The Chronicles of Riddick (25 page)

Then a set of inner doors began to close, separating soldiers from the rest of the vessel as they continued toward their quarters. Officer after officer turned in her direction as dim internal illumination took over from external sunshine.

Just before the inner doors shut tight, the pupils of one officer glinted with a singular flash.

T
oo stunned by the news to pace, object, or do more than gape uncomprehendingly at his companion, Vaako could only blurt, “You mean, ‘on Helion’?”

A handsome fool was still a fool, she told herself heatedly, but this man was the best she could do. Berating him aloud would only be counterproductive. In the scheme of things, there was no alternative to the newly promoted commander general. She had too much invested in him to alienate him now.

They had been handed a shock. Well, she had dealt with difficult, unforeseen circumstances before. Many who had underestimated her resourcefulness and resolve had preceded her to the Threshold— prematurely. She was not about to let one man, whatever his abilities, send her on that untimely journey now.

“I mean on this very ship,” she snapped. “Right here, in the sanctuary of the Basilica itself.”

Though he had never had reason to doubt her before, Vaako found it hard to believe. Difficult enough to imagine anyone surviving direct exposure to the sun of Crematoria. To expect him to believe that Riddick had not only survived, but made it back to Helion Prime and onto the Basilica, was almost too much to envision. Yet no matter how strongly or sensibly he objected, she continued to insist that she had seen him here.

Presented with a seeming impossibility, he sought other explanations. “Could you be wrong? Could your mind just be fabricating what we fear? We have been under considerable stress lately; stress caused both by professional demands and personal expectations.” He moved closer to her, searching her face, meeting her gaze.
“Could you be wrong?”

She saw that he did not want to accept an unpleasant reality. Well, he’d better find a way to accept it, and fast. Whatever Riddick had in mind, she doubted the breeder would wait long before putting it in play. They needed to be ready. For whatever might come.

“Not so wrong as when you left him alive,” she chided her companion. She knew that, had she been on Crematoria, that oversight would not have occurred. Her thoughts swirled as she tried to anticipate possible eventualities. “It’s twice a mistake. Not only your failure to make certain of his passing, but now we have to live with your report that the expedition was a success.” She was pacing fiercely now, a panther barely caged, muttering to herself as much as to him. “How do we salvage this . . . how . . . ?”

Vaako chose that moment to reveal that they were not thinking along similar lines. “The Lord Marshal,” he exclaimed with a start. “He’s got to be warned. Even if it turns out that you were mistaken, it’s a risk that cannot be ignored.” He turned and started for the door.

She did not move to intercept him. Nor did she raise her voice or sputter curses. Her tone was perfectly steady. “You will never see UnderVerse. He’ll kill us both before due time. And it won’t matter whether Riddick is here or not. I’ve seen how he acts when the breeder is discussed. Just the possibility that you might have failed will be enough to set him off. Is that what you want?”

Vaako halted, confusion and uncertainty writ plain on his face. “Then—what do we do?”

“It is truly the wise one who can turn seeming adversity into advantage.” She moved closer, her voice at once conspiratorial and ferocious. “This Riddick is persistent beyond reason. I say give him his chance. You saw what he did when confronted by the Quasi-Dead. No one in my experience or I daresay in yours has shown such resolve, such resilience. Such skill. If he is half of what Lord Marshal fears, then perhaps he can at least wound him.” Her gaze met that of her companion, bold and unwavering.

“It may be enough. If hurt, he will hesitate. When he hesitates, that is when you must act.”

Vaako balked. What she was saying, this woman to whom he had hitched his life, went against every teaching he had absorbed since becoming a soldier. “Just to take his place? I am made commander general. Is that not enough? Must I do this just to keep what I kill?”

“It is the Necromonger way. No lord marshal reigns forever.” She all but spat the words. “This one’s time for replacement is overdue. You will be doing him a favor. Send him on his way to UnderVerse. Advance him to his due time.”

