Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4)

by S. A. Lusher

  Finally, they settled on just coming to get him, since talking over the radio was no longer the most intelligent option. Stephen told them to hurry. He sounded desperate, then he told them that the guys in dark armor were nearby.

  Not a good sign.

  Trent was still holding on to some tiny, infinitesimal hope that the destruction of the ship was some kind of misunderstanding or perhaps a mistake. Could they be backup? But all his instincts told him no. He guessed he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

  “Clear,” Trent said after he'd emerged from the shaft.

  He turned, offered a hand to Gideon and hauled the bulky merc into the room. They headed for the only way out. Trent hit the open button and looked out. Nothing but a wall of stacked crates a few feet ahead of him. He looked left, right, still nothing. They'd come to one of the titanic warehouses of the storage building.

  If Trent had the layout of the area correct, all they had to do was head over to the next warehouse over, then find a small restroom in the back, which was where Stephen claimed to have holed up. And then they'd get on to the next leg of their trip, whatever the hell it was. The pair moved through the warehouse, listening for signs of life.

  They managed to reach the far door without running into anything, though now they could very clearly hear the sounds of gunshots elsewhere in the facility.

  “Looks like our new friends met the natives,” Gideon murmured.

  “Hopefully they have more luck than we did,” Trent replied.

  He opened the door. The corridor beyond was barren. They crossed over quickly, moving through the next door into another warehouse. More signs of brutal conflict. Pools of blood: red, black and silver. Bodies. Bullet holes. Spent shell casings. It was unlike any battlefield Trent had seen before. For the most part, he helped produce similar situations, he never had to come through and see the aftermath. But even this was crazier than the majority of his career. He kept his rifle tucked tight into his shoulder, eyes continually scanning.

  Trent and Gideon froze when the sound of voices came back to them. From the direction Stephen was supposed to be. The voices were cold, mechanical, coming through some kind of filters. Trent felt the hairs on his neck bristle. That was usually the kind of shit you heard with a Spec Ops group or some high-trained, no-bullshit private corporate squad. Trent and Gideon moved closer, slipping in among the stacks of crates.

  They kept moving until they found the bathroom at the back. Six men in dark armor were crowding around the door.

  “Target is inside.”

  “Confirmed?”

  “Confirmed.”

  “All right. Simple breach and clear. Grab him, then we can start finding the others.”

  “If he resists?”

  “Shoot him a few times. Try not to kill him.”

  That was all Trent needed to hear. He looked at Gideon, who nodded coldly back. Both men stepped out, raised their weapons and opened fire. Trent had switched to full auto and rattled through the whole magazine. Gideon's massive, long-barreled, extended-magazine machine gun continued speaking long after Trent's had run dry.

  When he finally stopped firing, the last of the soldiers had dropped and fully stopped moving. Trent and Gideon slowly approached, reloading and then keeping the corpses covered. Trent studied them as he came to stand over them.

  They were, in fact, all wearing dark armor. But it was not merely dark, it was jet-black, the color of deep, starless space. He looked for a long moment, even going as far as to move one of the bodies over onto its side, then its front, but he could find no insignia of any kind. He knelt and took off one of the helmets, tossing it aside.

  The man behind the helmet didn't seem abnormal. He just looked like a regular merc or soldier. Shaved head, pale, tough, even in death.

  “Who the fuck are these guys?” Trent murmured.

  “Doesn't matter, let's get Stephen and press on,” Gideon replied.

  Trent guessed the older merc was right. They opened the door and found Stephen hiding in one of the stalls, near the end of the row.

  He looked immensely relieved. “Thank God, those guys were out for my ass, man.”

  “Yeah, we noticed,” Trent replied.

  “So, now what?” Gideon asked.

  “The command center,” Stephen replied almost immediately. “I've been thinking about it. If you can get me to the command center, I can finally figure out what the fuck is going on here, maybe get some kind of a plan together.”

  Trent and Gideon exchanged glances, considering it. Trent decided it was probably the best shot they had for the moment.

  “All right,” Trent agreed. “The command center. Let's get moving.”

  Chapter 12

  –The Plan–

  Underground again.

  Trent was beginning to feel a little bit better. They hadn't found Drake yet, hadn't heard from any of the others, but having two survivors at your back was better than going it alone. They'd stopped by a terminal and brought up a map of the underground portion. Trent was glad to see that it ran beneath all eight of the structures, even the Cyr ones. Which still blew Trent's mind. Stephen seemed less surprised when he was being brought up to speed.

  “I figured it had something to do with the Cyr,” he said as they moved down another length of anonymous, bland corridor.

  “Really?” Trent asked.

  “Yeah. This level of secrecy and security...it was either that or some kind of insane under-the-table deal. But the Cyr stuff makes sense. Everyone is hot for it. The government doesn't like to admit it, the corporates even less, but Cyr tech has provided some very nice leaps in technology for us. And given what we've seen so far, this is a hell of a find,” Stephen explained.

  “You do a lot of looking into this kind of stuff?” Gideon asked.

