“Rise, warrior. There are more battles to fight. As long as we have breath, we will defend those who need us. It is the promise I made to the universe, and the promise you made to me.” I didn’t know if she said the words aloud or in my mind, but it didn’t matter. I heard them, and I rolled my head off her lap so I could push my aching body upright.
Damn, did I ache. Every muscle felt as if I had ripped it into pieces. Every joint felt as if I had arthritis. Every millimeter of my skin felt as if it was recovering from a second degree burn. My eyelids felt like sandpaper, and they tore across my dry eyeballs every time I blinked. My brain felt as if I hadn’t slept in two weeks, and a migraine pulsed through my temples.
“I will help you walk,” Eve said as she slid her shoulders under my right arm. I was too tired to be prideful, and I let her support me as we walked down the darkened streets of the station.
“How much longer until the bombs?” I whispered. My head rolled back on my shoulders, and I caught a glimpse of the two drones who accompanied Byron and me into District H.
“Not long, maybe fifteen minutes. I heard your words across the transponder, and I knew you were in danger. I left Z and Juliette so I could come rescue you.”
“My heroine,” I said with a dry chuckle.
“You would do the same for me,” she said with a smile.
“A thousand times,” I said. “Hold on.” A wave of dizziness assaulted me, the muscles in my neck relaxed. My head slumped forward, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
“Adam. Adam. Adam,” Eve called my name, and I opened my eyes again. She was still supporting me, but we had somehow almost made it to Juliette’s police station.
“Did you carry me?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” she said with a mysterious smile that showed the points of her fangs.
“Can we talk about Z? I feel as if--”
“No. Not now, my love. I know you want to get it off your chest. There will be time. I already know what is in both of your hearts.”
“But I love you. It’s… I’ve never felt this way about another woman, but then Z and I--”
“Shhh… Later.” Eve looked at me, and she pursed her lips. “Or you will make me mad.”
“Ohhh,” I said with a sigh.
“My love, you should see your face. I am coming to understand a bit more of Z’s sassy humor. That was a joke.” Eve let out a light laugh, and I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.
The swarm of drones floated inside of the lobby, and part of the group followed us down through the hallway and into the waiting elevator. Eve pressed one of the buttons, but I had trouble reading the numbers.
The ride seemed to take forever, or maybe it just felt that way because I was fighting against overwhelming exhaustion. I heard the doors chime open, and Eve pulled my arm over her slender shoulders again. Then I forced my eyelids apart and saw we were in the command center under the security station.
“No. Fucking shit, Pierre! They have planted explosives in your building! You need to find them. They’ve probably put sixteen. That was what they did to mine.” I heard Juliette shouting, and I looked up to the raised platform in the center of the room. She was speaking into a microphone and gesturing wildly in the air. “Half of Parliament has been bought by Nebula Gammon. They are going to invade in less than an hour.” The policewoman paused, and I saw her beckon Eve and me to come up and sit next to her. “I know that because I’ve got the fucking bombs right here you dumb piece of shit. Are you a fucking traitor? I guess you are. No wait, you probably aren’t because you are sitting in the damn building and the bomb is going to go off in fifteen.”
I could hear the muffled voice of the man who Juliette talked to. He sounded outraged and I heard him shouting curse words back at the redhead.
“Hey,” Juliette said. “Here’s an idea. Go poke that ugly head of yours out of your office and walk around the hallways. Just go out for half a minute. You are going to see that almost no one is in the station. Where are they? They know about the bombs and they all fucking left. Go do it. I’ll hold.” Juliette moved her hand over her microphone and then turned to Eve and I. “This is the last one. I’ve talked to all the others. I don’t know how many I’ve convinced. I think two or three will ignore me.”
“That’s where I come in!” I heard Z shout from behind us, and I turned to see the blonde hacker climbing out of a shaft in the ground. She was wearing a skin-tight flight suit, and the lights on the side of her belt were lit. My friend also had a bunch of tools in her belt, and she carried a keyboard on her shoulder. “I think I re-wired the main frame. We should be good to go.”
