The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [44]
Riddick did not have time to watch them go. He was busy.
The most active and eager elite was the first to go. Wanting to make it personal, he charged with blade in hand, a comrade close behind. As the first to make a mistake, he was also the first to die. Riddick blocked the blow, twisted, and sliced. As the blade was emerging from the soldier’s already crumpling form and his colleague was raising his own weapon to strike downward, Riddick saw that the third soldier and Vaako were not about to engage in similar primitive foolishness. Both were leveling guns in his direction. He grappled with the second soldier.
And flung himself, dropping and rolling, just as Vaako and the other soldier fired. The shaped charges of their weapons arrived simultaneously, on opposite sides of the second soldier, and crushed his armor as if it was a can. With its owner inside. A mess resulted.
Four of the five Quasi-Dead had reached the safety and sanctity of their hollows. As Vaako and the surviving elite realigned their weapons, and as other soldiers came pouring into the grotto, Riddick picked up one of the dead soldiers’ weapons, grabbed at the transport of the one remaining exposed Quasi-Dead—and let it drag him backward.
Fearing for the safety of the revered Quasi, Vaako got there fast. Just in time to see it slide into the security of its dark cubicle—preceded by Riddick, who held back the approaching soldiers with their dead comrade’s own gun. Crouching, the frustrated commander tried to take aim. But the darkness within rendered any shot uncertain, and he could not risk hitting the Quasi-Dead. As he tried to decide what to do, the armored portal slammed shut—and sealed.
The subject was gone.
Above, her garb of rank draped around her, Dame Vaako stared down at the milling soldiers on the grotto floor. Everyone was shouting, moving, trying to decide what to do next. Outside, the Lord Marshal and the Purifier were engaged in deep, intense conversation while technicians swarmed around them. Her gaze moved to the sealed doorway through which the last Quasi-Dead and the only subject had vanished.
“Who is this man?” she found herself muttering. Who—or what.
The interior of most starships, the working sections not seen by interstellar travelers but only by the technicians who occasionally had to visit to service problems the automatics could not handle, were a maze of conduits and channels, life-support systems and electronics, engine components and proactive apparatus. A difficult realm through which to travel and a harder one for a stranger to puzzle out. Always one for seeking the simplest solution to a problem, Riddick used the gun he had taken from a passing soldier to punch his way through one level after another. Knowing his pursuers would try to predict which of several possible passageways he would take, he chose wherever possible to make his own.
Tenders working engine support were startled to hear a pounding over their heads that was not associated with their work. Eyes turned upward toward the source of the sound. Several technicians tracked it as it moved slightly to the right. They drew back when a hole was blasted in the ceiling. Shredded metal lined the edges of the new opening, through which a large man promptly dropped. Landing on his feet, gun in hand and knife secured, Riddick looked around to get his bearings. Aloud, he said nothing. Attitude-wise, it was very much “Don’t mind me— just passing through.”
Though every Necromonger was trained in the arts of war, technicians on the Basilica had no reason to carry weapons and went about their duties unarmed. No one moved to challenge the man with the gun. Even had they been armed, they would not have been inclined to do so. Clearly, the intruder was a problem for soldiers