Chapter Forty-five: Jack/Jarvis - Naviguessation

Astrogation charts, Jack decided, were a stone bitch.

She'd spent the entire day on them and she still wasn't sure of her results. Of course, it didn't help that she was constantly being distracted by thoughts of Riddick, of the amazing things he'd done to her body for the past two days. She was also still soaring, inside, from her first landing. What a magnificent experience that had been, terrifying and exhilarating at once...

And I am not getting any work done, she reminded herself.

It should be simple. Should be, of course, had so little to do with reality, especially when one factored in the wicked sparkle that had danced through Riddick's eyes as he'd given her the instructions.

All she had to do was plot a course from the Corsair System to the Achilles Mining Station that would take less than a month to travel. Well, he wanted at least two alternate courses, too.

Problem was, the space between the two points was thick with stars and nebulas, which had to be dodged. After seven hours of plotting, Jack was relatively confident that she'd found four workable routes, but she wasn't sure. The look in Riddick's eyes, the little twist to his smile, had told her it couldn't possibly be easy, not even a little.

She was looking over the calculations yet again, trying to figure out what she might have missed that he'd catch her on, when she finally heard him returning. The fact that she could hear him amused her a little. He could walk as silently as a cat when he wanted to; he only clunked his feet like that when he wanted his presence to be conspicuous.

She watched the opening between the upper and lower level and blew Riddick a kiss as his head appeared. He smiled and climbed the rest of the way through, heading straight for her.

"There'd better be more where that came from," he chuckled, bending over her. She lifted her head up and pressed her mouth against his. There was always more, she thought to herself. There always would be.

She sighed happily into his lips as his hands moved over her body, her own hands stroking his upper arms. It didn't surprise her at all when he lifted her out of the seat, scattering her charts everywhere as he carried her into their room. It was the first thing either one of them thought about, lately, when they saw each other.

"Mind if we skip the preliminaries?" he asked as he dropped down onto the bed, pulling her down on top of him.

She caught his lower lip with her teeth for a moment even as she shrugged out of her top. "As long as you don't plan on skipping the fucking, fine with me."

He chuckled. "You know I never skip that."

They didn't bother undressing completely; they just pushed their clothes out of the way, removing anything that was inconvenient but not bothering with the rest. In a moment Jack was flat on her back, her calves resting on Riddick's shoulders as he thrust into her and she gasped. Their eyes were locked as he rode her; he insisted on her keeping her eyes open at all times whenever they made love.

"Shouldn't've been gone so long," Riddick murmured as he drove into her repeatedly. "Got a bad case of withdrawal going."

"Me too," she gasped. "I didn't know you'd be gone all day."

"Didn't plan to be, Darlin'. Won't happen again, either." He moved her legs down onto his arms so he could bend forward and cover her mouth with his. She slid her arms around his back and held on tightly. She could feel her climax approaching.

He could sense it as well, apparently. He stilled for a moment and released her mouth, cupping her face in his hands. When he began moving again their eyes were locked once more. Her orgasm hit a moment later, striking like a blitz. "Oh God..." she moaned.

"Shhhh..." He rested two of his fingers on her lips, thrusting into her even faster. Pleasure crashed over her with each impact and she could hear her own cries as if from a distance. Above her, Riddick's mouth suddenly twisted and a look of almost-agony appeared on his face as his own climax struck. They shuddered together for a long moment.

Afterward, they were quiet for several minutes. Finally Riddick sat up. "Gonna have to do that several more times before we're through tonight, Jack. Been saving up all day."

She chuckled. "No argument here. You don't know how hard it was for me to concentrate on that course-plotting you gave me. I kept thinking about the things I wanted to do with you."

He smiled wickedly in response. "That mean you didn't finish your charts?"

"No, they're done. I did four."

"Four, hmmm?" He looked skeptical. "Guess it's time to take a look at them." He rose and headed for the outer living quarters, not bothering to reassemble his clothes. Glancing back at her in the doorway, he smirked. "You'd better get all the way undressed while I'm gone, Babe."

She was completely bare by the time he returned, carrying her charts and the source materials.

"Very good. Now, let's see what you've got here." He piled them on the foot of the bed and crawled up to sit beside her.

"What, am I gonna be the only naked person here?"

"Fine," he muttered, shucking out of his clothes. "Better?"

Jack grinned. "Much." She could never get enough of looking at his body. She loved his size, his proportions, the way his muscles played under his beautiful golden-brown skin... such perfect skin, too, smooth and flawless. She'd heard that he'd been shot once, at least once, but she hadn't found a scar on him and she'd been memorizing every inch of his skin.

He chuckled and looked over the first chart. "Hate to tell you this, Babe, but this one takes five weeks to travel."

"What?" Jack moved next to him. "No. No way."

"Sorry... big old yeah. Five weeks minimum."

"But..." She gestured to the shape of the route, tracing it with her finger. "There's no way that would take longer than four weeks, Riddick, I'm sure of it!"

