Ross knew the H’kaah was fishing for information, but he also didn’t know if she was actually jealous or merely curious. Still, he knew he had better be as diplomatic as possible.
“C’maat is an attractive female; she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t. Still,” he said evenly, “she’s not ‘my type’.” He hugged S’leen and smiled, and he sweated just a little.
“And am I, a person of an entirely different species from yourself, ‘your type’, Jack?” she asked, a bit too casual for Ross’ comfort.
“You’re here with me, S’leen, and C’maat’s not; that should tell you something.” He hugged her again. “I don’t regret my decision. Do you?”
She pulled slightly away from him, then said, “After what you told me today, Jack, I…I began to fear you viewed us more as—I believe your term for such people is ‘aborigines’.” When he began an indignant protest she quieted him, then said, “Yet after a lot of thought I have come to realize that you do not see us as ‘primitives’, but as ‘innocents’ thrust into a dangerous universe.”
“That’s the very thing I’ve been telling you all along,” he began hotly, but she silenced him with a claw-tipped finger on his lips.
“But ‘telling’ and ‘convincing’ are two different things, Jack, and until I gave it a great deal of thought this afternoon I wondered if what you were ‘telling’ me wasn’t simply what you thought I wanted to hear.”
“And now?” he inquired after a thoughtful pause.
She looked directly into his eyes, and several moments later she simply said, “I am convinced.”
Chapter 6
*Dead Right There*
Midnight had long rolled by and for more than an hour Jack Ross and S’leen had been dozing on the couch. The day had been filled with stress, emotion and the kind of revelations that drain the spirit more than the body. Ross’ honking snores woke them both, and they grudgingly decided to begin working their way upstairs to bed. But before they could put that plan into action a muted but shrill-pitched electronic alarm began warbling, and in the middle of the ceiling in each room of the house a tiny red light began a once-a-second pulsing.
Human and H’kaah blinked foggily for a few moments, then Ross sprang into action—and fell flat on his face, his feet tangled in the lightweight blanket that had been shielding them from the ceiling fan’s draft. S’leen still didn’t understand what was happening but she hurried to help untangle Ross.
“Nelly—BINGO!” he barked, and the alarm obediently fell silent, the pulsing warning lights went dark. By that time he had gotten to his feet, and after a quick visual sweep of the dimly-lit room he again barked into the air, saying, “Nelly— STEALTH!” Every electrical device in the house, other than the AI security system itself, immediately powered down, which plunged the interior into total darkness; no lights, no fans, no air conditioner, no refrigerator. Virtually everything electromechanical that hummed, whirred, glowed or moved quickly died, and within seconds they could hear night sounds normally masked by the sounds of a living house.
Still, Ross knew that it would be critical minutes before his vision would dark-adapt, during which time he would be virtually blind. S’leen, on the other hand, had larger, much younger eyes, and her hearing was far superior to any human’s. Taking advantage of her keen senses, however, would not be easy; she had no idea what was going on.
“Jack!” she cried. “What is wrong? I’ve never seen you act this way—” But with a guilty start she suddenly realized that wasn’t correct. She had, in fact, seen him react in just such a manner the morning they had first met. At that time S’leen had screamed in terror when Ross started the engine in his antique Corvette, and in the literal blink-of-an-eye she saw him change from a pleasant middle-aged businessman to a potentially-lethal warrior.
As, after a groggy, uncoordinated start, he had done once more. This time, however, S’leen understood that the unknown threat had to be far more than an unexpectedly noisy engine, and while she was momentarily confused she trusted Ross enough to follow his lead.
Although the house was tomb-dark inside, Ross seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Quickly taking the H’kaah by the hand he whispered, “The security perimeter that surrounds this place has been breached. We have at least one intruder on the property, and now all that weapons and self-preservation training you’ve been getting might just help keep you alive. Even though the cops were automatically called the instant I gave Nelly the ‘bingo’ command, we’re going to have to fend for ourselves until they get here. Right now we need to move as quietly as possible toward the foot of the stairs. I’ve got a couple of special pistols hidden in a false bottom of the magazine table there.”
