A Thousand Shades Of Black

Chapter Seven – Sunglasses at Night

The ship lay quiescent before them. Riddick flattened himself against the wall and Alia crouched, knife out, beside him. She was grateful to him for his quick understanding and was feeling rather chastened by her own foolishness.

Kyra was bouncing a little behind them, unsure of why they were waiting. She opened her mouth to ask and Riddick motioned her to silence. There were the nearby sounds of combat but the area around them was curiously silent. Kyra eyed the two Furyans askance but stayed still.
Alia looked up at Riddick in enquiry and he nodded. Picking up a pebble, she skimmed it towards the ship. Instantly weapons popped out of the smooth skin and trained on the tiny projectile. A quick blast of energy and it was annihilated. Riddick gave her a long irritated glare.

“Why can they never just make it easy?” he grumbled at her. Looking at his face, she found herself smiling. She wished the risks didn’t outweigh the benefits where he was concerned.

“Where would the fun be in that?” she retorted with a shrug and he grinned back at her.

“How are we going to get near the ship?” Kyra’s voice was laced with frustration. Riddick met Alia’s eyes again and she knew what the plan was. “Oh no, I know that look,” Kyra muttered.

Alia paused and memorized that moment. The way he looked in the smoky darkness, his silver eyes glimmering, skin sheeted with sweat and rapidly drying blood. Kyra crouched behind them, trusting that somehow they would survive this, her soot-stained hospital clothes hanging tattered from her shoulders. She held in her mind this moment where she was part of a group, a family, and then she readied herself to go.

“Run!” She heard Riddick roar and she pushed off, legs pumping frantically, body weaving to keep the guns from tracking her. She felt the hot sizzle of the energy weapons, heard Riddick and Kyra pounding along behind her and saw the ship getting closer with every step.

A burning agony shot through her right calf as she ran and she stumbled. She felt herself pitching forward and rolled into a ball coming to her feet again and still running. The pain was almost unbearable but she knew she was dead if she stopped moving. The crossing could only have taken a minute but it felt like hours as she ran and then she was in the lee of the ship, crouched in its shadow. She let her leg crumple beneath her and collapsed.

“Alia!” Riddick’s voice shot through the haze of pain and she jerked her head up to find him crouched over her. Kyra was staring at her in shock, as though unable to believe she could be injured.

“Leg,” she answered him through gritted teeth and he turned her to one side to examine it. The burn was deep and blood seeped from the jagged hole.

“Can you go on?” he asked and she had never heard his voice so gentle before. The deep rasp had eased to velvet.

“Bind it,” she bit out and Riddick pulled fabric from Kyra’s tattered clothes and wrapped it tight around her calf. Kyra jerked another strip off and handed it to him and he yanked it hard, applying pressure to the wound. Alia grimaced from the pain and fought the urge to black out. There was no time for that.

Riddick stood and extended a hand to her and she grabbed on, letting him pull her to her feet. There was a bad moment as she put weight on it and then she steadied.

“Alia?” He was frowning at her in concern. She knew she must look pretty bad to elicit such an expression from him.

“What are we waiting for?” She cocked her head at him and turned to try to find some sign of an entrance hatch on the smooth hull. Kyra shadowed Alia as she, limping and in agony, followed Riddick and they eased along, searching for an opening.

They were about a third of the way down when they came to a thin line that described a circle on the hull.

“Alia? You got any of those jackers on you?” Riddick’s voice rumbled through the pain-filled haze that Alia was moving in. She pulled her focus together and shifted past him, pulling the thief’s tools from the concealed pockets of her jacket.

“I always do,” she assured him with a tired smile that he didn’t return. He looked really worried now and she wondered idly how much blood she had lost. She found the locking mechanism easily and then stared at the alien apparatus for a long moment, trying to bring her mind to bear on the problem.

“How long is this going to take?” Kyra nervously muttered.

“As long as it takes,” he replied with a patient tone. Alia ignored them after that, pulling a jacker seeker out first and inserting the slender red wire into the lock. The seeker twisted and turned through the hardware, learning its secrets and mapping its heart. She felt it clicking in her hand and drew it out, inserting it now into the reader card.

The card was a slim plastic strip, barely longer than her pinky and in a nanosecond it had downloaded the data on the lock off of the seeker. She pulled a pick jacker out next, its rather bulkier form jammed full of sensitive electronics and inserted it into the reader.

Once the black wire was programmed for this specific lock, she slid it back into the locking mechanism and deftly wiggled it deep into the heart of it. She blessed Old Ripper, who had taken her under his wing and taught her the art of thievery. He had forced her to practice with every conceivable type of lock for hours upon hours until she had been able to pick one blindfolded, exhausted, cold and hungry. She could see and she wasn’t cold, so Alia figured she could manage this lock too. Long moments passed as she worked and then with a soft click and a hum, the door opened, letting soft green-tinged light pour out.

“Nice.” Riddick complimented her and she rose to go on. He grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back. “Stay here, you’ll only slow us down.” She wished she could protest that but he was right, she could hardly walk, let alone run. She sighed and sat back down, scooting herself back into the shadowed bulk of the alien craft.

“We’ll be right back,” Kyra assured her and then they crept through the open doorway and vanished. Alia pulled a small knife from her boot and wedged it into the door machinery, jamming it open. She kept her eyes peeled and waited.

