Ambling unconcernedly forward, as if Johns no longer held the powerful rifle, the man crouched down to stare at the mercenary. His posture, as much as his indifferent attitude, suggested either lingering brain damage, supreme stupidity, or ultimate confidence. Johns did not have to debate long over which was the most likely. He found that he could see his own snow-scarred, wind-battered face reflected back at him in those shiny lenses that were as inscrutable as their owner.
   The man brought one hand forward. Johns flinched slightly. Opening his fingers, the man revealed the contents of his hand. It was a human ear, raw and bleeding at the base.
   “Yours?” the man murmured quietly. Though deceptively soft, his voice pierced cleanly through the wind.
   There was a pause. Then Johns clamped a hand to one side of his head. His gloved fingers came away bloody. Biting cold and surging adrenaline had combined to numb him to a point where he hadn’t felt the appendage being torn away. Unfortunately, in the shocked realization of the moment, he’d grabbed for his missing ear with the hand that had been anchoring him to the protruding rock. Grip lost, he scrambled briefly for a second handhold. The smooth ice was not compliant. He went over the edge of the deep drop silent except for his gun, from which he managed to coax a few final shots before hitting the ground far below. The multiple rounds were as thunderous as they were wild.

     Rising, the hirsute stranger in the deviant footwear walked fearlessly to the edge of the precipice and peered over. Thanks to the swirling snow, there was not much to see. His expression unchanging, he backed away from the brink and turned. Though he did not reveal it through expression or emotion, he was surprised at what he encountered.
     The double barrels of a particularly nasty weapon were aimed directly at his midsection. They suited the individual who held them. Toombs’s name had always been good for a running gag among his colleagues in the business. None of them had ever used it to his face, of course. At least, none could be found alive who had done so.
     Whereas his partners, Codd and Johns, had been quiet and businesslike, Toombs liked to talk. He possessed a certain vicious charm that constituted something of an attractant to the ladies and allowed him to get into places and away with things that defeated less animated types like Codd and Johns. He was not feeling particularly charming right now. But he was far too experienced to let the anger boiling within him assume control. Having a good idea who he was facing, he kept his distance and his cool. But neither could keep him from talking.

     Using the muzzles of the gun, he gestured slightly in the direction of the ragged, windswept cliff that had recently been depopulated by one. “Two of my best boys. Both gone. You got no idea how careful I brought ’em both along. Had real bright futures in the trade.” Self-control or no, his voice rose perceptibly. “And now cuzza you, CUZZA YOU, you subhuman piece of shit, they won’t be around to split the reward, will they?” He jabbed the double barrels forward threateningly. “Will they?”
     He began to laugh. More nasty whoop than chuckle, it was anything but appealing. Not everyone cackled when they laughed, nor made it sound like the final gasps of a dying man. Toombs chortled like a dyspeptic vulture.

     In contrast, the man with the reflective goggles was as silent as the snow on which he stood, as unmoving as the rock that had been grasped so desperately, and briefly, by the now deceased Johns. Still crowing over his triumph, Toombs began to circle his trapped quarry—careful to keep his distance. He was in control, and fully intended to keep it that way.
     “Let’s see,” he muttered, affecting a momentary uncertainty that was as false as its purpose was transparent. “Do I need to regale you with the contents of a hardcopy as to why I’m here? I don’t think so. Escapee from Koravan Penal Facility. Escapee from the double-maximum security joint on Ribald Ess. Escapee from Tangiers Three Penal Colony. Officially on the outs for the last fifty-eight standard months.” Feeling it with his foot, he kicked a rock aside without so much as glancing down in its direction. Unblinking, hard, his gaze remained locked on his silent quarry.

     “Is there more? Oh, you know there’s more!” He sniggered. “Wanted on five worlds in three systems for . . .” Feigning thoughtfulness, he tapped his lower lip with one forefinger. “Lessee—how many murders? Can I use all nine of my toes to run the tally?” He was fairly dancing now with repressed excitement. “Oh, yeah, baby, I bagged the man in motion, the killin’ villain himself! Too bad about Codd and Johns. Shame they won’t be around to split the reward. I’ll just hafta handle their thirds for them. Life’s a bitch, but Death, she can give it up when she wants to. Guess I must live right. Guess I must live.” Now he did giggle, a sound more unsettling than his regular laugh.
     Finger light on the trigger, he cradled his weapon in one hand. Short and nasty, it had two thick-bodied, large-caliber barrels over and under, butt and trigger snapping out from the lower half. A shot from either barrel would blow a man in half. Let loose with both barrels and—well, there wouldn’t be enough left on which to file a claim for payment. Removing a pair of cuffs from his utility belt, he dangled them like an enticement to a dance.

     “C’mon. Party time’s over. Time to say bye-bye to this shit ball. Fulfill the drill.”
     Toombs tossed the cuffs at his quarry. They bounced off the man’s chest and fell into the snow. The quarry glanced down at them, then back up at the mercenary, still not saying a word. He might act the mute, but Toombs knew he was not.
     The mercenary could have grimaced, snapped something like “Put ’em on now, I’m not fucking around!” Instead, he took aim and let loose with both barrels of his weapon. The breeze from the explosive shells passed close enough to the quarry’s skull to riffle his tangle of hair. They were more eloquent than anything Toombs himself could have said.

