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

by Michael-Scott Earle

  The commander’s voice had ordered the squads to separate, but that didn’t mean there still weren’t men down guarding this door. I would have to push through them. I was going to have to kill them if I wanted to escape this trap.

  I was going to have to change.

  “Don’t scream. I won’t hurt you,” I told the hacker.

  “Huh?” I was surprised at how well she handled herself up till this point, but my words had the adverse effect than what I intended. She took a step away from me and teetered on the edge of the elevator car.

  “I’m going to change my appearance so we can get out of here. I’m going to look different, but it is still me. Understand?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Do you want to live? Just don’t freak out when I change. I’ll try to get us out of here. I need the strength and speed.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I tasted the blood of the dead men on the air. I felt the gravitational release of the lowering elevator. I heard the girl’s panicked heartbeat from the other side of the roof where we hid. The universe seemed to spin around me like all of the galaxies circling each other with their solar systems. Their suns. Their planets.

  Rage filled me. The animal tore loose from my stomach and filled my soul. The power of it took every cell in my body and made it better. Stronger. My spine popped and grew new discs as the old ones exploded. I felt my new bulk push against my pant legs, the boots around my feet, and the jacket around my shoulders. The clothes were all a few sizes too large for my human frame, but they were almost too small for my changed body. I yanked the now-too-tight hat off of my head and tossed it to the roof of the elevator. I wanted to rip free of the rest of my clothes and kill everything around me until my world was red and screaming.

  The hunter was my name. I killed to live.

  “Holy shi--”

  “Stop,” I growled at her as I opened my eyes. The world was a few shades yellower, but at the same time, it was brighter. The agony of my transformation still echoed through my skeleton and muscles, but I was more than used to it by now.

  I welcomed it.

  The door dinged, and I waited for it to open before I poked my head down below. If there were more armed men downstairs, seeing their dead friends would probably give me a reaction.

  “Fuck! They--”

  I didn’t wait for the rest of the man’s words. I dove headfirst through the doorway into the elevator. As soon as my torso cleared the hole, I spread out my legs so that my feet caught the edge of the roof. Had I been human, the motion would have been impossible, but now every part of me was filled with strength. My boots hooked against the roof without any sort of pain, and I hung upside down from the shaft with my gun pointed out of the door.

  My rifle was still set to full-auto, and the first wave of bullets slammed into two armored men closest to the opened elevator. They lowered their guns when they saw the carnage wrought to their friends, and they hadn’t considered that a hunter was so near.

  It was the last mistake they would ever make.

  I moved my holosight’s red dot to the next pair of targets. Screams of surprise and the sounds of my rifle bullet casings splattering onto the bloody pool beneath me filled my ears. These two men died as the first did, and I savored the warm sensation of joy their deaths brought to me.

  Even as it made me angrier.

  I pointed my sight down toward the end of the distant garage. There were four black armored vans there, and another group of armed men were guarding the vehicles. They were about one hundred and twenty meters away, but the soldiers had heard the gunfire and were now moving in my direction.

  I fell from my hanging spot and managed to twist in mid-air so I landed feet first. One of the dead men at my feet had a cylindrical smoke grenade tied to his armored vest, and I crouched down so that I could yank it free with my left hand. Half a moment later it was rolling out of the elevator door leaking smoke, and I was exchanging the mostly spent magazine on my rifle for a fresh one I had grabbed from another body.

  “Shoot in the eleva--” one of the men started to shout as I sprinted out of the body filled room.

  The smoke had only begun to permeate the air of the parking garage, and I would have preferred more of a visual cover before I tried to escape, but I wouldn’t live for much longer standing in the confined space, so I had to force an exit. My hope was that the men wouldn’t notice me dashing through the small amount of smoke already out. Or, if they did notice me, they would have a harder time shooting me because I was moving so fast.

  Two of the four men did see me as I darted past. They cried out a word of warning and pivoted their rifles to try and get a bead on me. I was too fast, though, and I sprinted the long open distance between their vans and the smoke before they could get a shot off.

  The backs of two of the vans were open, and I pointed my rifle inside of the first one when I ran past. As I expected, there was a drone control panel and a pair of pilots inside. The men pivoted in their chairs as I fired, but my bullets tore through their unarmored bodies as if they were made of warm gelatin.

  The next opened van also held a pair of pilots inside. They were a little more prepared than the men I had just killed, and they were both reaching for their sidearms. Neither of them were able to draw their weapons before my bullets reduced their lives to red splats across the display monitors.

  Each of those screens had bent robot legs on the edges of the video feeds, and I guessed these two men were piloting spider-tank drones. A crazy idea came to my animal mind, and I set my mental fangs to chew on it while I figured out how to kill the other four men I had just ran past.

  I poked my head out from around the edge of the armored van to gauge the battlefield. The smoke filled the concrete garage a fair amount now, and I saw the shapes of the four men as they moved to the edge of the smoke. The garage was about half filled with expensive looking automobiles, so there were plenty of places for them to take cover.

  I debated my options for a few seconds while my opponents took their positions. If I only had to worry about myself, I would jump into one of these vans, and drive it into one of the hundred of slum zones before ditching it. They would have a hard time following me because I had just killed their pilots, and I would be able to escape into the neon city again.