Kyra felt a melancholy stealing over her as they left Sturm by the hatch. She had seen the other woman fall and then roll to her feet so fast that she had been certain that she was unharmed. To see the jagged wound and the pale, sweating face had been a shock. Kyra had seen Riddick weak and near death but Sturm was like a statue, cold and untouchable. It was startling to see beneath that façade, to find a human being with weaknesses.

Riddick had looked utterly white as he bound her leg. Kyra had seen him look like that when she herself had been dying. She hadn’t expected to see it again anytime soon.

They were speeding down a corridor, searching for some way to destroy the ship and it occurred to Kyra that the whole plan was cobbled together and probably suicidal. She figured that what they were really hoping for was a big arrow in universal standard saying, “this way to the self-destruct button” or something along those lines. Instead her big discovery was that the monkey aliens had indoor plumbing but very bad aim.

“Will Sturm be all right?” Kyra asked worriedly. She felt like a child asking for reassurance from a parent and despised her own weakness.

“Sturm is strong. She can take care of herself.” Riddick sounded angry and for an instant Kyra wondered if she were the cause of it. Then illumination dawned. Riddick had hated leaving her there. The big bad man who had almost left her and Imam for dead on that planet was having problems with leaving tough, nasty, hardened Sturm alone but well-armed, without any sign of the enemy. Kyra wanted to laugh.

“You’re sweet on her, Riddick,” she teased him gently. He shot her a darkling look and she found herself grinning at him.

“I got a question, Kyra.” He cocked his head at her and she paused, waiting for his next words. “How come there are no aliens on this ship?” It took her a moment to regroup her thoughts and she looked around in thoughtful silence. He was right, they had wandered through the corridors completely unmolested. Weren’t there any guards?

“Because they are all outside kicking our asses?” She knew it was a smart-mouthed answer but she was really thinking about the question.

“Yeah, but why no guards?” he persisted.

“Because they think no one can get into the ship?” She was feeling a trifle exasperated by the interrogation. What was up?

“Never met my woman, have they?” Kyra had the distinct impression that Riddick hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Perhaps it was the sudden blankness of his expression, or maybe the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Was he really admitting that he had some serious intentions towards Sturm? Kyra wasn’t sure what she thought of that. On the one hand, Sturm was impressive and amazing; on the other hand, she was so cold and distant. Could she have any feelings for him?

“We’ll pick up this discussion later,” she finally muttered. “After we are no longer in shit up to our necks.” Riddick flashed her a quelling look.

“Glad to see your priorities are straight,” he shot back and they turned the corner to see a huge room filled with bright shining machinery. They exchanged a glance and Riddick shrugged. “Oh for a few satchel charges.”

“I’d settle for a big wrench right now.” She scanned the room but there was nothing with which to smash the device.

Alia sat crouched in the shadows and wished she had a nice big rifle to keep her company. If the aliens came back to their ship, she was utterly screwed. She had a pair of throwing knives and her mother’s long knife on her but they would be useless if she was caught here.
The pain was ebbing away and she was starting to feel calm and just a little sleepy. She knew it was a very bad sign and fought to stay awake.

“Li.” Someone was calling her name and she turned her head trying to find the speaker. The air wavered and she looked into a smiling pixie face.

Kava had always been Alia’s antithesis, for all that they were born of the same mother. Alia had her father’s build and wiry strength, Kava all their mother’s slender delicacy. They both shared the black hair but where Alia’s was flat black with silvered highlights, Kava had the raven’s wing purpled black that Alia had always envied in their mother, but curly and long. Kava had shining green eyes from the bastard that had raped their mother, instead of the nearly black eyes that Alia had inherited from her own father.

Alia knew that she was hallucinating as she looked into her little sister’s face but she was so happy to see her that she didn’t care. If dying meant reuniting with Kava then it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

“No, Li.” Kava was shaking her head, looking sad but determined.

“Kavie?” The baby name came easily to her tongue, even after years of disuse.

“Li, wake up.” Her sister looked as she had before the Mercs had busted in and beaten Alia to the ground. She looked as she had before they had raped and then murdered her while Alia was screaming and bound, unable to stop them.

“Kavie, I’m so sorry.” Alia reached for the ghostly image, but Kava shook her head again.

“Li, you have to wake up!” Kava insisted and Alia frowned. Was she dreaming? “Li! You have to remember Riddick, don’t forget about him!” Alia frowned. Kava was being silly, how could she forget about Riddick? He was like a part of her now. She couldn’t forget.

“Kava, what are you talking about?”

“Li, you have to wake up!” Alia’s eyes snapped open and she took a gasping breath. Riddick, she had to stay awake for Riddick.

Riddick turned and saw the panel with the flashing lights and strange markings and it caught his eye. It looked familiar. A moment’s thought and he realized that it looked like a piloting board, only backwards and upside down. He grinned. There was more than one way to destroy a ship.

“I have a plan,” he announced to Kyra and she cast a dubious eye on him.

“Oh really?”

“Somewhere on this bucket of bolts is a Nav log. Hunt it up for me.” She shrugged and ran off, leaving him with the boards to figure out.
She returned around fifteen minutes later with a pile of plastic sheets that only made sense to him because he knew the Helion system pretty well.

It took him long minutes to figure out their navigation system but years of hacking government databases made their security seem frail and anemic. He gave Kyra and himself a ten-minute head start, activated the boards and then began to run for the exit.