Zeta Hack: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 3)

by Michael-Scott Earle

  There wasn’t a keypad on the exit side, so I guessed the door would unlock as soon as I approached it from the interior side. I was proven correct, and the door clicked unlocked as soon as I touched the handle.

  The men hadn’t been looking at the door, they were looking out at the street for cops, so they were caught off guard when I flung it open. The metal edge slammed into the head of the nearest man, and he bounced away with a surprised shout. I stepped out of the path of the swinging glass and drove my fist into the man standing closest to the street. My knuckles shattered his nose, and he actually flipped head-over-heels.

  The suited man working the keypad spun as he reached into his coat, but my left hand trapped his right against his belly, and I slammed my head into his nose. His face bounced off my skull, and then the back of his head ping-ponged off the wall of the apartment complex. I head butted him again on his return, and I heard his skull crack with the impact.

  The man I’d hit with the door was trying to get up, but I stomped down on the side of his face with the heel of my fancy shoe, and his body went limp.

  “Who needs guns when your head is as hard as a ship hull,” Z commented as she stepped around the door and reached inside of one of the men’s coats. She yanked his pistol out and then looked down at her tight dress.

  “I’ll take it,” I said as I pulled the gun from her hand. “Just call Juliette.”

  “She’s not answering,” Z said as she waved the transponder around.

  “What?” I heard the redhead’s voice come across the speaker.

  It also sounded like there were gunshots coming from the device.

  “Was that a gun?” Z asked as I pulled the other two pistols from the fallen men and then searched them for magazines.

  “They found out about the safe house. I’m pinned down.”

  “Where?” I asked as I pulled six magazines from the men and crammed them in my pocket.

  “North side of the District. Off Royal Avenue and Cornfield Lane. There is a group of yellow rhodium refining plants. They are old buildings from the Nebula Gammon days.”

  “I think I remember where it is on the map,” Z said.

  “Can you hurry the fuck up?” Juliette shouted through the transponder after there was another series of gunshots.

  “We’re coming,” I said into the transponder. “Sit tight.”

  “That’s what I’m doing!” Juliette spat.

  “Let’s go.” Z said as she pointed to our right.

  I followed the hacker into the street and began to run. It only took half a dozen steps for me to notice my friend’s awkward form. She was practically stumbling, and I grabbed onto her arm to prevent her from falling.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “These fucking heels. I need to take them off. I’ve run all I can in them,” Z said as she reached down with her free hand to pry the gold stilettos off her feet.

  “Wait,” I said, and she turned away from her feet to look at me. “I’ll go alone. Where am I heading?”

  “No, I’ll go with you.” She shook her head, and her short blonde hair whipped around her face urgently.

  “You are wearing a dress and ten centimeter high heels.”

  “You are wearing a suit,” she argued. “I don’t see what--”

  “The android told us that communications are cut off between the other districts. I need you to go back to the ship, change into your armor, get some rifles ready, and then try to figure out how we can get a hold of them without sending a carrier pigeon. As soon as I get Juliette, I’ll circle back with you, and we can get Eve.”

  “By the time I get changed, you are going to--”

  “Z, please go back to Persephone and try to figure out how we can tell them all. I’m good at shooting assholes, you are good with computers. Even a few extra minutes in their system might save everyone.” I stared into her eyes. I didn’t want to tell her it was an order, but it was. Hell, none of us were even military. It wasn’t like I was going to kick her off the ship for not obeying my orders. I just wanted her to agree with me so she’d be out of harm’s way.

  “Take this street up to Royal and make a left. I think Cornfield is maybe two kilometers down,” she said as she pointed in the direction we were heading.

  “Thanks. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve--”

  “Don’t get shot. Okay?” she said.

  “I don’t try to--” I began to say, but her lips pressed against mine, and her kiss interrupted my words.

  Her arms wrapped around my neck and my hands circled her thin waist. Our tongues explored each other’s mouths for half a moment, and she let out a slight moan the seemed to fill my skull with passion.

  Then she pushed away from me and turned toward the closest tube train station. My hands were still around her body, and I almost wanted to pull her back into me. I let her go instead, and she stepped away.

  “Go get ‘em, tiger,” Z said without looking back at me.

  A thousand words came to my tongue, but I didn’t say any of them. I just turned away from her.

  Then I started running down the street.

  There weren’t many pedestrians. It was night on the station, and I guessed that anyone who would have been on the street had either moved toward the commotion at Benjo or heard the gunshots and decided to stay inside. I reached Royal Avenue and made a left. This street wasn’t as well lit, but it didn’t matter much to my enhanced vision. I didn’t see any citizens walking this road, so I pushed as much strength as I could into my legs and sprinted over the cobblestones.

  The animal inside of me begged for release, but I ignored its cries, and they quickly turned into angry growls. It loved to run, it wanted to fight, and every step caused it to become more frustrated.

  I reached the corner of Cornfield Lane and spotted the large rhodium refineries Juliette spoke of. The fence around them was another hundred meters down the street, and I saw that the once-locked gate of the property had been broken open.

