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

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  End Notes

  A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure

  Michael-Scott Earle

  Chapter 1

  “Queen’s Hat, this is Persephone. Requesting permission to dock,” Z said as soon as we exited hyperspace in System 879.

  “Roger that, Persephone. I don’t see any corporate or military branding tags on your ID feed. What is the purpose of your visit?” a woman’s nasally voice replied over our bridge.

  “We’ve got some rhodium to trade. Looking to stock up on food and take on some crew. Heard you were the station to go to.” The blonde hacker looked at me and shrugged. Z’s cheeks had sunk into her face, and dark circles shone under her eyes. Her eyelids looked almost too heavy for her to lift, and I prayed that the control tower would let us dock without too much hassle.

  Seventeen days was a long time to go without food.

  “Sounds good, Persephone. If you are looking to trade rhodium, there is no docking fee, but the harbor clerk will inspect your wares as soon as you exit onto our platform. We’ve got a no firearms policy in the station. If we catch a gun on you, we’ll throw you in prison for a few weeks. If you kill anyone on the station, we’ll throw you out the airlock. I’m forwarding you the bylaws attachment. There are more details of our policies in there.”

  “I got you, Queen’s Hat. We’re not looking for trouble, just a bite to eat, mixed food supplies for our ship, and a few extra crew members. Will the harbor clerk give us directions for obtaining those things?”

  “Affirmative, Persephone. Head to dock 458-B. Set your autopilot to bearing 0.23 and 234.45,” the woman said.

  “Roger that, Queen’s Hat. Thanks for the welcome,” Z replied as she tapped her fingers on the controls.

  “Clerk will meet you on the platform for paperwork. Thanks for coming by. Ending communication,” the woman said before she cut the transmission.

  “Thank the stars,” Z said as she leaned back in the plush pilot’s chair. “I half expected them to say, ‘Elaka Nota’s entire armada is on your ass, you’ve got a vampire woman on board who knows their plans to take over the galaxy, and your ship is a sentient being put together with alien technology that even they don’t understand.’” The blonde woman rubbed the bridge of her nose and let out a sigh. “Where is Eve anyways? I thought she’d want to--”

  “I am here,” the beautiful woman said as she walked past me. Even though the three of us had spent the last seventeen days doing nothing else but lying around and talking to each other, my heart still raced whenever I saw her. “I wanted to observe the hyperdrives when they disengaged.”

  “Ahh,” Z said with a nod. “Notice anything strange about them? Also, you aren’t going to wear your street clothes?”

  “I do not know what to look for with the drives, but I did not feel anything odd about them when they disengaged.” Eve shrugged and then gestured to her tight fighting gray and black flight suit. “I am comfortable in our crew uniform.”

  “Yeah, uhh. Sure.” Z glanced down at her own clothes for a second. We had figured out how to use the clothes washing machines on board and cleaned our street clothes. Both Z and I were wearing the same tight suits that Eve was, but under our jeans and jackets.

  Eve dropped into the copilot’s chair, pointed to the front bridge display, and hummed. “This is quite a large station.”

  Persephone's display highlighted the massive structure with green, and the matching colored text was scrolling down the side of the view screen.

  Metropolis Class Station: Q-987-H-rR345b

  Manufactured by: Nebula Gammon

  Branding: Queen’s Hat Station

  Hyperdrive: Inca Seven model 020201. 4,135 hours to one light year

  Warpdrive: No

  Foldingdrive: No

  Length: 22.5 kilometers

  Minimum Crew: 2,000

  Estimated population: 2.65 million

  Estimated fighter craft: 650

  Estimated drone payload: 2,000

  Heavy plasma cannons: 380

  Light plasma guns: 840

  Laser arrays: 0

  The hat shaped space station was massive. I reasoned it had to be larger than the massive Elaka Nota ship we witnessed destroy Gliese 876-Cii, but I didn’t have the scan report of Elaka Nota’s ship up to compare the sizes. Our position was far enough away so that our destination still looked small on our screen. Persephone's screen lit up with other green outlines of other ships, she estimated there were at least three hundred vessels docked with the massive station, and there could have been more that we couldn’t scan on the other side.

  “Captain, I’ve engaged the autopilot. We’ll dock in three minutes,” Z said as she turned over her shoulder to look at me again. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’ll go aboard, trade our rhodium for whatever the local currency is, go to the nearest restaurant, eat, find some bulk food to buy for our stores and Jatal’s people, hire an engineer to fix Persephone's drives, and then deliver the food.”

  “And hire a pilot and navigator,” Eve said with a smile.

  “And a cook. Fuck me. I’m so hungry all I can think about is food. Yesterday I wasn’t hungry at all.” Z sighed.

  “You’ll feel better after you eat. We can’t go crazy though, your stomach won’t be ready. We’ll get something light to test our stomachs and then--”

  “What do we do about the tracker?” Z said. “We couldn’t find one, what if Elaka Nota finds us again?”

