Chapter Thirty-four: Jack - Looking Into The Abyss

Riddick grabbed her by the arms and lifted her bodily out of the pilot's seat, standing her up roughly to the side. She staggered and almost fell against the controls. He was already sitting down as she gained her footing, and was switching on the ship's flight system.

"What is it? What's happened?" The fear on his face had disappeared now, replaced by grim determination as he powered up the drive. He didn't answer her right away.

"Lock that shit down," he finally growled, gesturing at the bags he had carried in. "We're getting the fuck out of here."

Whatever it was, it was serious. She grabbed the bags and carried them over to one of the lockers, stuffing them inside it. With a pang, she saw that he'd brought home a whole, fresh pineapple. For her. She finished locking everything down and ran over to the copilot's seat.

"Don't we need to call the tower?" she asked, strapping herself in. His bark of laughter was entirely empty of humor.

"Yeah, let them know exactly who we are. This is our only shot, kid; I hope we still have time to use it."

"Our only shot at what?"

"Getting the fuck out of here before Jarvis's boys show up, Jack! You alerted them to where we are!"

The comm system crackled to life. "Singing Swan, please power your engines down, you are currently not cleared for takeoff."

"Fuck me," Riddick growled, strapping himself in. He hit the throttle.

Jack was slammed back against her seat as Riddick accelerated well beyond normal safety limits.

"Tower to Singing Swan!" the voice on the comm shouted. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Riddick didn't bother to answer. Jack had never seen someone look calm and furious at the same time before.

The g-forces were increasing painfully as they hit escape velocity faster than was legal. Jack could only guess how many laws they'd broken with this takeoff. The sky through the front windows began to darken as they approached the edge of the atmosphere. They shot through and the vast expanse of stars greeted them, along with--

"What the fuck is that?" Jack gasped, staring at the enormous craft above them. Riddick banked the Swan away from it.

"That," he growled, "is the Messina." He began running his hands over switches, reconfiguring the outer hull for combat. The controls for the Swan's armaments began popping up on panels all around him.

Jack gasped again as the artificial gravity system shut off.

"What are you doing?"

"Can't have false grav dragging against me while I'm maneuvering. Now listen to me very carefully, Jack." Riddick fixed her with an intense glare. "Don't you say anything to me unless I ask you a question. If I ask you something, you answer me immediately but otherwise you need to shut the fuck up. I don't care what you see on the screen or on the instrument panels. If I need to know, I'll ask you. But I'm gonna have to concentrate on keeping us alive, and if you break my concentration we're both fuckin' dead. You got me?"

Profound hurt speared through her. She nodded, unable to speak past the sudden knot in her throat.

"You got me?"

"Y-yes," she managed after a second. Tears started in her eyes.

"Good." He turned back to the panels. "Oh yeah, here they come."

Tiny spacecraft were shooting out of the Messina, arrowing toward them. More than two dozen... Jack gasped but managed to keep from saying anything.

"Let the games begin," Riddick murmured softly. His face was calm now. He almost looked happy. She gasped again as he aimed the Swan straight for the nearer squadron. His hands were moving across the controls as he activated the ship's weapons.

A beam of light shot toward them from one of the fighters. Riddick dodged it and fired back, his hands moving in a blur across the controls. No human being should be able to move that fast, Jack thought in stunned amazement. His shot hit the fighter, sending it into an uncontrolled spin. It careened into one of its mates; that craft began to drift away from the formation, its hull throwing sparks.

"Richard B. Riddick," the comm unit suddenly blared. "You are under arrest--"

"Turn that the fuck off!" Riddick snapped. Jack hit the control with a shaking, clammy hand.

They banked again, hard, and Riddick began firing again. He charged at the fighters, forcing them to scatter, and wheeled around, still shooting. One of his shots struck a fighter head-on and Jack's eyes were momentarily dazzled by the explosion.

The second squadron had caught up now and was attempting to encircle them. Brilliant streams of light lanced out, forcing Riddick to twist the ship in intricate patterns to avoid them. Jack began to feel a little nauseated.

"What the fuck is wrong with you people?" he suddenly muttered. "You're not even trying. What are you trying to do, take me alive?"

He blew up another fighter.

"Idiots."

He charged the largest knot of fighters and forced them to scatter again. Shooting out past all of them, he began to accelerate.

"Been fun and all, guys, but if you're not going to try--"

He gasped and banked sharply. A millisecond later the ship shuddered under the impact of something.

"Jack, are we holed?"

"What?"

"Has our fucking hull been compromised?"

"No," she managed after a moment. Interior air pressure was steady.

Riddick banked the craft around. A new fighter, of a slightly different configuration, had entered the fray.

"Now that's more like it. Somebody out there is playing the game for keeps. That you, Reg?" The other craft had caught up with their new leader and were reforming around it. Jack glanced from the viewscreen to Riddick's face, surprising a look of fierce joy.

What the hell was going on here?

"Okay, Reggie, let's see what you got," he growled, and accelerated toward the fighters. Deliberately, he snapped off shots that destroyed the fighters on either side of the leader's craft. He took the Swan into an intricate spin to avoid the return fire. Jack clapped her hand over her mouth, retching.

