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

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Come on. Come on. Fucking close. Please,” she started to chant.

  The sounds of the boots grew oppressively close, and I guessed the woman could hear them now.

  “Yes!” Z cried as the doors started to close again.

  They moved really slow.

  “Fuck! What is wrong with this piece of shit?” Z moaned. “The blood and guts must have messed with the motors.”

  “I’ve got a grenade on my--” I started to say, but Eve was already pulling one of the smoke grenades off of my jacket with her bloody hand. She flicked off the pin with an easy twist of her long nail, and then tossed the cylinder past the closing door.

  Just as the men turned the corner.

  The door wasn’t done closing, and the smoke had only partially filled the hallway. I raised my shotgun with my right arm and sent a slug into the first in the pack. The fifty-gram projectile made a hole in his chest armor the size of my spread hand, and then the slug took out the two guards running behind him.

  The other men jumped back around the corner, and I fired a few times into the wall where they took cover. My slugs smashed through the wall like a jackhammer, and two more of them died.

  The door was halfway closed, but the smoke had now filled up most of the room.

  Z yanked her cord out of the door’s keypad and turned toward me. A spray of bullets bounced around us, and she fell down with her arms over her head. The guards were shooting blind, but it was only a matter of time before they got lucky. We needed to move.

  “Let’s go.” A growl emerged from my throat as I pushed my back against the wall and slowly rolled myself to stand.

  My arm was starting to itch at the shoulder like a group of ants were crawling over my wound. It was the familiar sensation of healing, and I wondered if my body was actually going to repair itself.

  I probably wouldn’t live long enough to find out. The guards knew we were here, and we weren’t even on the correct floor yet.

  “The elevator!” Z yelled as we turned the next corner.

  “Down,” I shouted at them as I pulled them forward.

  The light above the double doors of the elevator flashed, and the doors began to open. I didn’t even wait to see who opened it; I just let my shotgun roar. The slugs turned the contents of the lift into spaghetti.

  I saw the corpses of eight men when the doors finished opening. This group, like the men on the other side of our smoke grenade, wore armored plates over their chest in a design similar to Eve’s armor.

  It hadn’t saved them. Very little would stop a solid slug from a shotgun fired at less than twenty meters.

  I pushed my right elbow into the ground and seethed when I stood. It was only a few dozen steps the rest of the way to the blood-soaked elevator, and I leaned against the hole filled wall as soon as we stepped in.

  “Going up,” Z commented as she hit the button. There was a terminal jack, and the hacker shrugged before she plugged her skull cord into it.

  “Ohhhh,” she said after the door slid closed. “Elevators are on a port system.”

  “What does that mean?” I grunted. My arm was finally starting to hurt, but the pain was just making me angrier.

  “It’s like closed. There is a single access point that the security crew can access for control. If that is turned off, then they can’t move the elevators unless they go local.”

  “Can you turn it off?” Eve and I asked at the same time.

  “Already did. I also turned off all of the elevators besides this one. As soon as the door opens, I’ll shut this one down also. They can turn them back on if they get someone with a skull jack to one of the elevators, but I just shat all over their code, so whoever it is better bring a big fucking clean disk.”

  “Thanks. That will help,” I said. Then I pressed the release on my magazine, and the almost empty drum of my shotgun fell on top of one of the guard bodies with a wet thud.

  “I need a--” I began to say, but Eve was already fishing through the correct ammo pouch on my belt. The beautiful woman pulled out another ammo drum, and then pushed it up into my shotgun until it clicked into place.

  “You two have this creepy finishing each other’s sentences kind of--” Z stopped talking when the door dinged, and I pointed the productive end of my gun at the doors as they opened.

  The hallway was clear, and the three of us let out a collective sigh of relief.

  “Two more security doors,” Eve said.

  “Confirmed,” I replied as I took a cautious step into the hallway. We couldn’t actually run with Eve still pushing my arm into my socket, but we could walk quickly.

  An alarm began to scream through the halls.