  I also heard the gunshots, so I figured I was in the right spot.

  There were three buildings on the property. The one on the left, closest to me, was a long rectangular structure that appeared to be one story high. The building in the middle was cone shaped, and its point rose a good twenty-five meters off the floor of the station. The last building on the right was attached to the cone structure with a raised access tunnel, but it was only about half as high. It was a square shape, like a standard warehouse structure, and it was where the gunfire was coming from.

  I carried three pistols in my belt, and I pulled two of them out as I ran toward the sounds of combat. The buildings were in a dilapidated state, and they were covered with a combination of rust, graffiti, and peeling paint. There was a roll up door closest to me, and I could see flashes of gunfire from inside the building.

  I slid to a stop at the edge of the door and risked a glance inside the warehouse. It looked to be a labyrinth of shelves stocked with metal boxes, planks of wood, and old computer parts. My enhanced vision made out the shape of three men ducking behind cover to my right, and I saw another group of four to my left. They were pointing their guns to the far side of the building, and I guessed Juliette was taking cover there.

  I ducked back around the corner and tried to piece together a plan. I’d seen seven men, but that had only been after a quick glance. There could easily have been twice as many in the building. Then again, if there had been more than ten, they would have easily been able to outflank Juliette and taken her out. A quick rattle of distant gunfire, followed by one of the men screaming with pain, convinced me she was still alive.

  The creature who lived in my DNA demanded release. It whispered to me that I couldn’t kill these men without its help. It begged to be free so it could taste their terror. It promised me we would be victorious together. The human part of my soul said changing was a mistake. If I shifted now, I’d have to sleep as soon as I got back into my human form, and I knew I’d need to make d
ecisions about saving the station in the next few hours.

  I pushed the animal back down into my stomach, and then rushed around the corner toward the group of four men on my left.

  Their attention was focused on the other side of the building, and I was able to close the distance without any of them turning toward me.

  Two of the men were hiding behind the same large shelf, and I was able to punch both of pistols into their backs before I pulled the triggers. Their bodies muffled some of the sounds of the bullets, but the front of their chests still exploded, and the other two men in the group let out a startled yelp.

  The other pair of gangsters swung their pistols toward me, so I rolled to my right behind a metal crate. Unfortunately, this put me in Juliette’s line of sight, and the woman’s bullet slammed into the metal next to my head as the other men’s bullets bounced off the top.

  “Watch it!” I screamed at her as I crawled across the front of the crate to try and circumnavigate the men.

  “Shit. Sorry!” she yelled, but then the other three men on the far side of the warehouse now knew that the redhead had support, and I heard their bullets punch through the other side of the crate where I crouched.

  I was a bit out of position now. I could back up across the warehouse toward Juliette’s position, but it would mean a longer gunfight as the two of us tried to defend our position against the five of them. I was only a few meters away from the last two men on this corner of the warehouse, but I would have to either jump over my crate and through the shelving to get to them or run around the side of the crate and risk bullets.

  If it were me in their position, the last tactic I would think my opponent would use would be climbing on top of the crate, jumping through the shelf, and coming at me head on.

  So that was what I did.

  I sprung up to the top of the metal crate with a grunt and leaned over sideways as I pushed off the edge with my feet. The motion sent me flying through the air and caused the crate under me to slide a bit. There were a few cardboard boxes on the shelf, and my left shoulder knocked them over as I threaded the needle between the open spaces.

  A flurry of bullets ricocheted around me, and I thought about what Z would say if she saw me do this. She’d probably make a comment about me spending another one of my nine lives, and then roll her eyes melodramatically.

  None of the bullets hit me, and I rolled forward once I had cleared the shelf. The other two men were on my right, and they were both peering around the corner of the crate where they hid. They were expecting me to come around that side and were caught off guard when I rolled on the ground on their other side.

  I fired as soon as my shoulder hit the hard ground. One of my bullets punched into a man’s lower back, but the other went a bit wide and missed the second man by five centimeters. The man I missed turned to his shot partner, and then he spun around more to try and point his gun at me. Both of my pistols fired first though, and both bullets penetrated his skull at the eye sockets.

  The other man wasn’t dead, and he was trying to spin around so he could get some vengeance. I knew from experience that bullets in the back hampered movement, so I wasn’t at all surprised when I was able to send a bullet into his heart before he could shoot me.

  I rolled to my left a few times as a spray of bullets flew through the air above me. The men on the other side of the warehouse were yelling my location, and I guessed that they were taking up new positions. My risky strategy paid off though. It was now two against three, and Juliette and I had them flanked against the far side of the building. I crawled over toward the exit roll up door and then took a new position by a metal shelf there. They wouldn’t be able to escape unless they moved across my line of fire.

