Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (16 page)

“Special order for you,” the doctor said with a smile.  Abrams grunted and started to lift the garments over her head while standing near the medical table.

“Well, they would have to be.  I don’t see any of the other Crows hiding any breasts,” Abrams said before pulling the exercise fatigues up onto her waist.  She cinched the ties and looked at the only other woman in the complex.  The doctor shook her head and nodded towards the hallway.

“I’d let you know if they were.  I kinda see everything here,” Charlotte said with a wry smile.  Abrams shook her head as she approached the room’s exit.

“What has gotten into you?  Hawkins away?  That’s the only thing that I know of that could take the gloom out of this place,” Abrams said with a half-grin.  She made a mistake, though, because as soon as Jessica said the scientist’s name, Charlotte let the smile fall and seemed to recall some terrible memories.  Abrams felt guilty for letting the joking lead to such a change in the atmosphere.

They walked in silence for a small moment.  Abrams wanted to change the girl’s mood, it was her responsibility that she had let it turn sour, but she had nothing in reserve.  Jessica literally didn’t know anything about the doctor except that she was rather pretty.  Abrams often heard a few Crows talking about the raven-haired doctor instead of her; it only slightly hurt the soldier’s feelings. 

“So, what the hell is a nice girl like you doing down here on this god-forsaken rock?”  The doctor seemed to break herself out of her thoughts and looked at the soldier quizzically.  She looked down and laughed.

“I could ask you the same question.  You’re a foul-mouth, but you don’t belong here, either,” she said with a smile before using her eyes to trace the lines between the tiles in front of her.  “Honestly, I don’t really know.  I wanted to help.  There are plenty of doctors all over the asteroids, especially on Midgard where I went to school, and I didn’t really want to stay in Babylon.  Somehow I thought Eris would be less depressing than that place,” she said before turning to Abrams with a slight smile.  Jessica could tell there was a hint of sadness behind it.  “I figured that there would be a need for doctors here and I was right.”  She stopped in the hallway and looked back towards the resurrection chamber.

“Between you and me I don’t like this place.  It hurts me deep down, Jessica.  I don’t like seeing all of you mistreated,” she said before looking back at the female soldier.  Abrams could tell that the doctor was filled with compassion.  The warrior woman had done what she could to limit her own feelings, but she couldn’t help but feel empathy for the girl.  “I thought about leaving once,” Charlotte said before looking back to the resurrection chamber, “but I can’t leave you guys.  Not with
him
.”

Abrams heard the woman’s voice change when she mentioned Hawkins.  It had to be him.  Peter Hawkins, the head scientist in charge of the clinic, was a monster.  The various members of the Crows might butcher, murder and burn people alive, but Hawkins was the true boogeyman.  Abrams could understand Dr. Kane’s fear; after a number of run-ins with the scientist, Abrams knew exactly what kind of man Hawkins could be.  Being the only woman on the Crows was enough to garner special interest from the man.

“We appreciate that, doctor.  Or, at least, I do.  He was pretty horrible with all the rest of his assistants.  Thank you for sticking it out,” Abrams said before putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder.  Jessica didn’t show appreciation like that often in her stay on Eris, but she used to be normal.  War had just made her harder.  Charlotte turned to her and smiled.

“Well, thanks.  And you can call me Charlotte, by the way.  ‘Doctor’ is too formal and it’s not like you come to me with a cold.  I just make sure you’re battle-ready,” the doctor said before turning and walking back towards the training room.  Abrams kept step with the girl and shook her head. 

“I’ll keep that in mind, doc,” the soldier said before looking down the hallway.

“So why are you here?” the doctor asked from Abrams’ side.   The soldier looked over at the girl and tried to smile.  Jessica Abrams was still coming to grips with never seeing her loved ones again.

“My sister.  Rebecca.”  Abrams thought about leaving it at that, but she figured the doctor wouldn’t speak to anyone about it.  “She was sick.  I came here to pay for her treatment.  And now, I’m … never going to leave.”  It hurt Abrams to say the words out loud.  The thoughts were painful, but saying the truth brought it out of the darkness.  Charlotte looked at her with a question on the tip of her tongue.

