“Boss,” he muttered, nodding in the direction of the shaft. Wordless agreement passed between wary superior and valued subordinate. Douruba spoke curtly to the man on his right.
“Malak, grab a look. Check out the flowers.”
The guard protested. “What the shit for? There’s nothing up there. All the slugs are boxed up back in slam. Why waste the time? Because Anatoli says so?”
The slam boss was in no mood to argue. “Because his nose says so.”
Grumbling under his breath, Malak turned to comply. Douruba ignored his muttered curses. In a job like this, in a place like this, a man needed to be able to let off steam. Let off steam on Crematoria, he thought. That was pretty funny. Nothing much funny had happened ever since that last fuckin’ quick-tempered merc crew had arrived at his place with their one unsettling package.
Well, it would all work out. They had all the payoff money on hand and the mercs would get blamed for the destruction. The assorted powers that be who needed and funded a shit hole like Crematoria would bitch and moan about the cost of replacement. Then they’d sigh, suck it up, stick their constituents with some artfully hidden special tax, and come in and rebuild. He wouldn’t be around to see it, though. He intended to take his share of the money and retire. To someplace cold. Where it snowed.
Still complaining, the guard at the bottom of the shaft activated the self-powered lift mechanism. There was a grinding sound as the metal cap elevated on screws that were miniatures of the ones that raised and lowered the slam control room. Punching through accumulated crust and dust, it hummed to a halt half a meter above the surface.
Resigned to the work, the muttering guard climbed up and cautiously positioned himself beneath the cap. From there he had a more or less 360-degree view of the surface terrain. A check of his chronometer showed that the sun was still below the horizon. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be up here. No sane person would.
But someone was.
His jaw dropped as he spied the moving shapes. Their movements too loosey-goosey for machines, they had to be human. While their sanity remained a matter for conjecture, there was no question that they were advancing, and advancing fast. They shouldn’t be advancing anywhere, he knew. They should be dead.
That was a correctable anomaly. Bringing up his rifle, he started to level it with the intention of sighting in on the first figure. But just before he could lock on, the advancing column made a sharp turn and disappeared into a fissure. Had they seen him? That seemed impossible. Nobody could spot ground-level movement at such a distance. Or could they? Malak’s thoughts turned, unwillingly, to a certain recently arrived inmate to whom Douruba had referred repeatedly.
“What the hell’s going on up there?” came the impatient voice of the slam boss. Malak looked down.
“Better see for yourself, boss!”
In a moment, Douruba and Anatoli had made their way up to join the first man. Crowded together at the top of the molehole and at first seeing nothing in the still dim light, it took a moment for their eyes to focus and register on the figures that reemerged from the distant fissure, still moving forward but on a tack that kept them well out of range. Only one of them was readily recognizable, and the slam boss wished it wasn’t.
“Riddick . . .”
“No way,” mumbled Malak. “No way. He was down in the tiers when we broke out. How in the hell . . . ?”
“This is hell, remember?” snapped Douruba. He started hurriedly back down the shaft.
At the bottom, the new and unexpected development prompted a hasty conference. Various suggestions were mooted, some more hopeful than practical. Those Douruba ignored. If nothing else, he had always been a practical man.
“No chance do they get to the hangar first,” Malak declared vehemently. “No chance.”
“Nothin’ but rock between here and there,” another man put in. “They’re in the crap zone. Black lava everywhere. They’re toast.” On Crematoria, such an assessment was not metaphorical.
“I dunno,” the man standing next to him exclaimed. “That one guy, that Riddick—I don’t like the idea of walkin’ into the hangar with him maybe hangin’ from the ceiling, waiting for us.”
“And he’s not alone,” Anatoli pointed out. “Couldn’t get a for-sure count, but maybe half a dozen total. All armed.”
This revelation spurred more concern. When the uneasy chatter had died down, the slam boss stepped in. “All right. We make sure they don’t get to the hangar first.” His expression was hard. “We make sure they don’t get to the hangar at all. Move out.”