S’leen was a credit to her rabbit heritage as she silently crept in Ross’ wake. By this time a full minute had passed, and both human and H’kaah were beginning to gain a degree of night vision. While the night had no moon to brighten the dark sky, there was also no layer of clouds or fog to mute the canopy of stars, and the feeble glow they produced sifted through the closed, lightly curtained windows. S’leen could faintly see Ross’ pale form as he tripped a hidden latch under the table, and moments later he pressed a cold, black object into her trembling hands.
“I have a suppressed .45 caliber Ruger autopistol,” he softly told her, “but what I’ve given you is a modified version of the .22 caliber Browning Buck Mark autopistol you practice with on the firing range. This one has a flash and noise suppresser on the end of the barrel, and it’s loaded with subsonic jacketed hollow points. Fired inside the house it’ll still be loud but it won’t deafen you. The suppresser will also keep the flash of light from the muzzle from blinding you if you have to shoot it in the dark.
“And along with luminescent tritium night sights,” he continued, “your gun, like mine, has a laser aiming aid. Nothing will happen until you put light pressure on the trigger; do that and a tiny red laser beam will project from just under the barrel. Squeeze the trigger a little harder and the gun will put a bullet a half-inch above where the laser’s red dot is located. This whole system will allow you to pre-aim using the glowing night sights, then use the laser to make any final aiming adjustments the instant before you spoil the bad guy’s day.” She could see the white flash of his feral grin, and although she experienced a momentary chill from the knowledge that Ross had once again shifted to “predator mode”, a part of her psyche she never realized existed found that it appreciated his deadly humor.
Still, humor couldn’t disguise the gravity of the situation. This wasn’t one of their practice sessions against lifeless, 2-dimensional cardboard targets; he was telling her that in mere moments she might actually have to shoot a living person! She began shaking in earnest.
Ross whisper-barked another order to the computer-controlled security system. “Nelly—OMEGA!” The nearby front door’s electric latches snicked off. “All the other doors and windows are locked tight,” he softly explained, “so there’s a good chance our intruder will try the path of least resistance— and we’ll be waiting.” He clicked his pistol’s safety off, then squatted at the foot of the stairs where he would have a clear view of the front door. He had S’leen crouch on the far side of an overstuffed chair that was positioned well out of any probable line-of-fire. He saw a pure red laser dot momentarily illuminate a spot down low on the far wall, then he was pleased to hear the soft click of her pistol’s safety as she clicked it to the fire position. She crouched low, laying her light-colored ears back so they wouldn’t show against the dark wood paneling.
And then they waited, listening for any telltale sounds and straining their eyes for possible flashes of light—but the night was quiet. Too quiet. “Listen,” he whispered. “The crickets and frogs that live around the front porch aren’t raising hell like they normally do. I’d say our ‘guest’ has arrived.”
He saw her mobile ears momentarily rise and orient toward the front door, and a few moments later he heard the faint squeak of the lever
latch as it was slowly depressed. “Showtime,” Ross barely hissed behind his raised gun as the door began to swing inward. It glided fully open on silent, well-oiled hinges, but the view into the starlit night showed nothing silhouetted against the opening. Several moments passed, then they both noticed a small shape snaking around the bottom of the doorway—a long-barreled pistol! It was followed almost immediately by a dark head shape that seemed to make a quick visual sweep of the entrance foyer, then it withdrew.
Ross didn’t know if its owner had seen him where he was squatting, and he waited to see what the intruder would do next. “Next” proved to be a dark, upright form that quickly stepped through the open doorway and then to the side, blending almost invisibly into the woodwork. For several seconds no additional movements or sounds came from the figure, then a painful, blue-white beam of light leaped from a 4-cell Mag-Lite the intruder was holding—and it centered on Ross!
“Nelly—LIGHT!” Ross yelled, and the entire house was suddenly bathed in a harsh glare as all available lighting switched on at full intensity. The intruder, though, remained a lumpy, hard-to-see figure dressed in a flat-black full body suit, complete with masked hood. Yet despite Ross’ watering eyes one unpleasant detail was all-too-easy for him to see; the intruder was armed, and was aiming a black, suppressed autopistol his way.