     Bending, the quarry picked up the cuffs and worked them around to his back. Cuffing oneself wasn’t an easy task, even for a renegade contortionist, but though the big man took his time, he made it look easy.
     Edging around behind him, twin gun muzzles never wavering, Toombs checked the cuffs. While doing so, he also kept a watchful eye on the prey’s urzoshod feet. Explosive power sufficient to destroy a small aircraft hovered centimeters from the quarry’s spine. With practiced fingers, the mercenary checked and rechecked the bonds. No funny business there, at least. The cuffs were locked and secure.
     Even more emboldened than before, Toombs moved closer until he was practically inside the other man’s protective suit. Licking his lips, he made his voice as low and intimidating as possible.

     “An’ just for the file. Just so you shouldn’t forget it. The guy all up on your neck right now? It’s Toombs. The name of your new shot-caller is Toombs. Easy to remember. It’s what you’re gonna end up in.”
     This time the quarry did react but not in the way Toombs expected. He was too big, too wide, to do what he did. The impossibility of it did not fully register on Toombs until later. All he knew was that one minute his quarry was standing in front of him, and the next, he had sprung into the air and backward somersaulted over the stunned mercenary. In the process, he simultaneously dislocated his shoulders and his wrists. One freed hand came around in an arc to smack the weapon out of Toombs’s hands. The other caught it before it had flipped halfway to the ground.
     A grand total of perhaps two seconds had elapsed. Before, Toombs had been standing behind his bound prisoner, weapon in hand. After, he found himself with their respective positions exactly reversed. Though it had happened, the bewildered mercenary was unsure of how it had been accomplished.

     The reality of the transformed situation beggared analysis. All he knew was that instead of holding the gun on his quarry, it was the quarry who was now pressing the double barrels against the bottom of Toombs’s jaw. A single shot would messily remove that important bit of skeletal structure, along with half the mercenary’s head. He stood very still.
     “Your life or your ship,” the quarry murmured matter-of-factly into Toombs’s ear. “You decide, shot-caller. And just for the file? My name’s Riddick. Richard B. But you can call me anything you want.” The barrels pressed harder against the underside of the mercenary’s jaw. “You probably will. I don’t care. Ship locator. Now. Or I can sort it out for myself.”
     Toombs’s hands began to move, quickly and carefully. All manner of hardware began hitting the snow as he emptied his utility belt, pockets both visible and hidden, side pouches. None of them distracted Riddick; none of them fooled him. Seeing how the snowflakes and the shit were blowing, a resigned Toombs finally dropped the locator. At the same time, he did conjure a few choice new names for his former quarry—but despite the big man’s seeming indifference, the mercenary was careful to keep them to himself.

     He had plenty of time to give loud voice to them later, when he was strung up inside the ice cave alongside the dead and defeated Urzo giganticus. Radically different physiognomies notwithstanding, both man and monster looked equally unhappy.
     As he ran, Riddick seemed to float along above the snow, when in reality he was plowing purposely and powerfully through it. At times diverse, right now his thoughts were purely linear. Casual contemplation of multiple subjects was all very well and good—when one was sitting in a warm room with belly full and the only weapons in the vicinity your own. Survival precedes cogitation.
     Pausing between drifts that marched across the landscape like fossilized waves and a distant line of rocks, he checked the ship locator. The line he had been following indicated he was very close to something now. He could only hope that it was not a decoy, set by a perverse mind to deliver a last dose of despair to anyone sharp and fast enough to acquire the device from its original owner. Riddick was only slightly concerned. Toombs was good, but the big man didn’t think he was that good. Proof of the latter evaluation lay in the mercenary’s present condition—hung out to dry. Or rather, freeze.

     Flipping the ship locator closed to protect its vital innards from the weather, he let his thumb slide over the red contact near its base. In a moment he would know whether Toombs would have the last, cackling laugh. The indications were that what he was searching for lay near at hand. How near, or if at all, he would know in a moment. He nudged the control.
     So close in front of him that he took a reflexive step backward, snow began to fall upward.
     It was a better ship than he expected that rose out of the drift, sloughing off gravel and ice crystals as it slowly ascended before him. A Flattery C-19 under-cutter—low-slung, handsome, contemporary construction manufactured on a world noted for skilled engineering. Adaptable and tough, it was exactly the kind of versatile transport a pack of mercenaries would utilize, if they could afford it. In addition to traversing interstellar space and a variety of atmospheres, it could also burrow or swim. Doubtless it had cost Toombs and team a pretty credit or two. Now it belonged to someone else: him. That’s the way the comet crumbles, he thought to himself as he pulled out the locator and ran a subsidiary check. Unless the information he sought was being masked, the ship was empty; devoid of life-forms. No reason to mask the interior, he decided as he started toward it. Not with the maskers among the recently departed.

Foster, Alan Dean (2007-12-18). The Chronicles of Riddick (pp. 20-28). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.