Eye of the Tiger: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 1)

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “That one,” Eve interrupted me. The dark-haired beauty raised her finger to point at one of the blueprints on the wall, and I directed my eyes to follow her finger.

  “This one?” Z asked as she zoomed in on the blueprint.

  The craft had measurements on the side indicating it was one hundred and sixty meters long. It would be small enough to land on a surface world, but I imagined a ship that size would have at least two subcraft which it could launch for planet visitations. The shape of the starcraft was slightly strange. Most craft seemed to be either a circular shape for gravity purposes, traditional whale shaped, geometrically shaped like building blocks, or styled after the ancient airplanes of Earth. This vessel looked a bit like a manta ray, except the wings weren’t extended out from the main body to the same proportions, and there were diamond-shaped formations rising from the sides like it wore shoulder armor. Even though the blueprint was confusing to read, I could still visualize the elegant sweep along the flanks.

  “That one. That is our ship,” Eve said with a finality that made me wonder if she had planned on that exact ship as soon as she freed me.

  “You’ve picked the only ship that doesn’t have codes to open the fly bay or get take off approval. Can you pick one of the other ones?” Z asked as she hammered on the keyboard. It sounded like there were three pairs of hands typing, and her fingers were a blur.

  “No. That is the one with the folding technology. We want that one. It has called to me for years. She will take us where we need to go.”

  “I don’t see anything in here about the folding tech. Says it has a hyperdrive, warpdrive, uhh, two shuttles and three one-man fighter craft. Accommodations for up to a hundred and twenty. A minimum crew of ten. Huh. That’s some good automation tech. No mention of folding tech. I would have thought they would have put it on a larger ship.”

  “We can’t really pilot it,” I said to Eve. “We don’t have enough people.”

  “We will get more crew. That is our ship. Doesn’t it call to you, Adam? She has told me her name for years. She was born to be ours.” Eve’s red eyes burned into mine, and I found myself nodding.

  “Official name is HAD-35-11345-243-5432B.” Z rattled off the name.

  “Hades, but that will not be the name we will call her. Can you get the bay codes?” Eve asked the blonde woman.

  “Uhhh. There just aren’t any. If the president of fucking weapons doesn’t have them, you know what that means?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “This bird wasn’t meant to fly, not anytime soon. It probably doesn’t have any chairs, or amenities, or anything on it that we are going to need for the trip into deep space.”

  “She is ready for us. Can you hack the codes for the fly bay? How about the take off approval codes?” Eve asked Z.

  “That’s not really how this works. If there is something there I can find it, if there is nothing there, then I can’t find it. I’m not a god. I don’t just--”

  “Create it. You are a god on the computer. Create a new set of bay codes so we can leave and another for takeoff approval.” Eve pointed to the computer and then shrugged her shoulders.

  “Okay, I can do that, but there are a bunch of other problems. I get you like that ship. It is good looking, but there are two others around that size with hyperdrives. I have the complete codes to those. We made it this far already, and we are somehow alive, we can get off this rock in less than a quarter of an hour if we just take one of them.” Z bit her lip after she spoke, and I guessed the girl had known Eve’s answer before she gave it.

  “No. It has to be that one. How can we help you create the codes?”

  “Fuck.” The hacker sighed as she covered her face. “I can’t do it from here. I’ll need to get to the bay’s control tower. It will be kind of simple to just create new bay codes, but the approvals are going to be a pain.”

  “Where is the control tower?” I asked.

  “Here,” she said as she typed on the keyboard. The map of the facility popped up, and the tattooed woman tapped a spot on the map with the nail of her pointer finger. “It’s in the main building where the ships are docked.”

  “Confirmed. Let’s--” I began to say, but she interrupted me.

  “It’s two kilometers away.”

  “Confirmed. We can run there in--”

  “Through five control locks, and past three security checkpoints.”

  “Hmmm,” I growled.

