Swan Song (Book Three of the Icarus Trilogy) (8 page)

The older man took care of the bloody patches with the first aid kit in the kitchen and then dressed himself in comfortable clothes.  He hadn’t bothered to turn off the television and silently resolved to leave the thing on while he was in the apartment.  Garrison
liked
being angry.  It felt like the right thing to do.

Garrison walked by the coffee table and absent-mindedly grabbed the fourth remote, pressing the button to turn the television off.  He didn’t want the device to waste power while he was walking around the city.  The middle-aged man gathered his things before leaving and then walked out of the apartment, letting the door swing closed behind him.

It was time to get some fresh air.

-

The waves rolled about in the fresh light and a smile started on Jenkins’ face.  He hadn’t seen anything so beautiful in his whole life.  Ryan had been used to the moonlight, comfortable in it, but now that he saw the sun and felt its warmth all he wanted to do was get closer.  He didn’t think he would ever be content with the moonlight ever again.

Ryan dipped towards the waves, more confident now that he could fully see the shape of them, and felt the salt in the air scratching against his face.  For a moment the flying man closed his eyes and just flapped his wings enough to keep himself in the air.  It was an amazing feeling, flying but trusting that the wind would carry him.

The young man opened his eyes just in time to see his wings about to touch the crest of a giant wave.  Ryan panicked slightly and flapped his wings harder just to regain some altitude.  For a moment he thought he was about to hit the waves with his black wings, but the young man was fortunate.  Jenkins pumped his wings for a few minutes before he was at a comfortable distance from the white tops of the ocean beneath him.

Ryan breathed out heavily in relief and looked to his left.  The moon was starting to disappear below the horizon and the young man felt a small bit of sadness at that.  The white sphere had been his constant companion for so long now, but it was being replaced.  It would no longer be the guiding light that he used to find his way.

Jenkins nodded towards the departing light and looked forward, instantly feeling the warmth of the yellow sun on his face.  He could see the land a little clearer, now that the sun had risen above the landmass.  It was still just a black line, but Ryan knew that he would make it eventually.  These crows’ feathers that he had stolen would help him there.  The soaring man brought out his arms in his exultation and joy and pumped his wings again, finally feeling free to enjoy his life.  But as he did, one of the pieces of shrapnel in his right wing tore open the skin on his arm and caused the flying man to grimace in pain.

Ryan woke with his arm feeling an enormous amount of pain and brought it swiftly to his chest.  The young messiah-figure gasped as the echoes of pain worked through his right side, but after a moment he realized that it wasn’t true reality; it was just a sympathetic reaction from his brain.  The young man brought his arm back to his side and stared at the ceiling in the dark.

The young Crow brought himself up to a sitting position and then swung his legs around to the side of the bed.  He didn’t know why he was allowed a bed; most of the soldiers slept on cots.  Jenkins didn’t think it was fair, but no one was going to argue with him about it.  Atlas and Ryan were given this comfort for the work they had to do.  The other soldiers had thought it out of the question that Ryan could sleep on just another cot.

Jenkins had only fought them for a few days before he realized that he loved having his own room and his own bed.  It was a luxury in a time of deprivation, and although he didn’t deserve that treatment it became quickly apparent that he needed it.  He needed the time alone and the comfort that a bed could give him.  Helping lead a revolution was wearing down the young man.

The messiah figure picked himself up, lit the nearby lamp and then walked over to his desk.  The blueprints of the Jericho complex were still scattered around the table, Ryan’s notes scribbled all over them.  The young Crow wished that his operatives would report back already.  It was out of his hands, but he still hated knowing that he was responsible for the lives and deaths of so many people in the Earth Freedom Initiative.  While there had been numerous successes, each one of the failures weighed heavily on his conscience.

The dreams were starting to worry Jenkins.  Usually they were uneventful, but this rising sun seemed foreboding.  Ryan could be hopeful and consider that maybe things were going to get better, but the soldier knew that good things didn’t often happen to him.  The thoughts of his dream persona were not helping, either.  In his dream, he had felt guilty for stealing the feathers; he felt guilty for the loss of the birds.  Jenkins rubbed his eyes as he tried to think about the significance.

Ryan laughed as he remembered that he was only twenty-four.  It had seemed like years since he had departed from Eris.  It seemed like lifetimes since he had grown up in the dens of New Chicago.

Then he realized that it had.

The thought woke up the young messiah.  It was not so long ago that Jenkins had committed suicide because he realized that he was not the same man who had signed himself and all his clones into a bloody slavery.  Ryan had been convinced that five different men had lived on Eris with the same memories and the same genetic code.  He had valued his life as less than nothing and only briefly hesitated before putting a bullet through his skull.

Guilt tore at the young Crow.  He was never supposed to be a hero; Ryan was just a thief who got suckered into perpetual death.  But the EFI had caught hold of his story and decided that they could use Jenkins as a sort of Jesus figure.  They just needed to bring him back from the dead and luckily technology was up to the task.  It didn’t matter that so many people had to die just to get the suicidal soldier off the planet; now the EFI had their mascot.

Ryan leaned back in his chair and sank into himself.  His anger over the Fall of Eris had lasted a good long while and Jenkins had used it as fuel, but the meter was running on empty.  The anger had given over to self-pity and grief and Ryan could just barely justify his existence.  There were so many better men that had been killed just for him to have his chance at freedom and redemption. 

Roberts and Feldman were in his thoughts constantly, but for different reasons.  Jenkins could rationalize away most of the deaths from the Crows on that last day on Eris, it was war after all, but not Roberts.  The tortured young soldier had no business dying that way, cradling himself over a grenade so that Ryan could live through his mistake.  Jenkins had been unable to grieve for his friend and his sacrifice at the time, but that just made the reaction worse.  Ryan was directly responsible for the boy’s death and it wore at him every day.

