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Faint Premonition	By : ehiltebe Category: M through R > Pitch Black Views: 2132 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: In no way do I own any part of Pitch Black, its setting, or its characters, and I make no money from this work. I just get to play with them.

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Another chapter for everyone... Please review? *pouts*
Faint Premonition

A Pitch Black Alternate Universe

Chapter Six

I didn’t backtrack along our entire trail. The moment I came out of the canyon, I reoriented to home in on the wreck and took the most direct path I could find. Had the atmosphere been more normal, I would have been able to maintain my sprint for a good fifteen minutes, at least, but I was down to an oxygen-conserving, ground-eating lope after only five minutes. Mentally, I cursed my short stature.

The moment I reached the remains of the ship, my blood boiled. Zeke, unconscious, lay on the upturned locker, his heavily-bandaged left arm across his chest. For a moment, I saw Paris as he peeked over the other man, then ducked back into hiding. The Irishman was slumped over on the ground a short distance away, a sharp-edged red spot on his temple that would turn into a spectacular bruise. Shazza and Jack, both looking dazed, leaned against one of the remaining sections of the hull, the girl visibly struggling to stand.

And at the center of it all, Johns spat curses as he laid into a curled-up figure with his feet and the butt of his shotgun.

“Leave him the fuck alone, asshole!” The girl’s protest only caused the merc to backhand her. She fell back on top of the brunette bushwhacker.

I came from behind the blond, landing a quick, forceful leopard punch on his right kidney. His torso snapped upright reflexively as I stepped closer, to stand next to him. Johns turned a bit and took a blow to his solar plexus that staggered him.

“Bitch!” He let go of his gauge and pulled a knife. I brushed aside the overhand strike, grabbing his wrist in the same motion. The blade fell as I dug my fingers into the tendons, and I twisted the arm behind him. The merc bent forward, trying to relieve the pressure on the joints, and I pinned the arm to his back, digging my left elbow in next to his spine to keep him down.

“How do you like it now, motherfucker?” He tried, but couldn’t do anything to get out of my hold. My elbow shifted a bit, drawing a choked-off scream. “Do I have your attention now, Mr. Johns?” The blond nodded quickly. “You make one move to hurt someone, and I will gut you like a fish, merc.” I eased up enough to get him turned toward the gap in the hull, then propelled him into the harsh sunlight with an ungentle combat boot to his ass.

A darkly amused chuckle drew my attention to the convict. He sat up slowly, rubbing his jaw, and flashed me a grin of predator-to-predator respect. I stepped closer, braced myself, and offered him a hand. He gripped my forearm just below the elbow and pulled; it was a test, so I stood firm as he got to his feet, despite the electric frission where his skin touched mine.

“He… he… Johns is a bounty hunter?!” Fry was panting and sweating buckets as she stood by the opening. “I thought he was a cop!”

“Probably exactly the assumption he wanted people to make.”

“No sane cop puts a con on a civilian transport.” Riddick’s low voice made the blonde woman jump. “Got their own ships for that. An’ cops are generally smart enough not t’ go after me.”

“If I recall the firm’s file on him correctly, most of Mr. Johns’ catches were in pretty sad shape when he cashed ‘em in.” The pilot shot me an odd look, shoving her sunglasses up to her forehead. “I work for a private-sector law firm that goes after mercs whenever they get solid evidence against them. We’ve been watching Johns in particular since he decided to tackle Mr. Riddick.” The big man grunted, running a hand over the dark stubble on his scalp. “Running pool on how long you’d make him chase his tail ‘fore you ghosted him.” That drew an amused snort.

“Zeke’s not waking up.” The tremble in Shazza’s voice put me on high alert. I moved to check the stocky man’s pulse: faint, but steady. The bandaged arm was a good fifteen centimeters shorter than the other, at least. But the field dressings that I recognised from the med-kit hadn’t started spotting yet. “Somethin’ got ‘im, took…” The prospector gulped. “Riddick got ‘im out when I couldn’t. Saved ‘im.” She stroked her husband’s hair as a tear rolled down one cheek.

“Somethin’, um, went missin’.” Jack spoke up, sunglasses clenched in one hand as she briefly glanced at Fry. “They went lookin’, down in a hole they didn’t dig, and then that happened.” She nodded toward the couple, then reached behind her and produced Johns’ pistol. Clever kid had done what many do when they haven’t got a holster for their handgun: stuck it through the waistband of her pants at the small of her back.

The slide of the weapon had been drawn back and locked into place, exposing the empty firing chamber. Whatever the bushwhacker had been shooting at, he’d unloaded the entire clip trying to hit it. I held out a hand and she promptly surrendered the gun into my keeping.