  “We’ll need to move fast,” I said with a sigh. We’d done our best to search every part of Persephone, but we hadn’t found the foldingdrive or anything looking like a tracking beacon that could have transmitted our location to our enemies. I’d asked Eve to see if Persephone would tell us, but the vampire admitted she was only feeling the ship’s emotions, and it was much harder to communicate with her than it had been with the cave worm beings we encountered on Gliese 876-Biv.

  Eve told us other things about the ship. It was information that she had learned when various corporate vice presidents and executives who came to observe the woman’s “treatment.”

  Persephone had been discovered, not built, and they retrofitted her with their latest hyperdrive, warpdrive, weapon technology, military equipment, and crew accommodations because they found a functioning foldingdrive onboard her. Elaka Nota didn’t know who built Persephone, but the discovery of a foldingdrive provided them the opportunity to study the engine with hopes of recreating it.

  Eve didn’t know if they had been successful, but I guessed they had, or they probably wouldn’t have fitted the ship for combat. If Elaka Nota hadn’t built another ship with a foldingdrive, we had stolen the most powerful ship in their entire fleet.

  Along with their most powerful organic weapon: Eve.

  The beautiful woman told us that she was one of Elaka Nota’s first experiments. Eve was a child with unexplained powers, and the corporation had been able to increase her abilities by man
ipulating her DNA and feeding her the lifeblood of sentient creatures. She was being groomed to be their perfect spy. Their perfect assassin. Their perfect agent. What they hadn’t accomplished was to bend her mind to their will. She'd been able to resist their brainwashing.

  Then Eve discovered the scientists who controlled her experiments created other subjects. While less powerful than she, they showed more promise of becoming easier to manage weapons. It was important to Eve that we get a crew, no, a small army, and then hit back at Elaka Nota so the sisters she had never met could be saved.

  “Captain?” I heard Z ask, and her question tugged me away from my thoughts.

  “Sorry. Lost in thought,” I said as I looked at the screen. I saw that we were docked, and the tube from the Queen’s Hat station was extending to connect to Persephone's cargo hold entrance.

  “I asked if you wanted me to lock her down after we leave. I’m presuming the answer is yes, but--”

  “Yeah. Also, I want you both to carry knives and the stun guns on you. Can you check their bylaws to make sure that isn’t against their rules?”

  “Sure,” Z said as she clicked on her terminal buttons. The woman had her skull plugged into the controls of the ship, but I still didn’t quite know how she interfaced with the computers. Sometimes she closed her eyes when she worked and seemed to be able to control the devices without typing, but other times she typed on the keys like someone without interface hardware.

  “They just say firearms. They are rather draconian with their murder laws. If they find out that anyone has killed someone else, even in self-defense, they throw you out the airlock.”

  “We’ll ask when we meet with the harbor clerk. Let’s go,” I said as I stood on wobbly legs. The hunger pains and weakness had come and gone in the last seventeen days. Sometimes I felt as if I possessed endless strength, other times I couldn’t get out of bed. I found sleep nearly impossible because my stomach ached so much. I’d never gone this long without food, and it was more than mildly uncomfortable.

  It had been seventeen days of torture for Z and I. Eve hadn’t seemed bothered by the lack of food, and she told us that she was using her powers to ease her pains. I’d been thankful for her resilience since Z and I had often been too weak to explore the ship in search of the tracking beacon we thought Elaka Nota had put onboard.

  “Do you think they have restaurants that serve steak?” Z asked after we’d taken the elevator down to the hold floor.

  “Yeah. Probably,” I replied.

  “I’m gonna get a two kilogram one. Porterhouse. Grilled rare, with potatoes and asparagus covered in butter. A bottle of wine to wash it down. For dessert? A banana split.” Z smacked her lips together, and her eyes glazed over. “How about you two?”

  “Chicken broth and a green salad,” I said as we walked toward Persephone’s armory.

  “Boringgggggg,” Z moaned.

  “Yeah, but I won’t be puking.”

  “I’m going to keep it all down, trust me. It will be the best meal of my life. Eve?”

  “Fish, if they have it. Or some sort of poultry. I agree with Adam, steak will be too heavy for a first meal. Perhaps once my stomach adjusts.”

  “I’m gonna make both of you jealous when I’m scarfing down half a cow,” Z said as we reached the armory.

  Half a minute later we had hung up our pistols and replaced them with the stun guns. I wore a large knife sheathed on my belt, but the women didn’t, and I asked them to each put a smaller blade on before continuing to Persephone's camera-iris shutter-shaped hold exit.

  Z hit the button to open the large bay door. There was a six-meter long metal hallway beyond, and then another leading into the station. We exited Persephone, and Z closed the hatch behind us by pressing on one of the hidden switches by the side of her ramp.

  “I’m setting the code. It will open if you press here and have a synced transponder on you. Which you both do,” Z said as she motioned for us to watch her press the panel at the end of the ramp. It looked exactly like one of the hundreds of other small metal panels on the starship. “If you don’t have the transponder, you can move your fingers over like so.” She made a wide “m” shape and then joined it together at the bottom with a “V.”

  “Why that shape?” I asked as the doors spun open.

  “It looks like a manta ray, duh,” Z explained as she closed the doors again.

