Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4)

by S. A. Lusher

  The others came over and stared down. A guy with his skull cracked open and scooped out was one thing, but a skeletal, detached arm was quite another. Trent knelt and decided that yes, there was literally nothing left of the arm but the skeleton. It had fallen into several pieces, as there was nothing left to hold the bones together.

  No flesh, no meat, no muscles, nothing.

  The bone was practically bleached.

  “So...what do the brains and this have in common?” Drake murmured.

  “Nothing,” Tristan replied after a moment.

  “It can't be nothing,” Trent said.

  “Keep it moving,” Sharpe said suddenly.

  Trent glanced up from pile of bones. She wasn't looking at them, she was eying the edges of the room, the shadows, the vents. Anywhere that might hold hostiles...whatever those hostiles might be. She began to make her way across the mess hall. Trent and the others followed her after lingering for a reluctant moment.

  They all stopped as a low clicking sound cut loose across the area. Everyone whirled, weapons raised, at the origin of the sound. Trent blinked in shock as he spied something, a vague outline of a shape, lingering in the deeper shadows at the edge of the room. How could he have possibly missed that? And what was it?

  An anticipation built up inside of him. He was finally going to get to see whatever the hell had been hounding them since they'd arrived, what cored people's heads for their brains. It definitely didn't seem human, from the sound of it.

  When the thing moved, it was fast.

  It bolted out into the light. Trent only caught a glimpse of a humanoid figure that seemed as dark as space. It leaped through the air, the clicking becoming rapid now, and came right for Sharpe. She leveled her rifle at it and fired without hesitation. Trent had to give her credit. He honestly might have frozen up if that thing was coming dead-on at him. The bullets hit it square in the chest and the force of the blast tossed it back the way it had come.

  For a second, Trent was positive that his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the wet stuff that sprayed out of the creature seemed almost...silver. The body hit the floor and twitched violently. Sharpe put another two rounds into its head and then, after it hadn't moved for a full ten seconds, put two more just to be sure.

  Slowly, covering it with their weapons, the quartet converged on the creature. Trent studied it as he came to stand an arm's length from it. It was tall, somewhere close to six and a half feet, maybe closer to seven. It was definitely reptilian in nature. Obsidian scales covered it from head to toe. It had wicked, six-inch claws on its toes and fingers and a muzzle of a mouth that extended away from its face, stuffed full of teeth like razors.

  And, Trent saw, its blood was, in fact, silver.

  “What...what the fuck is this thing?” Drake asked. “I mean...it's a fucking lizard person.” He laughed. “First contact with an intelligent race and it's fucking lizard people.”

  “I don't think this is intelligent,” Tristan murmured. “It seems more like an animal than a sentient being. Look at those claws, those teeth...this thing was made for killing.”

  “Sharpe?” Trent asked, looking up.

  She was staring down at the body, her eyes unreadable as always, her mouth a flat line. She didn't say anything, instead opting to stand and begin moving towards the door. After a moment, the others followed her.

  “How much you wanna bet that was the brain-scooper?” Drake asked.

  “Maybe,” Tristan said. “But what about the bones?”

  “What if it eats people and shits out the bones?”

  “Bleached, perfectly picked-clean bones? And it couldn't have eaten the meat off of those bones with that much precision, its teeth are too big, too sharp. It'd be covered in nicks and scratches. Those bones were perfectly smooth.”

  “Shut up. Stay focused. We're in enemy territory now,” Sharpe said.

  They left the mess hall and came to the next corridor. Trent took Sharpe's words to heart. She was right. There were things that wanted to kill him and would have a pretty easy time doing it. Those claws looked like they'd tear through his armor like it was nothing. They reached the first turn in the corridor, took it, kept going.

  This length of hallway was worse than the previous one. More bodies, more hollowed-out skulls, more blood. One of the corpses was one of the lizard things. Most of its head had been blown away and it lay in a pool of silvery blood that resembled mercury. Trent kept trying to wrap his head around these things.

  How many were there? Where had they come from? What kind of motivation drove them? It wasn't lost on him that the corporate dogs had been so tight-lipped and then they find insane lizard people intent on brutal murder.

  Just what the fuck, exactly, had they been up to out here at the edge of the galaxy?

  They reached the end of the corridor and the door that led to the security center. Sharpe had it open in a minute and, when they found nothing particularly unpleasant waiting inside for them, she slipped in. Trent and Tristan followed and Drake hovered in the doorway, watching their back. Trent scanned the bank of monitors across the way, but most of them were registering only static or were outright dead.

  The security center was identical to the one he'd come across back in the first structure. Sharpe sat in front of the primary terminal and booted it up. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and after a few moments, there was a positive-sounding chime and she stood back up.

  “This is Sharpe, I've raised the lockout here on my end, and we've encountered some hostiles...what's your status?”

  Trent listened, but he could hear no response. At first, he figured that Sergio and Sharpe must be speaking on a private channel, but from the way she was standing, her muscles tensing up, he realized she wasn't receiving a response either.

  “Boss, what's going on over there? I repeat, we've encountered hostiles, we've had a containment breach.”

  Nothing.

