Read Online Absolute Zero (The Shadow Wars Book 4) by S. A. Lusher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: S. A. Lusher
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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
“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
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