The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [72]
“I told you to stay in New Mecca. Why didn’t you listen to me?” He added, almost to himself, “Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me.” His voice returned to normal and he was in her face now, at once accusing and advising. “I had mercs on my neck then. I’ll always have mercs on my neck. And then you go and sign up? With those no-good wannabe badges? The same guys I was steerin’ away from you?”
Seeking a release for his frustration, he turned away and slammed a fist into the nearest wall. The solid mass indented beneath his scarred knuckles. She knew he was doing it instead of pounding her. His fury cowed her—for about two seconds. She had long ago passed beyond being intimidated. After all, she had come to realize, all anyone could do was kill you. She had lost her fear of that along with her youth. Or maybe before. Sometimes, it was hard to remember things. Oftentimes, it was better not to.
So she continued to confront him. “What’re you pitchin’ at me, Riddick? That you cuttin’ out was a good thing? That you had my scrawny twelve-year-old ass covered from halfway across the galaxy?” She snorted derisively. “I was supposed to take that on faith, huh? That was supposed to be my salvation? A few words from you and then bam, you’re gone, gone.”
He was muttering to himself. She knew he must have heard her, but he did not acknowledge it. “Mercs. She signed with mercs.”
The knife she twisted in him had no blade, but it cut deeply just the same.
“There was nobody else around.”
Up above, in slam control central, word of the confrontation far below had yet to work its way up to the notice of the slam boss. Right now, he and everyone else in the room had more important things on their minds. An important ritual was about to take place; one of the few daily activities of any real importance on Crematoria. Things were about to happen in swift succession that would brook no error. That they occurred once a day did not mean they could be taken lightly. Everything depended on certain equipment, certain instruments, working flawlessly day after monotonous day. The alternative was possible death: not monotonous perhaps, but to be avoided nonetheless.
Having been given the run of the facility (perhaps in Douruba’s hope that while doing so they might run afoul of some fatal encounter and save him the trouble of further bargaining), Toombs and his copilot had just entered the control room. Immediately aware something of importance was taking place, he and Logan moved off to one side. Out of the way, they kept to themselves and watched. All information, Toombs knew, was potentially useful information.
Certainly the slam boss and the guard techs in the control room were sufficiently preoccupied with what they were doing to ignore the visitors. The chief tech was monitoring a dozen different readouts. One supplied, among other stats, the external temperature. Presently, it was minus one hundred and rising fast. Toombs’s pilot eyed it with interest. The only other place he had ever been that showed such numbers was out in deep space itself, and there they didn’t fluctuate as rapidly as this.
“Terminator approaching,” the chief guard tech was reporting methodically. Throughout the control room, readouts changed by the second, screens flared, and alarms began to beep for attention.
The temperature readout suddenly went green. A bell rang, sounding above the multiple beepings. Douruba straightened and regarded his team.
“Clock’s running, people. Let’s pop the cork.”
Another tech moved hands over console. Toombs and his colleagues grabbed for the nearest unmoving object as the whole control room shuddered slightly. But it was a light tremor. What was unusual was that it continued, a steady vibration in the floor, in the walls.
The control room was rising out of its hole, a slow mechanical mole preparing to peek out at the surface. It ascended on massive, solid alloy screws. The mechanics seemed primitive, but even sealed hydraulics couldn’t survive long on Crematoria. If the control room happened