“What did she have?”  Abrams looked at the doctor and smiled.  Of course she would ask that.

“Higgins-Scott.  The gene therapy was pretty expensive, but she seems to be pulling through.”  At that the woman by her side looked at her and gave her a sympathetic look.

“Well, that’s good, at least.  That’s a pretty horrible disease.  That Rebecca pulled through is a bit of a miracle.  You should be glad.”  Abrams looked at the girl by her side and realized that Charlotte was right.  Jessica was glad for it.  She remembered why she had decided to go through Hell for her little sister.  A small tear fell down the left side of her face.  She was grateful that the doctor couldn’t see it from her right side.

“I….I am.”  Abrams resolved to talk to her sister the next chance she got.  She hadn’t been able to talk to the girl the day before due to atmospheric interference.

“I have a sister, too,” Abrams heard from her right side.  She looked at the doctor who was giving her a slight smile.

“How old?”

“She’ll be twenty in a month,” Charlotte said before looking back to the training room.  They were almost there, now.  They had been walking slowly due to the conversation, but Abrams had to come to terms with the fact that her therapy was about to begin.  Jessica kept in her sigh and tried not to think about it.  She wanted to focus on having a normal conversation.

“Fun age.  Not for anybody else since we have to worry about them, but twenty is fun,” Abrams said before turning with a smile.  Thankfully the lone tear had already made its way down the soldier’s cheek and Charlotte couldn’t have noticed.  The doctor laughed at the soldier’s statement and sighed.

“Nah, she’s too much of a homebody.  My parents worry more about me than her.  I’m the one on the asteroid devoted to war, remember?” she said while looking out of the corner of her eye.  Charlotte had meant the statement as a joke, but then she remembered her new purpose on Eris.  She had been happy for the last few days thinking about how they were going to change these soldiers’ lives, but now she was thinking about what that meant.  She was thinking about the struggles that were to come.  Maybe her parents were right to worry about her.

Abrams laughed at her side and brought her out of her thoughts for the moment.  She laughed half-heartedly to fit in, but now her thoughts were consumed with this coming uprising.  Charlotte Kane suddenly felt awful about the whole ordeal.

The two women entered the training room and Charlotte situated Jessica in the muscle-growth equipment before starting her on the treadmill.  The young doctor noticed the red light that meant that another soldier was ready for resurrection and looked to the warrior woman.  Abrams just smiled as she started to run on the machine.

“That would be Jenkins.  Go on.  I’ll be fine here, Charlotte,” Abrams said as she ran in place.  The good doctor watched the woman for a while before shaking her head.  She wondered if she could ever be that strong.

She went to go bring the artificial soldier back to the living.

-

Charlotte Kane sighed as she looked over the display for the two soldiers.  Each had done well enough in their therapy and she had sent them out the door out into the cruel world again.  They were the last to die in the game against the Bulls and after they had departed there was nothing left for Dr. Kane to do.

The young doctor cleaned up her station, shutting down the computer display and throwing away the miscellaneous trash that had piled up.  There were some half-empty coffee cups and a few more empty ones scattered around the room.  A few of them were testament to her struggles to stay alert, but most of them had belonged to Hawkins at one point during the day.

Or the night
, she thought.  She hadn’t realized until halfway through her time on Eris, but Hawkins never went to his house back in McClellan except for extended vacations.  He spent most of his time in the clinic writing his medical papers or performing his experiments.

She shuddered at the thought.  Jenkins was the last straw, but Hawkins had plenty of other horrors in his back catalogue.  The only one she really knew about was the pain conditioning being done on Roberts.  The poor boy was just one of Hawkins’ guinea pigs over the years.  That was terrible enough, but recently Charlotte had been informed that Hawkins was just one of the scientists responsible for the experiment and that the whole thing had been funded by the Commission. 

But that’s why I’m doing this
, Charlotte Kane told herself.  She was about to meet up with Laurence and Albert when she got to McClellan.  She was about to help make this asteroid something worthwhile.  Charlotte Kane was going to end the atrocities men like Hawkins had been allowed to perform.  She steeled herself with that comforting thought.

Charlotte could look at Jenkins and know it was the sweet boy that she had come to admire.

