The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [99]
In most things, she told the truth. In most things. But when it came to not caring about dying she was, as she had just recently told Riddick, a terrible liar. In some ways, the choice she made now was an easy one. When one hope is gone, most people naturally gravitate to the next. Abandoning her hiding place, that the still rising sun would find all too soon, she rose to her feet and ran—toward the potential safe haven that was the Necromonger ship.
Within the rapidly intensifying hell that was the runway now exposed to the full glare of Crematoria’s sun, nothing moved except waves of rising heat and the beginnings of combustion from several of the prone human shapes. But within the shadows of the abandoned hangar, something did. Advancing deliberately out into the searing light, a human shape wound its way through the scattered bodies. The expensive and technically advanced cloak and hood of office it wore fended off the lethal effects of the naked sun for a little while. Long enough, anyway, for the figure to find what it was looking for, hook the motionless body under both arms, and drag the second man back into the still barely tolerable shade of the hangar. With the doors standing open, powerful internal cooling units struggled desperately to maintain the hangar temperature within habitable human limits.
Letting the body he had scavenged fall limp to the hangar floor, the Purifier pushed back the hood of his cloak, slightly burning his fingers in the process. The fabric was remarkably resilient, but if he had been forced to hike another twenty meters or so out in the sunlight, it, too, would have started to burn.
Speaking of burns, the exposed flesh of the man he had dragged off the runway was already showing signs of blistering in places. Only the dark goggles he wore had prevented his eyes from boiling away. The all-purpose hygienic spray the Purifier pulled from a pouch concealed within his raiment and proceeded to apply to these surfaces was normally used in Necromonger purification ceremonies to heal damaged faces before their soul-abandoned bodies were consigned permanently to oblivion. Now it worked its restorative epidermal magic on the man he had pulled out of the lethal sunlight.
The shock of instant healing combined with lingering pain to snap Riddick back to consciousness. He sat up with a suddenness that would have startled anyone other than the Purifier. But he was not looking at his rescuer, or thinking about him.
Something had happened out on the runway, in that instant frozen in time when Riddick had finally run out of strength, resources, and ideas. It had happened when the Necromonger commander had stood over him, gun in hand, muzzle aimed at his head. He could not put a name to it, did not know how he had done whatever it was that he had done. Only that it was as much a part of him, of his mental and physical makeup, as the fingers on his hands and the implants in his eyes. The experience had defined him in ways he had not imagined, and now it enabled him to better define himself.
“I’m Furyan,” he declared, his tone a mixture of assurance and wonder. Then he turned slightly to study the scene outside the hangar.
The thermal wind had reached the runway and passed on, tossing dead soldiers about like broken dolls. Those who still lay within view were beginning to steam as the water that composed most of their bodies boiled away. Muscles shrank inside armor and desiccated skin contracted to shrink-wrap the underlying bones. The goggles that had saved his eyes from the ravening sun scanned back and forth across the runway, nearby rocks, the protective berms that flanked the pavement. All the bodies he saw wore Necromonger gear of one kind or another. Of one small, lithe, unarmored woman there was no sign.
Moments later the sky was filled with a deep thrumming like a snoring whale. Slowly, majestically, the Necromonger warship hove into view. Riddick and the Purifier ducked farther back into the shelter of the hangar, watching. The frigate circled once overhead. No destructive