Apprentice

Ardath Rekha


 


Chapter Fifty-one: Riddick - "Come Back, Shane..."

Five hours had passed since Jack had left the ship and Riddick was almost done preparing his surprise.

He was actually very glad she'd had some research she needed to do. It meant that he hadn't had to cook up an excuse to get her off of the ship for a few hours while he installed the entertainment system he'd bought her. Now almost everything was in place. The screens were up, one in the main room and one in the bedroom. A new storage case had been installed for the boxes of classic cinematics he'd purchased. Now he just had to put those away and run a final test on the equipment.

He glanced over the various titles as he loaded them in. Every movie he'd ever loved and every movie Jack had mentioned enjoying were here. These would be another thing to keep them entertained on long trips, when they weren't...

Oh yeah, he wanted her back at the ship. He was looking forward to her return. Tonight they'd watch one of the movies in between lovemaking sessions. Maybe even more than one. But the second she walked through the door... mmmm....

Okay, Jack, you can come home any time now, he thought, as he ran the final test. He put his loose equipment away as the test cycled, and smiled at the result. Perfect; ready to run any time.

What should they watch first?

He glanced over the titles again, considering. Should he foist Casablanca off on her again, see if she found it more interesting now? He thought she would. But maybe he'd better start off with something a little more subtle. Something she hadn't seen before...

His eye caught, for a moment, on Shane before he sighed and shook his head. Not that; not yet. He wasn't sure he was ready to see it again. He wasn't even sure why he'd bought it.

Well, no, he knew the answer to that. It was a very good movie and he'd liked most of it. Westerns were popular again now that the human race had begun to colonize distant worlds; although they rode starships instead of stagecoaches, the pioneers of this century had much in common with those of the nineteenth and early twentieth century and they knew it. They faced much the same perils and concerns, so the old movies resonated once again.

Funny how seeing a centuries-old movie had almost flayed him alive...


It had been only a week since the Barracks Incident when Riddick boarded the passenger ship Roman Holiday under the alias Michael Greene. Despite the name's hint at debauchery (or perhaps just old movies), the ship was very tame and touristy, the perfect place for him to "go to ground" for a time.

Although anyone could have ordered a movie piped directly into their cabin, most of the passengers gathered nightly in one of the communal rooms to watch one. Westerns were very popular; most of his fellow passengers were on their way to the Frontier Systems themselves. Despite his rapidly resurfacing antisocial tendencies, Riddick had joined them.

Shane had played the third night out.

The pain had begun when he'd watched how little Joey behaved toward Shane. The same watchful admiration filled the boys eyes that had filled his Jack's, every time the kid looked at Shane. Every time he saw the boy he felt the emptiness again. Jack should have been next to him, leaning up against him with his arm over her shoulder and her head on his chest, watching the movie with him. Not dead. Not dead...

If the boy Joey reminded him of Jack, the hired gunslinger Wilson reminded him oddly of Johns. He had the same smile that Johns had worn, the same callous amorality. He'd smiled when Shane killed him, the pain of Jack's loss briefly lifting.

That pain had been bad, but it hadn't become unbearable until the end. Up until Shane rode out, with the little boy calling out to him. That scene had struck him like a high-velocity bullet.

Afterward he wasn't sure just what about that moment had upset him so. The desperate quaver in the boy's voice, most likely. In that moment, the kid had sounded like Jack.

Jack, the same wavery plea in her voice, calling after him to wait for her and the others, as he surged past them with the cells... Jack, seconds before she was attacked by one of the hideous creatures...

And I almost left her to die, he'd thought, his face buried in his hands as he sat on the edge of his bunk. He'd barely managed to make it out of the common room when the lights came up; only years of practiced stoicism had allowed it. I almost left her to die twice.

He'd lain back on the bed, his mind overwhelmed by a flood of memories and emotion. He remembered it all. For the last few weeks he'd wished it was possible for him to get drunk, because he desperately wanted to sink into oblivion. To exist, just for a little while, in a world in which Jack wasn't dead.

I should have stayed with her, he'd thought with a deep pang of regret, an emotion that had been a stranger to him for more than a decade. He knew he would have stayed, this time, if only it had been possible... if only the airlock door hadn't closed in his face at that moment. Jack had died alone, without him, and that was what hurt most of all.

Even his bloody act of vengeance against Jarvis's young cadets hadn't assuaged that powerful agony. And at that moment every wound, mental or physical, that he had ever suffered seemed to have been ripped open anew. It was a pain he didn't think his tenuous connection to humanity could survive.

