The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [83]
More impressed than afraid, Toombs found himself gaping at his former prisoner. “How come you know all this shit? You wasn’t even here.”
Riddick favored the mercenary with a particularly disgusted look. “Cuz it was my plan.”
In the tunnel, the slam boss and five remaining guards jogged methodically onward, their boots pounding rhythmically against the hard, compacted surface underfoot. Striking a rail, one man stumbled and, cursing, picked up the pace as he adjusted the gear that provided a flow of supplementary oxygen to his lungs. Douruba was having a harder time of it than his men. He was older, and not in as good a shape. A word to the overly energetic guard now leading the way slowed the younger man down.
“Stay together,” he admonished them.
One of the other survivors frowned at his superior. “Why?” He glanced back in the direction of the prison. “Even if any of those half heads could figure out what happened, they can’t follow us.” He grinned as he ran. “Doors are jammed good. They can’t get into the tunnel.”
The slam boss nodded curtly. “You remember that last drop-off? The big man with the goggles? Keep moving. Stay together.” Reaching up, he scratched his nose and lengthened his own stride, inspired—or maybe troubled—by his own words. “Damn supplementation units didn’t provide nearly enough oxygen to complement an atmosphere that was largely nitrogen and argon,” he muttered under his breath. He nudged the guide lever on his own unit to maximum flow.
Within the control room, exactly the kind of confusion and aimlessness that the slam boss had envisioned held sway. A few of the prisoners smashed and kicked anything intact they came across, futilely taking out years of anger and frustration on inanimate objects. Under the direction of the Guv, a semiorganized group was struggling to pry open the doors that led to the transport tunnel. Built to withstand everything from a major earth tremor to direct hits by heavy ordnance, the doors refused to cooperate. Nothing they found to attack the doors with was tougher than the doors themselves.
Kyra, meanwhile, was watching Riddick. The big man was seated in a chair, actively working a section of surviving instrumentation. She was pretty sure he wasn’t dialing up the latest entertainment vid. That anything at all remained functional in the control room was something of a minor miracle in itself. That anything had survived that might prove useful was almost too much to hope for.
Something deep underfoot went ca-thunk. The floor trembled. Men raging at machines turned to look up from their festival of destruction. Those working on the tunnel doors halted their fruitless efforts to turn and stare.
The floor heaved. Not buckling, but rising. The small earthquake was machine generated. Ascending on its massive, solid screws, the battered control room began to drive toward the surface. Reluctantly at first, but with gathering efficiency, eased along by Riddick’s demanding touch. As he worked the controls, Kyra walked over to stand next to him, her attention on his face. She nodded to herself.
“I know that look.” He said nothing, busy at the instrumentation. “I don’t like it. I don’t like what it implies.”
He spoke without looking up at her. “Plenty of choices. Don’t have to follow.”
“Yeah, right,” she muttered. “Like I’m gonna stay here.”
Between picking up what they could of the terse conversation and combining it with what Riddick was doing, even the slowest-witted prisoner soon had a pretty good idea of the big man’s intention. Realization provoked disbelief, and debate.
“He’s out of his mind,” one man declared without hesitation. “Won’t last five minutes out there.”
His companion was staring out a port as the control room surfaced. It was still pitch-black outside— for a little while. “Five minutes?” He nodded at the vista of blackened, blasted lava; a twisted maze of extruded volcanic rock that could alternately