Torn between desire for her and loyalty to his superior, between his own dreams and the faith to which he had pledged himself, he looked away and gave voice to the emotions that were churning inside him.

“It is not enough.”

She contained her exasperation. Where would this man be without her to motivate him? On the battlefield he reigned supreme: none could touch him for bravery or skill. But when thrust into the maze of politics and court intrigue, he was like a lost child. It fell to her to lead him.

“Then if you will not do it for yourself, and you will not do it for me, do it for the faith.”

That brought a reaction. The intended one. Having struck the right nerve, she continued without pause.

“He fears this Riddick. If he shows fear, he demonstrates weakness. Weakness can be treated and cured within the junior ranks, and tolerated among the senior staff, but a lord marshal who exhibits weakness proves himself unworthy of that office. That is
not
the Necromonger way.” Sidling close, she placed a hand on his chest, ran it slowly up and down.

“You know that what I speak is the truth. Sending you all the way to a distant system, in the midst of war, to find and kill one man. Does that demonstrate the kind of nerve that is needed to lead our people? At the time, you questioned the decision. Why can you not now see the need to question the man behind the decision? How can someone so fearful of one individual be deemed fit to continue defending the cause?” She stepped back.

“You
must
act. There
is
no one else. No one with your ability to seize the moment. No one with your skill to carry out the sentence. What we do now, we do not for ourselves, but for all who subscribe to the Necromonger way of life. And of death. Besides,” she added, “you will only be sending him onward to the place where we all wish to go. That should be considered a boon, not a punishment.”

“What,” he wondered, slowly warming to the idea in spite of himself, “if it is not his due time?”

“The Lord Marshal? It is always his due time. He only needs someone to give him a helping hand to the Threshold. You will be doing him, as well as our people, a great favor.”

He was coming around, she saw. He always did. It was only a matter of time, of placing the right words in his ear and sometimes hands in the right places. The best blade, she knew, was a sword that was malleable in the hands of the one who wielded it.

“To protect the Faith . . . ,” he was murmuring, his eyes now focused on something distant.

“To protect the Faith,” she echoed impatiently. Get on with it, man! But she saw that he still needed further reassurance. “This can still be a day of days, as the Lord Marshal declared. But the timing must be flawless.” Without a hint of cynicism she added, “The Lord Marshal may not entirely approve of the generous gesture you are going to make on his behalf.”

One more time, he met her eyes. Were they really going to do this? Once committed, he knew, he would have no chance to back out. There would be no turning back. Explanations after the fact were unlikely to be accepted.

U
naware of the complex machinations being plotted by others, Riddick strode purposefully down the corridor. Having traded battle armor for the stolen lightweight dress cloak and attire of an off-duty officer, he advanced without being questioned by the occasional guard or preoccupied passerby. Everyone was too intent on discussing the preeminent issue of the moment to notice him anyway, as soldiers and support personnel alike tried to come up with a reason why the armada should be ordered off the surface of Helion Prime before that stubbornly resistant world had been fully subdued. Such an action was unprecedented. Some even, in carefully guarded whispers and dark corners, were bold enough to voice concern about the current Lord Marshal’s resolve.

Though he made his way forward with care for the position of his cloak, Riddick could not prevent it from billowing slightly open as he mechanically saluted representatives of the lower ranks. At such times, anyone with a sharp eye and an inclination to peer beneath might have noticed that underneath his cloak of rank the big man’s vest was decorated not with symbols of accomplishment or medals of valor, but with blades. Lots of blades, among which was the unusual dagger that had once adorned the right deltoid muscle of a now dead soldier named Irgun. Primitive weapons, knives. But they wouldn’t jam on you, they emitted no telltale radiation, they were silent, they contained no electronics that could be jammed by a routine room-spanning security field, and they did their job just as effectively as any shell or beam weapon.