She threw away the coffee cups and headed down the hallway to the resurrection chamber.  The control room was situated right next to the chamber and she was sure she would find the weasel-faced doctor tapping away at the computer display in the corner.  On more than one occasion she had left him sitting there for hours and come back to see that he hadn’t even turned from the computer.  Charlotte hated that she had to see him again, but seeing as she was
his
assistant, a fact that he loved telling her, she had to make an appearance before she left the clinic.  Half the time the scientist simply waved her off and didn’t want her around to spoil his exploits, but the other half of the time he created busy-work for her just to make her suffer.

The good doctor sighed as she entered the room.  She didn’t bother trying to make him feel appreciated; she didn’t bother to hide the sigh.  Just like Hawkins loved to remind her of her status, she liked to remind him that he was a waste of humanity.  Charlotte looked at him from across the room and just like she assumed he was tapping away on the computer again.  She knocked on the doorway and he stopped tapping on the display before looking over his shoulder.

“What do you want, Dr. Kane?”  She looked at him and gave him a tired smile.

“Jenkins and Abrams are out of here.”  He rolled his eyes and gave a disgusted sigh at her.

“Would you like a cookie?  I’d give you a cookie but I was too busy doing real work to actually make any.  If you’d like one then I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait for me to be finished with this program.  I’d ask you to help, but obviously it’s out of your league,” the scientist said with scarcely-veiled antagonism.  Charlotte’s eyes flickered with anger at the statement.

“No need to be snide, Hawkins.  I was wondering if I could leave,” the doctor said with her hand behind her back, her fingers crossed.  The scientist scoffed and shook his head.

“As long as the action figures are gone that’s fine.  I only need you here for the grunt work,” Hawkins said before turning back to his display.  She hated when he called the soldiers by that pet name of his.

“So I can leave?”  Hawkins stopped tapping and grunted.

“Yes, you can stop interrupting my work.  Unless you
want
me to think up something so that you can miss date night,” the scientist said with his back to the woman.  Dr. Kane shook her head and walked past him towards the other exit.

“Have a nice night, Peter,” she said as she passed him.  The scientist merely grunted and waved her off towards the door.  Charlotte could feel him staring at her ass as she crossed the room.  She desperately wanted something horrible to happen to him.

The air was rather cold when the doctor exited the building.  Charlotte had taken off her lab coat and was wearing a black dress down to her ankles that was now clinging closely to her legs.  She wore a medium length jacket as well to deal with the weather, but as the cold air bit at her she wished she had worn a few more layers.  It was getting close to winter for the asteroid, but it wouldn’t get much worse than this.  The scientists in charge of Eris’ orbit did what they could to make the seasons as similar as possible.

The young doctor climbed into the rover parked outside and sat down in one of the seats near the middle.  The shock from each bump seemed a little bit less there than anywhere else in the vehicle.  She strapped herself into the seat and then tapped at the controls nearby.  This rover was built for auto-transit to McClellan, so there was no need for a driver; no need to pay the wages of a living person when an automated system could work better.  The asteroid was under constant satellite surveillance and any changes in the landscape, if there were any, could be avoided just by tracking the vehicle. 

Charlotte Kane bounced against the restraints as the rover took off.  It might have been the apex of technology, but the rover was not built for comfort.  The landscape of Eris outside of the support cities was rocky and littered with scrap metal.  The hillsides were made of concrete, rebar and barbed wire; the roads were slightly worn-down concrete, rebar, barbed wire and other wreckage.  The rover was built to withstand the environment but little else.

While Charlotte had plenty to complain about in terms of comfort, she did appreciate the ride home every night.  Though it was perpetually hazy and cloudy during the day, or at least what they considered the day, the sky was magnificent after Earthrise.  Light pollution was almost non-existent on the asteroid and the nearby asteroids bounced light onto the little planet.  The awe-inspiring planet bodies seen through the gaps in the clouds were complemented by a vast array of stars.  The constellations there seemed slightly different to Charlotte than the ones back on Earth.  It didn’t make sense considering the distance from the stars, but she liked to think they were just a
little
different.  It made her feel like she was really somewhere else; that humanity had accomplished something.