Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (24 page)

Warner stopped breathing for a moment.  He was glad that the wall was behind him, because there was no way he could support himself after that statement.  The convict looked at the black man on the other side of the room and didn’t even realize that his anger had left him.  He was too confused.

“The
fuck
are you talking about?”

“I’m with the Eris Freedom Initiative, Joe.  I’m assuming you haven’t heard of us, but we’re the ones who are going to show the world that we don’t have to take this.  How long have you wanted to get back at the Commission, Joe?” the thin man asked as he stepped to his side and then sat down on top of Warner’s desk.  He made sure not to step on any of the scattered pages of Warner’s journal.

“Every day since I got here, Templeton,” Warner said, lifting his back off the wall behind him and standing on his own two feet.  The convict liked what he was hearing.  He even forgot to use his usual vocabulary.

“Thought so.  In a week it’s starting.  They’re gonna take back this piece-of-shit rock, we’re gonna get the hell off of it, and then we’re going to take back Earth.  Because the Commission and the Trade Union have it coming.  How do you like that?” Templeton asked, knowing for certain that the convict liked the idea quite a bit.

“We’ll die, nigger,” Warner said crossing his arms, but not realizing that a smile had crept across his face.

“Then we’ll just have to take a lot of those fuckers out, won’t we?” the revolutionary said with that same half-smile that had ignited Warner’s fury only moments before.  This time it brought back a mirror version across the convict’s face.

“Shit, Templeton, I won’t even have to kill you.  You’re going to die anyway,” he said laughing at the end of the statement.

“Maybe so, but maybe not.  You might just make it out yourself, you know.  You could be the one to put them in their place,” Templeton said, giving a cursory nod at the encouragement.  Warner laughed.

“Don’t expect to, motherfucker.  But at least I’ll get some killing in.  By the way, how stupid are you to be having this talk indoors, nigger?  There’s probably a bug in here and they’re listening to us,” the convict said, realizing but not caring about the risks of the conversation.  The agent merely shook his head.

“There’s no bug in here, Joe.  You like the killing too much; you’re not on any watch list,” he said while shrugging.  Warner sighed, looked off into the middle distance and shrugged with him.  It made sense, in a way.  “There’s another reason I came to talk to you, though.”  Warner looked back to the black man and furrowed his brow.

“What?  You curious about the writing?”  Templeton shook his head and took a deep breath.  He lifted himself off the desk, getting into the proper position in case Warner decided to go berserk again.

“There’s more to this plan and you’re not going to like it,” he said, his tone grim and his eyes hard.  Warner glared at the man invading his personal space and shrugged again.

“Well get the fuck on with it, then.”

“It’s about Jenkins, Joe.  He’s instrumental to the plan.  I need to know that you won’t hurt them,” he said, his muscles tense, waiting for the incoming blows.  Instead, Warner backed up against the wall and laughed miserably at the ceiling.

“Of COURSE it’s about Jenkins.  It’s
always
about Jenkins.  Can’t have a world-saving plan without
Jenkins
,” he said shaking his head as he lowered it back down to look at the revolutionary.  “And what the fuck do you mean, ‘hurt
them
?’”

“Part of the plan is that we’re bringing back the old Jenkins, the
real
Jenkins, in order to show what lengths the Commission goes to and what cruelties they permit.  It helps that they’re turning the new Jenkins into a hero for television.  He’s going to be one of our greatest assets, Joe.  We need him to stay alive,” Templeton stated, wondering at what point the convict was simply going to snap.  The white man twisted his face while he contemplated the plan and then tilted his head.

“You can do that?  You can bring him back?” he asked as he scratched his scalp underneath the few days of hair growth.  Templeton nodded.  The convict blinked his eyes hard a few times and breathed in deep.  He wondered what it would be like to see the coward that Jenkins used to be walking around again.  The convict wondered how the kid would talk, how he might react to a world where he actually had a chance.

That’s when Warner realized that he missed the kid, too.  He looked back up at Templeton and sighed.

“Well, shit, let’s bring the boy home.”

