Aaen felt himself regaining strength, and his eyelids looked bright red from the light he sensed coming from his surroundings. The clicking sounds were gone—now, only the sound of mechanical beeping noises, and heavy breathing from. .somewhere. . .he listened for a few more seconds. .from the right and in front of him, about ten or fifteen feet away. He lifted his head and slowly opened his eyes. The sound was distorted, and so was the light. It moved like he was looking up at a street light through the surface of the water in a swimming pool As he was waking up, his face felt sore with a flat, blunt throbbing pain on the right side of his face, and low on his left side in the middle of his cheek. Some of his muscles were throbbing and he sensed in the back of his mind that the sensation was because of whatever he had been injected with however long ago. He wondered how much time had gone by as he opened his eyes, wincing at first at a brightly-lit area—so bright, he felt like he was looking at seemed like highly-reflective objects throughout the room. He was seated on a chair that felt like metal, and he was restrained at the elbow and wrists. He was silently wondering where he was at, and why he was here—
“Tell Turkon, he’s awake,” a dark, growling voice said; the voice seemed to be all around him, but he couldn’t see who was speaking. “There were two others with you. They wore a similar uniform as you do. Where did they go?”
Aaen was curious about who was talking to him. He felt like resisting the restraints but decided to wait until he felt stronger, first, as he contemplated how he was going to answer—He coughed and struggled to ask, “What do you want. .with me?”
He barely could see motion amid the other distortions in the light: a tall, dark figure seemed to move past him as he felt a small amount of fluid running down his right nostril, seemingly stopping about halfway down.
“You were with two others like you,” a distorted voice growled, “you entered one of our ships without authorization, and reacted when we responded to your intrusion. I’m going to ask you one-more-time: where are the others that were with you?”
“If they’re not with me, they went where you’re not likely going to find them.”
Seconds later, another blunt blow straight to his gut. He felt a rush of blood to his head, dizziness, nausea, and lost nearly all strength in his legs as he crumbled as low as he could go and coughed almost uncontrollably, intermittently gagging as he felt like something was going to shoot up through his throat.
The sensation gradually went down over the course of what he guessed was a minute, but his gut still felt very sore. The temperature in the room was going up and down erratically. He felt tears building in his eyes.
“This isn’t working.” the distorted voice said, and then more of what Aaen could only interpret as gibberish followed. He guessed that was someone’s native language.
One of the dark figures stopped in their tracks and held something to their head, voice acknowledgment of something, and then walked away. They were out of sight in seconds. Despite the unpleasant feeling in his gut, Aaen wondered what the other dark figures were going to do. They seemed to be walking around without any noticeable pattern and kept checking something they were holding in their hands—something that made a sharp metallic clicking and sliding sound every time they interacted with what they were holding in front of them. The only thing Aaen knew that could make such a sound was a firearm. After the metallic sounds stopped, a mechanical humming sound would follow and last for a few seconds, and then the source of the sound was put inside something on their sides. He tried to figure out what they were holding, but it didn’t seem like much of a mystery—they were doing that on purpose. They were practicing for something. He told himself he had to stay strong. . .
A handful of them are visible. The rest were a fine white area on the screen; they resembled the humanoid shape, but there was no apparently clear shot, much less any indication that an order to fire wouldn’t motivate anyone who might otherwise be around to call in what they saw. Too much lack of certainty about the danger to the hostage getting any worse.
“All shooters acquire to capture! I need five targets green!” Storm declared into the bridge comm system. “Weapons release on my command.”
Storm observed team two’s acknowledgments of the order in nearly perfect sequence. It was pitch black outside. The other tangos were out of sight, and dozens of yards away. The tango’s radios buzzed with indistinguishable chatter as they slowly walked closer to team two’s position—Storm saw they were eight feet away and closing!
One of the tangos said something into their radio in a language Storm didn’t understand. Storm pointed to the Shadow at communications and ordered, “Get that translation!”
Looking back at the viewscreen, the tangos were five feet away.
“Execute!"
Five suppressed shots popped in near-perfect sync, hitting their targets with expert precision as the infrared targeting reticules danced erratically from the shots’ recoil. The five figures crumbled where they were.
*****
Steve H. told Jordan Foutin, "You are the next Tom Clancy. You really are a gifted writer."
Another reader told Jordan Foutin about his novel, DANIEL STORM, "Absolutely life changing. God bless you for this piece of art."
DANIEL STORM, a Jordan Foutin novel, is coming soon to Amazon.com in ebook, softcover, and audiobook!
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