He Didn't Come

Riddick turned away from her and concentrated all of his attention onto the situation. She didn’t blame him. Her first encounter with him came at the hands of pirates. She didn’t want her last to be at their hands, too.

Riddick looked intensely focused and muttered continuously. Jack was only able to catch a word or two, most of them beginning with ‘F.’

She was completely oblivious to the details of the next five minutes. It was a nauseating whirlwind of intense zero-G action. She assumed that he cut the artificial gravity to give most of the power to the thrusters. At first seemed like they would escape, but when Riddick stared at the console with an awful expression on his face… it wasn’t fear, it couldn’t be. She knew something went seriously wrong.

“Jack, go to your room.” Riddick spoke in a strained voice that she could barely recognize.

She knew it wasn’t the time to argue. She unbuckled herself and tried to pull herself toward her bedroom, but the lack of artificial gravity made it difficult. She didn’t want to say anything to Riddick, though. She didn’t want to make him even angrier with her.

She felt the ship come to a shuddering halt. At that moment, artificial gravity slammed back into place, and she tripped as her body suddenly got ten times heavier.

“I hate artificial-G,” she moaned. “Riddick, what’s going-”

He interrupted her, “Jack, lock your fucking door!”

Was that desperation in his voice? Jack obeyed him. She knew that her combat training wasn’t anywhere close to his level yet, and if this was enough to make him nervous, then she’d better fucking listen.

When in her room, she couldn’t stop her frenzied pacing. Her mind raced. What was going on? Okay, so they were on their way to New Germany and got targeted from some space ‘rats. Was there a ‘rat colony nearby?

Riddick had been able to take care of Jack and Imam during the last ‘rat attack she had been involved in. What could possibly be preventing him from doing the same this time?

The ship shivered suddenly, and Jack’s eyes widened. It reminded her of when she boarded Riddick’s ship with Herman. In fact, the two feelings were almost identical.

There was no way she was opening her door now. She heard some shouting, and the unmistakable sound of Riddick shivving people. The sounds of the bodies falling made her sick to her stomach. Jack double-checked her lock, but at the same time she felt guilty for leaving Riddick to deal with the ‘rats on his own. Maybe she could help him somehow.

She had her shiv with her, and clutched it tensely. The only times she’d ever had to use it were the few and far-between incidents at Chap and occasionally at Nero’s. She wondered, all of a sudden, what they thought when she didn’t show for work. Probably that she was raped and murdered like one or two other female bartenders she’d heard of.

Forcing herself to focus, Jack uncoded the lock and opened the door slowly. What she saw shocked her. There were ‘rats everywhere! There were easily ten of them, and every single one was scurrying around jacking their shit. There wasn’t a lot to steal, but when she saw them go after the console, she muttered, “Oh, hell no,” and stepped out of her room.

She was promptly spotted, of course. She barely heard Riddick shout, “Jack, watch the fuck out!” before a ‘rat moved on her. She reacted without thinking, and sliced at him as she ducked out of his way. Blood slicked onto her shiv, and she did her best to ignore it. Riddick was a killing machine. As she defended herself from assaults that seemed to come from all sides, she watched him kill three ‘rats in rapid succession. More kept reappearing, though. Jack couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. Finally she had the presence of mind to take a look at the airlock. It was open and through it, she could see ‘rats storing away their equipment.

“Jack, get back in your room!” Riddick yelled as he fended off another attacker.

“No!” she yelled back, but suddenly she felt ridiculous. Here she was, eighteen years old, trying to help the most important person in her life, and she was going about it like a stubborn child.

“I’ll get you back in your room,” a ‘rat leered at her. Without thinking, she shoved her shiv into his belly. Her eyes closed as he grunted. She tried to ignore the blood and… were those guts?… that slipped down her hand. She suppressed the nausea and pulled the shiv out to finish the job. She had gone that far, she might as well continue. She tried not to think about Russell, and the time she essentially gutted him with a shiv much like the one she was using now.

Someone pinned her hands behind her back, making her drop her blade. She twisted and struggled as much as she could, but the ‘rat had a firm grip on her. She shrieked curses at him as he started dragging her toward the airlock.

Riddick saw and sprang for them both. “Jack, what the fuck!”

As he reached for her captor’s throat, another ‘rat slammed a piece of the now-dissembled console on the back of his head. Jack didn’t speak as he fell. She couldn’t. There was no way he was down. “Come on, Riddick. Come on,” she said, fighting desperation, as well as the ‘rat’s painful hands. “Don’t do this to me!”

He didn’t move. As she was picked up and carried into the pirate ship, someone dragged Riddick behind them. Someone else- she didn’t see who- shoved a rag into her face. Jack gagged as her nose and throat began to burn. Finally everything faded, and she was out.

