The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [47]
Despite the warning, the leader of the mercenaries lingered amid the rubble. As was his style, he wanted to crow a bit before running. But this time he kept his distance, remembering the little trick his quarry had pulled at their last meeting.
“Two things you coulda done better: first, find and trash the locator beacon inside the ship you jacked. But that woulda meant taking the time to locate the locator, wouldn’t it? You musta been in one shit-fired hurry. Second—and this is really the more important part—you shoulda dusted my dick when you had the chance.”
Reaching beneath his appropriated cleric’s robes, he brought out a pair of cuffs and tossed them to Riddick.
“Let’s do this one more time. One last time. Any questions?”
Riddick considered the four sets of weapons aimed in his direction. He could take out Toombs and one or two of the others, but not all four. They might be edgy, but they weren’t unskilled. Wait for the opening.
“Yeah,” he said flatly as he started putting on the cuffs. “What took you so long?”
VIII
The surface of Helion Prime fell away beneath the accelerating merc ship. From space, it was impossible to tell that the dominant society on the planet had been battered and torn, that devastation and destruction on a massive scale had occurred at all. Oceans still rolled, clouds still scudded, plant life still stained multiple continents with swathes of muted green. At a distance, the works of man, whether benevolent or malign, shrank to insignificance.
Aboard the ship, the last lingering vestiges of concern had given way to preliminary celebration. There was much whooping and yelling. Despite the unusual challenges and dangers, they had pulled it off.
“In and out, unsuspected and undetected by either side!” one of the mercs was hollering. “Damn, I love a good smash and grab!”
While equally pleased, the copilot was busy carrying out essential piloting functions. They might be out of the woods, but they weren’t out of the system.
“Stand by, stand by,” she muttered earnestly. “Picking up fields here. Frequencies all over the place.” Her fingers worked the instrumentation, her eyes darting from monitor to monitor.
Seated alongside her, the pilot worked his own necessities, methodically analyzing readouts and totaling up what the numbers meant. “Shit, here it comes. . . .”
The copilot was shaking her head dubiously. “Some kinda scan. Readin’ our drive spit, maybe.” Her attention was riveted on half a dozen readouts. “I dunno, I dunno. . . .”
Toombs didn’t hesitate. He who hesitates was one dead motherfucker, as the ancient saying went. Or something like that. “Don’t wait for detailed analysis. Let’s drop one.”
The pilot complied, assaulting the appropriate instrumentation.
As the ship continued to accelerate, a portion of its exterior appeared to break away and spin free. It tumbled only for a moment, until independent internal self-guidance and operations systems took over from the master control on board the mother vessel. As the merc ship sped spaceward, the liberated engine’s own internal backup drive kicked in. This was a particularly messy, undisciplined drive that spewed indications of its presence all over the immediate spatial vicinity. Kicking off at an angle to the merc ship’s course, it sped away at its own impressive speed. It did not possess the onboard resources to do so for very long, or to enable it to reach another star system, but that was not its purpose. Its purpose was to make fools of whoever happened to be tracking.
Aboard the mother craft, the merc crew held their breath as they watched the tracing field indicators on their respective screens dropping, dropping—and finally going dead flat line. Both pilots sagged in relief. Whether it was a scanner or missile or inertialess projectile that had been tracking them, it had changed course in pursuit of their clever decoy. In a very little while they would be able to make the jump to supralight speed, and should be safe from any pursuit.