Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (22 page)

“It wasn’t you.  It wasn’t even Hawkins, really.  It’s all the Commission and as everybody keeps reminding me,” Jenkins said just before sighing and looking at the floor, “I signed the contract.”  He did his best to look her in the eye.  “I’m a thief, Charlotte, or at least I used to be one.  I chose this,” Jenkins said as he tried to comfort her.  He didn’t know if it would work; the words didn’t comfort him at all.  Ryan had not chosen the life of a thief but he just wanted her to stop crying; he wanted to reach out and hug her but didn’t know if that would be appropriate.  He settled for sitting to the side and preaching platitudes.  She looked up at him and seemed to muster her resolve.

“It doesn’t matter that you’re a thief, Ryan.  It’s still wrong and I’m part of it,” she said, refusing to let any more tears fall from her eyes.  Jenkins looked at her and gave her a melancholic smile.

“At least you know it’s wrong,” he said as he remembered the official who had so off-handedly refused to bargain or hear Jenkins’ pleas.  “There are a lot of people who just sweep it under the rug or try to justify it.  You’re better than that, and you know it,” he said as he started to walk past her into the hallway.  He hoped his speech would be enough to make her feel better. 

He hoped because it didn’t make him feel better one bit.

-

Jenkins walked down the hallway away from the shooting gallery.  He had finished his round of calisthenics and had taken another long and lonely walk to the barracks.  It was Earthrise yet again and he had tried to sleep but he couldn’t help staying awake.  All he could think about were the twenty thousand times in his life where he could have turned it all around.  He could have left his gang or even tried to rob a different warehouse.  He thought of twenty thousand different versions of himself with little changes to each depending on his decisions.  He wondered if he would have liked their lives; he wondered if he would have been happy.

The young Crow realized it didn’t matter.  There was no way to turn back the clock.  He had risen with the other soldiers when the alarms went off and had continued on in his day like nothing had happened.  There was no major altercation with any of the soldiers in the mess hall.  They knew him to be an old hand, now, and no one thought anything of his third death.  Jenkins had made small talk with one of the new recruits during the meal.  Feldman had been absent and Jenkins wanted someone to talk to.  The recruit, a boy named Chang, had very little to say.  Jenkins stopped trying to talk to him once he noticed the kid crying into his oatmeal.

He went about his day and logged in his hour in the shooting gallery.  He didn’t try very hard to hit the moving targets and daydreamt the entire time.  There seemed to be a black cloud over him.  At the end the computer readout told him that he was largely average and if Jenkins wanted to survive he would need to improve.  He scoffed at the readout and threw it in the trashcan.  He was about to leave towards his room when he walked by Feldman’s training room.  He looked inside to find the giant swinging his sword just like the other day.

The giant seemed slower; his swings more deliberate and labored.  Jenkins could tell the man was sweating profusely underneath his armor and that his heaving chest couldn’t give the titan nearly enough oxygen.  Jenkins watched Feldman swing through all of his virtual opponents but saw quite a few firing back at the man.  The massive Crow couldn’t quite kill all of them and the computer was noting every fake bullet that struck the giant.  Soon enough Feldman stopped swinging his sword and set it on the ground.  He paid no attention to the virtual soldiers flanking him and then sat down on the floor next to his weapon.  The simulation ended and the room was again its natural, gray color.

Jenkins entered through the doorway and walked up to his friend.  Even sitting down the giant was an impressive height.  Jenkins sat down on the floor with the giant and folded his legs in front of him.

“You having some trouble, Feldman?” he asked as he flicked at a small piece of dust on the ground.  He was just opening conversation.  The giant shrugged and scratched at his cheek.  He didn’t wear his helmet during the training.

“A little.  This last resurrection was rough and unfortunately the muscle memory doesn’t translate,” he said before looking at his weapon.  Jenkins looked at the sword and imagined having to train with such intensity.  He suddenly was grateful he just had to shoot a rifle for an hour.

“Sounds painful,” he said, merely making noise.

“It is,” Feldman said before looking to the door.  He looked back at Jenkins, who was struggling with finding the words he wanted to say.  Feldman could tell there was something on the young soldier’s mind.

