Deserter: Chapter Three-One by One

  She was near the ship. He knew she hadn’t slept outside again. She’d crept in when the sun had set and laid in one of the empty rooms. When the sun had risen, she’d slipped out again, unnoticed by anyone. Except him.

  And Riddick knew she’d felt him, too. His dreams had been foggy, but she’d haunted them, that little sadistic smile curling her full lips. She’d asked him questions, but he hadn’t answered.

  He wondered what she’d seen, sneaking into his head the way she had. He knew it had been more than a dream, and he hadn’t hovered in it long before shaking himself awake. He’d escaped her weird ability, but he knew she wouldn’t leave him alone.

  They were leaving for Rhea’s settlement in an hour. Rain was either out of his range or hiding again. He knew that’s what she’d done the night before. Clouded his senses with whatever mind tricks she used. He didn’t like it and half wished he’d ghosted her when he’d had the chance, despite her intriguing ways.

  An hour later, Riddick had his duffel bag thrown over his shoulder and was hiking through Rhea’s heavy forestry towards the city.

  He was walking towards the front of the line and sent out feelers, looking for the woman. He knew she had to be near but she wasn’t letting anything on to anyone, even him.

  About an hour into the hike, there was a whoosh of air from the back of the line and Riddick felt it. No one else seemed to notice and he stepped out of the line, letting everyone walk by him. The people didn’t look at him as they passed, and as the last straggler stumbled by he noticed the merc was gone.

  He lifted his head and felt for the man. The scent of death filled his nostrils and he felt Rain’s proximity just enough to know it was her. She’d gotten the merc.

  He began hiking back the way they’d come, drawn to her uncontrollably.

  He didn’t find her, but he did find the merc’s corpse in the underbrush. There was a bruise around his neck, and Riddick guessed it was from Rain having wrapped the chain of her cuffs around the man’s throat and dragging him off into the trees.

  The merc’s head was twisted at a strange angle on his shoulders. Rain has snapped his spine, removed him from the equation. Less chance of her getting captured again, now. She had to be strong to have done that to the large man, but he’d known that she was exactly that. And she was a predator.