  “How rude. It’s like they don’t want us stealing their ships, or something,” Z laughed.

  “You are in a gggggood mood,” I growled.

  “Men waiting for us up ahead at the next turn. They are heavily armored and have shotguns,” Eve hissed.

  “Next corner?” I asked as I looked forty meters down the hallway. “Right or left?”

  “Left,” she answered with a nod.

  “Can you--”

  “Yes. Do it,” she confirmed, and I dropped my shotgun onto my sling so that I could pull out my second to the last grenade. It was a highly offensive one, and would probably wreck a good sixty cubic meters of the passageway with bouncing shrapnel.

  I pulled the pin and then chucked the grenade down the hall toward the corner. As soon as it reached the turn, the sphere froze in mid air and then darted a sharp left. The men around the corner screamed out a warning two seconds before the detonation. The grenade was a beast, and the boom of its explosion shook the walls, dimmed the lights, and made the floor shift like an ocean.

  “They are dead,” Eve said after a cloud of smoke poured out of the side hallway.

  “No shit. Did you have a nuke in your pocket?” Z asked me. “Please say you did. I have a snappy joke ready.”

  “Let’s go.” I grabbed my shotgun and started to walk forward.

  “Ahhh,” she whined.

  “I’m surprised you can make jokes at a time like this.” Force of habit made me check the hallway with my shotgun before we walked past. The sound the grenade made had been much less horrific than the damage it caused to the armored men. Most of the hallway had been reduced to bits of armor drenched in a thick red soup.

  “It is how she copes with stress,” the vampire said.

  “Exactly! Eve gets it.”

  “The next security door is around this corner,” I said. The door would take us to the lobby area of the control tower. Then there was another guard station before the door to the control room.

  “I got it,” the blonde hacker said as she pulled into the terminal.

  “There is no one in the next room,” Eve whispered.

  “That’s strange,” I said.

  “They were probably the guys in the hallway you just exploded. Or maybe they were the guys in the elevator that you aerated,” Z said. “Or maybe they were watching the security footage, and they just figured that they wanted to live. I’m just glad they aren’t there. We should have been dead five minutes ago. Here is the door.” The metal panes in front of the blonde women started to shift and part. I raised my shotgun and slid to the side so I could have a little cover in case Eve was wrong.

  The doors opened, and I leaned past them. The lobby was about fifty meters wide by eighty long. The sides of the room had small counter nooks, and I could see the neon lit words of various restaurant brands I noticed in the city. This was less of a lobby and more of a food court. There were tables, chairs, and trash bins stacked to one of the sides. I saw the guard station on the far end of the large room by the elevator passage leading to the control room. It appeared that Z was correct: There was no one manning it.

  “Let’s move,” I ordered as I stepped into the foyer. Eve was still holding onto my left arm, but the numbness had started to fade, and agonizing pain accompanied the horrendous itch that c
ame along with my healing. It was almost too much for my human mind, and the tiger who lived in my soul begged to be cut loose so he could run through the halls.

  I fought against the beast inside of me. I couldn’t lose control now; we were almost in the control tower. Once we were there, Z could jam the doors and we’d have a few minutes of breathing time. I just had to make it the rest of the way across the room.

  You can do it, Adam. I am with you. Soon we will be with the stars.

  Her voice came to my mind and pushed the animal back from the edges of my vision. I let out a long breath and managed to close my left hand into a fist.

  “Huh,” I said as I stared at the bloody cat hand.

  “You are powerful. They didn’t know your true strength, but soon they will,” Eve whispered as she let go of my arm. The limb stayed connected to my shoulder, and I began to think I’d have full use of it in ten minutes.

  “Last door,” Z sighed thankfully as she pushed the cord from her head into the terminal slot. “I’m getting faster with their systems.”

  “Hurry,” I said. “I hear something.” I pointed my shotgun to the far side of the open plaza. There was a wide tunnel there that I guessed was a supply delivery port.

  “I don’t sense any--” Eve began to say.