-

Jenkins didn’t much like waiting in line to jump.  There was a bit of anxiety, but really Jenkins didn’t care about the fall.  It was the standing around in the cargo bay as the wind whipped through and buffeted him back and forth.  He didn’t want to lose his footing and slide out of the opening prematurely, screwing up the deployment as he did.  It was a relief as the green light flashed and the soldier in front of him walked forward and jumped out of the transport.  Jenkins followed only a few seconds behind the gladiator.

The wind screamed past him as he plummeted to the steel landscape.  From his high vantage point he could only see the reflections of light from a thousand shards of metal and plating and knew there was barbed wire and so many other hazards in his landing zone.  The soldier smiled anyway and fell to the death trap.

About three hundred meters up in the air Jenkins released his parachute and the sudden deceleration was almost enough to cause whiplash in the young soldier.  He ignored the sensation and focused on the task at hand, as the ground was still rushing to meet him and would allow for no survival if he wasn’t paying attention.

After guiding himself to a relatively clear spot of land, Jenkins released the parachute from his harness while still five meters above the ground.  He did what he could to use up his momentum in a forward roll, but still felt the impact as he hit the surface of the asteroid.  His bones ached, but it was one of the nicest landings he had ever performed; the suit of power armor compensated well for re-entry.  He picked himself up from the ground and readied his rifle for what was to come.

Jenkins could see Warner off to his left and noticed that he was trying to connect to people over Comms.

“Jenkins and I are down, we’re gonna scout off to the East and then let you know.  Yeah, well fuck you, too,” he said before sighing and looking back to his partner for the match.  The convict nodded towards the crest to his right and then started to jog at a brisk pace.  Jenkins followed him east and wondered how things would go against the Wolverines.

As he jogged after Warner, Jenkins could see the compass at the top of his Heads-Up Display.  The HUD was full of useful information, but the young soldier had to smile at the large E in the middle of the compass.  There was no true East on War World, as there was no real magnetic North.  The Commission had made up a geographical analog just so that their slave soldiers would be able to coordinate during their matches.

Warner didn’t much care if he lived or died anymore.  As he ran forward, hoping to encounter the enemy, he realized that his debts didn’t matter.  There was the pain from every resurrection to deal with, certainly, but the money that he would have to spend on his new bodies didn’t matter now.  In just a week he would be free from his corporate shackles.  He might be exchanging it for a turn in the gallows, but Warner was satisfied with the risks.  He could finally enjoy some good ole-fashioned bloodlust once again; it didn’t just come down to balancing the books anymore.

The convict thought about the soldier following behind him.  He wasn’t the true Jenkins and he had no future as the real Jenkins.  The man jogging behind him, the man who would have the convict’s back in case there were Wolverines hiding around the bend was no longer going to matter in just a few days.  Warner wondered what kind of stress that would put on the soldier; to know that he was going to be inconsequential in just a week.  Joe wondered what it would do to Jenkins to realize he was going to be paraded around like a carnival show.

The convict felt a sudden twinge of sympathy, which was something he had not expected to feel.  He decided that if he had time for it, he would have to talk with the slave soldier.  Warner didn’t like the idea, but there were times when even he had to succumb to human nature.

Luckily for the convict Warner had little time to think about it.  As they rounded a bend in the pathway between two half-wrecked transports, Warner was greeted by the sight of three Wolverines fifteen meters in front of him.  The gladiator cursed, armed a grenade and threw it before trying to sidle up against the transport to his right, doing what he could to decrease the space that he occupied.  As he raised his automatic up to his shoulder he smiled, realizing that the three soldiers had no idea that they had been joined by their enemy.

The Wolverines heard the clinking sound of the grenade bouncing along the ground and did what they could to dive out of the way.  The two to either side were fortunate enough to dive behind assorted pieces of trash, one behind a massive rubber tire and the other behind a sheet of steel plating, but the other soldier could only dive to the ground.  The fragmentation grenade burst in all directions, pelting the tire and the steel plating, leaving the first two unharmed, but the third soldier was not so lucky.  The shards of metal and plastic ripped through the prone man’s legs and groin, creating dozens of small lacerations which caused the man’s life to leak out all around him. 