  Sharpe suddenly sat down at the terminal again and began working it. After another few moments, she let out a curse and stood back up.

  “Fuck...they haven't lifted their lockout and I can't reach them...okay, listen up. We're going to double back to the mess hall, there's another tram station there. We make for the storage facility and find out what the fuck's happening.”

  Trent wasn't sure what to say to that, so he didn't say anything as he followed the others back down the corridor to the tram station.

  Chapter 07

  –The Divide–

  Sharpe kept trying to raise the others as they filed into the tram and began riding it over, across to the storage structure where Sergio and his group had gone. As Trent took a seat and began waiting, he found himself immensely grateful that the boss had not split Drake and him up. Because if they had been divided, he'd be way more worried.

  Few things in life genuinely mattered to Trent. Money was one of them, but only because it was essential for a continued existence. People liked to say that you needed things like food and water and oxygen and shelter to keep your body going. And that was true. But a deeper truth, buried in the substratum of economics, politics and corporate policy was that if you didn't have money, you didn't have a good chance of getting those things.

  Women mattered to Trent. Not any specific one, but just the female population in general. He had learned in his teenage years that he had a voracious sexual appetite. He was big and he liked to work out, which was, apparently, enough to attract the kind of women he liked. Failing that, he had money. He knew that sex wasn't technically necessary to sustain life on a day-to-day basis, but some days that truth wore very thin.

  Finally, above all else, Drake mattered to him.

  They had grown up together on a shit colony where it always rained, as if the collective abuse and neglect of its population called to it a permanent storm. They were best friends, grew up next to each other in the slums. The place was a factory colony. It existed largely to produce the huge pieces of metal they fitted together to
make starship hulls. That was it. A couple thousand families lived in poverty and misery to build glorified sheet metal.

  That had always seemed funny to Drake, in a bleak kind of way.

  What Trent liked the most about Drake, besides the fact that he shared a similar sense of humor, knew how to handle a gun and wouldn't hesitate to have his back, was the fact that he never let anything bother him. Like his sexual orientation or others' reactions to it. There had never been what religious idiots back in the day had called 'confusion'. The fact that he knew who he was and never tried to hide it spoke of deep bravery.

  Because blind ignorance and pointless hatred, despite what all the utopian sci-fi writers had liked to think, had not died out completely. Racism and sexism and homophobia still existed in the more remote, isolated pockets of the galaxy. Their colony had been one such place. Growing up there had basically been a living hell.

  The best day of their lives was the day they stole enough valuable materials and credit chips to buy their way off world when they were sixteen.

  The tram came to a halt. Trent stopped thinking about darker days and stood up, readying his weapon. Anything could be waiting for them. He thought about the dark lizard things with a deep hunger for human gray matter, which was bad enough. But something was bothering him. The bones. The lizard men didn't explain the bleached bone.

  “Everybody out!” Sharpe called, coming back from the tiny cockpit.

  She led the way. Trent followed, rifle tucked into his shoulder. They moved through the small antechamber into the tram station. It was a wreck. Blood on the floor, bones, too, picked one hundred percent clean. The team spread out as they came into the area. Nothing moved. The emergency lights made the shadows deep.

  They crossed the room, the only sound that of Sharpe's litany, trying to get in touch with Sergio or anyone else on the team. No luck. They stopped short as they reached one of the only two doors out of the station.

  “Shit,” Sharpe muttered. “It's welded shut.”

  “Let's head to the other,” Trent replied, already turning and making for the opposite door.

  He approached it and hit the open button. Nothing happened. He sighed and hit it again. Nothing continued to happen.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, stepping back.

  Sharpe took his place and spent a moment trying to get the door open. Finally, she took a step back. “It's locked down. And I can't get it open. Trevor's on the other side of this and I don't suppose any of you know enough to hack it open?”

  No one spoke up. Sharpe sighed heavily. She looked around for a moment, then she looked up and a small smile took up residency on her face. Trent followed her glass gaze over to a large ventilation grate high on the wall.

  “Who wants to volunteer?” she asked.

  “I'll go,” Trent said.

  “Me too,” Drake said.

  Sharpe seemed to consider it for a moment, then nodded. They gathered beneath the vent and Sharpe boosted Drake up first, since he was the lighter of the two. He activated the vent grate, poked his head and his gun in, then hauled himself up and inside. Trent went next, just big enough that he could barely fit within as well.

  “Hurry back!” Sharpe called.

  “You got it, boss,” Trent said, not caring if she heard him or not.

  Up ahead, Drake was already crawling through the vents. He followed after the man's black combat boots. He found himself immensely grateful for the lack of bulk his suit offered, otherwise this little vent crawl would be extremely difficult. They moved for several moments in silence and an ethereal crimson light.

  “Man, this sucks,” Drake said after a moment.

  Trent chuckled. “Yeah, with you on that one. What do you think we should do when this craptastic little adventure is over?”

  “We have got to go back to Gibson Station.”

  “I'm somewhat tempted but...I've gotta disagree with you there. Security has a long memory and they'll probably have a hard-on for throwing us in lockup for at least a few days.”

  Drake shrugged the best he could in the vent. “Well, maybe. How about Lovelace Station? They've got that club...Trigger Finger.”