Within him he could feel the beast, writhing and snarling, desperate to strike out at everyone and everything that had caused this pain. He'd let it loose a week and a half earlier, letting it savage Jarvis's trainees in direct retaliation for Jack's death. He'd come so close to becoming a genuine human being again, too... close enough that, if the airlock door hadn't closed, he would have gone back out and surrendered to Jarvis, if only so that he could stay with Jack until it was over, so she wouldn't die alone, surrounded by uncaring strangers...

Never again, the beast within him had growled. Next time I see Jarvis he's going to die. There will never be any surrender now...

His mind had turned again to the quaver in her voice as she'd called out to him, back in the dark canyon, pleading with him to wait for the others, to wait for her. He'd almost kept going. And when she'd been attacked, he'd almost let the thing take her. For a moment he'd wavered, turning back and then away. He hadn't wanted her to die and hadn't known what to make of that. But he hadn't believed that she could make it, either.

Even if he saved her from that attack, after all, there would soon be another.

For a moment, listening to her cry out in fear and desperation as she struggled to keep the bone between her and her attacker, the thought had come to him: just let it end now. He almost had.

Fry had changed his mind. He'd turned back and gone to their aid, but the thought had stayed with him. Now it cut at him, as if his wish for the ordeal to be over had somehow been responsible for Jarvis's bullet.

He'd turned his back on her yet again when the rains had started. Climbing up the canyon wall, he'd sought out the settlement and had been surprised by the anguish that settled in his chest when he realized it was still too far away. He couldn't get them there. Even as he realized it the boy Suleiman was taken.

Imam's vocal grief had torn at him, too. Looking at Carolyn and Jack, he'd wondered suddenly if soon it would be him on his knees, begging the night to give one or both of them back. It was more than he'd been capable of facing.

I can't watch them die, he'd thought. He'd spotted the cave a moment later and had ordered them into it. With them sealed inside, safe for a time, he had been able to continue his run for the skiff, trying hard to ignore the bitter debate within him over their fates.

He'd almost left them again. He'd almost left her. And once more it was Carolyn who dragged him back toward humanity. Jack, when he'd returned for her, had told him she'd never doubted him, but he could see the relief in her eyes. She'd been waiting to die. Because of him.

And now, he'd thought, his eyes screwed tightly shut as he lay on his bunk in the inaptly-named Roman Holiday, she really was dead. She'd died alone among callous strangers who cared nothing for her, who could only possibly see her as "collateral damage."

He should have gone back. Somehow.

At least Shane didn't run out until the battle was over, he thought to himself scathingly. At least he knew the boy was safe when he left him.

He'd slept for twelve hours, as he always did when the pain of being what he was grew too great.

It was only a few days later that he heard the gossip circulating. Rumors that Jack had survived. The condition, he overheard two settlers saying, of the girl injured in the gunbattle on New Sacramento had just been downgraded from critical to stable. Sitting near them in the Roman Holiday's dining hall, Riddick had felt the guttering spark of his humanity catch hold and flare anew. Jack was alive. He abandoned his plans of a suicide mission against Tribunal Headquarters immediately, his attention turning to the more important matter of re-acquiring his girl.

He'd wondered if she would blame him. If she would hate him. That worry had quickly been put to rest. Judicious hacking into law enforcement mainframes had given him access to her psych evaluations and he'd quickly discovered that all of her hostility was reserved for the Special Forces officers who had her in their custody. They called her "sullen and uncooperative."

Richard B. Riddick had smiled and begun his plans for taking her back from them, plans that would take four years to come to fruition. He was calm and careful about it; he had to be. He'd learned that his entire humanity -- his embryonic soul -- was tied to the girl. Her loss would destroy it utterly. He could leave nothing to chance.

But he never could bring himself to watch Shane again.


Riddick sighed to himself. Maybe now that Jack was back in his life he'd be able to watch the movie again. He wasn't entirely sure. It was a good movie, and he had a feeling he would always enjoy watching the gunslinger Wilson -- who reminded him so much of Johns -- getting dropped by Shane.

But not tonight.

He chuckled quietly as he selected the movie they would start with. It was appropriate, given the current registry his beloved ship, the "Whatsername," was listed under -- the Audrey II. He was going to introduce her to Little Shop of Horrors. He wondered what kind of response she would have to musical comedy.

He wondered if the carnivorous plant with the attitude would remind her of her grandmother.

Chuckling still, he loaded the disc into the machine and set everything on standby. Now all he needed was for her to come home.

While he waited, he straightened up the ship until it was flight ready. He wasn't going to wait much more than that, though. If necessary, he'd go collect her from the library.

Some things were getting harder and harder to wait for.

 

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