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

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “I’m not sure I like the plan,” Juliette said as she looked back to me, “but if I went with you, I wouldn’t be able to do the last part until we got back.”

  “That will take too long. This is the best solution. Thanks for the help, Byron,” I said to the gangster, and he bowed his head a bit.

  Juliette pointed down the hallway. “Let’s get us some beefier weapons.”

  We followed the police commander down the hall, then made a right at the doorway where we had originally found the crooked cop with the first bomb. Then it was down another empty hallway to a steel door locked with a keypad. Juliette’s fingers danced across the numbers, and the door popped open with a hiss.

  It was a damn fine armory.

  There were boxes filled with stun batons, shelves stacked with riot shields and helmets, drawers filled with armor, and each of the four walls were covered with rifles, shotguns, pistols, and various taser weapons.

  “Take what you want,” Juliette said as she reached for a molded armor chest piece.

  I grabbed the largest suit of heavy armor I could find, but the chest piece was almost too small for me. Eve had already slipped into a suit, so she helped me attach the latches of the torso armor, leggings, shoulder pads, arms, and shin guards. We even found a pair of boots that my furry tiger feet were able to fit into. They were somehow a perfect fit, and I guessed from their dusty condition that they must have sat unused in the armory for many years.

  Byron was also putting on armor, but he just went with a vest piece and a riot helmet. He shot me a crooked smile when he finished strapping on the chin piece of his helmet, and then we stepped toward the wall of weapons.

  “I’ll take this,” I growled as I lifted the meanest shotgun I could see off the wall hanger.

  It was about the same size as the one I left on Persephone, but this weapon had two magazines attached to the bottom. It was meant to be loaded with two different types of ammo, probably riot bullets or sandbags, and then the user could toggle between them with the selector button I saw above the magazine release switches.

  I grabbed eight magazines and moved to the ammo section of the armory. Most of the bullets there were for riot purposes, but I found some crates of buckshot and aerodynamic solid-slug. I loaded up the eight magazines equally, popped two into the bottom of the shotgun, and then put the rest in the pouches of an ammo harness I found. Then I holstered the two pistols on the harness and put their extra magazines in the rest of the spare pouches.

  “I’m ready,” I said to my companions.

  Juliette was done loading up her rifle, and she was helping Eve put extra magazines in her belt. Somewhere along the way, my friend must have ducked into a bathroom. The spots where her tight-fitting suit showed under her armor were still covered in blood, but her face was now clean.

  Byron slammed a magazine into his own rifle and then pointed to a stack of boxes in the corner. They were grenades.

  “Might we have a bit of those bangers?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I tried to laugh, but it came out like a growl.

  “Eh, smokers. Better than nothing,” he said as he picked up two.

  “Here are some defensive ones,” I said as I passed him two more.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Less shrapnel, more concussive,” I explained as I attached three of the smokes and three of the defensive grenades to my harness.

  “Good enough for me, Mate. There might not be anyone waiting for us, but it never hurts to bring gifts.”

  “You said you know where you are going?” Juliette asked Byron as she set her rifle on her shoulder.

  “Yeah. I’m gonna take Triumphant up to the border. There’s a side passage I know that goes in through the sewers, but if you’ve got a key card it will--”

  Juliette interrupted the bald gangster by holding up a piece of plastic. The android went to grab it, but she jerked it away from him and held it out to me.

  “Then what?” she asked him after I took the card.

  “Continue on Triumphant for two kilometers or so, then make a left on Marrion. Then a right on… Elizabeth? Is that the one? Has an old Nebula Gammon radio station on the corner?”

  “That’s it,” she said. “Station will be on the left. You want to access the command center. It will be on the bottom floor, just like this station. You’ll look for a firewall bypass. Someone must have switched it on. If you need help, use the transponder, and I’ll try to give you directions once you are in there.”

  “Got it,” I said as I turned to Byron. The man nodded at me, and then he moved out of the armory.

  “Be careful,” I said to Eve before I turned to follow the gangster android.

  “You as well.” She smiled at me, and the weapon filled room seemed to brighten a few shades.

  Then I ran after the android and out of the police station.

  Chapter 18

  “Here’s the door, Mate!” Byron said after we’d run through the streets of District B for ten minutes. It was still early in the morning, and we’d only passed three people walking on the cobblestones. They took one look at me in my tiger-man form, and ducked into the nearest alley.

  “Where do I put the key?” I asked as soon as we reached the massive bulkhead. Unlike the graffiti covered door to District H that I saw in District E, this door was painted with a beautiful mural of a mermaid on a beach.

  There was a pair of drones from the swarm floating above our heads, and a red laser emerged from one. The red pointer fell on the wall where I originally thought there was just a crack in the brick, and I pushed the plastic card in. Then the bricks lit up with a pair of kanji symbols. I could read the writing well enough, and I pressed the symbol for “up.”

  The massive door shuddered, groaned, and then began to lift on ancient hydraulics. As soon as it was a meter off the ground, the android and I rolled under it and continued our run. The two drones followed us, and I wondered which twin was piloting them.

