A Dark Horizon(PB2):Chapter Six-Abandoned
Bounty hunter Raye Connors waited patiently on a ledge in the canyon that boarded the remote settlement on K1-B7, watching as Riddick and his two companions kicked around in the dirt below her. The little girl had come so close to discovering her when she'd climbed to the top of that hill, too close for Raye's taste. If only she'd turned a little to her left she would have seen Connors there, kneeling at the mouth of a shallow cavern, allegedly hidden. It was a close call, and Raye didn't like close calls. They were bad for business. She'd landed on the forboding planet about an hour ago, taking care to land her ship far from the settlement so no one would be alerted to her arrival. She would make her presence known only when she felt the time was right. Then her and Riddick would have to work out a solution to thier little 'problem'. She sighed as she watched Riddick and the others head back towards the settlement. Frowning, she dropped down to the canyon floor and began shuffling around in the clay at her feet with the toe of her boot. They'd been looking at something down there, something that seemed to worry them quite a bit. She was too cautious and too curious to let anything slip by her. Her foot hit something in the dirt too delicate, too soft to be a rock. She kicked it out from under the soil and bent to pick it up. A finger, bone still covered in a small bit of blackened flesh, how interesting. Raye looked around suspiciously, drawing her gun from it's holster. The place was covered in rotting, festering, stinking bodies. Her stomach wrenched and she put her arm over her nose and mouth to try to block out the horrendous odor.. On an upbeat note, Raye told herself, the corpses were for the most part intact and had been unmoved since the day the were unceremoniously laid to rest out here, leaving the possability of wild predators unlikely. Then she caught a different scent carried on the harsh winds, not the smell of human decay but that of metallic rot almost entirely overpowered even to her ultra-sensative nose, by the sickening stench of the bodies. She followed it cautiously keeping her gun drawn, loaded and at the ready. The canyon dipped along the path she took and the walls seemed to grow upwards and eclipse the dark pink sky. She got the impression of being swallowed up by the planet with each progressive step she took. "Holy Christ!" she exclaimed , stepping out into a large, circular clearing. "A ship!" One that had been there for quite some time, judging from the look of it. It was rusted, dilapitated. Connors approached it, wiping years of filth from the cockpit viewport and peering in. It was a small craft, built to carry three maybe four people comfortably for long term travels. She wrapped her fingers around the vehicle's emergency hatch manual control lever, and strained hard until the metal gave way with a hideous groan. She pulled the hatch open and crawled inside. The air was stale and foul and left a bad taste in Raye's mouth. She strolled over to the control panel and, hardedning herself to the damp, musty smell of the craft, had a good look around. "Outta gas," she said aloud, tapping the meter that measured the flow of energy from the power cells. "They must have made an emergency landing here. But they never left again," she sighed, wiping some dried blood from the console with her fingertips. "Shit, this is so fucking messed up." She removed the ship's log disc from the panel and stuck it into a portable data pad she had strapped to her wrist. The last entry was five months ago, so this couldn't be Riddick's vessel. Interesting again, she nodded. A mystery. She sighed. Godammit, this wasn't it in the job description. Then again she had little to no intention of following Mr. Henry's rules. This was her game and she hadn't lost yet.