  But I had made a promise to Z, and I didn’t go back on my word.

  One of the men to my right made a signal with his hand, and the other three advanced to the next set of cars while he kept his rifle pointed in my direction. I toggled my own gun to single-fire mode and aimed my holosight at his helmet. We both fired at the same time, but we were still a good eighty meters away, and we each missed. His bullet bounced off the armor of the van, and mine ripped through the luxury sports car he was taking cover behind.

  The other three men fired a half a second after their friend, but the van deflected all of the bullets. I bobbed out with my chest as if I was going to take a shot, pulled back inside when they fired against the side of the van, and then jumped out to sprint behind the other van. The men hadn’t expected my movement, and their next volleys missed me.

  I slid under the other van and went to a prone position. I saw their boots under the cars in the distance, and I lined up the dot on my holosight. One of the men’s feet disappeared when the bullet hit him, and he fell screaming to the concrete. My next shot took him in the neck, and the man’s cries turned into a bloody gurgle.

  Three left, but I was running out of time.

  I jumped to my feet and sprinted back toward the van I had just been inside. This time I didn’t enter the back hatch, I just ran around the far side and poked my head out of the front "A" pillar of the vehicle. The first man I shot at was still behind the luxury sports car, and I set my rifle to burst-mode before I squeezed the trigger. I made three quick trigger pulls that sent the bullets into the vehicle. I didn’t know exactly how many got to the other side, but the man made a short scream after the second burst, and
he stopped screaming after my final spray.

  Two more.

  The smoke started to fill the entire garage, and I considered my options. Staying behind the vans was probably the safest bet because I had armored cover. It would mean the battle would probably take longer, though, and I didn’t know how long it would be until the other squads decided to return. I still needed to run back to get Z out of the elevator, and the other side of the parking garage seemed very far away now.

  My other option was to jump into the smoke and try to maneuver around behind the two gunmen. It was risky and might end up with me getting pinched between the returning squads, but I wasn’t going to get out of here without making some risky moves. I took this choice and dashed into the thick roll of smoke coming from my grenade.

  “He ran into the smoke!” one of the guards said from their position before they fired off a burst in my direction. The trio of shots wasn’t even close to hitting me, but it did give my sensitive ears a good idea of where the men were positioned and I crept through the thick mist behind them.

  “Shut up! Listen for his--” one of the men hissed at the other, but I had moved quicker than they had expected, and I could make out the rough shape of their bodies four meters past the nearest car. I fixed my holosight on them and then pumped two bursts into each of their bodies.

  My magazine was nearly empty, so I thumbed the release next to the trigger and replaced it with a fresh clip, and then I grabbed three more off their bodies, along with a pair of smoke and defensive grenades. I listened for a few seconds for the sound of approaching military boots before I ran back toward the elevator.

  The door was closed, and I growled under my breath. Z was probably still above the car, and the wall didn’t have a display that showed me which floor it was on. Or, it did have a display, but bullets had destroyed it.

  “Hey!” I heard a voice hiss at me.

  I turned to my right and saw that the blonde woman was hiding behind a car in the corner of the garage twenty-five meters from me. I trotted over to her and then gestured through the smoke of the grenade.

  “We are going to take a van and get out of here. Can you pilot a drone?” I asked.

  “Are you going to eat me?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

  “No. We need to get out of here.” I yanked on her arm, and half dragged, half carried her through the smoke.

  “Here,” I said as I pushed her into the back of the van I thought had the spider drone pilots.

  “Oh, you said ‘pilot a drone.’ It was hard to understand you. Yeah. I can do that. I’m not as good at it as I am at hacking but--”

  “Keep them off of us so I can get us out of here,” I said as I yanked the two bodies out of their chairs and tossed them onto the concrete. As soon as they were removed from inside, I closed the hatch behind us and gestured for her to sit down at one of the control terminals.

  There was a door on the other side of the van, and I squeezed my broad tiger-striped shoulders through the opening. Then I wiggled into the driver’s seat. The ’start’ button for the van glowed a bright green color, and I pushed my furry thumb over it to bring the engine to life.

  Nothing.

  “Shit!” I shouted as I punched the steering wheel. Maybe one of the other vans would work? The clock was ticking, and the rest of the guards would be here any second. I still had a smoke cover, but I wanted to run, not fight. I was more than a little surprised that I was still alive.

  “It has got a security lock!” Z shouted from behind me. “I’m trying to take care of it.”

  “Hurry! They are going to come back any moment,” I thought I said, but the anger and panic were eating into my vocal cords, and my words just came out as a series of growls.

  “Try now!” she shouted again, and I slammed my finger into the green button.

  The lights of the van’s display lit up with an aesthetically pleasing swirl of colors. I sighed with relief and brought my boot down on the acceleration pedal. The van leapt forward like a jumping toad, and I scraped across the side of a thick support column with a sharp tearing sound.

  Then we were moving, and I made the first sharp turn to angle the bulky vehicle up the exit ramp.