“Thought we might need that at some point, so I picked it up before we came back here.”

“Good job, kiddo.” I flicked the magazine release, dropping the spent clip into the other hand. Twenty rounds, it looked like. That went into one thigh pocket, then I pulled the slide back and let it snap closed before putting it in the other one. One thing I love about fatigues: you never run out of pockets.

“Figure he lost two, maybe two an’ a half liters.” I winced at the con’s words. No wonder Zeke’s pulse was hard to feel, he’d lost nearly half the blood in his body. He’d be days regaining the strength to do much.

“We found an abandoned settlement and an emergency skiff.” The pilot’s nine words brightened faces all around.

“I told the imam to get his boys to help him fix up the moisture collector, so we’ll have a supply soon. We should get together whatever we can use, rig up a sled and move our base to the town. Probably cooler in the buildings there than here.” Then I eased my shades down my nose and peered over the frames at Paris. “If you want to bring along anything that isn’t necessary, you get to carry it yourself.” He gave me a far too innocent look in return.

Without a word to anyone, Riddick went outside. I turned the corner and opened the locker that I’d stashed my bags in, hauling them back to the cluster of topsy-turvy metal boxes. Almost the moment I opened the biometric lock on the duffel that held the boxy rifle case, Jack was crouched by my side, eyes glued to the widely varied blades in their unadorned sheaths. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Shazza digging through the jumble of parts she and her husband had scrounged up to make the breathers; maybe she was putting one together for the convict.

“Can I have one?” I grinned at the girl’s awed whisper, thought for a moment, and picked out a smallish dagger and a wave-shaped knife. The latter was promptly tucked back where she’d kept the pistol, and the other sheath was threaded onto her belt. Something about her scent was off, bothering me a bit, but I couldn’t pinpoint why.

A clatter of metal against the ragged hull announced Riddick’s return as he dumped a sizeable rectangle of sheet metal in the breach. A long piece of cable slithered off it, two jagged holes on the narrowest side. Probably what the bushwhackers had been using to move the dead crew. Leaving it there, the large man came my way, pausing only a second before picking up the set of straps holding the swingblades. Considering the size of his hands, I suspected my subconscious had had him in mind when it urged me to buy them.

“What qualifies as necessary?” I blinked, suddenly realizing that I’d been staring as he adjusted the harness. Hoping no one had noticed, I looked over at the Irishman.

“Water-tight containers, definitely. We’ll need to get as much water on the skiff as we can, as there’s no telling how long it’ll take for someone to pick us up. Non-perishable foods. And at least one power cell.” I shrugged. “Probably only one, this trip. Too much else that needs to get there ASAP.” The military-born acronym came out as ‘a-sap’ rather than four letters. “There may be some sort of mining vehicle left that we can use to get more if we need them.” With that, two men, two women, and a girl scattered like leaves in the wind. As I, too, stood, the convict stepped into my personal space, forcing me to tilt my head back to maintain some semblance of eye contact.

But I wasn’t discomfited by the closeness. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Just like that, I’m part of th’ gang?”

“You could never be ‘part’ of any gang. You’re too alpha to be anything less than leader.”

“And you’re all right with that?” A faint note of curiosity entered his bass voice.

“I trust Drift and Callahan’s judgment.” And I trusted my instincts, as my birth mother’s letter had advised—one of only two material possessions I had from her. It and the blanket were both in my bag, tucked inside the case protecting my expensive, company property comm system.

Riddick hummed thoughtfully and left, turning toward the command cabin’s resting place before he moved out of my sight.

But not out of my mind.

(Riddick)

She’s a puzzle.

An’ I have never been able t’ resist a fuckin’ puzzle. Gotten me outta six slams an’ a hundred traps in th’ last seven years. Outta Butcher Bay’s triple-max cryo-containment, outta Ursa Luna’s barely-lit maze of corridors—without th’ shine, contrary t’ th’ few rumors I heard before Johns caught up to me in th’ Conga system. Spent too much time settlin’ things on th’ Dark Athena.

Otherwise, I’d’ve ghosted th’ motherfucker before he laid eyes on those kids, let alone th’ sights of ‘is gauge. Two of ‘em dead ‘cause of me.

I look over at th’ girl as I pass her an’ th’ ratty-ass bag she’s packin’ up. What I see tells me she ran… prob’ly from some asshole of a foster home. I c’n guess why, with her dressin’ like a boy. Nearly happened t’ me, but a fuckin’ growth spurt hit me at eight th’ way th’ ship hit dirt on this shithole.