Feldman was another story.  The titan was more than enough to be a hero and a messiah, as far as Ryan was concerned.  Jenkins had never met a more worthy example of nobility and heroism, but that wasn’t Feldman’s fate.  He had been set up to be a martyr, resorting to using a sword in a gun fight.  It wasn’t Ryan's fault or his choice, but Gregory Feldman gave his life anyway just because it was the right thing to do.  Jenkins prayed to no god in particular that he was worthy of the giant’s faith in him.  Ryan had yet to feel like he had done the man justice, no matter how many sacrifices he made.

But as Jenkins stared at the ceiling of the sparsely-lit room his thoughts fell to another sacrificial lamb.  Ryan thought about his clone and the injustice of his entire existence.  As a way to recoup losses from Ryan's suicide, the Commission had decided to use a behavioral modification technique on the soldier’s brain.  The result had been a nearly-sociopathic version of the young Crow.  Perfect for battle in every way; an artificial hero.

Ryan couldn’t save him, either.  He had wanted to, desperately.  That alternate version of Jenkins was the closest thing to a brother that Ryan would ever have in this lifetime, and it had been ripped away from him.  The artificial man had given himself in order to save Charlotte; he had tried to make his artificial life worth something more than artificial.

And then Montgomery had stolen that, as well.  Ryan thought about the multi-trillionaire and his temper tantrum; destroying an entire world because a few slaves decided to rise up.  It was cold, brutal and totally devoid of humanity.  It had robbed Jenkins of his love and his army and it had robbed so many of so much more.

However, it had given the Earth Freedom Initiative exactly what it needed.  The catalyst was put to the human race and now all Jenkins needed to do was help the process along.  Ryan just needed to push humanity in the right direction and eventually all of those sacrifices would not be meaningless.  It didn’t matter what Atlas and all the reports said; the EFI still had a solid hold in this revolution.  The others might have studied war theory and the insurgencies throughout history, but Jenkins knew that this fight wasn’t over.

Jenkins would lead them; he would make certain that Jasper Montgomery paid dearly for his crimes.  Ryan would make absolutely certain that Earth and the seven daughters left to it would be the shining beacons of humanity that they always deserved to be.  The young Crow was going to do everything in his power to make it happen and would not accept any sort of compromises.

The messiah figure rolled up the blueprints of the Jericho installation and then brought up a folder from the inbox.  There were plans to be made over the next few assaults and Jenkins knew he had to write a speech for each one of them, be it success or failure.  His work was never over; it didn’t matter if he was plagued by dreams of flying and pain.  It didn’t matter that he only had a few hours of fitful rest and that he had to play messiah for the world.  Jasper Montgomery was going to pay for his crimes and Jenkins was going to bring this war to an end.

He owed it to them.  Every single one.

-

The flame-haired man was looking at the sky and felt completely at peace.  This was the kind of work he was always meant to do; it only made sense after the years of training he went through on Eris.  He only needed to be calm and placid at the right moments and the rest of the time he could just laugh and dance without any real cares.

It was too bad that real cares had decided to make themselves known anyway.  Edward Norris could no longer live in a fairytale world where he could endlessly destroy men from afar and suffer no consequences.  The sniper hadn’t been bothered by dying every once in a while; it seemed like a proper trade to the Englishman.  Now he had only the one life where he spent half of it underground or holed up in an apartment.

That’s why it was so important for the man to seize upon the little things in life.  He was tasked with staying on this rooftop until the official made a move, but he had a couple spotters that would let him know if the man was about to leave the building.  The EFI was like that, covering all the bases.

So Norris gazed at the sky and smiled, rubbing his gloved fingers against his ruined ear, which had become quite the habit.  As he looked skyward, he realized that some people didn’t consider Earth a beautiful world anymore; the sky was dirty, almost brown, and the clouds told omens of storms to come, but the Englishman appreciated seeing it from his rooftops.  This was his city, his hunting ground, and he reveled in it.

“Hey, Teucer, you ready?” a feminine voice crackled over the narrow-band radio.  Norris grunted at the code and wished she would just man up and use his real name.  He actually appreciated Tom’s use of code names for everyone else, but he liked taking credit for his actions.  The jester didn’t like the killing, but he didn’t want to hide behind any ancient references.  But all this was besides the point for the sniper, so Norris rolled over and crawled to the rifle he had left against the wall.

Edward Norris squatted near the edge of the rooftop and peered over.  He was on top of a modestly-sized building down the street from the Metropolitan Exchange, a huge glass building about forty stories high.  It wasn’t nearly as big as Babylon Tower, Montgomery’s centerpiece of human achievement, but it was still enough to hurt Edward's neck as he scanned up and down the building.  The Englishman brought his rifle to bear, pointed it at the entrance to the building and looked through the scope.

It was as if the scene playing in his eyepiece was only five meters away.  If nothing else, the EFI had done well in providing Norris the kind of weapon that made him drool.  The red-haired killer smiled as he watched the doorman opening the giant glass doors.  Norris laughed at the extravagance and wondered what the Trade Union thought was going to happen when they flaunted all this luxury.

“Teucer!” the voice yelled over the radio again, unaware that Norris was readying himself; the jester hadn’t bothered to respond and became slightly flustered at the interruption.  He tapped at his earpiece and licked his lips.

“Oi, ever heard of radio silence?  I got it,” Edward said as he watched the door.  He could see his target, the slightly-overweight man in the tan trench coat, two meters beyond the entrance.  He just had to wait until the paper-pusher was through the door and he could sink a bullet into his brain.