  “If we went straight to the bay and took one of these other ships. Whoosh!” Z made a flying motion with her hand. “If you want to go to the control tower…” The girl made a gun shape with her hand and then flicked her tongue across her lips with a gun firing sound.

  “We aren’t leaving her. Let’s go to the control tower,” Eve said quickly.

  “Okay. Fuck, here I was thinking we are going to get to live after all. Let me see what I can do about these locks,” Z started hammering on the keys again. “If I take care of the locks, are you two going to be able to handle the guards?”

  “Yes. That’s my job. I will do the killing,” I growled, and the beast was already pushing against my stomach.

  It wanted to be released. It wanted to roam in this building and kill everything that stood between us and our freedom. It wanted to give Eve the ship she wanted. It wanted to protect her as much as it wanted to hear the dying screams of my enemies fill the air.

  I let it fill me.

  Chapter 14

  “You said the guards were turning off the hallway cameras?” Z asked me as we prepared our weapons. The blonde hacker carried one of the smaller pistols that Uwuwto’s bodyguards used.

  “That is what they told me.” My words clawed out of my chest like a ball of sandpaper. I didn’t want to speak anymore. I wanted to kill. “They will see us running through the halls, eventually. We just have to get to the control tower before they can catch us. Are you both ready?”

  “Yes,” Eve said. She was carrying my rifle in her hands. The woman had admitted she wasn’t skilled with firearms, so I’d given her and the gun-ignorant hacker a quick lesson when we were in the hotel.

  “I’m ready. Oh fuck. We are going to die. This sucks,” Z laughed as she lifted the bags off of the ground. They were mostly our spare clothes and a few extra pistols. I had thought about carrying them, but we couldn’t afford for me to be encumbered during the upcoming fight.

  “We will be fine. Have faith.” Eve smiled at the hacker.

  “Oh, sure, ‘have faith,’ says the girl with the fangs and the red eyes. ‘Just follow the two and a half meter tall walking tiger-man into a tornado of bullets. What’s the worst that can happen?’ Kitty-boy doesn’t seem to mind getting shot, but I kind of like my blood staying inside of my body.”

  “Stay out of the way then. Let’s go.” I opened the door and pivoted around the hallway with my shotgun. There weren’t any guards, of course, but I did see the cameras on the ceiling. I was going to assume the guards at the front desk had not turned them off and were raising the alarm. It meant we had less than five minutes to run two kilometers, get through five security doors, kill the guards at three stations, access the control tower, hack new codes to open the bay doors, and figure out how to get launch clearance.

  Z’s fears were reasonable.

  I grunted at the women, and they came out of the office behind me. I’d spent the last ten minutes memorizing the map of the facility, so I knew exactly where to run. I grunted again, and then took the lead position at the mouth of the hallway that would take us to the control tower.

  We ran.

  I quickly outpaced my friends, but that was okay. I didn’t want to risk them getting shot at. The plan was for me to charge ahead with my enhanced speed and hope I could gain the initiative on any guards. The hallways were empty, and I was soon sprinting at my full speed down the long stretches.

  I turned the corner where the first guard checkpoint was and encountered my first opposition. There were only thre
e of them sitting at a desk next to a metal detector, and they wore the kind of uniforms the men at the front of the building had. It looked like the men were playing a game of holocards, and they weren’t prepared for me to come up on them so suddenly.

  I flicked out the claws on my left hand and ripped them across the neck of the first guard, and his blood sprayed across the faces of the other men. Before either could scream, I drove my nails into the eye sockets of the second guard to kill him. The final man was tilting back out of his chair, and I slammed the butt of my shotgun into his face. The blow smashed him into the ground, and then another strike from my weapon broke open his skull like an egg.

  “I’ll get the door!” Z shouted as she ran through the metal detector. The thing went off with a meek buzz, but the hacker paid it no attention.

  Eve and I moved to the blonde woman’s side and watched her plug a cord between her skull and the key pad of the door.