He stiffened slightly as he saw the two figures coming toward him. No one had questioned or challenged him until now, but—one of the figures was a lensor. Keeping his eyes straight and striving to appear preoccupied, he kept on. Like everyone else he had encountered in the Basilica, the pair walked right past him.

Right past him, and then the lensor turned. And issued an alert.

“You, sir—a moment, if you please,” the soldier with it exclaimed. Not too loudly, for which Riddick was grateful.

Turning, he waited while they approached. “Something wrong, soldier?”

The younger man hesitated, glanced at the lensor, received information, and gathered courage. “Nothing really, sir. Might I speak with you a moment?”

How to play this? the big man thought rapidly. At the moment, the corridor was not crowded, but neither was it deserted. Taking another step forward, he lowered his voice.

“Sure. But I’m not really supposed to be off duty right now.” Turning to his right, he gestured toward a dark side alcove. “Over there, okay?”

The soldier nodded knowingly. Together, he and his lensor accompanied Riddick into the recess. Once inside, Riddick reached beneath his cloak and pulled out his identification. Two of them.

No one else confronted him as he emerged from the now silent alcove, resumed his march down the corridor, and disappeared around a corner.

T
he view of Helion’s capital as seen through the large, floor-mounted port continued to expand as the Basilica gained altitude. Very soon now, every ship would be in position. There was nothing left to do but issue the necessary commands. Obliged by the need to preserve the lives of as many potential converts as possible, he had already put this off too long.

“Final protocol,” the Lord Marshal told the officer responsible for following through. “It is time to deliver a lasting lesson and simultaneously put an end to this obstinacy on the part of a few reluctant locals. With one blow, we will crush any remaining will to resist.” He turned back to the port. “Execute on my order.” Interesting he mused, how certain words could have such significant double meanings. “Execute,” for example.

Wordlessly, the officer made the necessary preparations. Among them was the appearance at his station of a control whose appearance was as much ceremonial as functional: a small replica of the great conquest icon itself.

Far below, the surviving citizens of the capital crept from their hiding places to gaze skyward in wonder at the impressive gathering of invading ships. One such house had suffered comparatively little damage. Its patriarch was dead. Unable without his help to reach the evacuation vessel that had been designated for them, mother and daughter had returned home. As one of the warrior ships thrummed malevolently low overhead, Lajjun clutched Ziza even tighter to her breast.

One by one, their massive engines combining to generate a deep-throated mechanical drone that drowned out every other sound, warships were gathering around the conquest icon, almost as if they were on parade. But their assembling had nothing to do with pageantry, and everything to do with death.

Like a broken piece of machinery, the dead lensor was dumped at the Lord Marshal’s feet. Ordinarily, it would not have been brought directly to his attention. Especially not now, when an event of considerable significance was about to transpire. But someone had already reviewed the lensor’s recording pack and deemed the information contained therein of sufficient importance that it should be viewed immediately by the highest authority.

To preserve the privacy of the transmission, an umbilical was jacked into an appropriate port in the lensor’s back and the other end into a console. The use of a cord was testament to the sensitivity of the information about to be displayed: any over-the-air transmission was susceptible to interception.

As the technician adjusted the flow, a wall screen displayed the lensor’s final recordings. A Necromonger handler was shown walking down a corridor in the company of a subofficer, both of them with their backs to the lensor. Entering a darkened alcove, they turned to face one another. Seeing the face of the subofficer in profile, the Lord Marshal sucked in his breath imperceptibly.

There was a brief exchange of questions. Then the scene turned chaotic as Riddick, in the guise of a Necromonger subofficer, attacked in a blur of motion. The screen went dark, as had the lensor.

The Lord Marshal ripped the umbilical out of its socket. “Commander Toal . . .”

Toal was already at his leader’s side, anticipating. “Don’t worry, Lord Marshal. He won’t escape twice.” He gestured freely. “This time, there’s no place for him to go. If he seeks to flee again via one of the landing support struts, this time my men will be there to help him step outside.” His expression was mirthless. “It will be a longer step, this time.”