  “Yeah. Conspiracy, cover-ups, they're pretty common now. Who assassinated who, which corporation sold cheap parts that caused some kind of catastrophe that killed thousands, who's taking payoffs. These aren't so much questions as matters of fact. I'm more interested in the bigger stuff. Who's stealing Cyr tech? Who's preparing to overthrow the government? Who really put an end to the Systems Wars?”

  “I was wondering that myself,” Gideon murmured.

  “What do you mean? I thought we won,” Trent replied.

  “No. I mean, we did, but...a lot of things don't add up. To put it simply, we won way too quickly. Lots of coincidences helped us out,” Stephen replied.

  They all stopped speaking as something made a sound up ahead. Trent opted to take point. He moved down to the end of the corridor and came into a large room with two stories and several entrances and exits. Nothing was immediately obvious. He scanned the area, the doorways, the vents, the shadows.

  Nothing.

  “Clear,” he said.

  The others joined him.

  “Kind of an anticlimax,” Stephen murmured. He didn't sound disappointed.

  They kept going.

  * * * * *

  They came to the command structure. Trent even managed to locate the very hole he'd crawled into a little over an hour ago to take down the automatic defenses. Whoever the guys in the dark suits were, they hadn't reached this far yet. The coast was clear, for now. Trent kept expecting to run into that nightmare of flesh and teeth and again he found himself wondering if Drake had made it out alive or he'd become a meal.

  He didn't like that train of thought, so he derailed it.

  Trent helped the other two up and they made for the central door that would take them to the actual command center itself.

  “Where are all the uglies?” Gideon murmured.

  “Probably taking on the guys in dark armor,” Trent replied. “Hopefully, at least. We should be thankful for this peaceful interlude.”

  “No complaints from me,” Stephen murmured.

  They opened the door, didn't get shot at or pounced at by something with claws and teeth, and pressed on down the corridor. Trent wondered where Sharpe wa
s, if she was still alive, still kicking and fighting. They moved through the door at the opposite end and found nothing nasty waiting for them in the command center.

  “All right,” Stephen said, moving up to the same terminal Sharpe had been at not all that long ago. “Let's see exactly what we're dealing with here.”

  Trent and Gideon took up position on either side of him, making sure nothing was going to shoot or eat him. Time passed. Seconds bled into minutes. Distantly, they could hear the sounds of combat, getting closer. Trent shifted on his feet, sweating inside his suit. He turned up the air-conditioning another notch, wondering how close he was to blowing the cooling units out. He hated waiting like this. After a very long moment, Stephen let out a long whistle.

  “Take a look, boys,” he said.

  Trent turned and looked at the screen. One of the lizard men was on it.

  “Say hello to the Harvester,” Stephen said.

  Trent frowned. Indeed, the word Harvester was printed over the picture.

  “It gets better,” Stephen added.

  He pushed a button. Another picture appeared, this one of a chest-hole. The word Fiend was pasted over the photo. Another button, another photo. This one of the beetles. They were called, of all things, Spitters.

  “What the fuck...they knew about them enough to name them?” Trent asked softly.

  “And here's our friend from before.”

  Trent now saw the creature that had broken into the room and knocked him into a vent shaft. It was simple called The Carnivore. The name seemed very fitting.

  “Apparently, this guy's unique. There weren't any others,” he murmured.

  “So what the hell is all this? What have you found out?”

  “Okay, this is what I've been able to glean from some of the data. The majority of it is locked away in the research building. It's what, I imagine, Sharpe was here to get. This is all just preliminary stuff. But, apparently, those three structures marked as 'Research' on the map are part of a Cyr biological research facility. They set it out here, way out in the middle of nowhere, back when they were running the show. And they were experimenting, creating all sorts of wicked shit. These are all basically biological warfare experiments...I guess they weren't so much better than us, morally at least. Man, these things are incredible.”

  “You've got to be shitting me...what about something we haven't seen? What else can we expect?” Gideon asked.

  “Uh...here. Look at this fucking thing.”

  A new picture appeared. It was out of focus, but whatever it was seemed to be huge, built of solid muscle. The word above it, which normally would have struck Trent as ridiculous but instead left him with a vague sense of terror, was Bugbear.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  “Yeah. Now, some of the sensors still work. I can tell that whoever these guys are, they landed some ships on the far side of the base, opposite where we landed, beyond the third research building. From the limited range I get, it looks like it's a bunch of pretty small ships, maybe jump ships, and one bigger one, which might have FTL capability-”

  Two of the doors suddenly opened.

  Stephen turned in surprise and Trent watched a trio of bullets punch straight through his faceplate, turning his face into a visceral spray of blood and gore. Even before he hit the ground, Trent and Gideon were spinning and firing.

  “Go!” Trent screamed, opening fire on a squad of dark-armored men who had burst into the room and were doing their best to kill them. “Back to the underground!”

  Gideon hurled a grenade and began sprinting for the exit. Trent raced after him. They barely managed to make it into the corridor before they heard the muffled whump! of the grenade going off. Several screams accompanied the sound. The pair of mercenaries raced down the corridor, found a trio of soldiers waiting for them in the tram lobby and blasted through them as they made for the hole. Trent went first, jumping straight down and landing with a thud. He barely managed to get out of the way before Gideon landed.

