Riddick was petting the hellhound. Toying with it, slapping it playfully back and forth across its lethal muzzle. Once, the Guv could have sworn he saw the newcomer put his clenched fist inside the predator’s mouth. Instead of snapping off the morsel in one bite, the hellhound gnawed on it affectionately. The Guv would have doubted it all, attributed what he was seeing to age and delusion, except for one thing: as he stared, the hellhound’s flushed skin changed from an energized deep red to a neutral slate gray.
Within the mist-shrouded cascade, Riddick continued to play with the carnivore. As he did so, he noted the deep scars on its muzzle and body, the dark slashes that were the mark of a maulstick applied at maximum power. He chucked the hellhound under its chin and it snapped at him playfully.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Know how it feels.”
Outside the cascade, a sharp whistle sounded, piercing the unwholesome air of the cavern. At its sound, the hellhound dropped to all fours, backed off, and departed.
With reluctance.
As the lift touched bottom, the quartet of guards that was riding it jumped off. Adjusting breather units and checking weapons, they headed for the base of the lavafall. Periodically, it was necessary to perform a comprehensive sweep of each part of the prison. One never knew what kind of fiendish devil-try the prisoners might get up to if left too long to their own devices.
Today, it was the turn of the cavern bottom, the top of the volcanic plug that had choked off the flow of magma to the now empty core. There wasn’t much to it. Anything resembling a permanent, functional installation had been pretty much ruined by the surprise lava flow of decades before. But with convicts, you never knew. Better to regularly scan every centimeter of the prison than to wake up one morning to find out the system had overlooked something potentially dangerous.
The area around the base of the lavafall was exactly where one might expect to encounter such problems. Full of nooks and crannies of tormented stone mixed with the remnants of the prison installation that the lava had destroyed, it was the perfect place for a convict to dwell in self-imposed isolation, away from guards and prison routine. A place where plots might be hatched. While the handlers and their hellhounds cleared the tiers elsewhere, the four-man team began probing places where sedition might lurk.
What they found was Kyra. Light beams joined together to focus on the single figure, momentarily blinding her.
“And just when you thought the cull was over,” one of the guards commented as the shape of the prisoner was identified. A nice shape, too, he thought to himself. Of course, down here, you never knew whether a protrusion beneath prison clothes was part of the prisoner, or a portent of something potentially treacherous. So even though there were four of them and only one of her, the guards still advanced with caution.
“Runnin’ solo.” The nominal leader of the group let his light sweep their immediate surroundings, search for scat or urine. “Hounds ain’t been through here. Could be she’s trying to hide something. Which is why we’re here.” He used his light to gesture at the unmoving figure. “Check her out, make sure she’s clean.” Alongside him, his three colleagues hesitated, looking at each other, avoiding their superior’s gaze.
“C’mon,” the senior member of the foursome chided his comrades. “What’re you afraid of? What is she, fifty kilos? Search her.”
Taking the lead, one of the other guards warily entered the open cell where Kyra had retreated. Making himself as large as possible, he gestured with his maulstick.
“Let’s go, sweetheart. You know the routine.”
Without a word, she turned, placed her hands against the wall, palm forward, and spread her legs, assuming the classic, age-old search position. Her compliance was more than encouraging: it was stimulating. Thus motivated, the other guards edged forward to join their colleague.
“Too bad Pavlov couldn’t see this,” one of them murmured.
The guard who had been bold enough to approach moved closer. Close enough for her booted foot to rub up and down his lower leg. The action simultaneously calmed and encouraged him. This wasn’t going to be so difficult after all. Some of the female inmates, now, they made a habit of being troublesome. That was what the maulstick was for. But this one . . .
Eyes closed, Kyra was repeating some private mantra. “‘Sokay . . . it’s okay . . . it’s okay. . . .”
The guard thought she was murmuring to him: mistakenly so. But, momentarily mesmerized by the inviting sight spread out before him, that part of his brain that should have been on full alert had turned to tapioca. Advancing the rest of the way, he put one hand on her back. It was well muscled, of course. Young or old, male or female, there was no fat on any of the inmates. Crematoria’s diet was not conducive to the accumulation of excess avoirdupois. His other hand reached up between her legs . . .
At which point a pair of steel spurs snapped out of the heel of her boot, driving upward and back, gaffing him like a trapped fish. The way his eyes bugged out was pretty piscine, too. He was too startled to scream.
That would come later, when he had time to fully comprehend where the steel had struck home.
Rabbit quick, her head snapped straight back to break his nose. Whirling around, she grabbed the maulstick and slammed it into him, driving the already half-unconscious mass into the cell bars. Libido literally crushed, he slid to the hard ground as limp as a sack of Jello.
It was the best she could do. Her intent, her hope, had been to break through and escape to the other side of the cavern, where she could take refuge in the sweltering hideouts of the sulfide collectors. She was not quite fast enough. One of the remaining three guards caught her as she dodged past the other two. Despite taking a solid whack from the purloined maulstick, he held on long enough for his companions to pile in. She crumpled beneath the sheer weight of massed muscle and raging testosterone.
