty to intercept him or take the most direct route into town. Don needed water and medical care if he could find an indentured doctor. Riddick didn't want one from the guild or they both might end up as slave labor.
The last rays of the sun disappeared over the horizon and the sudden chill it brought caused Don to moan. Riddick scooped up Don's listless body and carried him straight for the landing zone, and the most direct route for help. Shock and cold were not a good combination and Riddick was tired enough to worry about dropping Don. He needed a few hours of hard sleep and wasn't likely to get that soon; best he conserve energy.
At least exhaustion kept his mind clear and focused: One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. Don't drop the burden in his arms. Straight for the lights. Listen…Listen… No one following, no one approaching. Another mile, maybe less…
He shifted Don into a fireman's carry to ease the pain in his back and kept moving. "Almost there," he huffed softly and mostly to himself. Don must have been conscious enough to hear him and grunted in reply.
Almost there. Almost there. Rest soon. Listen. Step. Step. Listen. Step. Rest soon. Listen…
Riddick looked up from his footing to check the closeness of the lights again and stopped in his tracks. Half way across the tarmac the world opened up and a flickering light cascaded through the hole. His dream woman came to pester him about Zemma, he thought with some annoyance. Zemma was as safe as she could be in the minimum security women's prison, he didn't need to worry about her. Jack would probably find her, take care of her, until he could finish off the threat out here and break them loose.
But it wasn't HIS dream woman. It was one of the others, the one who seemed as shocked as he at what they had done earlier that day. The young woman stepped forward and bowed her head.
"Dienen, please follow me."
That word. Don had said it meant godfather, a caretaker, duty bound protector… But Riddick didn't know any other Furyans that hadn't been on the Basilica and none of them had called him dienen.
The vision woman seemed to step out of the hole in reality though she still flickered with some otherly light. She turned and headed away from the town, towards an escarpment of rocks he knew held a small village. Riddick had passed close enough to the place to ask questions about Jack but read in their faces that she wasn't there an had moved on. That village was further away than the port town. Riddick sighed. He never looked providence in the mouth though. He turned slightly left and plodded on.
His brain wanted to pick apart this strange new apparition. He thought he knew who his dream woman was, and why she visited him: Zemma's mother, some spirit form of the dead woman. But this one? He didn't have enough information to contemplate it very far. His thoughts went back to step, step, listen, step. The apparition made no sound, it cast no ambient light on the ground to illuminate his way. With his lenses up she sparked brilliantly, so he assumed she was real in some way. Near the edge of the airfield she blinked out suddenly. Riddick staggered to a stop and looked around.
A hundred yards further ahead stood a small group, eyes shining in the dark how he now knew his looked. Furyans. No one moved. Riddick lurched forward, crossing the edge of the airfield and stumbled the last ten yards over the broken ground. Hands reached out to him, lifting Don off his shoulders and guiding Riddick to a small vehicle. Few words were spoken but they were all in Furyan.
"Sit here. Drink this. We have your man. Ri, get us home." The vision woman was real here, no more illuminated than any of the other people now clinging to the sides of the small off road vehicle. Riddick sat in one of the two front seats, next to the driver. Don was in the small flat bed, covered with blankets and held in place by many hands. No one spoke unnecessarily. That suited Riddick.
Ri, the driver, and woman in his vision, spoke over the noise of the vehicle. "I'm sorry it took so long to find you." Riddick didn't reply, he didn't know anyone had been looking for him.
They didn't travel fast but it was certainly better than walking. They entered the little canyon of the village he'd seen but went deeper than Riddick had bothered until a much larger canyon opened up. Riddick was startled to see enough living space to accommodate a thousand people.
Moonlight glinted off metal piping, water flowed and crops were growing. It was a little paradise hidden behind massive rock walls. Overhead Riddick's attention was drawn to a slight flapping sound. There were huge camouflage nets stretched across the valley, showing stars through the webbing intermittently as the desert breeze moved it.
They stopped at a cave opening that looked man-made. Several pairs of hands lifted Don and offered aid to Riddick. He ignored them, not for lack of appreciation but because the moment he stopped pushing himself he would pass out for hours. Riddick followed the men carrying Don while his vision woman walked nearby to him, looking a little awed as she cast glances his way. He thought somewhat bemusedly that he should be in awe of her instead but he was simply too tired and awe wasnt common to his nature.
Inside the clearly manmade tunnel, walls were smooth and rounded as if by a boring machine, perhaps one used to find ore veins, Riddick didn't know for sure. The tunnel was minimally lighted by a string of tiny bulbs no bigger than a single digit of one of his fingers. It made him think of Christmas tree lights back on earth. The dim light didn't hurt his eyes while his lenses were up and cast a soft ambient glow that made everything clear in the dark.
