Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4) (6 page)

Drake moved forward until he was free of the sheds. Nothing happened. He took a step forward. Nothing continued to happen. He took another step, then a third, and a fourth. Finally, after taking two more, a general sigh of relief seemed to emanate from the group.

“Seems safe,”
he said.

“Let's go then,” Trent replied.

As one, the group moved forward, still a little hesitantly, but after a few meters, they decided they were safe. At least from the drone guns. When they got to the door, they had to rip open a panel and hit the manual release, as the keypad no longer functioned. As the manual catch was released, the door opened open a few inches.

Trent approached it, peering cautiously into the darkened crack.

Nothing moved around within. At least, nothing that he could see.

“All right, let's get a move on,” he said, stuffing his fingers into the opening.

He began to work the door open.

Chapter 05

–
The Silence
–

The door opened.

Trent peered cautiously within, playing his muzzle-mounted flashlight across the interior of the room beyond. There was light inside, though it was dim. He found himself looking at what appeared to be a fairly standard lobby. A semi-circle desk of wood and steel dominated the center of the room. As though in orbit around it, couches, chairs and small end tables were pressed up against the walls along the front half of the room.

“Empty,” Trent murmured.

He could see nothing in the thin light. He moved in, Drake behind him, the others slowly shuffling in. Trent moved up and around the desk, peered over it into the enclosed space where the receptionist would sit. He spied a rolling swivel chair, knocked over. A shelf ran the interior of the desk, hidden beneath its top.

He spied a few infopads, a couple of throwaway cups, a computer. Everything was powered down. He picked up one of the infopads.

Sergio cleared his throat.
“If you stick your nose where it doesn't belong, Mister Stone, you'll often find that it gets cut off.”

Trent glanced up. The others had gathered in the lobby. Trevor was closing the door behind them. Sergio and Sharpe stood in the center, staring directly at him. Sharpe's black lens eyes seemed to be locked onto his own eyes, boring into them. Trent replaced the infopad, fighting the urge to shoulder his weapon and plug the pair a few times.

He brought the level of his exterior speakers online so he could hear the environment around him. Someone or something was obviously in there with them, or they wouldn't need the guns. Unless this was a false alarm. So far, he hadn't seen anything to give him any kind of clue as to what might have really gone down.

Of course, they were only just inside the lobby.

Who knew how bad it might get?

“All right,” Sergio said, looking around. “Trevor, get on that console, figure out where we are. Obviously power is going to be an issue. Assess the situation. Everyone else, make sure this room remains secure.”

Trent came around from behind the desk and moved with Drake over to one of the two entrances into the room besides the primary one.

“This is bullshit,” Trent said, not caring if Sergio heard him.

“Yep,” Drake replied.

Trevor righted the chair, sat and set to his work. Seconds passed, then minutes. The only sounds that filled the lobby were the soft hum of power and the occasional sound of someone shifting. Trent frowned, staring around the lobby. The door he was guarding looked solid and secure. He didn't quite turn his back to it, not trusting anything in the facility at the moment. The lobby was cast in gloomy shadows, setting off his combat instincts without actually telling him anything. He strained his ears against the silence, filtering out the small sounds, listening for anything, any small hint, that might tip him off to the true nature of the facility.

For a long moment, there was nothing. He heard the hum of power, the nearly inaudible clacking of Trevor's fingers on a keyboard, the subtle sounds of the others shifting, breathing, murmuring occasionally.

Then he heard something new.

Beneath or perhaps behind it all, he thought he could hear a slow, steady, incredibly deep thumping sound. Trent's frown intensified and he pushed his exterior speakers to their maximum capacity, zeroing his senses in on the thudding. It was familiar, extremely familiar, and then he had it. He realized he couldn't figure it out at first because the answer was so glaringly obvious. It was a sound everyone heard in the subtle background of their own lives.

But it couldn't be.

It sounded like the beating of a gigantic heart.

“Shit!”

Trent barely managed not to shout in pain and surprise. He dialed his external speakers back down to regular level, waiting for the pain in his ears to subside. It was Trevor who had let out the angry curse. It seemed out of character for him, as though curse words rarely left his lips. Sergio and Sharpe crossed the lobby.

“What is it?” Sergio asked.

“The whole facility is on lockdown and power is almost totally gone. We've got maybe two hours left before everything goes offline and this place starts turning into a deep freeze. Reports showed a pretty bad ice storm coming in. It's going to be negative one hundred outside pretty soon. We need power
and
we need to kill the lockdown,” Trevor explained.

“So how do we do that?” Sergio murmured.

Trent and Drake were staring intently at the corporate trio. Trent saw that the other three mercenaries were paying close attention as well.

“We might as well tell everyone,” Trevor said. “It's not a secret or anything.”

Sergio seemed to consider it for a moment, then sighed heavily. “Gather round.” He waved everyone over.

The five mercenaries converged on the desk. Sergio stared at them in silent contemplation for a long moment, then nodded to Trevor.

“The facility is divided up into different buildings. Each building is connected with a tram tunnel.” He held up an infopad, showing a very basic map. The first four buildings were spread out in a diamond shape. They were in the bottom of the diamond, near the bottom of the screen. The next four buildings were situated in a straight line extending away from the top of the diamond. They were all connected with black lines.

Trent realized it resembled an upside-down kite.

