The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [90]
Drenched in sweat and wiping volcanic spew from her face, she drew alongside Riddick as they ran together along the ridge top. Having to reserve oxygen for breathing kept any conversation brief.
“Blasted the crap out of ’em.” She chortled. “Been waiting a long time to do something like that.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “You?”
There was a pause as they pounded along side-by-side, the others keeping pace behind them, before he finally responded. “You even care if you get out of this alive?”
“Not really.” She said it without emotion, as casually and indifferently as if contemplating the scenery. Together, they leaped off the last ledge and landed simultaneously on a lava bridge that spanned a significant cleft in the rocks.
“Well, maybe I do,” he replied unexpectedly.
She eyed him uncertainly for a moment. There was more in that curt affirmation than a mere desire to stay alive. She did not expect it from him, and it kept her wondering and speculating on hidden meanings as she ran on.
Though the sulfur fissure through which they were taking a hoped-for shortcut was lined with a fortune in rare minerals, no one paused to do any informal collecting. There was no time, and money meant nothing now. Not out here, in the open. On the surface. Smooth and supportive underfoot, the fissure Riddick had found ran in exactly the direction they needed to take. With luck, it would dump them out only a short distance from the hangar site.
It dumped them out, all right, and at the expected location. There was only one problem. Their luck had run as dry as the volcanic surface underfoot.
“Oh no,” the Guv was muttering. Stopped, staring, he just kept repeating it, over and over again. “No, no, no, no . . .”
There was something between them and the hangar site. Something none of them, knowing virtually nothing of the actual surface topography, could have foreseen. It was only a mountain. A small mountain, really. But still a mountain. Composed of melted and reformed sulphurous rock, it completely blocked the way forward. It was steep, and domineering, and immovable, and the Guv would have cried if he could have spared water for the tears.
“Shit,” one of the other escapees snapped as he lowered the weapon he was carrying. Not only his voice threatened to snap.
Knowing they were looking to him, Riddick could have consoled them with encouraging words. He might have strived to minimize the trial ahead. Instead, he did what he did best: spoke not a word, and kept moving forward. There was, after all, nothing else to do, and words would not get them over the obstacle a spiteful Nature had placed before them. Racing to the base of the mountain, he started climbing. No one hesitated to follow him. There was no going back now. There hadn’t been for some time. Overhead, a brilliant razor’s edge of light split the rapidly waning night sky.
The sun was coming up.
They scrambled and scraped their way upward, ignoring bloody fingers and frequent cuts, paying no attention to the increasingly lethal drop below them. If not directly helpful, Riddick was at least a target, a goal. Even vertically, he seemed to be making speed. They could not possibly catch up to him. They could not possibly fall too far behind. His receding form was encouragement enough.
With a shorter reach than the others, Kyra was beginning to struggle. Slipping once, she barely caught herself. If she let go, she’d fall all the way to the bottom: far enough now so that she would not have to worry about getting back up and trying again. Complicating matters, the increasing heat was making the rock itself almost too hot to touch.
Seeing her repeatedly flicking her hands to cool them for the next reach and grab, the Guv worked his way up alongside her. “Like this.” He showed her his hands, both wrapped with belt leather. “Your belts, use your belts. Gun sling, anything.”
Too tired to fire back one