Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (17 page)

She didn’t have long to think about humanity’s accomplishments, after clearing a ridge on the landscape McClellan came into view.  Light filtered away from the support city and ruined the views that Charlotte had been appreciating in the lack of light.  She sighed and looked at the city that was her home.  The good doctor knew there were other cities just like it all over Eris, each responsible for the teams in its proximity, but she had never been to a single one of them.  They were all named after famous generals from the past.  She didn’t know anything about McClellan, but he must have been famous for her town to be named after him.

It was only a few minutes before the rover reached its destination at the transit depot.  She would have to walk through the streets on her own, now.  She felt uneasy due to her upbringing on Earth, where walking alone meant that you were stupid or suicidal, but McClellan was possibly the safest place she could be at night.  Any violence was swiftly punished as each citizen was also an employee of the Commission and would face immediate integration into the games if found guilty of any illegal actions.  All of the citizens of the support cities worked for, or around, the games, so they knew exactly what would happen if they were found guilty. 

Charlotte wandered through the streets looking for the address that Laurence had given her just a few days ago.  Albert had made a mistake trying to bring her in and Laurence hadn’t been happy about it, but he had told her that they would fully brief her at a local bar.  She had laughed at the idea, but when Laurence gave her a stern look she knew that the resistance agent was not the type of guy to joke.  When she found a note in her lab coat with the bar’s address, a date and a time written underneath it, she knew that she would just have to trust the man.

She approached the nearest intersection and read the street name on the corner building.  Etched on the stone was the phrase “Semper Fidelis.”  She laughed at the meaning and how the three of them were being anything but faithful.  Charlotte looked back at the address on the note and saw the phrase written in Laurence’s handwriting.  At least she guessed it was his; it was the typical scrawl that would have come from a career soldier.  She shook her head and turned right down the street, looking for the street address.

The doctor had only been walking for a few minutes when she came to the address. 
341 Semper Fidelis Avenue
, she thought as she looked up and saw the sign.  Charlotte laughed again.  Laurence must have a sense of humor that she had not experienced, yet.  She looked down from the sign which proudly displayed “Always Faithful” and swung the door inwards.  The doctor stepped through and didn’t know what to expect.

Charlotte could have expected more.  There were a few drunkards at the bar and a couple sets of older men sitting at some of the tables.  The bartender, a grizzled, old man with smatterings of gray set in his black hair and wearing antiquated suspenders to hold up his slacks, was having a conversation with a few of his customers.  A general assortment of half-heard words and vague mumblings seemed to flow through the bar.

Charlotte breathed the stale air deep into her lungs and steeled herself.  She had to wait for them; she had to make a good show of it and put herself out there.  Charlotte Kane would have a drink and think good thoughts about the coming revolution.

She warily approached the bar and claimed a stool near the corner.  Charlotte was four seats down from the nearest drinker; she didn’t want to be too close to any of these people.  McClellan might be safe, but every once in a while there was an outlier; she didn’t want to be the aberration in the statistics.  The barman eyed her from the opposite side of the bar and finished up his conversation with one of the drunkards.  When he walked over to her position at the corner, he set his hands against the edge of the wooden surface and held himself up.

“You sure you’re in the right place?”  He seemed to be genuinely concerned for her, which was a bit of a relief.  Charlotte had expected him to just off-handedly tell her that she should stay out of his bar and go on home.  She didn’t know whether or not she would have just agreed and skirted off with her tail between her legs, but thankfully that wasn’t going to happen.

“You serve alcohol?  That’s what I’m here for,” Dr. Kane said defiantly.  She could
pretend
to have courage in any case.  The barkeep smiled and shook his head while he looked at the floor.

“You don’t look much like the drinking type, honey.”  Charlotte eyed the man and suddenly felt a mixture of feelings.  She didn’t like the condescension and felt outraged, but at the same time she just wanted to nod and tell him that he was right.  She was still working through it as he started to make a drink and looked her in the eye.