Side tunnels seemed to be cut by hand tools and were similarly lit. Very few people seemed to occupy the spaces that could accommodate dozens more. When he saw beds and equipment he guessed they were in a clinic.
"We didn't know about your friend until the last minute. A doctor is coming," the vision woman said. "I couldn't find your damali," she went on. "What happened out there?"
"Damali?"
"She called us together to defend you, Deinen." She dropped her head a little in a bow as she said the last word.
His dream woman called the others together, called this vision woman to him. But this one was alive and Zemma's mother should be dead. How did that work? Riddick couldn't suss it out now. "I don't know where she is," he said simply.
"We will send a part out to look for her if I can find her," the young woman said earnestly.
"It won't work, she was never on this planet with us." Riddick didn't give the girl much attention as he watched the others work on Don, making him comfortable and setting up an IV. "He has some alien nanos in him," Riddick informed them. A few looked up in confusion, while other continued to prep Don for the doctor: cutting away his clothing and washing away dirt and blood. One took hot towels from what looked like a cupboard but gave off radiant heat and placed then neatly on the parts of Don that were now clean.
"What do you mean 'alien nanos'?" A voice, calm and basso, came from behind Riddick. He turned as what he assumed was the doctor swept past him into the room.
"Lights," the man called out and two long seconds later they came on, brightening slowly so everyone had a chance to drop their lenses. The doctor started by examining Don's missing arm. He hissed at the silvery threads there. "I want to see this stuff close up…" he said as he took a scalpel to the strange scar tissue. An aid handed the brusque man a slide without missing a beat. "When did this happen?"
"Sometime yesterday," Riddick told him, wishing he could lay down but not ready to leave his friend.
The doctor continued his examination, noting Don's vital stats. "He should be dead," he murmured to himself. The IV bag was joined by a bag of blood and Don was now nearly covered with hot towels and a blanket when the next bout of shaking began.
"How long has he been doing that?" The doctor watched the spasms with some concern.
"About every 20 minutes since I found him."
"How did it happen that he lost his arm."
"I don't know." Riddick lied without guilt.
"There's not much to do but get him stable and hope," the doctor said morosely. He looked up from Don to Riddick. "You're the Deinen? Do you have any injuries?" Riddick shook his head no. "Take him to rest," the doctor nodded to the vision woman.
"This way, Deinen," she bobbed her head reverently. "Please."
Riddick stepped away from her, into the room with Don, and laid one hand on the man's good arm.
"Don…?"
Don tried to swallow several times. "Yah."
"You're gonna be ok now."
Don nodded a little but didn't speak.
"I'm gonna sleep," Riddick told him.
Don nodded again. "Good idea. Me too."
Riddick turned towards the girl and let her lead him to another room close by.
"We have a water shower here," she waved a hand to a small room just inside the door. Riddick grunted and began to strip off his clothes. She turned her back on him quickly. Riddick suppressed a chortle while turning on the water and stepping into it before it got warm. The cold water shocked his brain clear again.
"Are you damali?" He asked the girl over the sound of the water.
"Yes of course, Deinen. But I am very untrained and it took me a very long time to find you…"
"Why are you untrained?"
There was an embarrassed pause as Riddick turned off the water and stepped out to towel himself off, he could see her wringing her hands.
"You are the first Alpha I have ever met, Deinen," she said, her back still to him. Her voice was very small.
Alpha…Alpha? That sounded familiar. Did Don mention that before? Riddick was so tired and this information wasn't part of his lock and load survival skills. He simply couldn't remember if he had heard the word before. "Alpha?" He asked her.
"Yes, Sir…?"
"What's an alpha?"
"You…Sir?" She sounded like a student trying to please a teacher.
"I don't know who you think I am," Riddick said brusquely from under a towel as he scrubbed his head and face dry. "But I don't know shit about being deinen or alpha."
"I don't understand…" she started and turned towards him, then scream and covered her face with her hands. Riddick didn't have a towel around his waist but across his shoulders. He laughed as she turned her back to him again. He could imagine her blush even if he couldn't see it.
"What's your name?" He asked not unkindly while pulling on his clothes. He had debated asking her to have them washed but he wasn't entirely secure in this new place.
"Ri, Sir. Riya Tadhg." She sounded flustered and Riddick almost laughed again but the moment had passed and tiredness was crashing in on him.
"Richard B. Riddick," he replied. "Does the mining guild know you're all here?"
"Yes, Sir."
"I need them to not know about us," he said. "And, I need about four hours sleep."
She bobbed her head again, "Yes, sir," and she nearly bolted for the door. Riddick managed one last, low laugh.