The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [94]
XV
It had been a long time since the Guv had done any running, and it was finally starting to take its toll. Not that what he and his companion were doing at the moment could exactly be called running. It was more akin to slipping, sliding, stumbling, and praying you didn’t fall flat on your ass and, worse, break something you might need later. Like a femur.
The ground underfoot was as broken and nasty as a slam guard’s heart. Barefoot, their feet would have been cut to shreds in minutes by the planes and blades of volcanic glass. Here and there the two men encountered shallow depressions in which falling ash had accumulated and compacted. Grateful for these softer patches, they tried to move along them, hop-scotching their way steadily forward.
Though they’d made pretty good time since abandoning the top of the mountain that now loomed behind them, they were starting to run out of gas. Impetus to keep going came from the knowledge that though they were still in shade, it wouldn’t be long before the steadily rising sun put in its inevitable soul-sucking appearance above the ragged peak. Thought of what would happen to them when that happened was enough to keep legs moving and brains focused.
Looking up, the Guv saw something that provided yet another shot of the adrenaline he thought had all been used up. The stone pillar that marked the location of the underground hangar was just ahead, jutting above the last rise. The entrance to the hangar itself couldn’t be more than five hundred meters off.
“Almost there,” he gasped, lips cracked from the heat and lack of water.
“Almost,” the other convict wheezed. “One more hill. Just one more fucking hill.”
Practically on hands and knees, the two men started up the final rise, slipping and scrabbling on the maddeningly slick, glassy surface. The crest was ten meters away. Then seven. Then three . . .
Something grabbed the Guv’s ankle.
Shocked, stunned, he whipped around and looked down, mixed exclamation and curse rising in his throat. At the sight of who was holding him, he stifled the incipient shout aborning.
“Dead mouth,” Riddick said warningly.
He did not have to put finger to lips. The words were enough. Laying flat against the surface of the rise, the Guv fought to still his breathing. Nearby, his companion was panting hard. Making absolutely no noise, Riddick slid up alongside the other man and placed a hand over his mouth to muffle the labored breathing. Taking the hint, the convict nodded tersely and strove for absolute silence.
At first there was nothing, the thermal wind having moved on past the far sides of the valley, its perpetual thunder a distant memory now. Then a hint of something. Something new and not natural. A low, ominous thrumming.
Motioning for the Guv and the other convict to stay where they were, Riddick snaked his way to the top of the rise. Unable to restrain her curiosity, or to sit still, Kyra wormed up beside him. What she saw took away what little breath she still had.
They were not alone.
Engines humming, an imposing black warship hovered over the landing strip that had been hewn from Crematoria’s surface. Below and nearby gleamed the hangar doors, still in shade. They were shut tight. In front of them, foot soldiers in battle gear busied themselves like so many black ants; checking, inspecting, appraising, searching. Pulling on their leashes, lensing Necros were actively scanning every meter of building and ground. In the midst of them and clearly in charge was a figure Riddick recognized from his holiday on Helion Prime: the Necromonger commander called Vaako.
Next to him, Kyra queried in the softest whisper possible, “And those would be . . . ?”
“Necromongers,” Riddick told her.
She turned back to the view below. “So that’s what they look like. Creepy bastards, aren’t they?”
“That’s the idea,” he rumbled quietly.
She made a face. “Shit. I hate not being the bad guys.”
In the midst of the inspection, one of the lensors suddenly turned away from the ground it had been scrutinizing,