“Well, not if you don’t serve me.  How am I supposed to drink if you keep doubting me?”  She heard the tremors in her voice and knew she was losing this conversation.  Charlotte was about to give up and leave when he just smiled and chuckled.  He finished making the drink, just a vodka tonic with a twist, placed a small straw in it and placed it in front of her.

“Guess I just have to stop talking then.  I have a feeling you’re going to want to take this drink and sit over in that table over there,” the barkeep said before leaning down a bit and pointing over at a vacant table in the corner away from the other patrons.  She looked down at the vodka tonic and raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t order this.  Why would I want to drink it?”  The barkeep laughed and tilted his head before letting the wrinkles in his forehead crease his face.

“It’s a free drink, doc, and I don’t have anything less manly.  Just take it and wait for our two friends.”  Charlotte eyed the man and realized that he knew far more than she had thought.  He knew who she was waiting for; he knew that she was a doctor.  She warily put out her hand and curled her fingers around the rocks glass.  The man winked at her and stood back up.

“There you go.  They’ll be here soon.  You should get to that table,” the barkeep said before turning and heading back down to the other end.  The man clearly knew more about this little get-together than she did.

She sat there at the table for too long.  Her thoughts started to wander as she sat at the rickety, old table.  It was an antique, but not the good kind.  Charlotte was sure that if the table could tell its story that it would be a tale of moving from one dump to the next.  The legs were patched up and uneven.  Charlotte was glad she was sitting on a bench.  It had no real capability to shift on her.

As she sat at the table waiting for her little resistance meeting she wondered about what they could possibly do to bring Jenkins back.  Hawkins had modified his brain so much and obliterated the man’s past self to the point where Dr. Kane didn’t recognize him.  Charlotte didn’t know of any way to repair damage like that; didn’t know of any conditioning that would bring the real Ryan Jenkins back to life.

She tried not to think about the young soldier.  She had already spent too much time obsessing over that personal casualty.  Charlotte had been there when he had first died.  He had thought he’d gone to Purgatory or to Hell with that first resurrection.  She had quietly regarded those beliefs as silly and quaint, but it didn’t seem so inappropriate, now.  These soldiers under her care experienced eternal agonies; it was understandable that religion might come into it.  She had tried to help him out of that spiral of despair; she had tried to help him cope with this world where he had lost himself.

Charlotte shook the thoughts from her mind.  Soon enough Laurence and Albert would arrive and the only things they would talk about would be terrible.  It would all be about war and resistance and a number of things that Charlotte couldn’t normally stomach.  She decided she needed to think about something more cheerful.

Her thoughts fell to her sister.  She wondered if the girl was getting into any trouble.  Charlotte secretly hoped she was.  Elizabeth had always followed a little too closely to her sister’s own path.  Charlotte had always been a book worm; she was often found with her eyes too close to the computer display while she let all the information flow into her brain.  Elizabeth wasn’t as smart as the young doctor, but she emulated her all the same.  Charlotte didn’t wish that for her sister.  She looked back on her youth and thought about how nice it would have been to waste more of it.  If she got a chance she would tell Liz to go outside a bit more; she would tell Liz not to follow in her footsteps.

Albert walked in the bar first.  He was bumbling as always so it wasn’t very difficult for the doctor to recognize him outside of his armor.  He seemed less imposing without the bulky, black gear, but still formidable.  Charlotte thought about flagging the man over but thought better of it.  She would let him notice her.  It would be less suspicious.

He walked over to the bar and waited at the same stool she had first approached.  It wasn’t long before the barkeep came over and placed a beer in front of the man.  Charlotte couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw the bartender and the resistance agent glance over at her corner before chuckling.  It was only a moment before the grizzled, old man smiled, shook the soldier’s hand and then departed to the other side of the bar.  Albert saluted the man with his beer and then turned to walk towards the doctor.  He sat in one of the chairs opposite her bench and smiled once he got himself situated.

“Seems you found the place alright,” he said before taking a sip from his beer.  The doctor tilted her head to each side before shrugging.

“It wasn’t that hard.  Seems like Laurence has a sense of humor with the choice of our ‘terrorist meeting,’” Charlotte said, drawing quotation marks in the air.  Albert furrowed his brow and looked at her.  She was taken aback by this but then straightened up against the bench.