  “Alwin’s got a lot of codes that I downloaded. I’m just going to cycle through them first before I actually try to hack the-- and we are good!” Z did a fist pump in the air and then made a motion with her hand as if she was a magician opening up a doorway with her magic powers.

  The door did open, and I poked my head around the corner to make sure there wasn’t a battalion of plasma wielding guards in heavy armor standing on the other side. Fortunately, the hallway was clear, and I grunted at them to follow me.

  This next segment of the hallway was only two hundred meters, but it had a few intersecting passageways I checked before I ran past. I made it to the security door a good twenty seconds before my comrades could catch up to me, and felt the beast scream in my mind with impatience. I needed to run. I needed to kill. Waiting made me feel caged again.

  “On it,” Z said as she plugged her brain into the door again.

  “You are doing great,” Eve patted the other woman on the shoulder. “We are almost there.”

  “We actually aren’t, but thanks for the compliment. This door is done,” Z made her pretend magic motion with her hand, and the gray armored doors parted with the movement.

  “Three more doors.” I peeked around the opening. No guards were waiting for us, and I sprang forward to take the lead again.

  This was the longest stretch of distance between the doors. The passage where we ran was on the side of the main shipyard building, and if we wanted to take one of the other vessels, we could have chosen any of the doors on our left side to reach the massive hangar. Then we could have boarded the ship and blasted off without any more conflict.

  But Eve wanted the strange manta ray shaped ship, and the woman hadn’t led me astray yet.

  I wanted to sprint ahead of the two women, but while the doors on my left led to the hangar, the doors on my right were staff housing and equipment rooms. The map didn’t tell me if anyone was currently living in the rooms, but I didn’t want to risk someone stepping into the hallway between me and my companions. It would mean potential crossfire. I could shave the wings off of a fly with my shotgun at ten meters, but I feared Z would accidently put a bullet in me. Or her whole clip. I was going to have to teach her to shoot once we got on the ship.

  A man stepped out of a door in front of me. He looked like a lab tech since he wore a white coat and was studying a digital pad in his hands. He didn’t even look up when I reached him, but he gasped with surprise when I flung him back through the still opened door. I saw him smash into the far wall of his room and then slump to the floor. He was hurt and probably unconscious, but the man would live.

  The tiger screamed in my mind, and I almost staggered against the wall when I tried to run. It wanted to kill the man, even though he might have been innocent. The beast wanted to feed on screams and terror. It was a tightly wound animal rage that only thought in terms of kill or be killed. Hunt or flee. Mate or die. It didn’t understand I had no desire to kill a guy who was probably just working the late shift so that he could support a family. I didn't see anyone else in the room, so I pushed myself to run again.

  My boots pounded the tile floor, and the rhythm forced most of my bloodlust back into my stomach. We continued our run, but I could hear Z’s breath pour out of her mouth with painful gasps. I doubted hackers spent a lot of time exercising, and the woman’s heart sounded as if it was working way too hard to keep up with us. There wasn’t much I could do about the problem besides throwing her over my shoulder when she couldn’t run anymore.

  We weren’t even halfway to the control tower.

  I motioned for my friends to stop at the next corner. There was a guard station up ahead in front of the third security door. The door led to a service elevator which would take us up two floors to another long hallway dotted with endless office cubicles. There were only two more security doors after this elevator, and one more guard post right in front of the control tower. If I could get these men down without raising the alarm, it might buy us another minute before all hell broke loose.

  I crouched a bit and crept forward with short strides. I inhaled the scents surrounding me and then twitched my ears around so I could get a feel for the guards around the next corner. My nose caught the smell of their fear, and my ears picked up the frantic drumming of their hearts. Fuck. They knew we were coming.

  I debated my options. The animal wanted me to dash around the corner with my enhanced speed and kill the men, but my human brain knew that plan was all sorts of stupid, so I grabbed one of the grenades from my armored jacket. It was an offensive one and I hoped it wouldn’t fry the electronics on the security door when it went off.