They did so, wordlessly and faster than before.
Up above, it was raining. On Crematoria, that meant ash: sometimes brown, occasionally white, but most often black. Where the crust was weak or thin and swirling magma came close to the surface, distant volcanoes and cinder cones erupted from the volatile ground, spewing hot tears of feathery-soft rock. Like black snow, it drifted down to layer the uncompromising ground with shards of shroud.
It also draped the fast-moving escapees in speckled cloaks. The freshly vented volcanic material was always hot. Fortunately, this particular ash fall was not searingly so. Under assault by falling ash and accumulated perspiration, the fugitives found themselves discarding bits and pieces of clothing as they ran. The ash clung to damp, sweaty skin, but it was still better than overheating inside attire that had not been intended for outside use. And there was at least one ancillary benefit: themselves covered in ash, the escapees blended in astonishingly well with their now ash-covered surroundings. Having unintentionally acquired the look of ancient tribal warriors, they ran on, following the big man in the lead.
Except he was no longer in the lead. Or at least, the Guv decided, squinting into the dense ash fall, he was no longer in view. He started to slow, only to be jostled from behind. Angry, he readied a choice couple of words for whoever had bumped into him. Unexpectedly, it was Kyra, the ferret of a girl no one had been able to get close to. Running steadily, smoothly alongside, she communicated without words. A nod forward, a quick shake of the head, and then a lengthening of stride as she moved into the lead. He understood her meaning perfectly. He just wasn’t sure he accepted it.
But there was nothing else to do. Out here, on the surface of hell, he was no longer the Guv. He was just another batch of bound-together carbon molecules, another sack of animate water, waiting for the sun to come up and evaporate him. While it was not an end he looked forward to, it was an end he anticipated and was prepared to suffer. It was one he would probably meet, too. Unless the soft-spoken newcomer who had now vanished into the ash fall could pull off some kind of miracle. The Guv was not confident.
Miracles tended to elude convicts.
Directly ahead of them and still some distance away, the ground shuddered and cracked. Not from tectonic forces, but to allow for a thick cylinder of metal to rise above the surrounding stone and accumulating ash. It was the cap to a second molehole. As soon as open ports appeared below the cap, the lethal tube shape of an assault rifle eased forward out the opening.
The slam boss might move slow at times, the guard behind the weapon thought, but he knew his business. Estimating the best speed the escapees could make over the difficult, tricky terrain, he had chosen this shaft as the site for the ambush. Even so, the guard noted, they were almost too late. The fleeing convicts were really hoofing it. The key word, he knew, was “almost.”
He saw them through the ashfall; not clearly, but well enough to count individual shapes. They were just silhouettes moving toward him, but that was enough. A hand whacked his lower leg and he looked down and whispered.
“We’re just in time. They’re right here. Three o’clock and moving fast.”
“Tough bastards,” another guard muttered from where he was squinched in below the first.
“Be dead bastards in a couple of minutes.” The guard who had spotted the fugitives adjusted his electronic scope. Below him, his companions busied themselves chambe
ring ammunition. A few bursts would be all it would take: death erupting unexpectedly from the ground.
The guard’s view through the gun scope cleared as internal electronics resolved the view. He sighted in on the lead runner—and hesitated. Puzzlement was evident in his voice as he looked up and over the gun barrel.
“Hey. Where’d the big guy go?”
Standing atop the molehole lid, Riddick swung the metal spike around and down, its tip describing a perfect arc through the ash. Formerly an anchor loosely attached to the top of the molehole, it had been pressed into duty for which it had not been designed, but for which it proved more than sufficient. Proof of this arrived in the form of a loud crunching sound as it made direct contact with the startled guard’s face. The face lost.