~*~

Riddick slowly became aware of his surroundings. Where was he? With his eyes still closed, he checked his surroundings. He was on a hard, flat surface. A floor. He smelled the distinctive scent of a drive room- burnt grease and sweet fuel exhaust. For some reason he had been dumped in the center of the ship. The ship’s drive was concentrated here. The energy was generated in the drive room. There were power cells installed all around the circular room, and they all sent power to the machine itself when the drive was engaged. If the ship were to go into jump-mode, anyone inside was fried.

Where was Jack? He opened his eyes, and found the only illumination coming from a small green light, a few centimeters across, in the center of the drive system. It was primed, but not ready to engage yet. The light would turn a vibrant orange as it shifted from primed to engaged. He just hoped he would be out of the drive room before that happened.

Strange. He wasn’t restrained in any way. He stood and felt his way to the hatch. Please, please don’t be locked….

Okay. Good. It didn’t even have a lock. That was a stroke of luck he hadn’t been expecting. He saw that once opened, the door would slide all the way open automatically. That kind of killed the stealth thing he was going for.

He tapped the electronic bar that opened the door and leapt back, reaching for one of his shivs. It wasn’t there. He quickly searched himself, looking for a single blade. Nothing. He had been stripped. Riddick swore.

The door slid open, revealing a floor space about two meters across. The hallway was the exact width and height of the doorway itself, and it lent a claustrophobic feeling to the area. Directly opposite from the door itself was a set of stairs, also the exact width of the hallway. The stairs were steep, leading straight up through a hole in the ceiling. He kept alert for anyone that might come his way, but the stairs were empty. Without much choice, he climbed them, being as cautious as he could.

When he got to the open square in the ceiling, he poked his head up slowly and looked around. The deck appeared empty. It was a maintenance deck, he realized. Shit, how large was the ‘rat ship? If there was an entire deck devoted to the mechanics of the ship, then he had grossly underestimated the situation.

Where the fuck was everybody? Riddick climbed the rest of the way up and looked around. The lights were off, but there were three round circles in the ceiling at the lowest setting. The emergency lights, he realized. They never shut off. It was a precaution that he could understand, if not relate to. Nothing worse than having a disabled jump-drive, people attacking the ship, and no lights. Especially if he was doing the attacking.

The oblong maintenance deck ran the expanse of the ship. The drive room was always situated in the low center of the ship, with its other mechanical inner workings all around it in a maze. It would have seemed like a discordant mess to someone who didn’t know what they were looking at. The bottom of each ship was always in a rounded, conical shape. The tip of the cone held the drive room, and the upwardly slanted part housed the rest of the mechanics. The living and working quarters were located where the curve leveled off to aerodynamic flatness. Of course, aerodynamics weren’t all that important during basic space flight, but it was crucial during jumps.

He took a direction at random, knowing that he would find ways to the upper levels. Sure enough, after less than two minutes of navigating the purple darkness, he found a second set of stairs. There was another square hole in the ceiling that led to the higher deck, and light washed down and spread out on the maintenance floor like a beacon.

One problem, though. There were people there. He could hear them walking around, talking about their new haul: Riddick’s ship. Where was Jack in all of this? He wasn’t going to lose her again.

Sometimes it seemed to him that all he did caused her more problems. He got her in this situation. He got her into that harassment problem at that juvenile facility on that backwoods planet system. Hell, she wouldn’t have gotten into that trouble with the merc and the farmer if she hadn’t decided to tail him.

He sighed. He could decide what was best for her later. At the moment he had to focus on how to save her.

He took the same technique as the last stair he climbed. First he poked his head above the edge of the square of light. Pirates of all shapes and sizes lounged on chairs and the floor, watching vid screens and drinking beer that smelled like it had been distilled in a bucket of old fuel.

He could see no evidence of his ship. He was certain that it had been ripped for scrap parts. Damn it! He had put a lot of work into that thing. The dojo was an accomplishment he was particularly proud of. Finding the proper padding for the floor and getting a hold of all of the brand new equipment had been no easy feat. And then, of course, there had been his black ops equipment. That had been some expensive shit. He’d had to take three jobs just to afford the navcomm slicer.

He ducked back down, thinking. There was no real way to do this without getting caught. He needed to create a distraction of some kind. However, the maintenance deck was very sensitive. The only thing he could think of to attract attention was to create an explosion, or anything else that would cause a very loud noise. The ship’s inner workings were very delicate, however. If he damaged something, he could disable the ship. He knew there had to be cruisers ready to launch on a ship this big, but he wasn’t positive. He didn’t want to take the chance of getting stranded on board.

He heard a woman’s voice. It wasn’t Jack’s. For one thing, this voice held no fear. If nothing else, it was threaded with an aura of command. The ‘rats who answered her were almost diffident, and deferential ‘rats were hard to imagine. He needed to be able to hear more clearly. He brought his head as close to the hole as he dared, and then a bit closer. What was going on? What had he landed in the middle of?