The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [4]
“Can we SHUT UP THE GODDAMN NOISE?”
Delivered with the force and sharpness of an ascending razor, the unexpected demand was fulfilled— for about two seconds. Then the howling resumed, wilder and more crazed than ever. Within the narrow cage, the girl sat down on the hard, smooth floor, a surface as unyielding and uncomfortable as that of Crematoria itself. Putting her hands over her ears, she closed her eyes and began to rock back and forth, slowly, reciting something silently to herself even though there was no one else to overhear.
“Big Foe,” indeed.
The snow came in waves, like breaking foam absent the surf. It swirled around the disgruntled mercenary like wet sand. On high alert, his thoughts occupied elsewhere, he hardly noticed the squall. He was wary but not afraid. While the storm cut his personal visibility down to next to nothing, his instruments cut through the white-out as if the day had dawned clear and sunny.
He was cold, however. Despite his high-tech arctic gear, the wind and damp found ways through to his skin, burrowing beneath layers of clothing to sting like ants. His hands were steady, however. It would not have mattered had they been shaking, because the gun he carried was designed not for accuracy but for spread. It would stop anything that materialized in front of it within a 140-degree range of spray. Telltales on its top and side indicated that it was powered up and ready to kill.
It was a good thing all his instruments were working. Never bright, the light of this world’s sun shaded all the way over into the ultraviolet, much as its fauna tended to the ultra violent. Right now there wasn’t much to see by, or to see. For the latter he was grateful. With one exception. Despite his advanced gear and a wealth of personal experience in the trade, Codd’s quarry continued to elude him. That it continued to do so was beginning to grate. His was a business in which personal as well as professional pride was taken in delivering the goods. This was one delivery that was particularly overdue.
Something stained the low snowdrift in front of him. Moving closer, he flashed his organalyzer at it. Blood. But whose? Or in the case of this particular planet, what’s?
His communicator sputtered something unintelligible. Preoccupied with the stain, he moved closer and waited for the organalzyer to deliver a more detailed verdict. The discoloration in the snow was dark purple, but in the light of this world’s sun, that was no sure indicator of origin. A second time, the communicator in his ear buzzed for attention. He tapped it with one finger, as if by so doing he could simultaneously clear the static and deliver a smack to the caller at the other end. Dammit, he was busy .
“Hang on, hang on. I’m on something here.”
The screen on the organalyzer cleared, uninformative statistics and DNA details giving way to a schematic extracted from a series of exploration scans. The result was a diagram of something big, alien, and white as the snow sifting steadily down around him ought to be. It was bipedal and equipped with serious dentition. One did not have to be an experienced xenobiologist to deduce that the latter were designed for something more than masticating vegetables.
There was also a name—provisional, as was usually the case with examples of alien life-forms that were rarely encountered, aggressive, and disagreeably homicidal: Urzo giganticus.
Unwilling to go away and let him concentrate, the voice in his ear finally cleared enough to demand, “Whatcha got, Codd?