“Rewired?” I asked, and the word rolled off my tongue like three-year-old molasses.
“Yeah. Like Red said, two or three security stations will probably go. To mitigate the damage, I routed their manual and auto turret controls to this control center.” Z gestured around the room, and on cue, all of the hundred or so terminal monitors turned on.
“Excellent,” Eve said. “Does this mean you two are getting along?”
“Fuck no!” both women said at the same time, but then Juliette raised her hand off the microphone.
“Yeah, Pierre. I told you so. You’ve got ten minutes to find those bombs or get out. Who is the member of Parliament auditing you today?” She paused for a few seconds and then nodded. “Well, she’s obviously not in on it since she’s standing in your office right now. Protect her with your life. We’ll need her help to burn out the rats. I’m gonna go. You can figure out the rest.” Juliette pushed a button on her terminal and then leaned back in her chair. “There isn’t much more we can do until the bombs go off. Then we’ll know what stations we’ve lost and where our blind spots will be in our defenses.”
“Like I said, everything is routed through our mainframe,” Z said with a shrug. “We’ll be fine, even if the other stations get destroyed.”
“I highly doubt we are going to be fine, Blondie,” Juliette said. “I don’t think any of the auto turrets on Queen’s Hat have ever been used. Let alone the manual stations. These guns might not work, even if your little trick does.”
“Yeah, so let’s just sit on our thumbs and fucking spin. That’s your plan?” Z growled up at the other woman.
“No. I’m just saying now’s not the time to be optimistic,” Juliette replied.
“Optimistic? Oh. My. Fucking. Shit. Please, bitch. I’m never optimistic!” Z shouted as she pointed at me. “You can ask Eve and Adam. I’m constantly a downer. I pretty much think we are going to die every other hour.”
“We aren’t going to die. Calm the fuck down. The worst that will happen is we get invaded by Nebula Gammon and become enslaved,” Juliette said.
“Ugh! I can’t talk to you anymore.” Z rolled her eyes and stomped over to one of the nearest terminals to where she exited the floor passage. “I’m going to turn on the auto-defenses and see if they fire up. Did you close down all the harbors?”
“I told you that I did five minutes ago!” Juliette yelled back at Z. “Do you not even listen to me when I talk to you? I can’t believe you can even remember to breathe. Are you a natural blonde? Or do you just dye your hair that color to lower everyone else’s expectations?”
“I am double checking because once I flip these cannons on, they might start shooting anything out there. I did hear you, and yes, this is my natural color. Unlike yours.”
“This is my color, Blondie.”
“Except for all the gray you dye out!”
“I don’t have any gray. You’re so full of--”
“I think they like each other,” Eve whispered to me with a smile while the other two women continued to bicker.
“You are joking with me again.” I half-smiled at the dark beauty, and she smiled in return.
Then the alarm sirens shrieked an urgent scream.
“Looks like Stations C, E, and F are offline!” Juliette groaned after she pounded her fingers across the terminal where she sat. “Tho
se dumb fucks.”
“Or they were traitors,” I said as I tried to focus my vision on the terminal in front of me. The monitor was just displaying an image of empty space, but there was an icon that read Cannon B334.
“I’ve got control of the cannons from C and E, but F’s are offline,” Z called out. “I’m going to see if I can force them to restart.”
“You’ve gotta hurry. They could be here any--”
Juliette gasped and pointed at the large screen at the bottom of the control center. Ships were streaking out of hyperspace as if we were watching them being painted in a video played in reverse.
There were a lot of them.
“Shit,” Z, Juliette, and I said at the same time. I started to count, but I lost track at thirty when they began to angle across space toward us.
“Scanners say forty-five vessels. Six are mini-carrier class. Ten are battleship class. The-- fuck it. There are just too many.”