“What is it, Jenkins?  You didn’t come in here for small talk,” Feldman said before lifting himself off his elbows and regained his intimidating stature just by sitting up.  Jenkins looked at him and sighed before looking at his new legs sprawled out on the floor.  They were responding so much better than they had the other two times.

“You don’t belong here, Feldman.  You can’t have committed any crime.  You’re too nice; you’re too noble,” he said before looking the giant in the eye.  Feldman looked like a confused dog at this turn in conversation.  “And you don’t seem the type who would need money or think this was a good way to go about it.  You’re too smart.  It doesn’t make sense,” Jenkins said before propping up his head with his hand.  Feldman furrowed his brow and looked down. 

“I’ve never told anyone why I’m here, Jenkins.  Why do you want to know?”  Jenkins shrugged at that and started to pick at his fingernails.

“I don’t know, it’s just,” he said before standing up and walking a short distance.  He turned back and looked at the giant.  “I think you could have such a better life.  I feel like you’re wasting it here.  The rest of us were tricked into it, but by all rights you should have been able to stay away,” he said before Feldman laughed at him.

“This is what you think about?”  Feldman shook his head and kept a more sorrowful smile on his face.  “Ok, I’ll tell you,” he said before reaching out and touching the hilt of his sword.  The smile disappeared and the man seemed to empty of emotion.

“First off, my name’s Gregory, so if we’re going to be familiar you might as well know that.  And you know that I’m from Osmos.  Obviously I have to be from one of the farming asteroids.  The lesser gravity really lets us hicks grow tall,” he said before shifting in his seat.  “Well, I grew up on one of those asteroid farms.  My dad tried to instill some work ethic into all of us.  If you believe it, I’m in the middle of my brothers.  James has a good thirty centimeters on me.”

“We all grew up to help on the farm.  It was a decent man’s living.  I had no problem with it and I tended to the fields pretty much every day.  I didn’t get out too much, but sometimes I’d get to go to town and spend some time in the library.  My brothers just went to look at all the pretty girls,” he said before pausing.  Jenkins laughed a little without realizing it.

“Sorry, it just sounds pretty cliché,” Jenkins said.  Feldman laughed, too, and shook his head.

“It does, but I was happy.  My brothers could have all the girls they wanted.  I always wanted someone who got me up here” he said before tapping the side of his head.  Jenkins nodded in agreement.

“One day I was working near a batch of corn stalks and then one of our drones went haywire.  It was one of those things that would just cut down all the stalks and scoop them up so that we could take care of them back at the house,” he said before looking at Jenkins, who had adopted a very serious look on his face.  Feldman laughed before shaking his head.  “It wasn’t the horror movie that it sounds like.  Nobody got sliced up; some of the livestock got shredded, though.  But the thing did run me over and broke my spine.  The doctors tried what they could, but my family never had much money to begin with and they told us that anything they could do with the money wouldn’t be very effective,” he said before looking at the ground with sad eyes.  Jenkins resumed his seat and looked at his friend.  He hadn’t meant to bring back such sad memories.

“I was paralyzed, Jenkins; from about halfway down my torso.  It was humiliating in a lot of ways and downright horrible in a lot of others.  My mother had to help me with even the most basic tasks.  I couldn’t help with the farm, either.  I felt like such a burden,” Feldman said as he placed his hand on his knee and rubbed it slowly.  Jenkins felt for the man.  He knew how it felt to be trapped.

“I started reading a lot more.  We never watched too much television and I had always liked to read.  I started to learn a bit, and I’m sure that would have helped me out if I tried to go to school or something, but life was still rough.  I wasn’t able to really leave the house without someone helping me the entire way.  I started to become really angry with myself and thought about all the things I could have done to avoid that drone.  I’m sure you’ve felt something like that before,” Feldman said before sighing and leaning back down on his elbows.

“I’d always heard things about the games but I’d never really paid attention.  But then I thought about how they brought back these dead people with perfect bodies.  That’s what got me interested.  Sure, they died a lot, but they got to live in the meantime.  And they always came back.  I felt like it was situation where I could take advantage.”