  “This drone is on the other side of the garage. Do you want me to cover our--”

  “Yes!” I growled over my shoulder. The ramp was at a sharp angle, and the van’s front end kicked up off of the pavement half a meter when I hit the end of the slope. The axle popped down on the wheels, and the mass of the machine bounced a few times before it felt as if I had full control of the steering again.

  “I just lit up the group of fuckers standing next to the drone. Woooweeeeee! This thing is a beast! Heading to the-- Hey!” she shouted as I took a turn too quick.

  The back wheels of the van broke loose from the road, and I had to counter steer with the front to keep from fishtailing into oncoming traffic. The van popped up on its two left wheels, but I managed to get it back down with a wiggle of the steering wheel.

  “I’m trying to work back here!” Z yelled. “Keep the wheels on the ground!”

  “You do your job, I’ll do mine. Did you get all of them?” I turned the next corner a little slower this time, and saw a ramp that would take me to a highway. I didn’t like the idea of being out from the shelter of the megatowers, but I also wanted to get as much distance from the battleground as quickly as I could. I really only had ten minutes to ditch the van somewhere before Elaka Nota would realize we stole it. Then they would send their drones, or their heavily armed military units.

  “I’m waiting for them to come back to the ground floor. Oh! Here they come.” I thought I heard screams come from the audio feedback from the drone, but it was a bit hard to hear it over the sound of my heartbeat slamming into my ears and the beast screaming in my stomach.

  “I think I got them all. Sixteen total. Had to chase one up the stairs a bit. This drone is ridiculous. Their bullets bounced off of the armor like gnats, and it responds really well to my controls. I’m not even much of a drone pilot.”

  “We are going to get out of here,” I said as I angled the van toward the next off ramp. I had probably put a good five kilometers between the mall and our position, and I wanted to get rid of the van before Elaka Nota got their aerial drones following us.

  The off-ramp led us to another crowded part of the city, and the traffic was denser than I expected. I turned into the first parking garage, drove in through the exit so that I didn’t have to bother with the toll, ripped holes in all the tires when I ran over the spikes, and then parked it in the first available spot on the lowest floor.

  I let out a long sigh as soon as I turned off the engine, and I closed my eyes to calm my anger. It battled with me for a few moments, but I hadn’t been in this tiger form for very long, and my red hot emotions slowly soothed to a swirling blue haze. I was visualizing the beaches and oceans of Earth. I have never seen them in person, but I’d spent plenty of time looking at them on video feeds. Plenty of other planets had oceans, but there was something about the videos from Earth that always made me relax. Something deep in my DNA must have known it was home. Both the human and the tiger parts.

  “Hey, you okay? Are you dead?” Z was shaking my shoulder, and I opened my eyes.

  “I’m all right.” I yawned into my fist and sat up in the driver seat. My body screamed at me to sleep, and I knew we were going to have to get into a taxi as soon as possible or I would pass out on the street. I hadn’t been in my half-tiger form for that many minutes, but the change back kicked my ass. I now had to fight another battle to keep my eyes open. It was a battle I would lose in fifteen minutes, so we needed to get back to the hotel.

  “Can you change from a human to a tiger-man to a human again all the time? Who are you?” she asked. There was no longer terror in her blue eyes. In fact, she seemed to be generally concerned about me.

  “It doesn’t matter for now. I need you to meet someone, let’s go.�
� I opened the door to the van, helped the young woman get out, and led her to the nearest stairwell.

  “What about your rifle?” she asked when we started climbing the stairs.

  “It will draw too much attention on the streets. They might also have a tracker on the weapon. I doubt it, but I have another rifle. We just need to get a taxi, then another, then try to get back to my friend.”

  “Who is your friend? Is she another scary tiger-person like you?” Z asked, and I could hear the fear in her words again.

  “No. She is much scarier than me.”

  Chapter 10

  “Hello, Z. I am Eve,” the beautiful vampire said as soon as she opened the door to our hotel room.

  “How did you know my name?” the blonde hacker asked suspiciously.

  “I know things. Please come in. I am happy Adam has brought you.”

  “Yeah. I’m not. Well, I’m glad to be alive, but my-- shit! Is that live?” Z asked as she pointed to the video screen on the other side of the hotel room. It was a newsfeed, and it had all three of our pictures displayed on the screen. There were no names under the images, but a video feed from the mall suddenly began to play, and it showed us running from the armed men. It didn’t show what happened in the back hallways, and I wondered if there weren’t cameras back there.

  “Yes. It just began to play. I’m happy you both made it here in time. We will have to be careful leaving the hotel now.”

  “We? Listen, I don’t want any part of whatever terrorist bullshit you two have planned. My life was totally fine before I started working for you, and now it’s fucked from both sides.”

  “You caused the mess. You said you could get into Elaka Nota’s databases without a trace. You didn’t, and now you’ve compromised our plan to escape,” I told the hacker with a sigh. “You are stuck with us now, if you want to live, that is.”

  “I didn’t fuck up, though. I don’t mess up. I’m the best--” the blonde woman began, but Eve interrupted her with a small wave of her hand.

  “No. You didn’t make a mistake. I think you know what happened,” the raven-haired woman said as she crossed her arms.