He laughed and caught her finger, drawing it back to one spot on the route. "What about this?"

"What? That's empty space." There was a notation some kind, but the area wasn't marked as hazardous for travel...

"That, Jack, is the Quagmire."

"The Quagmire? What's that?"

"It's marked right on there, kid. It's a space-time anomaly. Didn't you figure those in when you were plotting?" He glanced at her, seeming to already know the answer. She blushed. "Come on, Jack, just because it ain't twinkling doesn't mean it ain't there. Lots more than stars in space."

She nodded, embarrassed. "So, what is it?"

"Space-time anomaly, I told you. It's almost like there's a gravity well there, or something. Really weird curvature to the space in the region. They call it the Quagmire because, when you enter it, it's like everything slows down. Adds a week, minimum, to the trip-time of anyone passing through it. There are rumors that some ships disappear completely, but I think that's just a Stellar Legend."

He smiled. "Now, that was pretty deliberate, by the way. Everybody plots a course through the Quagmire when they're first learning navigation. Did it myself, for real. Spent two weeks slogging through the Quagmire about a year into my escape."

She giggled. "Really? How come it took you two weeks?"

"'Cause 'Dummy' here figured he should turn around and back out of the damned thing. Brilliant move. That's the second lesson... if you ever do get stuck in an anomaly like the Quagmire, plow on through, don't turn around." He rolled up the chart and reached for her next effort. "Now... let's see how you did with this one."

She really liked this route; it was almost as good as she'd thought the Quagmire route would be. She hoped there wasn't anything wrong with it...

The look on his face told her there was, before he even spoke.

"Wrong again," Riddick told her with a chuckle. "You'll need to add a year to the trip time if you follow that route."

"A whole year? What could possibly do that? I don't see any anomalies on that route."

"It's not an anomaly," he replied, leaning close and pointing his finger at one area of space near a G-type star. "It's an Interdiction Zone, right in here. You go anywhere within a parsec of the Scylla System and you violate the Zone. They have three Fleet ships stationed nearby where they can respond quickly, and the second you emerge from the Zone, they're all over you. You're arrested and you spend the next full year in Level Five Quarantine."

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Nope. Your course would take us within half a parsec of Scylla. And if we attempted to resist arrest, those Fleet ships are authorized to blast us back to our component atoms. And they would."

"Why? What's in there?"

He chuckled. "That, my love, is the home of the legendary Scylla Spore. A life-form so virulent and so deadly that even minute exposure will result in infection, and there's no cure. Death takes months to years, and it's an extremely painful way to go. The spore progressively alters your DNA, causing a whole shitload of possible disorders. It also makes you go completely insane. Wanna go there for our honeymoon?"

"God, that's awful!"

Riddick feigned a hurt expression. "What, won't you marry me? After everything we've done I coulda sworn we were engaged... don't you respect me anymore?"

Jack burst out laughing and pounced at him. He fell onto his back, pretending she'd pinned him. The two of them laughed together for a moment. Jack rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes. "Honestly? Feels to me like we already are married."

He chuckled. "Well, if you ever want to make it official, I'll bet Imam would be delighted to do the honors."

Her heart seemed to stop for a moment.

"Imam!" she gasped. "Riddick, he thinks I'm dead!"

Riddick grinned smugly at her. "Nope."

"But--"

"Oh come on, Jack, you don't think I'd let him believe that, do you? He knows you're with me. If I hadn't managed to get to you through the placement agency, I woulda come for you when you were en route to New Mecca. We had it all worked out." He gave her ribs a gentle squeeze. "He's been a very good friend to both of us. Family, really. I wouldn't let him mourn you."

Jack sighed and closed her eyes again. She felt both relieved and ashamed. The shame was two-fold; first, that she could think Riddick would be so callous, and second, that she hadn't thought at all about what Imam might be going through until now.

"Let's do it," she said after a while.

"Again? You never think about anything else, do you?" he teased her.

"I don't mean sex this time, you perv! I mean, let's have Imam marry us." She looked up at him shyly. "That is... if you want to?"

The smile he gave her was amazingly tender. "I want to. I definitely want to. But you know what else I want?" The smile was suddenly wicked. "I do want to do it... I want to fuck you right now."

"What about my other two charts?"

"We'll look at them after we're done, Darlin'. I'm looking forward to seeing Chart Number Four, you know. Supposedly, there's only one solution to that little puzzle I gave you. Should be interesting to see what you found."

He lowered himself down onto the bed and drew her on top of him.

"You mean I got another one wrong?" she asked in annoyance.

"Not necessarily," he chuckled. "Maybe you found a way nobody else discovered. It happens from time to time. We'll find out later."

He lowered her down onto him and for a while star-charts were the very last thing in her mind.

"This time line makes no sense," Dr. Aspen muttered, shuffling through her papers.

Jarvis, who was making yet another pot of coffee, glanced over at her with a frown. "What's wrong with it?"

"Short answer?" Aspen looked up and grimaced. "Everything. It's all wrong."