“But they don’t expect us to fire back,” I said as I felt a surge of energy course through my exhausted body. Nebula Gammon wasn’t fucking around. I guessed that each of the carriers would be filled with at least five hundred soldiers. The battleships would have another two hundred and fifty to three-hundred. They would probably have over seven thousand troops ready to conquer Queen’s Hat. It didn’t sound like enough when I took into account the two million people that were living in the station, but there would be plenty of traitor security members to help the invaders, and all the loyal men and women would have been killed in the explosions.
“They are approaching from the E and F side. Damn it!” Z shouted, and I turned to see her smacking her fingers on her terminal. She had plugged her head into the computer, but I’d seen her work enough to know that she also liked typing.
“Fix it!” Juliette yelled.
“I’m trying. The auto system over there isn’t rebooting. I wonder if these fucks know?”
“They just came out of hyperspace. It is probably dumb luck,” Juliette said. “Can you try again?”
“I’m trying, but I think the system over there got destroyed. E’s is still working and we can take over manual controls here.” Z looked up and then gestured to the room full of terminals. “I’ve set them all for F. You can toggle between them by hitting the selection buttons on your terminal. There are only three of us here though. It might not be enough hands on the guns to help.”
“We’ll do what we can,” I said as I looked away from my friend and back down at my monitor. It now said Cannon F983, and I saw crosshairs on the center of the screen.
“Why aren’t the auto cannons firing?” Juliette asked, and the panic was leaking into her voice a bit.
“Out of range still,” Z said.
“Don’t fire until the auto cannons start,” I said. “We don’t want them to turn tail and run before we’ve had a chance to punish them.”
“Aye, Captain,” both Z and Eve said, but Juliette didn’t reply.
We waited and watched the wall of ships crawl closer on the large screen and our smaller targeting monitor.
I felt a cold sweat drip down my back. My breathing got heavy, and my body begged my adrenaline to let me sleep.
We waited, and then we all gasped when the first salvo of green plasma fire erupted across the screen and smashed into the bow of the lead destroyer class vessel.
“Fire,” I said, and we all squeezed the triggers.
Our shots targeted the lead ship in the armada, and it turned into a lime-green pool of energy when our combined balls of plasma slammed into it. I called for the ship to its right, a mini-carrier from the looks of it, and we all focused our fire in that direction. This ship took fifteen seconds of salvo fire from the massive station cannons, but then it began to melt and fold in on itself like a piece of cheese left in the microwave for too long.
“They are shooting back!” Z shouted out the obvious as the Nebula Gammon fleet launched their own plasma fire. Their shots were a sickly yellow color, and the seemingly endless spray of globes grew larger on my screen.
“Next carrier!” I shouted as I aimed my crosshairs at one of the larger ships to the left of the melting ones. The three women followed my order, but we only got a few seconds of shots before the enemy plasma hit us.
“My gun is down!” I gasped when my screen went dark.
“Mine too!” Juliette shouted from her terminal.
“Toggle it with the switch!” Z called out. “There should be others that are working.”
“Got it,” I said after I flipped the screen through a few more slots. The third pick gave me another gun, and I started shooting again.
The third vessel we targeted seemed to lose its floating buoyancy. The nose of the massive carrier pointed downward away from us, and then it erupted in a froth of green lava. The yellow plasma shots from the rest of the fleet hadn’t stopped though, and my gun went down a few moments later.
“Shit!” I growled as I toggled over to the next gun. There was still automatic fire from Districts G and E, but the plasma fire from those locations didn’t look to be coordinated on one target in the enemy fleet. It was as if each of the guns picked their own target. We were going to need some focus fire to eliminate Nebula Gammon’s offense.
“Switching guns,” Eve said calmly from her station next to me. Then mine went out.
“Z, the auto turrets aren’t focusing fire,” I yelled over my shoulder.
“I know!”
“Can you reprogram them?”
“You want me doing that or manually shooting? It might take me thirty minutes to fix it, and we are losing our guns way faster than these fucks are losing ships!”
“Damn it!” I growled as another salvo of enemy fire took out the gun I was controlling. We had eliminated another battleship, but we really needed eighty more people sitting in each of these terminals manning the guns. If we could focus fire, Nebula Gammon’s fleet would have been decimated by now.