The maulstick was wrenched from her fingers. Behind, as the three of them wrestled her toward a smooth patch of ground, the guard she had gaffed had lapsed into unconsciousness. Too bad, the leader of the remaining trio thought grimly. He was going to miss all the fun. They would make it last as long as they could, of course. But of one thing he was certain: this was one convict who by tomorrow morning would no longer be around to collect her food ration. She’d earned that end for what she’d just done.
Two of them were putting her down on the ground, pinning her with their weight. They ignored her curses and involuntarily moans of pain, not caring if they broke anything in the process. They were all three of them plenty mad: mad at what she had done to their colleague, mad that she had managed to get away with it, and particularly mad that they had been so easily put off their guard. That wouldn’t happen again.
The guard holding her left arm down frowned. Something was hovering in the shadows behind them, in the direction of the central cavern. As he stared, it emerged from the darkness. Just another convict, drinking calmly from a metal cup. Well, no matter how long he lingered or what he saw, the intruder was not going to get any. If he was lucky, the guards would let him disappear back the way he had come, instead of making him disappear permanently. Not that the slam boss was likely to raise an eyebrow over the death of one more prisoner. Especially after being told what she had done to a member of his staff.
The figure spoke. “You should take your wounded and go.” The newcomer nodded in the direction of the guard lying unconscious and bleeding in the cell. “Chalk it up to lessons learned. Take him and get out. While you can.”
Slowly, the guards rose from the slender shape they had been pinning to the ground. Raising her head slightly, Kyra lay there, not getting up. Not wanting to meet the business end of another maulstick. The three guards formed a small semicircle facing Riddick. They were not happy at having their fun interrupted.
The biggest of them sneered at the would-be knight with no horse and no shining armor. “Is there a name for this private little world of yours? The one you seem to be living in at the moment
? And what happens there when we don’t just run away, huh? You kill us?” He gestured. “With your soup cup?”
His friends snickered, appreciating their colleague’s wit. For his part, Riddick contemplated the metal cup, as if sizing up its potential.
“Tea, actually,” he murmured.
The big guard frowned, uncertain he’d heard correctly. “Whazzat?”
“I will kill you with a teacup.”
Inverting the container, he set it down just soooo on a nearby rock. No guest at a formal dinner could have been more precise. Unnerved, but not unduly so, the big guard’s eyes flicked between convict and cup, cup and convict. A part of him insisted that he was missing something. Another part insisted that it didn’t matter. The latter won. He looked over at his superior.
The leader of the trio shrugged indifferently. “You know the rule. They aren’t dead if they’re still on the books.”
The big guard nodded, then seemed to lapse into introspection. What he was actually doing was slipping the illegal blade from its sewn-in scabbard in the back of his pants. Once the point cleared his ass, he charged.
Even before he started forward, Riddick had picked the cup up again—and slammed it down. Hard and sideways, at a carefully precalculated angle. The rock it scraped was ragged and broken. It imparted a similar edge to the rim of the cup. A serrated edge, though not one that would win any prizes at a tool-sharpening competition.
It didn’t have to. The result was not neat, but it was effective. As the big guard reached him, Riddick blocked the slicing knife strike. Instead of retreating, he lunged ahead, right into his attacker. His right hand jammed the jagged rim of the cup forward, driving it in and down with tremendous velocity. The metal was thin but well-forged and composed of a particularly tough alloy, designed to take a good deal of rough treatment and last. Despite the force behind it, it did not snap and break.
The muscles of the guard’s belly were composed of less sturdy stuff. The ragged cup rim ripped through them, making a very impressive hole. When Riddick drew his arm back, the hole filled with blood and bits of some slick, colorful internal organs. Stunned, the guard grabbed at himself. Riddick threw him back into his comrades.
Dodging around the flaccid body, they leveled maulsticks and other devices designed to subdue unruly prisoners. As they did so, Riddick removed a food-tin key from a pocket, showed it to them, and set it down on a prominent rock. Just soooo.
The two survivors hesitated, exchanged a glance. Then they started backing up. It wasn’t easy for them to lug their surviving wounded colleague from the cell. But they managed.
It was less debilitating than the alternative.
Slowly climbing to her feet, Kyra sauntered over to the guard Riddick had killed, bent, and with an effort, yanked the bloody cup from his body.
“Death by teacup. Damn, why didn’t I think of that?”
Ignoring the fact that she was now in possession of the lethal cup, Riddick turned and looked back the way he’d come. “Wouldn’t have worked for you. Insufficient mass behind it. Wrong kinetics.”
“Another time, other circumstances,” she replied sharply, “that might be taken as a compliment.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, searching for any indication that the guards might have already managed to summon reinforcements. “Not that I mind playing Who’s the Better Killer, but it might be a good idea if we move along to the next thing.”
“Oh, you don’t get off that easy. Not when you started it. ’Sides,” she whispered into his ear as she darted past him, “it’s my favorite game.”
She started to whirl away from him, but he was too fast. A viselike hand whipped out to catch her and spin her around. He was tired of games. Tired of riddles.
“Did I hear right about you? That you came lookin’ for me?”