"You puke on the controls and I'll snap your skinny neck," Riddick growled. Jack's nausea abruptly receded, replaced by a much worse sensation: heartache.

The rest of the fighters began to scatter as he bore down on them, but the lead fighter began to accelerate itself, arrowing straight for them.

"Well well, Reggie, I think this has gotten personal for you," Riddick breathed. "Still mad about your boys?"

The two ships raced toward each other. Riddick began to laugh.

"You know, Reg, I think you'd actually do it, too. Sorry, buddy, but I'm not into kamikaze shit..." His concentration absolute, Riddick carefully squeezed off a shot. The looming fighter's wing abruptly disintegrated in a ball of fire that knocked the craft out of its trajectory. The Swan shot past it with inches to spare.

"That'll keep you out of trouble, Reggie. Now watch while I finish the job, just for you." He wheeled the ship around and began a run at the other fighters.

Jack watched in astonishment as the entire nature of the battle abruptly changed. Now Riddick was the pursuer and the other fighter craft were the pursued. He chased them down, every last one, until the only ships in the arena that hadn't been reduced to debris were theirs... and "Reggie's."

Riddick swung around, ignoring the crippled fighter, and throttled past and away, leaving "Reggie" and the Messina behind. He began running star-jump calculations.

Jack closed her eyes as he hit the drive. Star-jumps always made her queasy, and she was already nauseated from the wild ride Riddick had taken them through. She felt the jump begin...

...and end abruptly, far too soon. She opened her eyes back up in confusion. Riddick was banking the craft back around, toward a vast field of ice chunks and frozen debris. He'd taken them out past the system's Oort cloud, and no farther.

Impossible, she thought in confusion. Nobody can make a three-second star-jump with any accuracy.

Nobody, she reminded herself, should have been able to do any of the things she'd seen Riddick doing over the course of the battle. However he had managed it, he had wiped out two full squadrons of Special Forces fighters while she watched.

Artificial gravity abruptly kicked back in. Riddick moved the ship into the gap between two large ice-chunks, an area that would be shielded from meandering debris. She watched him in awe as he began shutting down the weapons systems. His face still wore that expression of glacial calm.

"Wow..." she managed after a moment. "How did you do--"

"Jack." The growl from his throat was barely human. "Go to your room."

"What?"

"Now, Jack." The calm was gone from his face, and what she saw in its place was truly frightening. She unstrapped herself and backed away.

He didn't move. She headed for her room. Looking back, she saw that he was still in his chair, his head bowed and his fists clenched.

"Riddick--"

"Lock your door." The menace in his voice was overwhelming. She shut herself into her room and flipped the door's lock.

Backing away from the door, she sat down heavily on the foot of her bed. She didn't understand any of what she'd just seen. It was almost as if the Riddick she knew had been ripped away and replaced with a stranger.

What did I do? she thought in horror. Somehow she'd brought disaster upon them.

She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on her memories. Trying to see where things had gone wrong.

He'd panicked when he'd seen that she was inside the "Charybdis" network. She'd thought her break-in had been clean, but apparently she must have been wrong. But there was no way that a whole battle-cruiser could just appear in the sky the minute she broke into some classified files. If they were here for Riddick--

"Richard B. Riddick," the voice over the comm had said. Yes, they knew who was in the ship.

How had they known where he was? How had they known to come?

Had she set something in motion two days ago when she broke into the law enforcement files? Oh god, they could have made their escape with plenty of time to spare if she'd fessed up to Riddick...

She could hear him, down below in the cargo level. He was in the exercise area. She listened to him as he pounded violently on the equipment. His grunts, as he worked, began to give way to roars of aggression.

Something abruptly shattered below.

She sat still in her room, her hands shaking, listening to Riddick take apart the equipment. The noises he was making didn't even sound human anymore. They were more like the fierce roars of a deadly predator.

Is this how he feels about me now? she thought, tears spilling down her face. Oh god, he must really hate me for what I did.

The sound of tortured metal being ripped apart made her jump.

What was he doing?

Cautiously, she went to her door and flipped the lock, peering out. The sounds were even louder now. Something else smashed. She crept out of her room and over to the ladder. She had to know, to see what was happening.

As carefully as she could, she braced her hands on the sides of the opening between levels and lowered her head into the gap. The room below slowly came into view. It had been destroyed. Its destroyer was still at work. The exercise equipment had been reduced to a tangled mass of broken metal. The dojo had been ripped apart. The large punching bag that she'd contemplated working over earlier was now in shreds. She was unable to contain her gasp of horror.

Riddick's head came up and turned toward her. His face was the most frightening thing she'd ever seen in her life.

No recognition. No humanity. No sign at all of the man she loved. In his place stood a savage, monstrous beast. He stared at her for a long moment.

Something akin to recognition crossed his face. "Jack," he growled. "Get back in your fucking room and LOCK YOUR FUCKING DOOR!"

She fled back to her room in complete panic, bolting the door behind her before collapsing onto her bed, sobbing.

He hates me, he hates me, he hates me... It was an endless, terrible refrain pounding through her head.

Her world had just ended.