Pilot’s strugglin’ with a cell when I duck into the trashed bridge. Squeaks when I pull th’ next one over. Squeaks. Goddamn, but she’s jumpy. Must be guilt; she knows she might’ve saved more passengers if she hadn’t wimped out. Might’ve saved her crewmate. I ignore her an’ swing the cell onto my shoulder before headin’ back.

Back to a fascinatin’ puzzle named Eileen.

(Eileen)

Johns reappeared when the sled was loaded, Zeke lying on top of a pair of folded Oriental rugs. They weren’t a concession to the merchant, nor was the bottle of Smirnoff vodka tucked into a wad of clothes out of my non-‘hardware’ duffel. Most of the rest were stuffed into my rifle case or cushioning the blades I hadn’t passed out. Nor had I given my pistol to anyone—but I had reloaded Johns’ gun, since it took the same nine millimeter rounds. I was glad the merc had missed seeing exactly what I had, and his start of surprise when he spotted the very military piece slung across my back had been entertaining.

He and Fry set out first, with several meters between them. Every so often, her head turned toward him, and bitter lines formed around her mouth. Probably because he’d fooled her. Ogilvie, Dr. O’Connell, and Shazza clumped together, the heavy-set scientist gesturing broadly as he described something. I’d asked him to distract them both from their not-inconsiderable worries. Jack hovered between them and me, visibly torn over whose company she preferred.

Riddick had shouldered the draglines before anyone said a word. I hung back enough to walk with him, staying on his right side so that the barrel of my rifle pointed away. The escaped convict simply leaned, making metal scrape loudly against hard dirt and gravel. Once it got going, though, it moved easily—probably because it had a layer moving between it and the stationary ground—and he was able to walk more normally.

“You didn’t have to play draft horse.” He grunted in response to my comment. The crunch of feet on loose pebbles reigned supreme for a bit. “I’m just waiting for that asshole to give me an excuse.” That got a turned head and a raised eyebrow. “If it weren’t for the others, I would have gotten rid of Johns when I got out of that fuckin’ cryo-locker.”

“A criminologist willin’ to help me behind other people’s backs an’ wantin’ to X out a merc.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, but I understood.

“I hate double standards, and the bounty hunter-convict dichotomy is one of the worst in existence. It’s one of the reasons I chose to work for Meyer, Meyer, and Trent, instead of the Alliance.”

“Heard of ‘em.” One corner of his generous mouth quirked upwards. “From a former merc, just ‘fore a couple of his one-time paydays turned him into a smear on the floor.”

“Haven’t had the opportunity to be part of one of those convictions yet, between cryo driving me bat-shit and only having been with the firm four years.” A stony silence all but demanded an explanation, so I affected a nasal tone. “‘You’ll go right to sleep, and next thing you know, you’ll be at your destination.’” I scowled. “What a load of bullshit. Aware of everything around me, but can’t do a goddamned thing.” That got a contemplative hum, followed by a long, halfway comfortable quiet.

“He killed a couple kids.” The non sequitur confused me for a moment before I realized Riddick had answered the question I’d been mulling over for hours, but hadn’t asked. “Was gettin’ a group of ‘em outta gang territory. He shot two, threatened to do two more ‘less I surrendered.”

A deep, instinctual anger rose in my chest at his words. Cases involving child victims always roused me like that, and I always threw myself into them whole-heartedly. But here, on this desolate little planet, there was no court, no jury… no law. I was going to slice Johns into ribbons, take him apart slowly as he screamed.

“… hang him with his own goddamned intestines while I do it.” The eyebrow lifted again. “Nobody hurts kids and gets away with it, if I have anything to say about it.”

“Wait ‘til he shoots up again, get him t’ do somethin’ stupid.”

“So that stink on him is some kinda drug.” The sickly-sweet smell I’d noticed on the first trek had intensified, almost overwhelming the blond’s base smell.

“Morphine.” I had the large man’s full attention now. “Sensitive nose?” I nodded, and he continued. “Keeps his doses in shotgun shells. Might be color-coded, can’t tell.”

We passed one of the massive skulls, and I recoiled from the foul odor that assaulted me. Menstrual blood reeked like an open cesspool; I used tampons that blocked the scent and came with sealable baggies for disposal because I couldn’t stand the smell. Fry, obviously, didn’t. She must have taken a piss and discarded a soiled pad or tampon while she had that bit of privacy.

“Oh, nasty, Fry.” Riddick chuckled at my comment.

“An’ your hearing?” His whisper bordered on sub-vocalization, and there was at least a meter between our heads. But to me, it was as clear as a bell, and I nodded. “Senses like mine.” His voice returned to a normal volume. “Interesting.”

