Gyn Wolf's Story:Chapter Seven-On the Way to Nowhere

Gyn stood under the hose and scrubbed herself down with a bar of soap. She tipped back her head and stared up into the night sky, the triple moons gleaming at her from their heavenly heights.

The water was cold and she hurriedly washed her dirty hair and then screwed a nozzle on the hose end so she could power wash the soap out of her hair. Riddick grabbed the hose from her and sprayed himself down. She watched appreciatively as he rinsed the suds from his skin.

He looked up and caught her watching him. “See somethin’ you like, leopard lady?”

She nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah, hun,” she replied in a low voice, her eyes sliding up and down the length of his body.

“To bad we have to leave in a minute or I’d let you touch, too. Quite lookin’ at me like I’m a hunk of meat or we’ll never get off this planet.” His silvery eyes were locked on her as he finished spraying off the soap. She looked damn good naked. Too damn good.

She grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, sexy.”

Riddick groaned. “Go get dressed, leopard lady.”

Gyn slid him another sly grin before grabbing a makeshift towel he’d thrown on the water tank earlier and sliding into the cabin, wrapping the towel around her shoulders.

Riddick waiting to go inside until he was completely dried off. When he entered the cabin Gyn was pulling on her boots, her blonde hair standing up in disheveled spikes all over her head. He lifted a dark brow.

She frowned at him and shoved her fingers through the soft spikes. “You’d think having short hair would make things easier.”

He grinned and rubbed the top of his head. “You just didn’t cut it short enough,” he teased.

She shook her head. “I think your head is sexy, but I’m not going as far as Jack.”

“Does she still shave her head and wear those broken goggles?” he asked.

Gyn raised her brows. “That little girl idolizes you. She still shaves her head, but she got some new goggles. Just like yours. I wish I hadn’t lost mine.”

Riddick searched her face curiously, looking into her eyes. “I didn’t even think that the sun would hurt your eyes. I forgot yours are hypersensitive.”

She nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I wanted to wait to leave until dark, so I wouldn’t have to walk in this sun. It’s a real killer on the retina. To make matters worse, my eyes are more sensitive that most people’s from Trys.”

“Why’s that?”

“When I was about five or six, my parents were forced to hide me in the forest on our home planet. The Company has always hated Trysians and they raided our village, before my parents went to do the solitary thing.

“All the parents were forced to hide their young children, hoping we’d fare all right until they could come back for us. Unfortunately, it was a longer time than they’d expected. Almost six months.

“Those of us that survived ended up with an even high rate of sensory perception. It also heightened our mind-body control abilities. I can heal a lot faster than most, even those from my planet.”

Riddick nodded his understanding. “Maybe being a forest sprite for a while wasn’t such a bad thing after all?”

She smiled. “Yeah. Maybe not. It’s gotten me this far.” She looked at him. “Trys isn’t a very bright planet. Only one dim sun, and you spend more than half your life wandering in the woods. This sun sucks.”

“Let me get dressed and I’ll dig something up for you,” Riddick said and grabbed his clothes off the floor. He dropped the towel and began tugging on his black cargos. He caught Gyn gazing at him wistfully and looked away quickly, hearing her husky chuckle as he buttoned his pants and tugged on his shirt.

“What did I tell you about looking at me like that?” he chastised.

She just laughed again.

Trying to keep his laugh contained in his throat, he headed for a big wooden trunk shoved up against the wall. He flipped open the lid and dug around in its contents for his other pair of goggles. He found the tinted lenses on the bottom, of course, and tossed them to her across the
room.

She eyed them critically. Then, apparently finding them suitable, she tugged them on over her eyes, shading them from the light. “Ahhh...” she sighed. “You have no idea...” she trailed off. “Wait, yes you do. You know exactly how good this feels.” She flashed him an appreciative grin.

Riddick looked at her. The goggles made her look even more
mysterious, and looked surprisingly good on her. “Yes. I know. That sun can be a real hindrance.”

“As long as I’m shaded, I can see great in the sun. Otherwise I see in shades of bright white and light gray.”

He nodded. “Let’s get going.”

Gyn pulled one of the bags they’d packed up onto her shoulder and he hefted up the second one. Both were laden with canned food, jerky, and an assortment of clothes and weapons. “This is heavy,” she grunted.

“C’mon. I know you can tough it out.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t.” She took off at a run towards the ship.

Riddick groaned and ran after her. He was good at running. Being an escapee proved that. Didn’t mean he *liked* it.

The arrived at the ship and threw everything on board. Gyn slid into the pilot’s seat and began starting the ship up.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Riddick asked her.

“Driving. Go to bed. I know where I’m going, and how to fly. You can take over in a couple hours.” She gazed at him defiantly, and he realized the ease they’d been living in the past few days was over. She was all business, and she was going to find her family with or without
him.

He watched her flipping switches and checking gauges for a few moments before replying. “Fine,” he said shortly, and headed into the back to catch some z’s.

When he woke up he checked his watch to see how long he’d been out. Seven hours! Damn, how the hell had he slept that long? He rolled off the cot and headed to the front of the prowler in search of Gyn. She was
still sitting in the pilot’s chair, goggles pushed up on her head, eyes focused on some distant goal.

“Gyn.” He said her name quietly in the dark.

She turned to look at him. “Hm?”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been flying for seven hours. Go get some sleep. You’re not completely well yet.” He paused. “Are you?”

A sudden look of exhaustion crossed her face and she slumped back against the seat. “No, I’m not.”

Riddick scooped her up and carried her to the cot, laying her down gently. “Are the coordinates logged on the flight screen?”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Just follow those.”

“Where are we going?” he questioned.

“The planet you left Jack on. Dres-Aries. She should still be there.”

“And if she isn’t? Then what? And I don’t know if it’s such a good idea that she see me.”

Gyn closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at him. “I’m going. If she’s not there, maybe someone else knows something about Ven and Brand. If she’s there, you can decide how to deal with her.”

“How did you meet Jack?”

With a sigh Gyn replied, “About six months after I escaped from Slam, I was in some distant system. There were a few free settlers there, and Jack was among them. She didn’t have anyone, no parents, no nothing. I helped her out. I felt bad for her. Probably because she reminded me of me and my family when we first lost our parents. Alone and tired.

“She must have jumped on Hunter-Gratzner after I left her. Then I ran into her after the crash on that freaky planet y’all were stranded on. She said she’d been staying with some folks when you dropped her off, but they’d left about three months earlier. I didn’t think anything of it.”

Riddick nodded. “Okay. You get some z’s now. I’ll drive.”

Gyn seemed to fall asleep immediately and Riddick went to check on their coordinates on the flight screen. They were five days and seventeen hours from Dres-Aries. Great.

At least that meant he’d have five days to dig the rest of Gyn’s past out of her. Setting the ship on auto-pilot he closed his eyes. The alarms were set so if anyone got within a million miles of them, he’d know it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gyn arose to the smell of heating beans, her nose sniffing the air. “Mmm,” she groaned. She followed her nose to where Riddick was heating the beans up.

He looked up at her. “Hungry?”

“Does the Pope wear a funny hat?”

Riddick lifted a brow at her curiously. “Pardon?”

“Its an old saying from the twentieth century, give or take a century or so. It means, hell yes!”

He spooned a big helping of the hot beans into a tin bowl and passed it to her, along with a plastic spork.

Gyn eyed the strange, pronged spoon curiously. “Is this thing safe to feed myself with?” she asked him.

“I wouldn’t know, but it’s worth a shot.” He raised his spork in a mock toast. “To one ‘dead’ Riddick and finding your family.”

She lifted her spoon with a wry smile. “Ditto.”

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