“This building here,” Trevor said, indicating the first in the row of structures that Trent came to think of as the 'string' tied on to the end of the 'kite'. “This is where we need to go. Unfortunately, the facility is locked down. In order to lift the lockdown, we need to manually terminate the order in three separate terminals. Here, here and here.”

He indicated the three other buildings that made up the 'kite'.

“What's in those buildings?” Gideon asked.

Trevor looked uncertainly at Sergio, who nodded.

“The building we're in houses the hangars and processing. The building to the left houses living quarters for the staff. The building to the right is storage. The building dead ahead of us is where the power plant, water filtration and other basic utilities are housed. After we hit all three terminals, we'll need to gather in the next building, the command center, to lift the final portion of the lockdown,” Trevor explained.

“And then? What's beyond that?” Drake asked.

“None of your concern,” Sergio replied. “Come on, let's get to the tram station.”

“You don't want to hunt around for survivors? Maybe find someone who made it and could tell us what went down?” Trevor asked, standing.

“We're not here for survivors,” Sergio replied.

They left the lobby.

As one, the group went through the left-hand exit and came to a lengthy corridor that stretched away from them, likely running the length of the structure itself. There were several doors along either wall. Trent led the way again, rifle tucked up tight against his shoulder. He couldn't get the sound of that massive beating heart out of his head. Had he imagined it? It didn't seem likely; he wasn't really the imagination type.

There must be some explanation. He was hearing his own heart inside the suit or maybe it was some kind of malfunction or perhaps even just a natural background noise that the building, for some reason, produced.

Glancing at the signs posted above the doors, Trent managed to piece together that the hangar was to the left and several different rooms were along the right. They passed a storage room, a break room, a bathroom, a security center. They reached the end of the corridor without incident and passed through it into an open room of blue carpet, blue-tinted walls and a blue ceiling. A handful of couches occupied the area along two of the walls.

“Tram station,” Trevor said.

“At least we don't have to clear it,” Trent murmured, staring around. There was nowhere to hide.

Opposite of their current position was an identical door, presumably leading to an identical corridor. Corporations loved symmetry. To their left were a pair of doors, each one leading to the actual trams, Trent figured. They approached the pair of doors. Trevor got there first and hit the access button. Nothing happened.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

He knelt and pressed a few more keys, then sighed heavily and pulled out his kit.

“This is going to take a minute.”

As he finished his sentence, a rapid series of knocks, something hard against metal, filled the room. Everyone spun around, pointing their collective arsenal towards the origin of the sound: the closed door leading to the opposite corridor.

“Check it,” Sergio murmured.

Trent, Drake and Gideon broke away from the group. They crossed the room, keeping their weapons aimed at the door. Trent got there first. Drake and Gideon covered the door while he hit the access button. It slid open smoothly. Nothing waited for him. He stepped through, his rifle raised, finger inside the trigger guard.

Trent heard the others moving in sync with him, as precise as any military squadron, covering all the angles.

“There!” he shouted, spying a blur of dark movement about halfway down the corridor.

It had gone left, into the hangar. The trio hurried to the nearest door along the left-hand side. Trent opened it and they poured through, moving their weapons in tight arcs, covering different portions of the massive room they found themselves in.

“What do you have?”
Sergio asked over the radio.

“Don't know. Something dark, roughly human sized, went into the hangar,” Trent replied.

As tense as he was with anticipation and a small amount of fear, Trent felt hopeful that he might finally see what had the corporate dogs so spooked. He scanned the hangar. It was immense, its far walls and ceiling lost to the shadows. A handful of jump ships and small cargo-haulers were scattered across the area, some of them in varying states of repair. Not what he had expected to find. If the situation was as bad as they painted it to be, then why weren't all these ships gone? Or at least the ones that could still fly.

Why hadn't everyone bugged out?

Maybe these were the ships that couldn't fly, but there were a
lot
of them. There must have been close to a dozen of them. There was no time to check and see anyway. This was a smaller mystery for later, if at all. Right now, they had bigger fish to fry.

“Anyone see anything?” Drake whispered.

“I've got nothing,” Gideon murmured back.

“No,” Trent said quietly.

They moved slowly through the hangar. There were any number of places to hide in the dim light. Behind piled crates, underneath or inside of ships, the shadows. Hell, even the vents. After another moment, Trent sighed, feeling the tension going out of him.

“Maybe it went into one of the other rooms,” he said.

“But why would...” Drake hesitated, then grinned. “Oh, yeah, maybe it did.”

Gideon chuckled quietly.

“What's happening?”
Sergio asked.

“We're still tracking it, whatever it is,” Trent replied.

“Don't stray too far. I want everyone back here in five minutes.”

“Roger that, boss.”

They came back out into the corridor. Trent looked left, right, found nothing, then went over to one of the doors marked Security Station. He opened it up and played his light across the dim interior. The only light came from a bank of screens stacked up behind a desk. The trio secured the room with quick sweeps of their weapons, then approached the monitors. Most of them showed nothing but empty corridors and abandoned rooms.

Everywhere he looked, Trent saw signs of abrupt abandonment. Half-eaten meals. Tipped over chairs. Infopads dropped on the floor.

“What happened here?” Drake murmured.

Only one screen showed any movement, and that was the tram lobby. Trevor had just finished getting the doors opened. Sergio looked back to the door Trent and the others had gone through just a moment ago. He seemed impatient.

“You see anything?” Gideon asked.