Her expression was half smile, half snarl. “If that’s what you heard,” she shot back rebelliously, “then you missed the good part. I hooked up with some mercs out of Lupus Five. Said they’d take me on, teach me the trade, give me a fair cut.” Turning briefly away from him, she spat at the ground. “But first job out, they flipped me to a pack of ’Golls. They slaved me out, Riddick.” She stared at him, seeing her own face reflected in his goggles.
“You know what that can do to you? When you’re that age? When you’re twelve years old?”
She was selling the sympathy thing, and Riddick wasn’t buying. He never did. Life was a bitch, you looked out for yourself or you didn’t, and the galaxy was a cold, cold place. Not all the steam that was rising came from the vents around them.
“I told you to stay in New Mecca. Why didn’t you listen to me?” He added, almost to himself, “Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me.” His voice returned to normal and he was in her face now, at once accusing and advising. “I had mercs on my neck then. I’ll always have mercs on my neck. And then you go and sign up? With those no-good wannabe badges? The same guys I was steerin’ away from you?”
Seeking a release for his frustration, he turned away and slammed a fist into the nearest wall. The solid mass indented beneath his scarred knuckles. She knew he was doing it instead of pounding her. His fury cowed her—for about two seconds. She had long ago passed beyond being intimidated. After all, she had come to realize, all anyone could do was kill you. She had lost her fear of that along with her youth. Or maybe before. Sometimes, it was hard to remember things. Oftentimes, it was better not to.
So she continued to confront him. “What’re you pitchin’ at me, Riddick? That you cuttin’ out was a good thing? That you had my scrawny twelve-year-old ass covered from halfway across the galaxy?” She snorted derisively. “I was supposed to take that on faith, huh? That was supposed to be my salvation? A few words from you and then bam, you’re gone, gone.”
He was muttering to himself. She knew he must have heard her, but he did not acknowledge it. “Mercs. She signed with mercs.”
The knife she twisted in him had no blade, but it cut deeply just the same.
“There was nobody else around.”
Up above, in slam control central, word of the confrontation far below had yet to work its way up to the notice of the slam boss. Right now, he and everyone else in the room had more important things on their minds. An important ritual was about to take place; one of the few daily activities of any real importance on Crematoria. Things were about to happen in swift succession that would brook no error. That they occurred once a day did not mean they could be taken lightly. Everything depended on certain equipment, certain instruments, working flawlessly day after monotonous day. The alternative was possible death: not monotonous perhaps, but to be avoided nonetheless.
Having been given the run of the facility (perhaps in Douruba’s hope that while doing so they might run afoul of some fatal encounter and save him the trouble of further bargaining), Toombs and his copilot had just entered the control room. Immediately aware something of importance was taking place, he and Logan moved off to one side. Out of the way, they kept to themselves and watched. All information, Toombs knew, was potentially useful information.
Certainly the slam boss and the guard techs in the control room were sufficiently preoccupied with what they were doing to ignore the visitors. The chief tech was monitoring a dozen different readouts. One supplied, among other stats, the external temperature. Presently, it was minus one hundred and rising fast. Toombs’s pilot eyed it with interest. The only other place he had ever been that showed such numbers was out in deep space itself, and there they didn’t fluctuate as rapidly as this.
“Terminator approaching,” the chief guard tech was reporting methodically. Throughout the control room, readouts changed by the second, screens flared, and alarms began to beep for attention.
The temperature readout suddenly went green. A bell rang, sounding above the multiple beepings. Douruba straightened and regarded his team.
“Clock’s running, people. Let’s pop the cork.”
Another tech moved
hands over console. Toombs and his colleagues grabbed for the nearest unmoving object as the whole control room shuddered slightly. But it was a light tremor. What was unusual was that it continued, a steady vibration in the floor, in the walls.
The control room was rising out of its hole, a slow mechanical mole preparing to peek out at the surface. It ascended on massive, solid alloy screws. The mechanics seemed primitive, but even sealed hydraulics couldn’t survive long on Crematoria. If the control room happened to get stuck topside when the sun came up, simple screw mechanisms would behave a lot better than hydraulics, and presumably survive. That was the theory, anyway, tested and verified through computer simulation.
By technicians and designers who had never actually set foot on Crematoria, the prison staff knew. None of them had any desire to test the validity of that particular mechanical thesis.
This morning, like every other morning, everything worked as intended, however. Simple in design but sound in practice, the screw and lift system elevated the control room until it was well above the surface. Equally rudimentary, the huge vents on the lower, uninhabited sides of the control room louvered open. Multiple fan-powered exchangers whirred to life and began the vital process of swapping the old, sulfur-impregnated air inside the prison with recently chilled, fresh air from outside.
Along with meals, it was one of the few eagerly anticipated moments of the day. Prisoners back in their cells moved to doors and bars to suck in as much of the fresh outside air as possible. Concealed oxygen generators supplemented the nitrogen and argon that dominated the planet’s atmosphere. That was the reason for the hellhound-policed cull. With the control center elevated, it was theoretically possible for a wily prisoner to slip beneath it and gain access to the outside. Why any fool would want to do so, no one could imagine. But rules were rules. Even futile escapes would mess with the count, and despite what Toombs might think, Douruba prided himself on his bookkeeping.