False Dawn

Chapter 13

The ship touched gently down on the pad marked M-34-A. The roar of the engines quieted to be replaced by loud hissing of the ships hydraulics and air compressors. Inside the pilot gently sighed in relief, releasing the white knuckled grip on the steering column. The Argentine was safely on the ground without a single problem.

Grinning at the neat landing as the adrenaline slowly faded she turned to her co-pilot. "Well?"

Riddick nodded, "Very good, but the driver of that cruiser will probably have to go clean his shorts."

Jack laughed out loud, loving this new teasing Riddick more than ever, "Oh, I didn't come close to him."

They stood at the same time and Riddick's firm hand at her waist held her for a moment as he leaned down to kiss her. Jack smiled up at him before turning and leading the way down to the cargo hold. Their contact would be waiting.

Tiborne 1 was a moon completely covered with water except for two islands at opposite poles. It rained ninety percent of the time and was light for about two hours a day. Not surprisingly the tenants and visitors to Tiborne 1 were most likely doing something illegal, or were hiding from something. Law abiding citizens would rather reside on the more hospitable planets.

Four hours later the shipper had removed all the crates from their hold and they headed out into the wet city. Supplies needed to be bought, and Jack was looking forward to eating something that hadn't been created synthetically. She had also wanted to do some shopping. During normal stops they were only planetside as long as they had to be, and were extremely cautious. But they had other plans for later on so after eating dinner she was thrilled to have Riddick escort her through a couple very nice shops. Riddick's obvious growing impatience as he stood nearby waiting for her had her grinning every time she looked at him. She knew how much he hated this. Not only were they out in the open to be recognized at any time, but a big dangerous looking man dressed all in black in the women's department made him look, and she was sure, feel ridiculous.

When she was finished they returned to the ship.

Riddick went over the ship's safeguards again, checking for anyone scanning them, and then locked everything down. They changed, dressing in solid black from head to toe, and armed themselves.

As Jack picked up the first gun to strap to her hip she could feel the weight of her actions settle on her. The earlier pleasure of the shopping trip and spending time with Riddick faded, and she was left feeling only anxiety. She had never shot anything except inanimate objects. The idea that they might need the weapons scared the hell out of her.

Riddick scowled as he focused those glinting eyes on her. She knew he was just double checking for his own peace of mind that she was ready, but his look was putting a little more fear into her as well. He stood on the hatch as it lowered, his hard body poised, giving a silhouette that she instinctively had to admire. He wasn't wearing his goggles, with the dark wet night allowing him to see perfectly. She could see him scan the area before stepping down. She followed, her heart already racing.

Once across the wide expanse of the loading docks, Riddick led her through a narrow alley and across a well lit street, the wet pavement shining and reflecting the lights set at intervals along the sidewalks. Down another alley and from there it was just a maze, one dark alley after another, where no light penetrated, and only the rain was constant. Jack was literally blind at times. The lit streets they carefully crossed allowed her to see sometimes, but mostly she just held onto Riddick's hand and silently cursed the steady drizzle.

With as much preparation as Riddick had insisted they go through to meet 'Chip', she was expecting someone rather menacing, or at least a heavily guarded safe house. They stopped at a dark doorway at the end of an alley, waiting for several minutes before the door was opened to them. Jack nearly laughed out loud when she finally saw the guy who appeared in the doorway, alone. He was pale and skinny, huge glasses hid his eyes and he wore a t-shirt that had once been white, and he was scared. She could see by the way he stared up at Riddick with eyes magnified by thick glasses that he was not too pleased by this particular visitor. But he smiled a nervous greeting at them. Jack had to literally swallow to keep her meal in her stomach. He was repulsive! He smelled of a combination of body odor, rotten food, and something unnamable, but when he smiled . . . His mouth was full of brown things that could have only once been teeth, making her admire Riddick's deadpan and try for her own.

They had to walk down a short ramp and several steps to get to a huge room, which was actually below ground level. The place seemed to have been a factory at some point in time, but was now deserted. At the back a small door lead down a hall to a pair of rooms that smelled even stronger than the man leading them. Riddick had paused at each doorway to set explosives, just small warning devices. If anyone other than him tried to open those doors they would hear the blast and have that added time to escape.

Jack was actually quite impressed with the computer system that Chip led her to. It took up one end of the larger room, multiple monitors and printers with a shelf system of base towers that made a sound that damn near drowned out everything else.

"So what can I do for you?" Chip asked, stopping before one of the wheeled chairs. It was obviously 'his', for it was stained in multiple colors with a permanent depression in the seat in the shape of his bony ass and, like him, smelled of something very unpleasant.