“Semper Fidelis?  Always Faithful?  Kind of an odd choice for this kind of meeting,” she said, doing her best to explain the joke without insulting his intelligence.  He took a second turning the gears in his mind, but eventually it seemed like he understood.

“Oh, well, Riley owns the bar, so it’s pretty safe here,” Albert said, clearly not understanding what she was talking about.  Charlotte wondered if she was getting on the wrong side in this resistance.  She decided to just ignore it and focus on what Albert had said.

“Ah, and Riley is the bartender?” she asked while using her outstretched-thumb to point at the old man serving drinks.  Albert took another sip of his beer and nodded.  He gulped and set the glass back down on the table.

“Mhmm.  He used to play for the Hawks, actually.  Got out and into the drinking business.  Sort of.  He’s been part of the EFI since almost the beginning,” Albert said while looking at the grizzled man behind the bar.  Charlotte looked at the man and suddenly appreciated the bartender a bit more.  She turned back to Albert just in time to see Laurence pass over the threshold.  He walked over to where Riley had been talking with one of the drunks and shook the old man’s hand.  The bartender poured out three fingers of whiskey for the man, neat, and then drank a shot himself.  Charlotte couldn’t help but smile at the man’s antics.  She wondered what kind of stories the old soldier would have.

Laurence left the barman to his business and headed over to Dr. Kane’s dark corner.  She suddenly felt nervous as she saw the resistance agent’s face.  It was weathered in the worst way.  The smile lines and the crow’s feet were there, but it was as if he had not been happy in a long time.  She hadn’t noticed it before, but Laurence didn’t seem to be the kind of man who had pleasant stories to tell.  All of his wrinkles were along his brow and his face was slightly gaunt.  Charlotte felt apprehensive as the man set down his whiskey and eased himself into one of the chairs.  Before looking up to acknowledge his companions he turned his head slightly to Albert.

“You took the good chair,” he said before looking up to see the new recruit.  Albert just laughed and sipped at his beer.

“That’s why I got here early, Laurence,” the young EOSF guard said without looking at his senior officer.  Laurence glanced at him out of the corner of his eye but then let the comment slide.  He didn’t really seem mad, for which Charlotte was grateful.  She desperately wanted him to be nice and light-hearted on the inside.  Everything he was going to say was going to contradict that, she knew, but she liked to hope.  Laurence cleared his throat and gave her a forced smile.  She could tell that he didn’t do it often.  He might not have remembered how to do it naturally.

“So, thankfully, you’ve kept your mouth shut.  We’ve kept surveillance on you since Albert’s little mix-up and since you didn’t tell anyone we’ve decided to let you further into the program,” he said while shaking his head at Albert.  The young soldier seemed shamed by the action.  Charlotte Kane looked at the man and furrowed her own brow.

“You’ve been watching me this whole time?  I thought I was already part of it.  What if I slipped up?  What would you have done?” Charlotte asked.  Laurence wasn’t really prepared for the onslaught of questions, so he didn’t respond at first, but he regained his composure and folded his hands in front of him.

“We had to be sure, Charlotte.  And while we’d appreciate your help, if you don’t know how to stay quiet then we would have had a problem,” he said before looking her in the eye.  “You know how serious this is, right?”  Charlotte looked at the man and nodded slightly.  He sighed and scratched the edge of his nose before continuing.  “We can’t afford anyone knowing.  I’ll leave it at that,” he said before sighing again and folding his hands.  Charlotte didn’t want to ask any more questions if that was going to be the response she got.  He leaned back in his chair and looked her in the eye.

“But you’re in.  You’re one of us now and hopefully some of us will make it through.  There are no guarantees, but if you’re like us then you know what we’re fighting for.  What we will be fighting for.  Now, as I remember you’re quite taken with the Jenkins boy,” he said after leaning in and propping up his chin with both of his hands.  Charlotte was surprised by the question and how it was asked.  She hadn’t considered herself involved with Jenkins; she just wanted him back.  The raven-haired woman silently tried to figure out the difference.