  “Or a heart,” Eve said with a smile. “Perhaps that is fitting because--”

  “Eve! Girl talk! What is wrong with you?” Z gaped at the obsidian-haired woman as she gave me a sideways glance.

  “I was going to explain that it is because Persephone loves us, and we love her.” Eve actually smirked, and it was the first time I had ever seen her use the facial expression.

  “Oh. Uhh. Yeahhhhhh… Let’s go meet the harbor clerk,” the hacker said quickly, and then she stomped down the hallway toward the station’s door without looking at us.

  “Should I have talked to her about--” I began to whisper to Eve, but the vampire shook her head.

  The feelings she has for you are real, but it is not your place to squash them. She knows about our relationship, and it makes her angry that she is jealous. I believe she will work through it, and her love for you will mature into something a sister holds for an older brother. We will give it time.

  I nodded at the red-eyed woman, and we followed Z to the station entrance.

  “Captain, how does this work?” Z asked as we reached the wide closed door. There was an array of buttons and switches she pointed to. The labels were all in Kanji, but they were faded, and I couldn’t read them.

  “I think you need to hit the green button,” I said as I glanced up at the top of the door. There was a red light there, and I guessed that there was some sort of security protocols they had to go through before they just let us into the station.

  Z hit the button, and the light shifted from red to green.

  “Greetings, ahhhh. Persephone? Is that correct?” A male voice asked from the panel next to the door.

  “Yes, that’s us,” Z answered.

  “Good. I’ve got eyes on you up on the ceiling,” he said, and we looked up to see the video camera. “Just the three of you?”

  “That’s correct,” the hacker answered.

  “You know about our firearms and killing policy?” he asked, and Z turned to me as she gestured at her belt.

  “How about stun guns and knives?” I asked.

  “Both are fine, as long as you don’t kill anyone. I’ve got it here that you are trading rhodium. How much do you have?”

  “About eighty grams,” I said as I pulled the plastic bag out.

  “Ehhh. That’s under the amount where we don’t charge a docking fee, but I’ll let you slide this time.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You are welcome. Anything else you want to declare?”

  “Anything else we should declare?” I asked.

  “If you intend to trade drugs or weapons, we’ll let you, but we charge an extra admin fee, and we have a designated high-security dock for those exchanges. If you have anything like that onboard, and we find out about it, we won’t be happy, so you had best be honest. We don’t deal with slavery. Period. So if you intend to sell slaves, you best get back on your ship and find another marketplace.”

  “Just looking to trade our rhodium for a meal, supplies for our ship, and take on an experienced crew. No drugs or weapons,” I said.

  “You’ll find what you are looking for here. If you head straight out, you’ll see a green colored info booth. You can download map images of the station that have the tube transit paths. You can also get directions from the dock clerks there. Welcome to Queen’s Hat Station.”

  “Thanks,” I said as the large door hissed open.

  Then the three of us stepped into the station’s harbor.

  During my tour with the Jupiter Marines, I had been to a few stations. But during all of those instances, the str
uctures were either owned by our military, or we’d dock in a special military harbor away from civilians, or the stations had been very small. I was a bit unprepared for the sights, smells, and visual chaos that awaited us inside of the Queen’s Hat harbor. I let out a breath of amazement and stood still for a few moments to take it all in.

  It was as if I had stepped inside an anthill, only the ants were people, wearing bright clothes and moving along platforms that stretched like chaotic ladder rungs across the cavern of the harbor. There must have been twenty levels to the station, and while the traffic wasn’t as dense as it had been in the megacity of Trappist-1e, people also were moving on the platforms above and below us. It created a vertical sensation of chaos that I wasn’t used to feeling.

  The people’s clothes were a variety of colors, cuts, and styles. Some wore bulky military uniforms, others wore expensive suits which looked like something out of an ancient Renaissance play. A few were obviously cowboys and wore wide-brimmed leather hats, dusters, and boots as they escorted herds of shaggy cattle across the platform. Several people walked around in powersuits that allowed them to bear thousands of kilos in their arms. Many wore matching crew uniforms of various design, and they laughed together as they walked

  Holographic and screen banner ads decorated any free space of the harbor. The advertisements all tried to scream over each other, and the crowd, in a dozen different languages.

  The place was loud. It was as loud as the storms on Jupiter, and I wanted to cover my ears. I saw Z open her mouth, but I couldn’t hear her speak, so I gestured toward the large green booth twenty meters in front of us, and we cut our way through the flow of traffic. The booth had a roof that said Harbor Clerk Office 450-B, and the structure helped dampen the noise once we stood under it.

  “We’ll get used to it,” I said to my friends.

  “I fucking hope so. Damn,” Z winced and then gestured to one of the terminals next to us. “Let me download a map of the station and copy it to our transponders.”

  Z pulled the cord out of her belt, plugged one end into her skull, and then plugged the other end into the data terminal. It took her a few minutes to upload the data map to each of our transponders, and I used the time to people watch. Eve seemed to be doing the same, and the beautiful woman’s smile warmed my heart.