Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [123]
The mijar stalked toward the SEALS officer, with the savant looming just behind. They came to a stop several meters away, and Jackson felt Catal’s powerful eyes burning into him. He stared straight up, concentrating but unwilling to meet that terrible gaze.
“You, soldier,” the mijar said to the LT. “You now face a future of almost unimaginable suffering. Do you realize what your vandalism cost my lord on the world of Batuu? You destroyed more than a billion credits’ worth of property! You killed hundreds of loyal Eluoi soldiers! You caused thousands of slaves to be released, most of whom were recaptured only at considerable cost.”
“Billions!” the savant screeched, in that voice that froze the will and liquefied the guts of the terrified humans cowering on the floor. He took a step forward, standing beside his mijar, still two meters away from the prone SEALS lieutenant. An Eluoi captain stood right behind them, his plasma gun held at the ready.
“Can you imagine the tortures that lie in your future?” the mijar asked mockingly. “We have masters of pain who can bring you to the point of death over a matter of days, and then, when you believe your life is ended and you are freed from the agony of the flesh, they can restore you to complete health only so that you can die again more slowly!”
He laughed, a nasty cackle of sound. “The cycle can be sustained for more than a year in some cases. I believe that you are one who might survive very well, indeed, to be killed a very great number of times. My master, the savant, is eager to find out.”
The savant took another step so that he was looming over Jackson, staring down at him through the faceplate on his helmet.
“You will suffer!” he said quietly, and even that low volume paralyzed the nerves of the nearby humans, sending shivers of pure agony coursing down their spines.
Jackson lashed out with his foot—a very much unparalyzed foot—bringing his boot around in a sideways kick that caught Tezlac Catal in the knee, dislocating the joint and dropping the savant with a shriek of pain.
In the next second, the LT’s G15 was in his hand. The assault rifle spit a single round through the suppressor, the 6.8-mm slug punching a neat hole through the nearby commando’s forehead, sending the lieutenant flying backward. The Eluoi was dead even before his body hit the floor.
Jackson was twisting around even as he fired the shot and punched the barrel of his assault rifle none too gently under the savant’s chin. Catal’s eyes, a green so dark that they were almost black, were wide but for the first time ever filled with unadulterated fear. His mouth opened, tongue extended, spittle flying from his lips.
“Be quiet!” the LT snapped. “Don’t make a sound unless you want to feel the brains blown out the top of your head. You’d better believe it would give me a great deal of pleasure to kill you.”
By then Ruiz had sprung to his feet and was holding his pistol to the back of the mijar’s head. That lackey was sputtering in disbelief, glancing wide-eyed back and forth between the two SEALS.
Admiral Ballard, nearby, groaned and tried to sit up. His head flopped back to the deck, and he shivered like a man suffering a mild seizure. “Don’t try to move, sir. The effect of this SOB’s voice takes a little while to wear off.”
“But you?” the mijar stammered. “How can you move? How can you speak?”
“Trade secret,” Jackson snapped. He gestured to the Eluoi commandos, dozens of whom surrounded them with weapons poised to shoot. None dared to move, not while their lord and master was at the mercy of this mad human soldier, the one the savant himself had called a saboteur, assassin, and thug. “Now, call off your dogs. Get them out of here!”
Catal groaned, his leg twitching, the knee twisted at an awkward angle. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” Jackson asked conversationally. He addressed the mijar again. “Get rid of those troops or I’ll break his other knee. Do it now!”
The mijar recoiled from the force of the command. He might have been a high-ranking leader,