  Riddick lifted the blade the man carried strapped to his leg, and stuffed it in his bag. He searched the man’s prone body, and finding nothing else of use, jogged to catch up with the others. He heard a slight rustle in the trees above him and knew she was following from above. Graceful little bitch, he thought. And dangerous, too. Bad combination for a man on the run.

  ~~~

  The group had stopped and Rain perched herself high in a tree, looking down at them. She knew Riddick had heard her above him when he’d found the merc, and she’d let him. Once again he hadn’t turned her in, but now everyone was looking nervous, having discovered that a fellow passenger was gone.

  “What happened to him?” a young crew member, that went by the name of Max asked. He had nervous, shifty eyes and a wiry build. His thin, dirt colored hair stuck up all over his head in half hazard spikes, and he ran his grimy fingers through it often.

  She could tell by Riddick’s body language that he was distancing himself from the rest of the crash victims, sitting away from them and turning his eyes away from the fire they’d started.

  Walker, the apparent captain of the group, glanced up from his meal of beans to look at Max. “Wandered off the trail. Got lost. Doesn’t really matter, ‘cause the guy was a shady character anyway. We should all be glad he’s gone.”

  She waited for Riddick to say something, but he didn’t. Instead he eyed his beans and jerky thoughtfully then took a long draw from his water canteen.

  A pretty young blonde spoke up. “I think that prisoner of his got ‘im,” she said. She had a thick Australian accent and soft blue eyes. Rain decided if this had been a less hospitable place, the girl would be dead by now.

  Rain rubbed her sore wrists absently. The merc had been holding the keys and she’d lifted them off of him before Riddick had arrived, but she hadn’t had time to get his blade, and that pissed her off. What made her even more angry was the fact that Riddick had noticed the sweet knife as well, and had stuffed it in his bag before heading off again. She forced an angry growl back down from her lips as she studied them.

  She salivated over the canned beans and wished she could get her hands on some, knowing she couldn’t with all of the people that were parked around the fire.

  Walker rose from his seat and dished some more beans into his tin bowl. Rain licked her lips. “I don’t think so. That little girl got thrown out the back of the Ring Cruiser at quite a speed, and her tube would have to have been made of some sort of super glass to sustain that sort of drop. She wasn’t dangerous enough looking to be put into one of those high security jobs.”

  A sneer pulled at Riddick’s lips at that. She knew he understood her better than them. He had the look of a killer, too.

  Keeping herself hidden from Riddick was taxing, and she felt herself slump drowsily against the tree’s thick trunk. A leaf tickled her shoulder and she grabbed at it, ripping it away from its limb. She held it to her nose and sniffed. Didn’t smell poisonous or toxic. Rain wondered how it would taste and decided she didn’t care. She closed her eyes and bit it.

  The bitter taste flooded her mouth and she fought to keep from spitting it out as she chewed. Two leafs and one nasty taste later, Rain gave up her vegetarian type meal and draped her body in such a way that she could relax against the tree with her eyes closed and not worry about falling out of the branches if she fell asleep. The promise of more injuries on a high speed trip to the forest floor was not a nice one.

  God, I’m hungry, she thought. Thirsty, too.

  Riddick felt a tingle of awareness and the thought that he was thirsty entered his head. He didn’t feel thirsty though. He took a swig from his canteen and looked around. The feeling he got whenever Rain was projecting a thought to him was tickling his senses.

  She was close, real close.

  Walker was going on about how he knew that Rain couldn’t have lived.

  A passenger named Clyde looked around the group slowly. “I think it was her, too,” he stated, trying to sound important. “She didn’t look all that helpless to me. You can never underestimate her type. You heard what Rick said, she was a deserter. She knocked off guards in her own faction to get away from the military on her planet.”

  “Do you think they were a Ranger group?” the young blonde asked.

  “Don’t be stupid, Anne. No one gets away from the Rangers and lives. They’re part of the Company. That’s one prison no one can escape from.” Walker stated.

  Another sneer from Riddick. Sure you could. But you’d regret it. The Company would come looking for you if you left. He began to wonder if she’d been a Ranger, too.

  Female Rangers were uncommon, but not unheard of. He’d even met a few that were good at what they did. Killing. He could see Rain had it in her, and killing the merc had only strengthened his belief that she was a killer. Being a Ranger would explain the efficiency of the bounty hunter’s death.

  “Let’s say it was her,” another crew member insisted. Riddick recognized him as the one screaming at Walker that he couldn’t get the numbers straight when they’d began their crash towards Rhea. “She could be anywhere right now and we’d never know it. She could start picking us off, one by one.”

  The thought had crossed Riddick’s mind more than once. He wasn’t worried about himself, or the others particularly, but that didn’t mean he wanted some AWOL military freak trying to ghost him. Especially one he had trouble keeping a solid beat on.

  The blonde nodded enthusiastically, and murmurs from the rest of the group, loudest Max and Clyde, joined in.

  “So what do you fools want to do?” Walker demanded furiously. “You wanna go on some wild hunt through the woods and try to find her before she supposedly kills us all?” He shot an angry look at the latest speaker. “Is that what you want, Biggs?”

  The man shrugged while the others shifted nervously, suddenly finding something of great interest in their tin bowls that needed their undivided attention.

  Walker made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a hurumph and sat down haughtily. Riddick grinned. If she was hearing this, she might decide to start picking them off for spite. He knew he might be happy to do the same.

  When the Hunter-Gratzner had crashed and he’d escaped the first time, he’d been inclined to pick them off and escape alone. Until Fry had convinced him to go back for Jack and Imam, he’d been getting ready to take off alone with a grin on his face.

  Deciding to give something a try, he projected a thought. ‘Where are you, Rain?’ he whispered mentally, wondering if his sarcastic tone could be projected in mental speak as well as out loud.

  Rain jerked awake. She thought she’d heard Riddick’s taunting voice asking her where she was.

  She stretched and yawned silently and looked down at the group. They were whispering about her tensely. They thought she was going to start picking them off. The thought had occurred to her, and had been a bit of a pleasing one. Just a few to keep them scared of her, she told herself wryly.

  ‘Where are you hiding, Rain?’ Riddick’s mental voice shattered her calm and she shifted her eyes to him. He was studying the brush around him, looking for her.

  She lifted the mental cloud she used to keep him from finding her and watched as his eyes immediately focused on her spot in the trees.

  Rain eyed him curiously and swung down a few branches, knowing he would pick her up instantly. She was right. ‘What makes you able to do that?’ she asked.

  He lifted a questioning brow. ‘What?’

  ‘Talk back. Most people can’t send back unless I initiate contact.’

  ‘Sixth sense,’ he shrugged.

  She projected a mental shrug back at him. ‘Doesn’t really matter. You can only find me if I let you, or if something happens where I lose complete control.’

  ‘Like when you passed out in the storm.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  Riddick stood and she watched him leave the circle of light that the others were crowding in. She followed him with her eyes as he started heading for the woods, then suddenly he was under her tree and lifting himself up into the bottom branches.

  Rain stared at him as he climbed up to her and perched beside her.

  ‘Nice view,’ he told her, seeing she had a bird’s eye view from her perch.

  She shrugged nonchalantly. He liked that she didn’t talk much. He wondered why he didn’t ghost her on the spot, though. He decided it was because he was intrigued by her, differently than he had been by Fry, but intrigued all the same.

  She watched the people below them silently

  ‘I could, you know,’ she said suddenly.

  He looked at her. ‘Pick them off?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Who’d you do first?’ he questioned.

  ‘I already did him,’ she answered, flashing him a feral grin.

  ‘Makes sense,’ he agreed, knowing she meant the bounty hunter. ‘He wanted to find you and would have convinced the others to help. Without him, both threats eliminated. Who next?’

  She pointed to Walker. ‘He’s alpha male, now. Without him, they’re headless chickens. Easy pickin’s.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly. Nice to know we think along the same lines.’

  “Same cloth,” she murmured, this time out loud.

  Riddick was slightly startled by her voice and shot her a look. She just twisted her lips at him and began to lower herself towards the ground.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, starting to appreciate the silent talk she used with him. Mostly because the others couldn’t hear what was said.

  “I think I’m going to scare them,” she answered, once again using her normal speaking voice.

  He followed but when he reached the ground she was already creeping towards the group silently. She reached his bag and he watched her pull the merc’s blade from its depths.

  Rain pulled the knife from its sheath and studied the wickedly curved blade.

  This would be fun, she thought sadistically, and headed for Walker.

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