Ross cranked a pair of hastily-aimed shots at the dark form’s chest but was dismayed when the intruder only coughed and staggered awkwardly back against the wall— and didn’t fall. The two heavy, sub-sonic hollow point rounds apparently did little damage, and his dismay turned into horror as the intruder was quickly joined by two more dark-clad figures in the open doorway, each pointing identical suppressed autopistols at him.
And then the trio opened fire.
From Ross’ point of view the next few seconds seemed to last a painful, lethal eternity. He felt each bullet’s agonizing shock as it slammed its way into his flesh, the multiple impacts to his body sounding far louder to him than the strangely dull CLAP of each muffled gunshot. After the first half-dozen bullets jolted him Ross discovered that he had lost all physical control of his spasming body.
As bullet after searing bullet continued to punch its way into his helpless form he sadly concluded that this was one close encounter that he wasn’t going to survive, and his last conscious thoughts were of S’leen, and his consuming fear for her safety.
And then he faded to black.
* * *
The three intruders had fired a total of nineteen rounds at Ross, but due to their excitement only twelve hit him in vital areas. Still, those were twelve bullets Ross could have happily done without. As he lay dying on the floor by the stairs the trio lowered their guns and muttered to themselves and each other, apparently surprised by how easily they overcame the infamous “Black Jack” Ross, former military terrorist, former Night Hawk assassin, former—
They slowly realized that his former status no longer meant anything; Ross’ current status was all that mattered, and currently he was well on his way toward his own personal hell, the goal the three men had worked toward for decades. Jack Ross, they felt, would soon be worm food, and their friends and relatives he had killed so long ago in faraway lands would be avenged.
And then one of them spied S’leen.
“SHIT!” cried the one that had been first through the door, and he hurriedly raised his suppressed 9mm Glock autopistol up to cover the crouching H’kaah’s wide-eyed, trembling form. But he held his fire, and as his companions moved to train their own pistols on S’leen the first one yelled, “Wait! That’s not a human or…or even a dog—that’s his pet alien that we’ve been hearing so much about. Their kind’s not dangerous, but—” the intruder gave a nasty laugh, “—I hear the females are supposed to be a good fuck.”
His companions slowly lowered their guns. “In fact,” the first one said, “the UN scientists say they’re basically ‘smart rabbits’, which means after we fuck her we can have her for dinner!” They all laughed, and she found the sound itself as chilling as their plans for her. “C’mon, bunny-girl, stand up and let us have a look at you.”
S’leen didn’t move, electing to stay crouched on the far side of the overstuffed chair. The intruders moved toward her, the talkative one again ordering her to stand. And again she ignored him.
“Listen you flea-bitten bitch, I told you to—”
Those harsh words were the last coherent ones the foulmouthed intruder uttered as S’leen suddenly brought her hidden Buck Mark autopistol up and POP-POPed a pair of jacketed hollow point rounds directly into the man’s laser-lit right eye. Before he could react to having his brains scrambled by the twin bullets racing round and round inside his skull like beads in a baby’s rattle, S’leen’s gun POP-POPped another pair of perfectly-placed eye shots. The second intruder’s right eye exploded into red ruin, then a moment later the third man received his own twin kisses of death deftly delivered to the red-lit right one of his surprise-widened eyes.
None of the intruders had imagined that the H’kaah would fight, none believed her species capable of effective resistance, much less lethal opposition. All three men were technically dead before their twitching, spasming bodies hit the carpet, victims of their own foul arrogance.
Shooting the men had taken all of three brief seconds, and after carefully watching the intruders collapse like lumpy, jerky rag dolls S’leen shook off part of her fright and turned her attention to the crumpled, bleeding form of her human patron, Jack Ross. She carefully clicked the sleek black target pistol’s safety on before placing it on the nearby table, then she forced herself to approach Ross’ obscene-looking, blood-oozing body. Her people normally didn’t handle violent death well, yet this was someone who meant a great deal to her, someone who apparently cared more for her than he did for himself.