  “That's a gay club. Fun for you, boring for me.”

  Trent could practically hear Drake roll his eyes. “They've also got that club Red. You know, where all the girls are redheads?”

  “Holy shit, I actually forgot about that. Okay, yeah, Lovelace it is then.”

  They reached a turn in the vent and went around it. A paranoia of things occupying the vents with them crowded his thoughts, to the point that he started to think he was hearing things. Then he stopped.

  “Whoa, hold it,” he said.

  “What?” Drake asked, stopping.

  “Listen.”

  They remained still and silent, for several seconds. Trent was about to give the all-clear, then he heard it. It was a kind of rumble that, as they listened further, resolved into a series of rapid tapping sounds.

  It was coming from behind them.

  “Shit, where's the next exit?” Trent asked, as he shuffled forward and shoved at Drake's boots.

  “Five meters,” Drake replied.

  “Good. We're getting out there.”

  They kept going. The sound got louder. And, what was worse, the vent started to vibrate. Something was coming. They reached the vent. Trent cursed his inability to look back over his shoulder. Drake fumbled with the grate.

  “Any day now,” he muttered, his skin crawling.

  The sounds and the vibration picked up.

  “I'm going, I'm going...shit,” Drake shouted, suddenly bashing his fist into the grille. It exploded outward and he disappeared through the aperture it made.

  Trent hurried after him, hearing him shout in surprise. No time to think, just to act. Trent kept going until he grabbed the edges of the vent and yanked himself through. For a second, there was the gut-wrenching feeling of free-fall, then he crashed into something very hard and unyielding. Just a foot away, he could see Drake.

  “Damn,” he moaned.

  Trent tried to push aside all the pain he felt along his left side; his arm, leg and chest now hurt and he was working on a headache. He brought his rifle to bear and rolled over on his back so he had a clear shot on anything that came out of the vent. The noise was louder now and as it seemed to reach an apex, it fell away.

  There was a moment of silence, then a high-pitched whine, almost machine-like in quality, and yet just animal enough to convey disappointment and frustration. Then the sound started up again, going until it receded into nothing.

  The vent opening remained vacant.

  “Shit,” Trent said after a moment, allowing himself to relax.

  Drake chuckled. “Good ten foot drop there, man. Thank God for these suits.”

  “I'd rather thank the guys that built 'em,” Trent said.

  They got up and looked around. The pair had fallen into a cavernous warehouse, behind a massive stack of crates. Trent glanced up at the vent once more to make double sure nothing sneaked through it after them, then made his way around the edge of the crate. Drake followed, watching his back.

  He hit the edge of the crate and peered around the corner. Nothing but a narrow alcove created by two stacks of crates. He couldn't see anything in it or beyond it, but the view was pretty slim. He moved down the alcove, barrel-first. Something flashed by the edge, making him freeze. He cursed sharply, then laughed, a nervous edge to his voice.

  “What is it?” Drake whispered.

  “Something up ahead, might be one of those fucking lizard things,” Trent replied.

  He kept going. When he reached the edge, Trent did a survey of the area. A broader version of the alcove he currently resided in awaited his inspection. Twin rows of stacked crates extended away to the left and right. He leaned out further and spied an exit a couple of dozen meters away to the right. It should take them back into a main corridor.

  “Come on,” Trent said, more to say somethin
g than anything else.

  There was no way they were doing this stealthily. He didn't think you could hide from lizard people. So there was no point in shutting up now. The pair hurried down the warehouse, eying the shadows that hung around the edges of the area. Something moved to Trent's right, then something else ahead of him, to the left.

  “Shit,” Drake murmured. “There's a lot of them.”

  “At least half a dozen,” Trent said.

  They made it as far as an open staging area just in front of the exit before they struck. As soon as the half-dozen or so dark figures were leaping from the shadows, Trent and Drake turned away from each other and covered their half of the room.

  Trent squeezed the trigger, glad he'd remembered to switch on the three-round burst function and put a trio of holes in the chest of the nearest lizard thing. The creature let out a shriek as it was forced flat on its back. Trent put another three rounds in its face, then turned the barrel on the next nearest monster, firing another three rounds into the thing's open, screaming maw, shattering a few of its teeth in the process.

  He aimed, fired, aimed, fired. His finger smoothly squeezed the trigger as his left hand guided the barrel of the rifle with an almost peaceful grace. There were four of them on his side. He put them down quick with the proficiency of a two-decade veteran. The gunfire ceased almost simultaneously. Trent turned around and spied another five dead bodies.

  “What the fuck are these things?” he asked, grimacing at the black bodies and silver pools of blood.

  “Creepy. Come on,” Drake replied.

  They moved through the exit and looked down the length of the corridor they'd stepped into. Trent frowned as he realized something and activated his radio.

  “So, Sharpe, you forgot to tell us where the security center is.”

  Sharpe sighed. “Same as the other building. Same layout. I heard gunfire, what happened over there?”

  “More lizard men. And there's something in the vents, too, but we didn't get a chance to really see it.”

  “Fantastic. Hurry up, I'll walk you through the process of raising the lockout. It's simple.”