Finger convulsing on the trigger of his rifle, the already dead guard slipped backward. Stance lost, life lost, he tumbled down the molehole shaft like a rag-doll casually tossed aside by an uncaring child, bouncing and bumping off his stunned comrades who had clustered below. The single spontaneous shot from his weapon alerting the fugitives to the molehole’s position, they unlimbered their own weapons and charged into the fray, firing at the pop-up target Riddick had already abandoned. After years of misery and abuse, the thrill of finally being able to strike back at their tormentors reinvigorated each and every one of them as effectively as a Spring shower.
Man-made chaos complemented the natural state of Crematoria’s surface as the convicts attacked from several directions, careful to keep from spreading out too far lest they catch each other in a dangerous cross fire. Frozen lava provided plenty of cover that they used to good advantage, working their way ever closer to the molehole. Within, guards scrambled to bring their own weapons to bear. But they were constrained by their tight surroundings. With shells exploding on the ground and sending flesh-cutting splinters of rock flying through the port, and others exploding with ear-shattering force against the metal of the molehole itself, it was almost impossible to line up a decent shot.
Meanwhile, the convicts were closing in. As the guards went down the chute, the jubilant escapees crowded around and began emptying their weapons into the narrow shaft. For their part, the guards fired frantically upward, no longer even trying to take aim, just trying to hold off the rain of death that was being poured in on them from above.
Inside the molehole shaft there was no place to hide, no cover to be had. One guard went down, then another. Men kept firing, slamming into one another, bouncing off flesh and walls as they fought to get out of the shaft that had become a cylindrical metal coffin. When the last survivor, wide-eyed and frantic, finally spilled out of the bottom of the shaft like a panicked gerbil, the grim-faced boss slammed the control lever hard over.
Above, the molehole cap began to descend, ratcheting downward until it was once more level with the surface. Elated, the convicts stepped back to savor the small triumph over their despised tormentors. Only one did not. Unsatisfied, her face crazed with hatred, Kyra immediately attacked the edges of the cylinder with the barrel of her weapon.
“Gonna go down there,” she was growling ferociously. “Find ’em. Just cut ’em up, gut ’em up, into little bite-size pieces. Wolf ’em down and shit them over the nearest cliff. C’mon, Riddick. Let’s get nitty-gritty on their asses!” She looked up, frowned. “Riddick?”
There was no response—unless one counted the sight of a broad back and pistoning legs, moving fast and still picking up speed as they shrank steadily into the distance.
She wasn’t sure if the adrenaline flowing through them after their triumph over the guards allowed them to catch up, or if he had subtlety slowed his pace. If the latter, he wouldn’t have admitted to it. Irregardless, the escapees, now five, caught up to him atop an east-facing ridge. Between the ash and the creeping dawn that still thankfully lay behind them, the ambient temperature was well up above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Everyone was grateful for the fact that the ashfall had nearly ceased.
Drenched in sweat and wiping volcanic spew from her face, she drew alongside Riddick as they ran together along the ridge top. Having to reserve oxygen for breathing kept any conversation brief.
“Blasted the crap out of ’em.” She chortled. “Been waiting a long time to do something like that.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “You?”
There was a pause as they pounded along side-by-side, the others keeping pace behind them, before he finally responded. “You even care if you get out of this alive?”
“Not really.” She said it without emotion, as casually and indifferently as if contemplating the scenery. Together, they leaped off the last ledge and landed simultaneously on a lava bridge that spanned a significant cleft in the rocks.
“Well, maybe I do,” he replied unexpectedly.
She eyed him uncertainly for a moment. There was more in that curt affirmation than a mere desire to stay alive. She did not expect it from him, and it kept her wondering and speculating on hidden meanings as she ran on.
Though the sulfur fissure through which they were taking a hoped-for shortcut was lined with a fortune in rare minerals, no one paused to do any informal collecting. There was no time, and money meant nothing now. Not out here, in the open. On the surface. Smooth and supportive underfoot, the fissure Riddick had found ran in exactly the direction they needed to take. With luck, it would dump them out only a short distance from the hangar site.
It dumped them out, all right, and at the expected location. There was only one problem. Their luck had run as dry as the volcanic surface underfoot.