“Only thing I know is that I got them from my biological parents, whoever they were.” He hummed thoughtfully.

~*~

We crested the hill at the end of the canyon and started down the slope to find an encouraging and welcome sight. Beneath the arched cloth that had sheltered the dried-up ‘ponics garden, the Muslims sat around a clear pitcher of water that cast little rainbows around itself. And the collector had to be chugging away, too, if the white plastic barrel fitted snugly under the spigot was any indication.

Apparently spotting the unconscious man on the sled, Abu leapt to his feet, gesturing at the boys as he rushed over.

“What has happened? Is Mr. Ezekiel injured?” The man’s formality was becoming familiar. The kids were ‘young so-and-so,’ while adults were addressed by the appropriate honorific and their surname. He was visibly worried.

“Couple liters and a hand short.” Frowns of varying degrees were turned on Johns at the callous remark. His swagger and drawl were back, perhaps because the Arabs had not seen me trounce him. But if he thought that made him ‘the boss’ again, he had another think coming.

“Some sort of subterranean creature attacked him.” Shazza still sounded distraught, and five-UD words were cropping up in her speech unexpectedly, but she’d collected herself outwardly. “He’s only alive because of Riddick.” She nodded in his direction while my feral side grumbled.

More than a few willing hands helped pull the sled just inside one of the larger homes. A sizeable table filled the first room, set for six, and I began pulling the chairs away and pushing them against a wall. Ali stacked the plates, the dried food making the pile unsteady, then came back for the glasses and silverware while his older brothers wiped the surface clean of accumulated dust.

As the others crowded inside, the odor from the pilot’s period grew more dense, until I almost gagged on it. The convict glanced between me and her as he lifted Zeke and transferred him to the table. I moved to open the louvers on the windows, letting light flood in. Light that we’d need to do a proper job of cleaning up the bushwhacker’s arm. Jack found a towel and started cleaning years of grime from one of the panels. The boys followed her example.

“Smirnoff.” The bottle was tossed toward me, and I caught its neck with one hand. “They had to have an infirmary somewhere around here. We’re gonna need sutures, bandaging material, needles, scalpels… The med-kit’s for temporary fixes, and the sooner we take care of this, the better it’s gonna heal.” I shooed most of the others out.

“Looks like th’ coagulant was still good.” Riddick checked the gauze carefully; there were only a few faintly darker spots on the material. I snorted.

“Of course it was. Who do you think I got the kit from?” The big con didn’t reply, laying the arm back on the man’s chest and prowling around, examining the room’s contents.

“Jackpot.” Shazza sailed in, carrying a plastic crate of vacuum-packed medical supplies. “Place is a wreck, but most of it was just tossed around a bit. Not a sign of stored plasma, though.” Damn. It looked like my recovery estimate of ‘days’ was right on target. “See what I can do with the old Sand Cat out there. Maybe get it running.” She zipped right back out again.

A moment later, Sean and Abu came in with their own burdens; two bottles of anesthetics and a chest full of tools. The astrophysicist left as soon as he’d gotten the case open on a counter. The imam, however, stayed, preparing to administer both a general knockout gas and a local numbing agent to the patient. I understood—his calling to minister to others drew him to try to alleviate pain in all its forms.

The coagulant’s effects didn’t make the job much less messy; it simply turned the blood into a thick jelly and gradually broke down to wash away with normal body wastes. Riddick took over from the start, his deceptively large hands and blunt-tipped fingers making tiny, precise movements. Torn blood vessels stitched together, rearranging things so relatively normal blood flow would remain and to prevent a hematoma. Incising away little bits that would have died anyway, or were already dead. The biodegradable sutures would be invaluable there; no need to open things back up to remove them.

Finally, the convict tied off the last of the knots holding down the flap of skin pulled over the stump, and he began wrapping bandaging around it all. One good, thick layer of non-sticking gauze, a second of an ingenious material that, when the cut ends of a piece were connected, shrank down tight enough to prevent contamination without restricting circulation. The end result was perhaps a centimeter thicker than the corresponding parts of the other arm.

Between the three of us, we got him moved to the next container over so no one would have to go into the makeshift OR. Then Abu described, in detail, the condition of the infirmary. I couldn’t resist taking a look myself; the destruction centered on some scraps of metal, insulation, and electrical cooling coils. The cooler that the blood would have been kept in.

Now, I was starting to get really worried. The creatures that had attacked Zeke were, without a doubt, at least part of the danger I’d prepared for, and they’d tasted human flesh now. They might have begun to develop a taste for us, even.

But if they had, why hadn’t they pursued the ‘meal’ they had only just started?
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Faint Premonition