  The pair took off, running into the underground.

  * * * * *

  “Trent? Can you hear me?”

  Trent stopped running the second Drake's voice came onto his comms unit.

  “Drake-oof!” Gideon slammed into him so hard he was thrown to the ground.

  “Sorry, why the fuck did you stop?” Gideon asked, helping him back up.

  “Trent, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Where the hell are you?”

  They'd come to stop in another anonymous corridor.

  “Underground. Beneath the utilities building. I've found Tristan. We're holed up in a maintenance bay. Can you get to us?”

  “Yeah. We've got some news.”

  “All right. Hurry up.”

  They set off again.

  * * * * *

  Trent felt immense relief flow through him as he came into the maintenance bay and saw Drake. Gideon came in behind him and secured the door. Drake stood at a terminal, working it, but when he saw Trent he crossed the room, grabbed one of his hands and pulled him into a half-hug. Trent pounded him on the back a few times.

  “Goddamn, good to see you,” Drake said.

  “Likewise. You been running around down here?”

  “Yeah. What's the news?”

  Trent caught him up to speed while he went back over to the terminal and kept working at what he had been before. Gideon took a seat and Tristan paced near the back of the room. Drake nodded as he worked, assimilating the information Trent gave him.

  “A biological research facility, huh?” he murmured. “I guess that makes sense. All these fucked-up things don't really add up, but now they do...well, I've got a plan, if you'd like to hear it.” Here, he stopped working and looked at Trent, at the others.

  Trent chuckled. “You've always been the smart one. I'm all ears.”

  “I'm listening,” Tristan murmured.

  “Same here,” Gideon replied, still sitting as he messed with his immense machine gun.

  “I don't know who these new boys are, but they're all over the place. There's lots of them. They're well-armed, well-armored and well-prepared. I know they've sent scouts into the underground. We need to turn the tables, get active. I want to take one of their scouts down, listen in on their radio network and figure out what the hell they're doing. Now, we know that Sergio and Stephen are dead, but Sharpe and Trevor are probably still out there somewhere.”

  “Why not just cut our losses, head out?” Gideon asked.

  “I have to agree. Now that I've found you, I'm pretty much ready to get the fuck out of here. This isn't really our war,” Trent added.

  Drake shook his head. “A few reasons. One, I'm good at tech stuff, but not good enough to really get some kind of genuine plan together, which is what we're going to need, given the nature of this place. Two, we still need at least one of them. Even if we make it out of here, we're going to need some kind of bargaining chip. This is all too important for them to just let us walk away. We need Trevor, Sharpe, both of them or that data.”

  Trent sighed. “Fine. Let's get to it then.”

  Everyone readied themselves to head back into the fray. Suits were checked, weapons were reloaded. Once everyone felt as ready as they were going to be, Trent took point again and led them back out into the corridor beyond the maintenance bay. The quartet moved swiftly down the corridor, guns out, listening for signs of life.

  It didn't take long to find the bad guys. Trent heard their mechanically augmented voices long before he saw them. He realized that they were up ahead, taking residence in one of the antechambers. Trent made quick hand motions, sending Gideon into a corridor to the right, Drake a corridor to the left. He kept going with Tristan.

  Trent flattened himself against one side of the corridor, motioned for Tristan to do the same. They kept moving forward until they had a view of the antechamber. Trent saw three men in dark armor standing in the center of it, talking.

  “In position,” Gideon mur
mured through their radio.

  “Same here,” Drake whispered.

  “Go.”

  They all converged on the hostiles, cutting them down in seconds. Trent and Tristan moved into the antechamber and swept the area with their muzzles, finding nothing. Drake and Gideon emerged from their hiding places. Drake moved to one of the corpses and tore the man's helmet off. He reached around inside until he found the radio and extracted it.

  “Here we go,” he murmured, fiddling with it.

  Trent and the others kept watch while he did his thing. Five minutes passed and Drake finally stood back up, pocketing the radio.

  “Okay,” he said. “The good news is that I know at least that Trevor is alive and being held in the detention center, which is on the outer portion of the command center. Not too far away.” Drake moved over to a general access terminal and booted it up. “And now I'm going to check the schematics and see the easiest way of extracting him.”

  “Any news on Sharpe?” Trent asked.

  Drake shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

  Trent frowned. That meant that she was either holed up somewhere or dead, because there was no way she wasn't giving them hell otherwise. Why did he care? Maybe, he decided, because she reminded him too much of a fellow mercenary. Or worse, a fellow merc collared by a corporation. What did it matter, anyway?

  Five more minutes passed, and Drake stepped away from the terminal.

  “All right, I've got it. Come on, I'll explain on the way.”

  * * * * *

  Trent found the lack of hostiles disturbing. Part of him was relieved, glad to be free of fighting tooth and nail for his life against inhuman experiments gone wrong, but another part of him wondered where they all were at. If you were wandering around a battlefield and the bad guys weren't shooting at you front and center, then that meant they were hiding. A hidden enemy is infinitely more dangerous than a big and obvious one.