Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4) (13 page)

After a long moment, his lungs seemed in roughly the same condition they had been before the fall, so he sat up. Everything ached. His back, his limbs, and now he had a bad headache. What a day this was turning out to be.

“Drake?” he asked into the radio. “You okay?”

Nothing. No response. Not even static. A black bolt of panic shot through him. Trent shoved his back against the wall, keeping a vigil along both lengths of bleak metal-and-pipe corridor for anyone that might be trying to sneak up on him.

“Drake? Are you there? Anyone?”

Dead silence mocked him. Trent clamped down on his fear. There wasn't any time for it. He could be alone now. What if he was the only survivor? What
was
that living nightmare? Trent spied his rifle lying a few feet away. He stood up, slowly, painfully, and walked over to it. Retrieving it, he was glad to see that it had survived the fall.

His shotgun, on the other hand, had been partially crushed by him when he'd fallen directly onto it. He was glad it hadn't broken any bones. Trent abandoned the thing, then reloaded both his rifle and his pistol, making sure they were both up to snuff. Satisfied, he holstered the pistol and slung the rifle back over his shoulder, setting it to three-round burst.

Trent looked around. He'd obviously fallen into the maintenance complex that ran beneath the surface of the planet and the facilities. He tried the radio, but there was still nothing on it. His panic subsided into the background, low-watt electrical current of worry. It would do, for now. Trent picked a direction almost at random and set off, moving down the length of metal corridor. Pipes ran along the walls and ceiling.

He tried to formulate some kind of plan, he was good at that, always had been. It was kind of in the job description for being a mercenary. Guys with low situational awareness or no ability to think for themselves usually didn't make it past year one. Trent was creeping up on his twentieth year, consecutively, as a merc.

Coming to the end of the corridor only granted him access to another crossroads antechamber that bled away into more of the endless, cramped maintenance bays and passageways. He felt like a rat, burrowing just below the surface. Again, Trent chose a direction at random, allowing his mind to sort of restart.

A plan wouldn't come. He couldn't stop seeing that great maw, the hulking figure. It had been a wholly different breed of beast from the things they'd encountered so far on this frozen hell of a planet. What kind of nightmare had they stumbled into?

Trent wandered down another corridor. He supposed he should get back topside. What had Stephen said? There were guys in suits of dark armor suddenly showing up? Could it be a rival corporation? He'd also said that their only ticket out of here was gone. Trent knew that his endgame was to get off-planet. But how?

A thought of hangars came to his mind. There were hangars at the base. Those hangars had ships. But the one he'd managed to get in to had been nothing but a display of non-functional ships. Or was that just negative thinking? He'd only had a glimpse of the hangar, and even then just the one. There'd been two of them.

Okay, so, he had to get topside, get to a hangar, find a ship with an FTL drive. Otherwise he'd be stuck in-system and that was no good. And those guys in dark armor...they must have gotten here somehow.

Perhaps he could steal a ship from them.

Of course, before he did any of this, his number one priority was finding Drake. He might be cold-hearted enough to leave everyone else behind, but there was no way he'd leave Drake behind. He'd die first.

Trent heard a sound, gunfire, somewhere distant. It seemed like it might be coming from the underground and not somewhere overhead. But maybe that was just wishful thinking. Trent pressed on. He checked a few of the doors he passed, finding nothing but vacant storage rooms and maintenance bays stuffed full of monitoring equipment. He'd gone another five minutes in the gray, gloomy silence before the sound of gunfire came to him again.

This time, it was much closer.

Trent slipped his finger inside the trigger guard and set off towards the noise. Maybe it was one of Stephen's dark-armored mystery men, or it might be another survivor from his squad. Trent had basically given up any hope of finding any of the original crew still alive. He began to see muzzle flares as he turned another corner.

The gunfire suddenly ceased.

He heard the clatter of a spent magazine.

“Who goes there?” Trent called.

There was a long pause, then, “it's Gideon.”

Trent breathed a sigh of relief. He came around the corner and then spied the huge veteran reloading his immense machine gun. A pile of lizard men lay before him in a heap, their silvery blood, like mercury, sprayed liberally.

“Goddamn good to see you,” Trent said.

“Likewise,” Gideon replied, finishing with his reload. “What's been happening?”

Trent looked around and spied a universally pleasant sign over one of the doors in the antechamber they'd come to. A red plus against a white background. An emergency infirmary. He pointed to it. Gideon followed his finger, the nodded.

They entered the infirmary, cleared it, then Trent took off his helmet.

“You first,” he said. “What the hell happened to you?”

Gideon gave him a rundown that started the same way Stephen's did.

“I was forced underground when that cutter showed up and started going to town on the boss. Went through his suit like it was fucking butter, man. I got jumped by a bunch of beetle things, got hit twice. Holed up in a storage room and licked my wounds for the better part of an hour. There was a lot going on out there and I wasn't really prepared to see what I saw. I was expecting a rival corporation, not a bunch of fucking sci-fi monsters.”

Trent chuckled as he scrounged around for some painkillers. He didn't feel like digging into his own personal supply if he could help it, and the infirmary was well-stocked. It seemed to have been mostly passed over by the chaos overhead. It was like the eye of a hurricane. Trent found a bottle of extra-strength painkillers and washed them down with water from a sink. He splashed water on his face a few times and dried off.

“I've been hanging around down here ever since, trying to find a safe way up and someone to get into contact with. I thought everyone else was dead.”

Trent gave him his own rough version of events, ending with the attack by the thing with the immense maw.

“So, now what?” Gideon asked finally.

“I
know
I'm finding Drake, dead or alive. And, I've got to be honest, I'd obviously welcome your help, but if that objective doesn't scan with you, then I've got to go off on my own. It's completely non-negotiable,” Trent replied.

Gideon chuckled. “I feel you. And I'll stick with you. I'm not a hundred percent sure about getting out of this place by myself. Hell, not even fifty. Especially not with these new players to the game. What are you thinking about them, rival corporation?”

“Probably,” Trent said, relieved that Gideon was going to stick with him. The guy was obviously hell on wheels.

“So you haven't heard from anyone?” Gideon asked after a moment.

Trent shook his head. He pulled his helmet back on and secured it firmly, then ran a quick suit-check to make sure everything was still working right.

“Nothing,” he replied.

“Fantastic. We're going to have to find
someone
, preferably a tech. Whatever we plan, I imagine it'll involve terminals and decryption and shit like that. Not really my thing,” Gideon said.

“Me neither,” Trent agreed.

They finished getting ready, checking their suits and their gear, then headed back out of the infirmary and into the antechamber.

The pair set off.

* * * * *

Trent climbed up the ladder first, activating the hatch at the top and playing dice with his life once more as he poked his head out. There was nothing waiting for him atop the ladder in the small storage bay. He and Gideon had managed to get in contact with Stephen, who had made it, somehow, to the storage structure and was by himself. They spoke for a little while about what might be done to formulate some kind of plan.

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.