  “It’s a spider drone,” I whispered as the first outline of the giant combat machine became apparent to my sensitive eyes.

  They must have been out of guards and sent these fuckers instead.

  “Door is opened!” Z screamed at the same time as the machine’s cannon barrels began to spin.

  “Go, go, go!” I growled. My arm burned a red hot agony when I pushed Eve through the door. Z had already pivoted around the opened steel shutter, and she was trying to close it behind us.

  “Hole. Eeeeeee. Shiiiiiit!” the hacker screamed as the wave of bullets erupted from the spinning gun. The ground, walls, and ceiling seemed to instantly turn into dust as the bullets separated their atoms with their kinetic energy. I’d pushed Eve deep into the hallway behind the door, but Z was kind of close to where the drone’s bullets were spraying, and I threw my giant tiger body over her.

  “Mmmmmmhhhhhhhh!” she screamed into my chest as the endless stream of bullets smashed into the world behind us. I felt one tag me in the back, but it skipped off of my armor like a rock across a pond. Then another slammed into my side, and it tore through my stomach like a red hot poker. The blonde woman screamed again, but the intensity of her shout made me think she wasn’t actually injured; she was just upset I’d gotten shot again.

  Then the door closed, and the staccato roll of bullets turned into the sound of angry hail slamming against the thick security doors.

  “Are you okay?” Z said when I pushed myself off of her. The woman’s blue eyes were wide, and she pointed down at my stomach.

  “Yeah,” I coughed, and it felt like a gallon of blood spilled out of my mouth.

  “Uhh, no. You’ve got half of your guts coming out of your stomach.”

  “Help me lift him,” Eve instructed the hacker as she pulled up on my right arm. The dark-haired beauty looked as if she weighed fifty-five kilograms soaking wet, so I was a little surprised when she yanked me to my feet. Z pushed her shoulder under the bloody armpit of my left arm, and the two women tried to help me walk toward the elevator leading up to the control tower.

  “We are almost there. Uhh, don’t die. Okay?” Z said after we’d taken half a dozen steps.

  “I won’t,” I tried to growl, but another bucket of blood splashed out of my tiger maw. Shit. How did my body hold this much blood?

  I didn’t feel the monster inside of me. I only knew human fear, and a dark fuzzy fog at the sides of my vision.

  My body hurt damn bad now. There was no numbness. It was just pain that I wanted to go away at any cost. I was so tired. I wanted to lay down for a bit and close my eyes.

  “Fight it,” Eve hissed. “Do not die. Keep walking.”

  “Confirmed,” I said as I focused on the next step. Then the next step. Then the next step.

  We reached the elevator and moved inside as soon as the doors dinged open. The inside of the lift car was empty, and Z plugged herself into the terminal so that she could manually open it.

  The doors closed with a happy ding, and the car shot up the shaft with a sudden rush. I hadn’t expected the speed, and my knees almost buckled against the force of gravity.

  My blood pattered on the floor tile like a heavy rain.

  “We are almost there. I’m sure there is a medical kit or something in the control tower. Everything is going to be fine. It’s going to be good. We’ve got this. Just hang in there,” Z pleaded.

  She cares for you. She has never seen another man protect her. They have all left or betrayed her. Fight this. You are strong. Death is your minion. You do not succumb to it. She needs you. I need you. The galaxy needs you. Use your anger. Don’t quiet the beast. Let it save you.

  There are men in the control room.

  “Confirmed,” I said as the elevator door dinged. Then I turned to the two women and raised my shotgun. “Step away,” I growled. Eve nodded and moved to the side of the car, and Z did the same, only the blonde hacker looked terrified.

  The tiger roared in my stomach. It filled my blood. It beat against my skull like a war drum. My sight was already tinted a bit yellow because of my form, but the walls of the elevator began to shift into a crimson hue.