“Oh no,” the Guv was muttering. Stopped, staring, he just kept repeating it, over and over again. “No, no, no, no . . .”
There was something between them and the hangar site. Something none of them, knowing virtually nothing of the actual surface topography, could have foreseen. It was only a mountain. A small mountain, really. But still a mountain. Composed of melted and reformed sulphurous rock, it completely blocked the way forward. It was steep, and domineering, and immovable, and the Guv would have cried if he could have spared water for the tears.
“Shit,” one of the other escapees snapped as he lowered the weapon he was carrying. Not only his voice threatened to snap.
Knowing they were looking to him, Riddick could have consoled them with encouraging words. He might have strived to minimize the trial ahead. Instead, he did what he did best: spoke not a word, and kept moving forward. There was, after all, nothing else to do, and words would not get them over the obstacle a spiteful Nature had placed before them. Racing to the base of the mountain, he started climbing. No one hesitated to follow him. There was no going back now. There hadn’t been for some time. Overhead, a brilliant razor’s edge of light split the rapidly waning night sky.
The sun was coming up.
They scrambled and scraped their way upward, ignoring bloody fingers and frequent cuts, paying no attention to the increasingly lethal drop below them. If not directly helpful, Riddick was at least a target, a goal. Even vertically, he seemed to be making speed. They could not possibly catch up to him. They could not possibly fall too far behind. His receding form was encouragement enough.
With a shorter reach than the others, Kyra was beginning to struggle. Slipping once, she barely caught herself. If she let go, she’d fall all the way to the bottom: far enough now so that she would not have to worry about getting back up and trying again. Complicating matters, the increasing heat was making the rock itself almost too hot to touch.
Seeing her repeatedly flicking her hands to cool them for the next reach and grab, the Guv worked his way up alongside her. “Like this.” He showed her his hands, both wrapped with belt leather. “Your belts, use your belts. Gun sling, anything.”
Too tired to fire back one of her usual defiant responses, she just barked tiredly at him. “Go, go, go— I don’t need your help. I’ll make it.”
He paused only briefly to favor her with a single lingering stare. Then he was moving again, size
notwithstanding, passing her on the upward climb. He did not look back to see her cutting up her belt into pieces suitable for hand wrapping.
Above the others, Riddick caught a glimpse of what he had been hoping for. In lieu of the Promised Land, he would settle for the summit. With one powerful heave, he propelled himself to the top.
The view beyond was striking in its desolation. Distant volcanoes smoked on the horizon; rivers of congealed molten rock streaked a surface forever frozen in time; and, virtually at his feet, a rocky plateau sloped away into a great undulating valley of crazed volcanic glass. Rising from the center of the valley was a single stone steeple, a natural landmark that could not be missed even from atmosphere.
Below it, he knew, lay the hangar complex, and within that complex, the mercenary ship.
Sucking in each superheated breath as if it was his last, one of the convicts emerged on the crest beside him. As the man collapsed and lay fighting for air, Riddick turned to check behind him. The landscape was dominated by a towering volcano, but it wasn’t geology that drew the big man’s attention. It was the sliver of sunlight growing at its edge, a hidden solar assassin that was coming inexorably for them all. Reaching into a pocket, he drew out his black goggles and slipped them on. They might protect his vision, but they would do nothing to save his life.
Peering over, he scanned the cliff face on the backside of the mountain. Figures were evident, climbing toward him. He checked the sequin of sun once more. Not fast enough.
“Kyra!”
Looking up, she saw the familiar figure bent over the edge. “What?”
He had no time to go into details. Nor did he. The urgency was plain in his voice. “Get that ass moving! Now!”
It was enough. She knew he didn’t raise his voice unless it was absolutely, positively, unavoidable. Which meant only one thing. She didn’t need to look around to see the sun approaching behind her. She could feel it tickling her neck, feeling its way down her spine, considering how best to finish the puny sack of damp meat that was stuck to the rock wall like a paralyzed fly.