“Switching guns, how many more are online?” Juliette shouted at Z.
“Uhhh. Twenty heavies and forty-seven lights. At this rate, they’ll take out all the cannons on District F in another four minutes.”
“Shoot at the next mini-carrier on the left!” I ordered, and a stream of plasma balls came from my screen and drifted toward the next large vessel.
“They are launching drones!” Z shouted, and the big display up top showed hundreds of mini fighters pouring out of each armada ship. The screen was filled with them, and my heart sunk into my stomach.
“Does Queen’s Hat have drones?” I asked as the tidal wave of flying robots flew toward us. Each of my shots was destroying them, but it was like trying to annihilate drywall with a thin screwdriver.
“Used to have a few thousand,” Juliette said with a sigh. “They were looted and sold on the black market when Nebula Gamma was first kicked out. All we have are the cannons.”
“Focus on the main ships!” a new voice shouted through the command center. We spun around with surprise and saw one of the twin blonde women sitting down at terminals near us. “If they are destroyed, the drones will stop.”
“About time you ladies showed up,” Z said with a chuckle.
“I will try and reprogram the auto cannons to focus fire,” one of the women said as she passed the terminals and descended into the tunnel where I guessed the mainframe was. “If I can’t do that, I’ll try and spin Queen’s Hat so we can bring more guns to bear.”
“Good idea!” Z shouted. “Thanks!”
“Take out another carrier!” I shouted as I blew a hole in the wall of drones and punched my shots toward the distant vessel. It was apparent that there was someone else on the guns now, and another stream of plasma fire meant this ship only took ten seconds to eliminate. As soon as the carrier began to turn more lava than ship, I noticed a wave of drones stop their flight and start to listlessly drift through space.
“It’s working! Next carrier!” I shouted, but I knew we’d only be able to
take out one more ship before the drones would reach us.
Then they would quickly destroy most of our cannons.
“Switching guns,” Eve said as she pressed the buttons on her terminal.
My own cannon went down, and I toggled to the next one as soon as I could. The panic was keeping me awake, but the pain in my head was growing with each gun Nebula Gammon destroyed. There were still too many ships left, and I didn’t need Z to tell me we were almost out of weapons.
“Carrier down,” I said as another one of the Nebula Gammon ships began to melt. More drones stopped their flight, but then they swarmed the cannons like angry wasps, and I only got a few more shots out before my gun went down.
“Shit!” Juliette shouted, and I heard her slam her hand on the top of her desk. “Fuckers! Damn it!”
“We’ll have to fight them on the streets,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t even know if I could get out of the chair. My legs didn’t want to work, and I didn’t think there was any way I could shift back into my tiger-man shape.
“No. We are done. They’ll have too many--”
Our screens suddenly illuminated, and I saw a new crosshair on my terminal.
Cannons G and E.
“Did that do it?” I heard one of the twins call out from the tunnel in the floor.
“Yes!” the other sister shouted.
“What did she--” I started to say, but my words were interrupted when I saw a torrential stream of plasma fire pour across the screen and slam into one of the distant ships. The vessel almost instantly came apart, but not before it tilted into a neighboring ship.
“All the auto turrets are now run through the manual controls. They will take the targets you aim.”
“Fuck yeah!” Z shouted and another spray of coordinated plasma emerged from the right of my screen, torched a hundred drones, and then drilled a fiery hole into the flank of a battleship.
“Thank you, Paula?” I asked the woman climbing out of the shaft.
“Yes.” She smiled at me and then moved to take the terminal seat next to Z.
“Fire at will then,” I said. There was almost no need to coordinate attacks anymore. The drones were still taking out our cannons, but each time I pulled the trigger for a few seconds, another barrage of plasma melted another ship. Then more drones stopped working, they took out fewer guns, and it soon felt as if we were hitting them harder than they were hitting us.
Zeta Hack: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 3) Page 26