Someone who loved her.
Her ears automatically oriented on a commotion coming from the driveway gate area, and when she glanced out the door she could see police cars squirting through the slowly opening barrier, blue lights strobing through the darkness in unsynchronized rhythms. The first car slid to a stop in front of the porch and two uniformed officers bolted from it with pistols drawn, to be quickly joined by officers from the second car.
“In here!” S’leen called, her lapin voice loud and piercing, and terribly desperate. “Help!”
One of the first two cops, a tall young black sergeant, recognized it, saying, “That’s the H’kaah—I’m going in!” Two other cops automatically positioned themselves to cover the entrance, and the fourth one moved into position to follow at a discrete distance. The first cop mounted the steps, his dull black .40 caliber Glock autopistol held ready, then he got a good look inside.
“Oh sweet Jesus!” he cried, then grabbed the radio microphone clipped to his epaulet and yelled, “Eight to St. Augustine! We’ve got at least four down! Roll rescue code three and put MedTrauma Air on standby!”
“Please help him!” was all S’leen said as she tried to cradle Ross’ bloody head to her breast.
The officer quickly asked, “Any others?” but was met with a confused, beseeching stare from the alien. “Benson! Davis! Check the perimeter. Diego, sweep the other rooms—but carefully! That car on the road by the gate was probably theirs, but it may have held more than these three. GO!” The other cops began their careful searches and the one giving the orders
briefly examined the now-deathly-still intruders.
“St. Augustine,” he said into the radio microphone after a few moments, “cancel all but one rescue unit. I will, however, need homicide and, oh hell, get the lieutenant here, too. This looks really bad and it may get a whole lot worse. I…I know it’s late but you better inform the chief.”
He carefully knelt down near S’leen, who was trying unsuccessfully to wipe blood off Ross’ bullet-shattered face using only her silky-furred fingers. “Here,” the cop said, offering her his handkerchief. “Jack was my friend, too.” She looked questioni
ngly at the officer and he said, “I’m Ron Washington; we met at the police firing range last month.” He nodded to the bodies of the three intruders. “Who shot the dirtbags?”
S’leen blinked a few times, then haltingly said, “J-Jack shot one of them with his big pistol,” and she pointed to Ross’ Ruger lying partly hidden under his body, “but it only made the intruder stagger. After…after that the other two came in and they all began s-shooting Jack.” She was reliving the nightmare in her mind, and her anguish tore at the young officer’s heart. “Then they saw me, and they said they were going to…to eat me after they…they f-fucked me.” Tears dripped from her beautiful amber eyes. “They laughed and lowered t-their guns and…and just like you and Jack taught me I t-took advantage of their m-mistake—and I…I s-shot them all.”
Washington glanced again at the three motionless forms, and at the bloody ruin where each one’s right eye had been. He licked his lips, then respectfully said, “S’leen, you’re the best student I’ve ever seen.” Washington looked sadly at Ross’ bullet-riddled form, then his eyes narrowed. He quickly reached a hand to Ross’ neck and pressed fingers into the side of it. When S’leen looked at him, puzzled, he motioned for her to be still. A moment later he held an ear to Ross’ bloody mouth, then quickly straightened and keyed his radio’s microphone.
“Eight to St. Augustine! Tell that responding rescue to hustle its ass! We’ve got one hanging by a thread with more gunshot wounds than I can count! Get MedTrauma Air on the
way; this one’s way too hot to handle locally!”
S’leen’s eyes widened and she looked from Washington to Ross and then back. “Do you mean—?” “Yeah!” the cop said, grinning like a delighted child. “I don’t know how, but our boy Jack’s still alive!”
Rescue Three carefully squeezed its way through the gate, then roared up the short drive and slid to a stop next to the police cars. One EMT came bounding up the front steps and into the house while the other two worked to thread a collapsed stretcher around the cars. “Holy shit!” the solid-built woman muttered as she took in the carnage, then she saw Washington frantically motioning her over to where he and the H’kaah were huddled over Ross’ body.
Redeeming Factors (Revised) Page 16