The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [98]
“And remember your primitive side. It’s always been there.”
Time and space collapsed back to normalcy. The woman was gone. The man who had killed the Guv was still there.
Vaako saw what Riddick, inundated by the surge of something far stranger and more powerful than mere adrenaline, could not. It was fury of a unique kind made real, made visible. Expanding from somewhere deep within the man kneeling before him, it expanded as it rushed to the limits of the big man’s body, reaching every extremity, coursing down arms, legs, fingers, up his neck, into his skull. Blood began to trickle from Riddick’s ears. Blood under pressure. Rising pressure.
Staring, not comprehending. The gun in Vaako’s hand fell to his side as he began to backpedal, his pace increasing with every step.
Something burst forth from the kneeling man. Too intent on finding cover, any kind of cover, Vaako didn’t see it. Neither did the Necromonger soldiers it flattened, each and every one unlucky enough to be standing within the radius of that expanding, palpable fury when it finally unleashed. Only one escaped the devastating effects of the silent discharge.
Standing nearby, the Purifier found himself rocked. Mentally as well as physically, but far more so the first. He was not knocked down, he was not shattered. But inside, something was blown away.
The singular detonation had caught and flattened the two soldiers who had been pursuing Kyra, but not her. Fortuitously, she had been retreating behind the runway berm in an attempt to lure them close enough for her blades to reach. When she finally rolled forward for a better look, she was startled to see both of them lying prone, dead on the runway. The smooth, flat approach to the hangar was littered with Necromonger corpses. A few were moving, but feebly, as if the life-force itself had been blasted out of them. At the epicenter of the eerie silence, one unarmored body lay motionless. Even at a distance, it was instantly recognizable.
Rising, she stared at the unmoving form. It continued to lie dormant. Maybe if she gazed at it long enough and hard enough, she thought, it would get up, move, at least twitch. But the intensity of her stare had no effect on the familiar shape. It just lay there, seemingly as dead as the scattered bodies surrounding it.
“Riddick?” she mumbled.
Another figure was moving. Staggering, stumbling, mind and body both dazed by something he did not understand but in nowise dead, Vaako struggled to his feet. Gathering himself, he also focused his attention on the motionless, goggled, apparently unbreathing form. As his mind cleared, he bent to pick up a dropped blade and started forward. From what he could see, whatever had detonated had killed the man Riddick as surely as it had flattened everyone around him. But good soldier that he was, Vaako wanted to make sure, needed to make sure. And no one was going to stop him. No one.
The sun flared over the top of the nearby mountain.
Most of the runway suddenly bleached out, as if every drop of color had abruptly been washed from the hard surface. Kyra dove for safety behind the nearest rocks while Vaako and those soldiers who had survived the mysterious blast effect fled toward their ship’s landing zone. There were some things not even the implacable servants of Necropolis could face.
Out on the runway, the uninhibited sun struck the unmoving bodies. Several of them began to smolder. Riddick remained where he had fallen.
“You bastard,” Kyra found herself muttering silently. “You son of a bitch. It’s not supposed to end like this. What the hell am I supposed to do now? What do you expect me to do? Get up, get up!”
A quick glance, stolen from the unrelenting sunlight, showed the big man still lying in the center of the field of Necromonger corpses. It had not moved. But in the rapidly shrinking shadows, others did: soldiers and support personnel, lensors and officers, retreating rapidly in the direction of their