“I contacted the Commission Office in Osmos and asked to be part of the games.  They told me that they didn’t really take handicapped people but I already knew how they did the process.  Like I said, I read quite a bit in those days.  I told them that I wouldn’t mind being killed if I was resurrected into a brand new body; I would sign up freely if they would give me a body that wasn’t paralyzed,” he said before rubbing his knee again.  Jenkins realized that the giant had done that before but the young soldier hadn’t paid it any attention.  Now Jenkins knew why the giant did it and it tugged at his heartstrings.

“Of course, as soon as he knew that was what I was after he turned it into a big bartering contest.  We negotiated for a while but in the end he was able to get me to agree to a lot of things I didn’t want; like the sword.  He had the upper hand, obviously, so I had to give in.  I guess that’s why it doesn’t bother me when I realize I’m stuck here for a while.  It’s much better than the alternative,” he concluded with a heavy breath.  He looked at his friend and smiled.  Jenkins could see the pain behind it, but he knew that the giant was content with his decision.  The young Crow would have been hard-pressed to do otherwise in the same situation.

Jenkins didn’t know what to say.  Feldman’s story was absolutely the last thing he had expected.  He had guessed that the man was involved in one of the doomed resistance movements, but in the end his story made perfect sense.  The revelation made Jenkins feel hollow.  He had no heart-warming story to explain his decision.  He was just too afraid to be sent to a slave labor camp.  Feldman picked himself up and grabbed his sword along the way.

“I don’t feel better now that I’ve told you.  I guess I really didn’t need to share it.  However, have I eased your mind?” he asked as he walked to the wall and slid the sword back into its mooring.  Jenkins looked after him and stood up with a fair amount of soreness.

“A little.  It wasn’t what I expected,” he said as he started walking towards the door slowly. 

“It is a bit of an odd story.  Like you hinted, I’m not the typical soldier,” he said as he caught up quickly with his great strides.  Jenkins stood near the door and looked at his friend.  He realized that there was no way he could ever measure up to the man; physically or with his character.  Feldman was more than he could ever hope to be. 

Roberts could see the light peeking through the window and realized there were a few more hours until the alarms would sound off.  The boy soldier shifted in his bed and immediately regretted it.  He gasped and clutched at the pillow by his head after feeling the pain lance through him.  The boy soldier had learned to hold back the screams, but that didn’t stop the contortions.  After a few labored breaths the man steeled himself and tried to sit up in his bed.  The pain was excruciating, but the only thing that could help was across the room in his desk; he couldn’t lie there any longer if the pain would stay with him.

Christopher Roberts did what he could to bear with the sensory explosion when his feet touched the ground.  He didn’t know why this incarnation was hurting so bad; he hadn’t even died in the last match, yet his body still hadn’t recovered from his last resurrection.  The boy soldier didn’t know why he was so prone to this affliction, and the doctors had done nothing to help him, but he figured it had something to do with his past life.  He figured someone was still getting revenge on him for all of his misdeeds.  Roberts needed something to justify the daily torture.

The boy soldier fell against the desk and immediately started rummaging through its contents.  He was trying desperately to find Goldstein’s newest delivery but ended up finding all of the used packages.  Roberts always found himself surrounded by these little reminders of his debts to the black market merchant.  The packages scattered to the floor as the man frantically searched the desk for his medicine.

Eventually the soldier grabbed hold of the new packaging and popped open the box to find the bottle of pills inside.  His eyes narrowed as he pushed against the lid and then twisted, spilling the contents of the bottle onto the desk.  Five pills came out and Roberts tried to gauge how many he actually needed.  His mind wasn’t working correctly from the pain and his fingers ached from twisting the lid off the bottle. 

Roberts grabbed all five pills and threw them into his mouth.  He swallowed them all and wondered if it was enough to overdose.  If he did he would just encounter another body filled with pain, so it didn’t much matter.  The boy soldier sighed deeply and sat in his chair before looking outside his window.  Roberts was able to see the Earth from his position.  The boy soldier tilted his head and wondered what all of his friends were doing there back in Los Angeles.