  The men understood their predicament, and one popped out from around the corner of a shelf he was standing behind to shoot in my direction. I ducked behind my own cover and then leaned out the side to try and aim at one of the three men I guessed were taking up a new position. I only caught a brief flash of movement by a crate two meters from where I thought the group was. There wasn’t really a clear shot at him, but I had plenty of ammo, so I squeezed the trigger a few times on each of my pistols and tried to punch a bullet through the crate and into him. All of my bullets bounced off the metal, but I did hear Juliette’s gun retort, and one of the men began to scream with pain.

  “Cover me!” I heard the woman shout at me, and I leaned out from the other side of my shelf and lit up the area where I guessed the men hid with the rest of the bullets in each of the guns. Our opponents didn’t risk peeking out to take a shot at Juliette, and I saw her slide behind a crate four meters closer to the men.

  I leaned back around the shelf and replaced the magazines in my two pistols. Then I peeked around the corner and made eye contact with Juliette as she sat with her back against the crate. The redhead pointed over her right shoulder with her pistol, and then gestured for me to go around the corner. I nodded at her, and then I watched her lean away from the crate. She made another small nod, and we each flung ourselves from around our cover and dashed toward the men.

  One of them was peeking out from behind the metal crate, and my bullet took him in the forehead. Another leaned out from the shelf where he was hiding, but Juliette’s bullet hit him in the side of the chest under the armpit, and he spun away before he could pull the trigger.

  I didn’t see the third man until I reached their cover. Then I saw him leaning on one of the boxes.

  “I surr-” he started to say, but Juliette’s gun cut him off with a bullet that tore through his teeth and sprayed most of his brain out the back of his skull and onto the crate.

  “Fucking slavers,” she spat.

  “You alright?” I asked as I pointed to the sleeve of her leather coat. It was covered in blood.

  “Not mine.” She sighed. “The only guys in my station I trusted were with me. I was about to head back to my office when these assholes attacked.

  “They all dead?” I asked, and the pretty woman nodded.

  “They were good men.” she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but I didn’t see any tears on her face.

  “What about the girls?”

  “Over here,” she said as she gestured to the back part of the building where I had first found her defending.

  I followed the cop through the shelves and crates to an office door. It was made of steel and locked, but the girls opened it after Juliette knocked on it three times and said it was her.

  “Are they gone?” the girl who opened the door asked.

  “Yes. You are safe for now,” Juliette said.

  “We need to talk,” I said to her, and I pointed to a spot out of earshot of the five young women.

  “Okay,” she said, and then she walked with me back through the dim warehouse.

  “Here is good,” I said once we were a good ten meters away from the office.

  “Listen, if you think I’m going to thank you for saving my ass, you are wrong. I know you only did it so your friend wouldn’t rot in jail.” Juliette crossed her arms and glared at me.

  The beast in my stomach growled, and I felt my hackles rise. My vision dimmed for a few seconds and I had to force a few gulps of air into my lungs before I spoke.

  “I know about the bombs,” I said at last.

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “There is a fleet of Nebula Gammon ships one solar system over. They intend to invade Queen’s Hat as soon as all the district’s security stations are bombed. The men and women loyal to the Baccala’s and the other corrupt parliament members will not be on site, but there are apparently other parliament members conducting surprise visits to all the centers tomorrow morning.”

  “How did you find this out?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Byron told me. Kind of.”

  “There are explosives at my station?” she asked. “Who planted them?”

  “Byron’s men. He didn’t think he could refuse Huyan Kar or Baccala, so he went alon
g with the plan.”

  “Will he testify against Kar and Baccala?” she asked, and she had a bit of a hard time hiding her excitement.

  “Kar is dead. Byron shot him in the head, and the Baccala couple are going to be dead as soon as you, Z, Eve, and I figure out how to disarm the bombs in this district and all the other ones.”

  “Who is going to kill th--”

  “I am,” I growled. “Unless you want to skip the trial and administer justice for them like you did for the men over there.” I pointed to the corpses on the far side of the warehouse.

  The woman and I stared at each other for a few moments, and I could tell she was puzzling out a reply. I was about to tell her that she needed to hurry the fuck up and trust me, but she spoke.

  “If you are telling the truth, I have a much bigger problem than the Baccala’s,” she said at last.

  “Yeah. A few thousand people are going to die, and that’s before Nebula Gammon shows up with their fleet.”

  “Fuck,” she said as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have to get these girls somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t think there is anywhere safe on this entire station until we stop Nebula Gammon,” I said. “Huyan Kar’s men know the girls are here, but he’s dead now, and I’m sure a lot of them will be waiting for the invasion.”

  “Wait here,” Juliette asked me, and then she ran back toward the office.

  I heard her whisper to the girls to stay in the room, lock the door, and wait for her to return. Then she told them that if she didn’t come back in two days, report to the security station. The girls agreed with concerned voices, and then Juliette returned to me.

  “Let’s go,” she said as she gestured out of the warehouse.

  “You need to release my friend,” I said as we ran onto the street.

  “I need to stop these bombs, and I can’t trust anyone at my station.”

  “My friend will help. Please trust me.” I was tired of trying to convince Juliette that I wasn’t a scumbag.