Haunted Planet: Chapter One-A Beginning

Come here
Pretty please
Can you tell me where I am
You won't you say something
I need to get my bearings
I'm lost
And the shadows keep on changing
-Poe, Haunted

“Trist, get up here,” Arwen called through space outpost Neptune7’s main comm
system, “external communications is on the fritz again.” The young woman sat back in
the control couch as she waited, her pale violet-blue eyes darting around the darkened
maintenance center. “Whole damn SpaSta is coming down around us,” she grumbled to
herself. “It’s a piece of crap, it is,” she said louder as she heard Tristan approach.

“Yeah, well, damn thing’s over fifty years old,” the older man sighed, pushing his jaw
length dirty blond hair from his face. “It’s bound to fall apart eventually. Metal rusts,
systems fail...” his voice began to trail off as he focused his attention on a sys-check.
“So much for the glory of the International Space Program.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, chief,” she teased, giving him a playful yet insistent nudge in
the shoulder with her foot. He gave her a quick and undeniably charming smile and
went back to what he was doing. She sighed, leaning back in her chair and telling him,
“You need a shave.”

“I need an electric razor that works,” he countered. “Well, the problem isn’t in-sys. The
fuck up must be on their end. Play the message again?” he asked and Arwen complied.
Static crackled over the comm. At intervals a voice could be heard speaking in broken
words and sentences. It was a man, his voice deep and resonant yet so distant,
drowned out almost entirely by the white noise surrounding it. “He needs help, whoever
he is,” Tristan sighed, running his hand through his hair. “And here we are, sitting here
completely uselessly.”

“Wait,” Arwen said suddenly, springing towards the control panel. “We’re getting it
again, the message. It’s coming in stronger, I think they’re closer now. Are the long
range sensors picking anything up yet?”

“Naw, the wiring was too far corroded, the system couldn’t be fixed,” Tristan sighed.
“Our only hope in picking them up now would be if they wandered into the proximity or
collision sensors. Then we could tow them to the dock. But the truth is, we have no idea
how far away they are and there’s no way we can help them if we can’t even talk to
them. If it works out it works out, but if it doesn’t... Just don’t sweat it, huh? C’mon,” he
told her with a wicked grin, “if there’s only one thing that still works the way it’s
supposed to on this hunk of floating shit, it’s the beds.”

So three days passed until, on the seventh evening since they’d first received the
strange call for help, the proximity sensors began to sound. According to the control
comp an object, too small to be an ordinary ship too large to be a simple piece of
wayward space flotsam, had floated into orbit around the outpost. Tristan activated the
tow and waited in the docking bay as the thing was dragged inside. It was an
emergency skiff, battered to the point that Tristan was surprised that it was still space
worthy. The force within the dock set the skiff down upon the smooth metal floor and
the atmosphere returned to normal as the bay doors closed automatically.

They had to force the skiff’s main hatch. Inside lay three human figures, one a
middle-aged man in Muslim garb sat slumped over in the passenger seats that lined the
path to the flight controls, still clutching his prayer beads in clenched fists, the other
two, a rough looking man with a badly injured leg and a young girl with a crew cut who
they at first mistook for a boy, sat limply in the pilots’ couches. “Are they... dead?”
Arwen whispered as she removed her protective mask. Checking their pulses, Tristan
shook his head and the two worked together to carry them one by one to medical.

“They’re severely dehydrated,” said Tristan as they sat the last of the strangers, the
rough man, on one of the flat metal med tables as it slid out of the wall at the press of a
nearby button, “and probably half starved. I don’t know how long they were in that thing
but they obviously did not have enough provisions to get where they were going. I
found a couple of empty water bottles on the skiff and a few spent rations taken from a
larger ship.”

“What do you think happened to them?” Arwen asked, cautiously cleaning the
bloodied wound on the man’s leg.

Tristan shrugged. “An emergency? I mean, why else would they have used an
emergency skiff? Anyways, they came to the wrong place. Not much we can do to help
them here, not until the provisions ship shows up and that hasn’t happened in about a
year.”

Arwen gave a sudden cry as the strange man’s hand shot up unexpectedly and
gripped her forearm tightly though he was still obviously weak. “Tell me, he said
deliriously, his voice cracked and parched with thirst but unmistakably the one heard in
the mysterious message, “tell me... where I am.”

It took both Arwen and Tristan’s strength to wrench her arm from the stranger’s violent
grasp. “You’re on registered Space Station Neptune7, orbiting the third moon of the
Ammet system,” she answered, backing away from him cautiously and rubbing her
aching wrist.

“And who might you be stranger?” Tristan asked, cocking a skeptical eyebrow and
placing his body protectively between Arwen and the man.

It seemed to them that only by sheer willpower alone the stranger sat up, his muscles
tightening as he strained against the pain of the act. He looked from one med table to
another at his unconscious companions, his face an emotionless mask, his eyes hidden
behind a pair of shaded goggles. Again he turned his gaze on Arwen, who seemed to
be the reasonable of the two. “Are they...?”

“Alive,” Tristan confirmed, still shielding Arwen. “But it was a close call. My name’s
Tristan Farrar, maintenance engineer second class, and this here is Arwen Rose, a
botanist from the research team who used to study up here. And you would be....?” he
prompted again, this time more insistently.

With a long, drawn out and steady sigh Riddick lay his head on his pillow, studying
the maintenance engineer second class and the botanist intently, sussing them out.
The station was old, decrepit, lightyears away from anything or anyone important and
the comm system was bunk he knew from his attempts to reach them. He doubted any
news reached them all the way out here, certainly not anything about crashes, or
escaped convicts... “Name’s Riddick, Richard B., if you’re being formal,” he growled.
“How did I get here?”