Warner’s smile vanished as the passion of the fight left him, but he trained his automatic on the Wolverine behind the steel plating.  As the two soldiers started to fire back at Warner’s position, the convict did what he could to spray ammunition into the helmet of the soldier.  He didn’t worry about the soldier behind the tire; he needed to focus on his target.  If the soon-to-be-irrelevant Jenkins was worth anything, he would take care of the other Wolverine.

The convict was right to think so.  Jenkins had only been a few steps behind the gladiator and had readied his rifle as soon as Warner had let slip his curses.  The artificial man trained his rifle on the Wolverine behind the tire and when the soldier tried to peek over cover, Jenkins let loose a round which broke through the man’s visor at an angle and splattered the man’s brains out of the side of his helmet.  The rifleman didn’t allow his momentary victory to distract him and instead shifted his aim to the Wolverine firing at Warner.  As he did, Jenkins noticed that the soldier had a grenade in his hand and had just let it fly towards the pair of Crows.

The grenade immediately exploded as it was intercepted by a lucky burst of rounds from Warner’s weapon.  Jenkins breathed out heavily and his eyes went wide at the spectacle.  Fortune was truly smiling down on them.  The young soldier turned to his partner and thought that underneath the helmet Warner must have been grinning from ear to ear.  Warner looked back at his fellow Crow and sighed, the supposed smile absent from his face.  He just didn’t enjoy this anymore, not when there was worthwhile slaughter just outside of his reach.

“Lucky break, eh?  Let’s look around for others,” Warner said before creeping forward with his weapon.  After a few minutes of searching, the pair of Crows realized there were no enemies nearby and relaxed a bit.  Warner communicated their success over Comms and then looked back at his partner, who was standing over the grenade victim.

“Awful way to go.  Just awful,” Jenkins said before turning his gaze back to Warner.  The convict thought of his own experiences on the eternal battlefield.

“Could be worse.  I think we both know that,” he said before sitting down on a slab of concrete a few meters away from any of the dead bodies.  He didn’t feel like moving position unless they asked for it over Comms.  The convict was content to wait near these newly-made corpses.  Jenkins walked over and sat on the hood of an old transport just a few meters away.

“Could be better, comrade.  Could be better,” Jenkins said before looking off into the distance.  Warner knew he had to tell him.  The convict knew he wouldn’t be the best medium for the message, but a man should know about the plans and machinations surrounding him.  Warner glanced around the battlefield and could see no glimmers or flickering reflections.  He guessed that the cloaked camera drones which filmed this brand of sports were long gone.  They had already killed their opponents; no use in wasting film.  The convict gathered his courage and then looked back at his partner.

“I’m guessing by now you know something is up with how people are treating you.  Do you have any idea why, Jenkins?” Warner asked, not caring how he broke the silence.  The words would get out somehow; no need to be graceful about it.  Jenkins turned his gaze back towards the convict and Warner could swear that the boy was pursing his lips.

“I’m not the real Jenkins.  I’m a fake.  Carver paid for it.  Trying to come to terms with it, Warner,” he said before looking down at the ground, past the rifle in his hands.  “Does everybody know?”  Warner turned to the boy and then realized he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.

“Yeah, except for maybe a few of the quiet guys,” he said in an uncharacteristically soft tone.  He hadn’t realized before that moment how large a part he played in that revelation to the community.  His temper had gotten away from him like always.  He bit his lip and tried to forget about that particular act of shame.  “There’s more, kid.”  He looked back up and could see Jenkins’ helmet pointed in his direction.  Joseph wondered what the man’s face looked like underneath that visor.

“There always is, isn’t there?” Jenkins asked, bracing himself for what was coming.  It seemed like this artificial life was destined to disappoint.

“They’re bringing back the old Jenkins, kid.  The one who killed himself.  They’re going to bring him back to show how fucked-up these Commission bastards really are.  Trying to turn him into a living martyr or whatever.  All I know is that we’re gonna be fighting for our lives here.  Probably won’t make it, but goddamn if I’m not going to take some of them out with me,” Warner said before looking at the dead Wolverine lying in a pool of his own blood and feces.  The convict wondered how he would die in just a few days; wondered if it was going to be worth it.