  “This place used to be nice. I don’t understand why they didn’t re-occupy it after Nebula Gammon was kicked out,” the android said. He wasn’t breathing heavily from our run, so I picked up the pace a bit.

  “They’d probably have to remove all the signage and demolish some of the buildings,” I growled as I pointed at one of the passing structures that said Nebula Gammon Corporate Apartment Building #1. It was getting hard to talk because I had been in my shifted tiger-man form for too long. I could feel the rage bubbling in my stomach.

  “We’ll turn up here, Mate,” he said at the next dark corner. It would have been impossible for me to see anything here with normal human eyes, but my cat eyes were far superior now, and I could make out a distant glow in the streets ahead. It provided enough light to guide my feet down the smooth streets.

  “Stop,” I commanded after another minute of running. I had heard something up ahead of us, and I motioned for the android to duck behind an alleyway corner with me.

  “Buggers. I see them,” he said after a moment. There were four men carrying rifles up on the corner of the next street. They were backlit by something, and I guessed it was the central security station.

  “I’ll work around up this way,” I growled as I pointed back into the alley. “You go around the other side of the street. I’ll try to take them out with my clawwwws so it is quiet, but if I can’t, you’ll nnnneeeeeed to take a shot.”

  “Sure, Mate. You okay? Sounding kind of more cat than man since we got into District H.”

  “I’m fine,” I hissed. Then I moved back into the alley and tried to push up past the four men’s position.

  The scent of the men helped me keep tabs on my position as I snuck through the dark alley, and I ended up coming out exactly where I wanted on the main street. The group of men were now pinched between Byron and me, and I could approach from the darker side of the street.

  I darted across the lanes so I was on the same side of the street as them. I knew that I made a little noise wh
en I ran in my boots, but I didn’t think the other men heard me. One of them did look over from his conversation, but I’d made my crossing where the street was dark, and the man just shrugged and then turned back to his companions’ discussion.

  “What you gonna do with your credits?” one of the men asked.

  “I’m going to get a bunch of Pow-Pow and buy some girls from District C. Some of the olive-skinned ones that will do anything for a bit of R-credit. Know what I mean?”

  The other men laughed, and then they all spoke at once about their plans. Their excited voices were a perfect cover for my own movements, and I managed to get into the shadow of an abandoned building five meters away without any of the four noticing my presence. I looked to my left and saw the front of the central security station. Light poured from the front windows and into the dark street like a glass of spilled milk, but I didn’t see any other men patrolling inside the lobby.

  I also didn’t see Byron on the other side of the four assholes, but I was only going to need him if something went wrong. I took a few quick breaths, moved the strap of my shotgun so the weapon hung against my back, and then sprang out from behind cover with my claws extended from my fingers.

  I made it to the group before any of them noticed me, and I ended the closest one with a slash across his throat. The other three men gasped when their faces were sprayed with the man’s blood, and the second one died when my claws ripped his head from his shoulders.

  “What the--” the third man started to say, but I grabbed his throat with my left hand and then shoved my pointer and middle fingers into the eye sockets of the last one. My claws found his brain and his dying body spasmed as he tumbled to the road. I jerked my left arm back and snapped the neck of the third man, and then I cast his body aside like a broken toy.

  “Oi! You’re one mean bugger, aren’t ya, Mate?” Byron said as he stepped from the shadows.

  “Yesssss,” I hissed as I fought against the roar that was trying to escape my throat. It must have been thirty minutes now, and I didn’t know how much longer I could stay in this form without losing myself. I wanted to keep running. To keep killing.

  “You got a human tongue in there? Or a big old tiger one?” Byron asked as he tried to peer into my mouth. I growled at him and then pointed to the front of the station.

  “Looks like a tiger one. I bet all the ladies love it when you--”

  “Let’s ggggggooo,” I said as I brought my shotgun out from behind my back and stepped up to the front door of the station. The door swung open with my foot, and I swept the lobby to make sure I wasn’t missing anyone hiding behind the corners. Even though the lights were on, all of the various waiting room chairs and tables were turned over, and it was obvious this place hadn’t been visited in dozens of years.

  Byron let out a soft whistle, and I turned to see the armored man nod to the door. I moved to kneel near the side of the door that would open. I heard conversation and footsteps approaching and figured the men on the other side didn’t know we were waiting here.

  I nodded to Byron, he pushed open the door, and my shotgun barked twice as it sent buckshot into the unarmored bodies of the suited men. My attack caught them completely by surprise, and it looked as if they had been walking toward the lobby as they spoke to each other.

  “Now they know we are here, Mate,” Byron said with a shrug.

  “Good,” I growled. “They will be afraid.”

  “Hey, that’s a real positive attitude you’ve got,” he said as he followed me into the hallway. I heard shouting coming from one of the side hallways, and I twisted my shotgun around the corner and fired my weapon without even bothering to aim. The choke on my gun wasn’t especially wide, but the men were a good twenty meters away, and my buckshot tagged two of the four men who were trying to move for cover.

  I squeezed the trigger twice more and sprayed the cubicles the men were trying to hide behind. I guessed that I’d hit another one of the men where he hid, but my pellets weren’t penetrating the metal where the other two were. I toggled the gun over to slugs, and then fired four of them into the terminals. The men screamed, and I saw plenty of blood splatter against the far walls.

