The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [49]
Even though it was the prisoner who was bound and he was the one walking free, Toombs had the weirdest feeling that their respective condition had somehow become reversed. He struggled to regain mastery of the situation.
“You know, you were supposed to be some slick shit—an’ here you are, all back of the bus. Don’t know how to finish. But don’t worry—I’ll handle it for you.” Turning away, he gestured to one of his crew. “Getting on time for jump. Change his goddamn oil.” Clearly annoyed, he walked to the front of the cockpit to converse with the pilots.
After making doubly sure the prisoner’s bonds were intact, the merc Toombs had given the order to begin activating the standard cryochill that had been hooked up to Riddick earlier. He did so while only occasionally meeting the prisoner’s gaze.
“So, uh,” he murmured with a precautionary glance in Toombs’s direction, “what did happen to the other guys?”
Tired of conversation that was to no purpose, and not inclined to deal with junior employees, the prisoner lowered his head and went dead mouth. Disappointed, the merc worked a little more roughly on the tubes and monitor lines.
“Ohhh—he don’t wanna talk to me. You know, Riddick, I’m gonna be awake a lot longer than you.”
Letting it hang in the air as a threat, the merc finished his work, concluded by leaning over to boldly give the prisoner’s cheek a firm slap-pat as if to say “Nighty-night.” Riddick might have reacted, but he was not a man to waste energy without a definitive payoff in sight.
Especially if it was not one that he favored.
That there was still some sand and rock mixed with the telltale vitrification was clear indication that the ship that had taken off from the spot was designed to leave as little evidence of its passing as possible. Anyone charged with carrying out a casual scan of the area might well have missed it. The Necromonger search team did not.
Having been summoned by the team that had found the place, Vaako ran a hand over the seared surface. Satisfied, he turned to the lensor standing nearby. The creature was signaling that it had divined something from the immediate surroundings, and not necessarily just from its inspection of the ground.
The tap at the base of the lensor’s spine broadcast directly to the handheld unit in the commander’s right hand. There he saw, and read, what the lensor had computed: a suggestive lingering in the sky of a departing vessel. This had been merged with a series of reports from orbital monitors put in place just prior to the main assault on Helion Prime, most particularly a recent one that told of a fleeing, fast, small craft that had deployed a fairly sophisticated decoy to throw off any pursuit. Taken together, they were combined with reports from soldiers and citizens on the ground who had observed a small group of armed civilians traveling in this direction with a single distinctive, unarmed man in their midst.
All the replies to all the questions added up to a pretty good approximation of an answer. That, and the fact that there had been no other sightings of the singular prisoner since his remarkable escape from the Basilica added up to a reasonable conclusion: there had been a small vessel hidden here, and it had departed in a great hurry, most likely with the man Vaako was after on board. Who had taken him and why was not important. All that mattered was the probable presence on the departed vessel of the individual the commander sought.
Rising, he turned to a subordinate. “Take my Galilee team, the one with the most acute lensors, and see this done. I’ll make the composite report myself, in person.”
In the control room that was the neural ganglion of the Basilica, the Lord Marshal was consulting with his general staff. Toal,