  The pin came off with a flick of my fingers, and I waited two seconds before I banked it off of the adjacent wall. The men shouted as soon as they saw the explosive, and I turned my head away to protect my ears from the boom.

  Their screams ended as soon as the blast sounded, and I spun around the corner on my knees; the three men were all sorts of dead, and the metal detector was ruined. I gestured for my two teammates to run forward, and I checked the other directions of the hallways before I took my position behind Z.

  “They know we arrrrrrr here,” I growled.

  “No shit, you just threw a grenade. You are like, the worst fucking ninja I’ve ever seen. What happened to being all quiet?” Z was pushing the cord from her head into the door again.

  “They knew wwwweee were here before I threw the gggggernade.” It was getting harder to speak without growling.

  “I thought we’d just get killed as soon as we stepped out of the office, so I’m going say we are still winning. This shit is opened.” Z snapped her fingers, and the blood covered security door began to slide apart.

  “Get down!” I shouted as I heard a stutter of safety switches flick over from the other side of the door.

  Eve was already twisting out of the way, but Z wasn’t prepared for my warning, and the hacker froze. I grabbed her shoulder with my left hand while I aimed my shotgun into the opening maw of the doorway. As soon as I saw the first guard’s head I pulled on the trigger of my shotgun.

  But the five other guards also began firing.

  Z flew away with a flick of my furry hand, but the other bullets slammed into me. Most hit my armored jacket in the chest, but they didn’t penetrate the armor. Two of the shots got lucky and hit me in my left bicep. The slugs ripped almost all of my arm off, but I was carrying my shotgun with my right arm, so I was able to continue yanking on the trigger.

  My slugs sprayed across the room like mini torpedoes. One shot punched a hole through two of the men’s chests, another ripped the top half of his body off at the stomach, a third slug left a skull sized hole inside the skull of the very unlucky guard, and the last shot somehow managed to toss all the limbs of the man free of his body when it hit him in the center mass.

  Shotguns were quite useful up close.

  I fell to a knee and looked at my left arm. It was attached by only a few long tendons, and a gallon of blood seemed to pour out of the side of my shoulder. I’d t
aken a few bullet hits before and still managed to heal through them, but this was a serious injury. I didn’t know if my mutated DNA would let just let the limb attach back.

  “Shit! Are you okay?” Z was at my side, and it looked like the she was trying to decide how she should comfort me during my last few seconds of life.

  “I’m fine. Let’s keep going,” I didn’t actually feel any pain, but my legs wouldn’t work for some reason.

  “You are very injured,” Eve stated the obvious.

  “Push my arm back into its socket for a few seconds. I might heal,” I said, but my heart was pounding in my ears, and I had trouble hearing my own words. Maybe I was whispering.

  “Uhhh. Your, whole fucking arm is-- oh jeez,” Z moaned when Eve grabbed onto my left limb and pushed it against my shoulder.

  “It’s fine. I think I am healing,” I wheezed as I looked up at the vampire. Her red eyes met mine, and I could easily see her worry.

  I heard boots marching down the adjacent hallway from where we had come from.

  “More are coming,” I said to the two women as I nodded back around the corner. “You should go. I’ll hold them off here.”

  “No. I’m not leaving you,” Eve said.

  “Then you’ll die. Just go. I want you to live,” I growled at her. No. I needed her to live. How did she not know how I felt about her?

  “I do know how you--”

  “Hey! No one needs to die right now. I can close the door. Pick him up!” Z grabbed me under the right arm and tried to lift. The woman’s face turned red with the strain, but I easily weighed one hundred and fifty kilograms without my armor on.

  Her effort inspired me to move, and I pushed off of the floor with wobbly legs.

  “There we go! Just get to the other side.” Z tugged on my arm in an effort to push me faster, and the three of us stumbled across the threshold of the security door.

  As soon as we crossed, Z let go of my arm and plugged her skull cord into the terminal on the other side.