Jack looked back at Riddick to see that he was finishing his sweep of the rooms, checking for anything out of the ordinary. Chip didn't seem to mind or even notice that Riddick was searching his 'home'.

Riddick stepped to the door leading back down the hall and gave her a curt nod before exiting the room to continue keeping watch.

She turned back to Chip and smiled. "I want into Chem Industries."

His eyes widened behind the thick glasses. "That's a tall order, little girl. They don't like intruders much."

Jack's jaw clenched at the insulting name 'little girl', but she chose to ignore it in favor of getting what she wanted. "But you can do it?"

He smiled, displaying those horrible teeth, "It would take a bit . . ."

The way he looked away from her with attempted innocence leaving his sentence unfinished left little doubt of what he really wanted. She pulled out a cred chip and handed it to him. "It will be worth your while."

He turned the cred chip over in his fingers and then dropped into his chair and rolled forward into his nest of monitors and equipment. The cred chip disappeared into a small slot and the screen directly before him came to life, showing the worth of the chip. He looked back up at her, "You really want this information," he said with a grin that she couldn't look at.

"I do." She pulled another of the wheeled chairs up and sat as close beside him as she could get, or tolerate.

He had turned back to the monitor and was already typing. "Getting' in ain't the hard part!" He was bent over his keyboard, speaking to the monitor itself. "Not gettin' caught s'the bitch of it."

"They can actually trace us to here just by trying to get in?" she asked, suddenly realizing that this was more dangerous than she had thought.

"Yep. But ol' Chip ain't ever been got. Just gotta link in through some poor sucka's system to throw 'em off."

An hour later Chip sat back with a curse and a sigh. "Ain't never seen the likes." He was staring at the flashing message on his screen 'Access Denied'. "Whatever they got, they wanna keep."

Suddenly Riddick came back in from the large room at a near sprint. "Jack, let's go."

Jack stood, wide-eyed, not sure of what he wanted, "But we didn't get anything."

He started to say something else, already edging closer to the small bathroom at the back, but a loud bang sounded from somewhere in the building, drowning him out.

Jack gasped and turned to look at the door, but Riddick was in motion. He grabbed Jack's arm hard enough to nearly rip it from the socket. Another explosion shook the thin walls. Men's voices were shouting somewhere in the building. Riddick was like a wall at her back, shoving her forward. She stumbled, but was kept from falling by him.

The bathroom window was the only way out. They quickly climbed out, hearing shouts just behind them in the room.

"How?" she gasped as they crawled out onto the slippery pavement.

"Go, Jack. Go!" He was shoving her forward again and she had no choice but to obey. Gunshots sounded from inside, and Jack just caught Chip's startled cries. Oh, god, did they kill him? Had they killed the little man because of them?

They had only reached the halfway point of the alley when more gunshots sounded.

Sparks flew off the wall beside her and then off the ground just in front of her. Riddick grunted but kept running and she didn't know if he had been hit for sure or not.

She pulled one of the guns strapped to her side beneath the jacket she wore and fired back down the alley. Running and shooting blindly, only making sure to keep Riddick on her other side. She doubted she hit anything.

Vehicles were moving by on the street before them and they were within feet of reaching the end of the alley when something slammed into her back and sent her flying.

"Jack!"

Jack watched her gun skitter across the sidewalk and into the street. The slick wet concrete allowed it to slide for so long. And then she gasped as she was being yanked bodily up. A hard arm around her chest seemed to literally be cutting off her air.

The gunfire had stopped for the moment, but she could hear feet thudding and slapping in the alley coming nearer.

"Come on!"

Pain shot through her chest where before there had just been a huge sense of pressure. Riddick had swung her onto his shoulder, an arm locked around her keeping her in place, as he continued down the street. Her stomach bounced hard against his shoulder. The pain was nearly excruciating and she struggled to breath, but coughed at the effort. Blood. She spit. Blood filled her mouth and she frowned as the meaning of it sank in.

Movement caused her eyes to focus. The men chasing them had rounded the corner and were coming after them. Flashes from gun barrels registered to her before the sounds of the shots. Her own injury didn't seem important just then. Riddick was a HUGE target. She reached back for her other gun, yanking it free and fired.

A garbled cry reached her ears just seconds after the man in the center front went down. She grinned. Glad I got all that target practice. Though she was bouncing on Riddick's shoulder her aim was amazingly true. Twelve in the clip, one in the barrel, and after all thirteen shots, she'd brought down eight of them. But, dammit! There was at least four more!