“Your... you ship, um, emergency skiff,” Arwen answered, her voice starting off small
but gaining confidence as she went, “it... it drifted into our proximity sensors. Our long
distance sensors are cracked, we got you call for help but didn’t know what to do about
it. Good luck you pissed over this way or else you would have been completely arsed...
so to speak.”

“Listen friend,” Tristan said, suspicion still evident in his voice though it lacked malice,
“we’ve got work to do, then we’re -planning on turning in for the night. If you’re strong
enough, the mess bay is just down the hallway to the left though I recommend tucking
in for the evening and just letting the I.V. work its little magic. Of course the choice is up
to you,” he shrugged. Putting his arm around Arwen’s shoulder they walked out
together, leaving Riddick in quiet solemn contemplation.

It was an hour before Riddick could work up enough strength to sit up again. Gritting
his teeth and biting back the pain and exhaustion he swung his legs over the side of
the med bed and got to his feet, staggering over to Jackie’s unmoving form. The light
cast ghostly shadows across her sallow face and her breath was so shallow it came as
barely a whisper from her mouth. She reminded Riddick of a corpse lying in a morgue,
so still on her metal table, pale, motionless. Gingerly he touched her hand as if just to
make sure she was still warm and alive, and her eyes blinked open wearily. “Waz it?
Waz gon on?” she muttered, moving her eyes, trying to focus them and have a look
around. “Mussa been resued.” She moved her hand to her stomach and groaned. “Gah,
‘m starved.”

“I was just about to go to the mess,” he said, surprising even himself with the
gentleness in his tone. “I’ll pick you up something. I want to have a look around too, this
place gives me the creeps. I’ll be back.”

Riddick found the mess bay easily, locating a few vacu-sealed packages of rations.
He pulled the foil open with his teeth on one of them. It had been marked ‘beef and
vegetables’ but tasted more like stale cardboard though he gulped it down gratefully
anyways, slipping the other packs into his pockets for Jack. For a moment he thought
of Jackie and Imam, whom he’d risked his life to save when he’d returned to that cave
he left them to die in and led them back to the settlement. They were the living proof of
his redemption, his humanity, and yet he’d almost lost them a second time when their
salvation, the skiff, had become a flying death trap, the food and water had run out.
What would have happened if they had dies? Would it have meant that Carolyn’s
sacrifice had been in vain? She’d been the only person in his entire life who’d shown
any faith in him when she’d gone back to save him and lost her life in return. What if
she had trusted him and he had let her down? The feeling tore at his stomach as he
tried to push the thought from his mind. They had lived, nothing more to it. And he’d
never let them down again, he never give himself the chance to let Fry down again.

Exiting the mess, he turned left instead of heading back to medical. He found himself
strolling through the staff’s personal quarters, searching through many empty and
abandoned apartments that looked as if they’d been that way for quite some time.
Riddick paused, his senses alert, his sharp hearing picking up a sound in the distance.
Tristan and Arwen must have been fighting because he could distinctly hear Arwen
yelling though, oddly, he could not make out any words, just rhythmic sounds like
passionate shouting. As he cautiously crept forward he understood why. It was not the
sound of an argument but rather the sound of the throes of pleasure. The two must
have been making love.

Hugging the wall next to the open entrance to their personal compartments, he peered
sideways through ajar door catching sight of their sexual escapades reflected in the
mirror on the wall opposite the bed. Arwen’s wild cries intensified, her wrists bound to
the space above the bed, as Tristan fucked her hard. Riddick grinned, watching for a
moment. He’d never would have though that the man had it in him, he thought with an
wicked chuckle.

Turning away, he removed his shaded goggles and let his shine job do its work on the
darkened unlit corridor. On the other side of the lovers’ doorway was a shaky looking
metal spiral stairway leading upwards to, Riddick guessed and hoped, the main control
area. He snuck by the door and made his way up the stairs, Arwen’s vocal pleasure
drowning out the noise of his heavy bootsteps on the rattling metal.

The upper levels were pitch black but Riddick moved around effortlessly, searching
through untidy stacks of papers and readouts, which appeared to be agricultural
studies, not even knowing what he was looking for. Though he felt no threat from either
Farrar or Rose (especially after glimpsing them in such a compromising position) he
couldn’t help but feel something was odd around the place. The empty crew apartments
were enough to set off his suspicions and the lovers’ almost public display told Riddick
they’d gotten used to be up here alone. He found nothing of importance or interest,
save for the strange occurrence of there being a comm channel indefinitely opened to
the moon’s surface though there seemed to be no answer on the other end, so he
decided to head back.

No longer in the throes of extreme passion, the hallway outside Farrar and Rose’s
quarters was almost silent save for the small sounds of the ever-running environmental
system. He took extra care in creeping past the open door, peering in cautiously and
briefly only once when he was on the other side of it to catch a small peak of the two
once again reflected in the mirror opposite. Arwen sat atop Tristan, who was lying on
his back amid the crumpled bedcovers, stretching her arms above her head and twirling
her dark auburn hair between her slender fingers. Much to Riddick’s disappointment,
her bared back was to him, Tristan enjoying much more fun view of the woman as his
hands reached up and cupped her breasts. A soft giggling and groaning filled the
corridor as Riddick turned to leave.

By the time he’d returned to the med bay Jackie was fast asleep and could not be
roused. Fondly he lay the packets of rations next to her, touching her forehead softly.
The kid needed her rest so Riddick left her and moved towards Imam, who was as still
as ever. After checking that the priest was still alive, Riddick settled down on his own
bed and closed his eyes. Sleep soon took him and bad dreams filled his head, plaguing
him ‘till morning came.
* * *

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