Jarvis hit the switch and the coffee-maker began to mutter to itself. He rejoined Aspen at the table. "Explain?"

It was four in the morning. The two of them had been going over their notes together for several hours, trying to piece together Riddick's activities on the planet. They'd had little luck and less sleep. They were on their fourth pot of coffee... possibly their fifth. He couldn't exactly remember.

"Okay," she began. "Supposing Riddick did come directly to Troubadour after he murdered Jack Kowalczyk... according to the time-of-death data, he would have left Seti Station three days after she disappeared, at the earliest."

Jarvis nodded, swallowing. As always, a painful shudder passed through his stomach. Three days. Riddick had kept Jack alive for three days before he finally let her die. He couldn't even begin to imagine what that hellish ordeal would have been like for her.

My fault, the tiny voice within him whispered once more. It had been whispering to him for decades now. He wondered when it would begin screaming, and how much longer after that he would manage to stay alive.

No, he told himself. This one doesn't rest with me. It rests with him.

He tried not to think the name "Bryan." Bryan Riddick was long dead. He had all the proof he needed. The monster that had taken Bry's place had even told him so, more than a decade ago real-time.

He looked up at Aspen after a moment and nodded again. "And?"

"Given that schedule, his earliest possible ETA on Troubadour would have been more than a day after Benicio Godot was murdered."

He nodded once more, chewing on his lip. "And yet Latent Prints pulled up a partial fingerprint on Godot's cufflink that matches Riddick point-for-point," Jarvis reminded her.

"I know," Aspen muttered. "And then there's the whole thing with the Singing Swan itself. It didn't arrive on Troubadour until half a day after Peter Malcolm was murdered, and it didn't even come out of Seti Station -- they tracked it in from the Cygnus Systems."

Jarvis could see her point, and he hated it. How does he do that? he wondered idly. Nothing was ever simple with Riddick. "So somehow Riddick killed two people on Troubadour before he could even arrive here."

"That's what the math keeps saying, yes. Not to mention the fact that he made a little side-trip to the Cygnus Systems on his way here, which is a four-month trip minimum. Did he invent a time machine in his spare time?"

Jarvis snorted. "If anybody could, it'd be him. But no, I don't think so."

"So how do you account for it?" Aspen challenged him.

He shrugged. "Figure if he managed to shave a day or so off of his trip here from Seti Station, he could have gotten here in time to kill Godot."

Aspen started to object and he held up his hand. He was already aware of how ridiculous his suggestion was, thank you.

"I know, I know... the laws of physics say he couldn't do that; the trip here from Seti Station is a minimum of a week by star-jump. But that's the only thing I can think of, Martina. Maybe he found a way. An uncharted gravity well or a string, something like that... If anybody could--"

"It'd be Riddick. Yeah." She stood up and went to the coffee maker for a fresh cup. "That's getting to be a refrain around here, you know."

"Getting? Every time we catch up with him he does something that's supposed to be impossible. He's been doing it ever since he was seven years old." Jarvis shook his head.

"But not before then?"

"Well, aside from scoring a perfect one-eighty on his IQ test at the age of five, no, he seemed completely ordinary," he muttered snidely. "They all did. And none of the others did anything unusual until we hit the Crisis Year."

They sat together for several moments, the only sound the slurping of coffee.

"Fine," Aspen finally sighed. "So... he shaves a day off of his trip somehow and gets here in time to murder Godot. Then what?"

"A week later he kills Peter Malcolm. He leaves Troubadour and goes past the sentry systems, and arcs around. He comes back in from a new direction, changing his electronic profile. We know he had more than a dozen to choose from."

She nodded across from him. "Makes sense."

It was about the only part that did.

She met his eyes. "It's a good theory, but there's just one problem. We ran a check on the electronic profiles the Charybdis Trap pulled off of his terminal. None of them correspond with any vessels that have been on Troubadour recently."

Both of them stood and headed for the coffee machine in tandem. Jarvis stepped back and let Aspen refill her cup first. Only a matter of time until one of them had to make a trip to the head, he thought with some small amount of dry humor.

"I know," he groused. "Obviously we didn't get all of them. Space Traffic Control is generating a list for us of all ships that landed before Godot's estimated time of death and left after Malcolm's. Once we have it, Navigation will begin plotting arcs using their departure times and the Swan's re-entry time. Gonna take a while, but we'll know who he was posing as."

Assuming, of course, that Riddick hadn't switched his electronic profile between killings. There was always that possibility. He made a mental note to have every ship that left between Malcolm's death and the Swan's arrival checked. More work for everyone.

"Any progress on Angelica Porter?" Aspen inquired, returning to the table.

"That turned out to be a very literal dead end." He filled his cup again and rejoined her. "Roger and Angelica Porter both died as children in a car crash on Tangier 6 twenty years ago. Whoever 'Angelica' really is, it looks like she's in deep with our man."

Funny, he thought to himself as he sipped his coffee. Why in God's name would Riddick have a woman with him... posing as his sister?