  If they weren’t dead, I’d done enough damage to make them wish they were.

  “You’re quite good with that boomstick, eh?” Byron asked as I swung back into the main hallway.

  “I’m ggggood at killinggg people.”

  “Yeah, Mate. I can tell. Made a good call hiring you, I did. Although, it wasn’t really me. Kasta’s sweet on you. Paula is too, but she’s all shy about saying that stuff.”

  “Keep movinggg,” I growled as I jogged down toward the end of the hallway. The pair of drones were kind of in my way, but they floated above me as I ran through their position.

  I reached the stairs and heard the elevator ding next to me. I toggled my weapon back to buckshot and then kneeled down as low as I could get without going prone. Byron followed my example, and we both opened fire as soon as the double metal doors opened.

  There were six men inside with their pistols drawn, but our bullets tore through them as if they were made of paper. Only one of them had time to scream, but it was the anguished sound of someone who knew he was about to die.

  “There can’t be much more of them, eh?” Byron asked as he gestured to the blood-soaked elevator.

  “Stairs,” I said as I reloaded both of my shotgun magazines. Then I moved to the door next to the elevator and propped it open with a massive boot.

  The stairwell was clear, but I still waited a few seconds for anyone below me to poke their head out. There was either no one there, or no one brave enough to lean out and shoot up through the stairwell center, so I continued down the steps.

  “So, anyways, Mate. We’d like to come with you when you leave Queen’s Hat,” Byron whispered.

  “Why?” I growled as I leaned over the side again with my shotgun.

  “Like sis said, nothing for us here. We put the dead in Huyan Kar. So there isn’t much else to do.”

  “There are otherrr people who need help. Don’t you have a lot of money from your illegal operrrrrrations? You could help them here.”

  “Yeah, Mate, but there are also some bad memories here. You get it, eh? We’ve never been off Queen’s Hat. Would be nice to walk on a planet, or see another star system. Maybe we can settle somewhere else one day. I can open up a gambling hall or a race track on some backwater planet and live like an emperor!”

  “What about your sssisterrrrr?”

  “They want to go, with you preferably. As I said, they are sweet on--”

  “No. The one who wassss kiddddddnapped.” There was one more level to go, and I had my sights set on the door where I expected a bunch of armed men to flood out of it and begin shooting up at us.

  “Mate, she’s not coming back. She’s lost to the stars. Just like all of humanity. We are drifting forever. Lost explorers who have forgotten our home.” I was surprised by the sudden sadness in the gangster android’s voice, and I turned to look at him. His face was contorted in an expression so agonizingly human, it made me wonder if I imagined him really being a machine.

  “But if she does?”

  “She won’t. Please, Mate. Let us come with you. We’ll pay our way. I’m a fucking scumbag. A real piece of shit, ya know? But they are wonderful. They will be safe with you.”

  “I’ll thinkkkk about it. Weeee neeeeed to gggget out of this first,” I said as we reached the door leading to the security control center. Damn. It was getting really hard to talk, and the android’s conversation was making me unreasonably angry.

  “Got it, Mate. I’ll get the door,” he moved to the hunk of steel and grabbed the handle. I nodded at the bald android, and he kicked it open as I swung around the corner with my shotgun ready.

  I got a single shot off before I had to duck back around the corner. The door, metal rails, and brick steps of the stairwell opposite the door were suddenly filled with a rain of hot b
ullets. The group of men in the command center were stationed behind a mobile police barrier, and I’d missed hitting any of them with my shotgun blast.

  “How many?” Byron shouted over the spray of bullets that came through the door between us.

  “More than twwwwwweeeenty!” I growled as I grabbed a defensive grenade from my belt. It appeared as if they had a light machine gun mounted to the top of the barrier, and we weren’t going to be able to make any progress unless we got rid of it.

  There was a gap in the stream of bullets, and I tossed the grenade through the door toward the barrier. It wasn’t the best of throws, but the men shouted when the small explosive bounced toward them. As soon as it went off, I pulled out a smoke grenade and tossed it in afterward. Byron mirrored my movement with one of his own smoke grenades, and the men in the control center started to shout.

  Byron moved to run in the door, but I pushed him back a moment before another stream of machine gun fire poured through the door between us. The android’s eyes opened wide with surprise, and I held up the palm of my furry hand to command him to wait.

  Then the stream of machine gun fire stopped, and I pointed before I dove through the smoky door.

  The command center was filled with gray soup, and I immediately dove to the left to hide behind some of the terminals I had glimpsed there. The smoke was hurting my sensitive nose and eyes, but I could get an understanding of where the enemies were because of my sensitive ears. I didn’t want to risk shooting them until I got behind the machine gun barrier, so I started to crawl in that direction.

  I heard some non- machine gunshots, but I didn’t know if they were coming from Byron’s rifle or one of the enemy guns. Then a few bullets smashed into the terminals above me, and I forced my body to lie still for a few moments.

  “Oi! You sassy buggers! I can smell the shit in your diapers!” Byron shouted. It sounded like he was on the other side of the command center, and I heard a bunch of guns retort around me.