  The door slid open, and I jumped through. There were three men with pistols standing behind the cover of the various flight control equipment. Their first volley of shots missed me when I dove through the door, but my first shotgun slug found one of their arms. The limb exploded off at the shoulder as the slug passed through, and the hunk of metal dented the thick glass window that looked out over the gigantic spaceship yard.

  I fell on the ground with an impact the shocked my entire body. I felt a whimper escape my mouth, and I rolled over to my side so I could aim my shotgun at the next attacker. My landing stunned me a bit, and the man was already sighting down his pistol barrel at me.

  Then half of his skull disappeared when the bullet from Eve's rifle passed through it.

  I sat up to aim my weapon at the last man, but he was taking cover behind the metal computer station, and I didn’t have a clean angle on him. I almost thought about shooting him through the terminal, but I didn’t know how much of this equipment we needed to escape. I expected him to poke his head out from the right side to take a shot, but the man surprised me by throwing his pistol to the floor and waving both of his hands over his head.

  “He is surrendering,” Z translated.

  “Fine, let him go,” Eve said as she gestured with her rifle to the elevator door.

  “Do you need him?” I asked the blonde girl as I stood.

  “What was that?” she asked, and I realized my words had been mostly a guttural growl.

  “He knows nothing of the system,” Eve said as she gestured with her rifle again. Then she spoke a single word, and the man ran into the elevator. A few seconds later, the door closed, and the car was descending to the lobby.

  “Well, we made it,” Z said as she sat in front of the largest array of computer terminals. “Now we just have to do the hard part.”

  “We have faith in your abilities,” Eve said as she put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

  “Heh. Thanks.” The blonde woman pushed her skull cord into the desk and then turned her face to me. “You going to be okay?”

  “Confirmed,” I said as I looked down to my stomach. I was still dripping blood all over the floor, but my intestines were somehow back in my body.

  “Good. Now sit back and watch some fucking techno magic.” The blonde woman cracked her knuckles, wiggled her narrow shoulders, and then began to dance her fingers across one of the many keyboards.

  Chapter 15

  “Annnnnnddddd we’ve got bay codes! Yes!” Z shouted after five minutes of frantic typing. “It
took a bit longer than I expected, but-- What are you doing? Eeeeeeeeekkk!” the blonde woman screamed and jumped out of her chair when she saw Eve kneeling next to one of the guards. The vampire was holding her long hair back with one hand and had her face pressed up against his arm stump where the blood gushed.

  “What is wrong?” Eve asked as she sat up from the man’s body. Her face was covered with crimson.

  “You are drinking his blood!” The hacker pointed a trembling finger.

  “Yes?” The raven haired woman licked her lips.

  “You are a vampire!” Z shouted.

  “Yes, you knew that.” Eve shrugged her shoulders and then wiped off some of her face with the back of her gloved hand.

  “I was joking! I thought you just got the implants and eyes because you liked the way it looked.”

  “Hmmm.” Eve nodded her head. “Yes, I understand that now. No, I’m not going to suck your blood.”

  “How do I know that? When we get into deep space, you are going to get hungry. Then what? Do we need to like capture people and keep them on the ship so you can eat them?”

  “Calm down, Z. No one is going to eat you,” I said as I stepped toward the blonde girl.

  “Easy for you to say. She’s not gonna--”

  “I do not need blood often. I eat regular food. The blood helps my powers. I believe I spent over thirty earth years as a prisoner in a tube without any. I can go for a long time. I’m still weak. It might take me years to regain my strength. You don’t need to fear me, Z. Besides Adam, you are my only friend.” Eve spoke quickly, and she managed to wipe the rest of her blood off of her face.

  The hacker was still perched on top of the terminal desk, and she spun her gaze between the two of us. I could almost see the gears turning in her head, and I prayed that she wouldn’t do something stupid.

  The elevator dinged behind us.

  “Uh oh,” Z said.

  “I thought you turned that off?” I asked.

  “I did. They need to get someone to plug in from down below to set it manually.” She jumped from her perch and ran to the elevator.

  “Can you stop it?” Eve asked.