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dipped into atmosphere. His sit-uation differed little from that of his
captors, who were similarly pressed back into their chairs. A
cou-ple of the mercenaries howled with bravado, trying to cover the fact that
they were struggling not to soil their shorts.
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On the desolate landscape below, something was moving. It was active, but not
alive. Among obsidian mountains and fields of cracked and cooled glass, safely
distant from volcanoes whose lava flowed downslope in other directions, a pair
of doors were opening. Fashioned of a special alloy of ceramic and titanium,
they parted to reveal an underground hangar that marked the terminus of a
specially fabri-cated runway. Within the area open to the atmos-phere, nothing
moved.
A towering pillar of natural stone marked the gen-eral location of the hangar.
The pilot nosed for it, wishing he could use the automatics, knowing that if
he did so those on the ground were likely to react un-kindly, and perhaps
lethally. The ship dropped steadily not quite fast enough.
The sun came over the horizon.
Stunned atmosphere shocked the descending ves-sel. Unequipped with the special
stabilizers used on regular Crematoria resupply ships, the mercenary craft
heaved wildly. Recoiling from the sun despite the special goggles he was
wearing and the muting ef-fect of the foreport's automatic polarizers, the
pilot fought to maintain control. Behind him, someone ut-tered a panicked
obscenity.
The hangar was coming up way too fast. But if they slowed gradually, they'd be
subject to more of the brutal solar effect. Without waiting for instruc-tions,
the copilot slammed her open palm down on a large, red plunger someone had
hand labeled PARTY POPPERS.
Instantly, a pair of emergency atmospheric engines deployed behind the ship.
Gulping atmosphere, they burned it and solid fuel in twin blasts that fired in
the opposite direction the ship was taking. Immediately, it began to
decelerate and drop faster.
They cut out just before the ship slid to a hard stop in the center of the
runway and slowing to safety inside the hangar. Wisps of smoke and vapor-ized
hull protection rose from the side that had been sun blasted. Inside, nervous
laughter mixed with ex-pressions of relief.
Sighing heavily, the pilot tiredly removed his pro-tective goggles and rubbed
at his eyes. "And that's why
I hate this run."
One of the other meres asked hesitantly, "What happens if you miss the first
approach and have to go around again?"
The copilot squinted up at him. "You like fried food?"
There was no one to greet them. No reason for anything organic that valued its
water to hang out in the vicinity of the runway and landing hangar. Exiting
the ship once the soaring doors had shut be-hind them, they made their way to
the small under-ground transport terminal. On other worlds, such a locale was
often decorated with murals, photonic projections, adaptive flora. Like the
rest of the instal-lation on
Crematoria, here it was wholly prosaic. The tunnel wall was bare stone that
had been chiseled and melted out of the surrounding bedrock. The trans-port
vehicle itself was a flat, utilitarian slug of a sled.
Two of them, actually: main in front, secondary smaller one in back, for
cargo. Their sole function was to go from one end of the line to the other
while breaking down as infrequently as possible. That was the extent of the
designers' intentions, the ultimate aim of its exceptionally well-paid
builders. Importing labor to Crematoria was even more expensive than importing
raw materials.
"Get in, meat!" The mercenary who shoved the tightly bound Riddick into the
cargo sled might have received a murderous glare from any other prisoner, or
at least a mumbled curse. Riddick said nothing, not even when the mere
followed the push by land-ing hard himself on the big man's chest. The others
took seats on the main sled.
Reduced to basics, the sleds had neither roof nor doors: a necessity of design
since it was used for transporting goods and material as often as people. At a
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touch from the pilot, the lump of metal and plas-tic began to accelerate.
Before long it was racing be-neath the wretched surface at speeds approaching
300 kph. On the very rudimentary console, an odometer was ticking off
kilometers.
Long-lasting hanging lighting fixtures fastened to the ceiling of the tunnel
kept it reasonably well lit.
Riddick's attention was focused on these fixtures as they flashed past
overhead with almost hypnotic effect. Perhaps the evenly spaced lights had a
similar effect on the mere who was sitting on his chest.
Per-haps he was already bored. Maybe he was convinced that the man on whom he
was sitting was going to cooperate and ride quietly. After all, what else
could he do, chained and pinned to the bottom of the cargo sled?
What Riddick did was arch his entire body in one single, convulsive muscular
spasm. It boosted the startled mercenary upward. Not far. Just, however, far
enough.
The next lighting fixture caught the back of the startled mercenary's head
before he could so much as utter a startled shout and removed it,
simultane-ously sending the decapitated body flying over the back of the sled.
By the time anyone else in the speeding vehicle no-ticed the absence of their
comrade, many kilometers had passed. It was the copilot who happened to glance
back and, espying Riddick seated calmly and alone in the last row, raised the
alarm.
"Where's Dahlven?"
Her companions joined her in searching for the missing mere. It took about
twenty seconds to ascer-tain that he was nowhere on the sled. Toombs stared
hard at Riddick. With those damn goggles he wore it was impossible to tell
where the big man's attention was focused. But he did shrug a response, as if
to say, beats me
.
Toombs hesitated, then burst out in a screaming cackle. "Four way! Four-way
split!" Hell, he'd never much liked Dahlven anyway. Dumb ass had a real
dangerous tendency to react before he thought.
Though the mercenary leader didn't know the details, he had a strong feeling
that was just what might have happened. As the sled began to decelerate, he
turned and sat back down in his seat.
It docked hard, the exceedingly low-tech absorp-tive bumper at the end of the
line sucking up the last of their forward momentum. Toombs leaped up onto the
platform and headed for the containment door that led, if memory served, to
the prison control cen-ter. Douruba, the slam boss, was there to greet him.
Beyond gruff, he snapped disappointedly at his visi-tor as the other
mercenaries unloaded their cargo.
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