Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (26 page)

“You ok, Roberts?”  The boy soldier shrugged and nodded before turning slightly to look past him.

“I’ll be fine.  Took some meds before we got on the transport.  I should be able to make it through.  How you want to play this?”  Jenkins looked at the boy warily and decided to trust his comrade.  The Crow was still feeling awkward about the soldier’s overdose and had spent the night wondering if he should even tell Roberts that Hawkins was responsible for all of it.  Jenkins had decided against it; Roberts already had a suitable boogeyman in place and telling him that the sniveling scientist was the culprit wouldn’t change anything.

He still felt guilty about it.

“Well,” Jenkins said as he looked towards the beacons of his fellow soldiers.  “Did you want to meet up with any of the other guys and travel in a squad?”  Roberts shrugged again and looked off in the distance.

“Never been my forte.  But considering what we’re up against I might want to go to someone with explosives.  Was Templeton trained for that?” Roberts asked while inspecting the beacons in view.  He could see Feldman and Carver to the north and a host of others, but none of them were supposed to be carrying heavy ordinance.  Jenkins laughed at the question and shook his head.

“Nah, that guy was given an automatic the first day.  They didn’t trust him with anything special,” he said before Roberts turned to look back at him.

“Well, I can’t remember anybody who’s trained for it, then.”  Jenkins shrugged and looked at the beacons around him.

“I’m not sure we have one on the team.  They trained Roth to carry an RPG but he got traded to the Hammerheads after that last game.”  Roberts put his hand on the back of his neck and sighed.

“Are we seriously going into a mech match without explosives?”  Roberts’ spirit seemed to drop with the desperate question.  In a way to increase viewership the Commission had introduced mech matches into the games thirty years prior.  Each team was granted one mechanized suit piloted by one soldier from their ranks.  A normal soldier couldn’t hope to fight on equal terms.  Jenkins walked up to the edge of their landing zone and tried to think.  Things were not looking good for their team.

“I guess so.  We could try to get up with Abrams.  She’s piloting for our side,” he said half-heartedly.  Roberts scoffed and shook his head at that.

“What, and end up being target practice?  I’d rather not.  We could head over to Norris and hope he shoots the pilot before he realizes there’s a sniper...” the boy soldier suggested.  Jenkins thought about that idea and bounced it around his head; it did make some sense.  He nodded and looked for Norris’ beacon.  He could tell that Norris and Warner were setting up camp four kilometers to the east.

It’ll have to do
, he thought before beckoning Roberts to follow him to the other Crows.  He hoped that the boy’s medication wouldn’t run out before they got to the sniper.

-

Jenkins' lungs were burning through his chest.  He thought that at any minute his heart would stop and that would be the end of his current incarnation.  The young Crow struggled through the pain long enough to see Roberts increase his pace.  It was enough to cause Jenkins to despair at his situation.  The slave soldier continued to plant each foot down and spring himself forward but Jenkins knew without a small break he wouldn’t be able to move at all.  The older Crow took a deep breath and tried to speak.

“I’m done… gotta stop,” he said before falling to his knees and forcing as much air as he could into his lungs.  Roberts continued to run for a moment, but soon decreased his speed and looked back at his comrade.  The boy soldier turned slowly, walked back to Jenkins and hunkered himself down on a nearby piece of grating.

“Sorry, I just don’t like being in the wide open like this.  I get this feeling that there’s always some guy with a gun,” he said before looking around.  Roberts’ eyes narrowed as he thought he caught a glimpse of something fifteen meters to his right.  The boy soldier looked back at Jenkins, who was still heaving on his knees.

“How do you do it?  Seriously.  I’ve never run that fast and I have a perfectly good body,” Jenkins said before looking back up at the boy veteran.  Roberts just shrugged and looked towards his right again.  He could have sworn that he’d seen one of the damned things.

“Eh, my body’s young, I’m pretty light and I usually have to deal with quite a bit more pain than you old bastards,” he said while continuing to scan the horizon.  “Plus I’m hopped up on painkillers, so I can take more of it right now.  There it is,” he said as he caught a glimmer in the air. 

Roberts brought up his rifle slowly while Jenkins watched.  The older soldier was confused why Roberts was getting ready to shoot but then the boy soldier jerked and trained his sights on the flickering existence to his right.  He fired three times before a bullet glanced off what sounded like metal.  Roberts pulled the trigger two more times before Jenkins saw a small explosion as the machine disengaged its cloaking device and fell to the ground.  Roberts smiled beneath his helmet and then hunkered himself back down to the piece of grating.

“Got it; knew it was there,” Roberts said before turning to look at Jenkins.  “I hate those things.”  Jenkins looked at him with puzzlement and walked over to inspect the machine which had fallen out of the sky.  It looked like one of the small news robots that had filled New Chicago.

“What is that?”  Jenkins looked back at Roberts, who had also walked over to the small machine.

“You’ve never seen one?  It’s just one of their cameras.  It’s how they get all of those close-ups for the show.  There’s a million of 'em floating around here,” Roberts said as he kicked the machine.  It rolled down the hill and settled against another piece of debris.  Roberts felt the pain echoing throughout his foot and wondered if he really would make it through the game before the pain came back.  He turned to look at Norris’ beacon and saw that it was only a kilometer away.

“Let’s go.  It’s not much further,” Roberts said as he started walking towards the two Crows.  Jenkins walked behind him and tried to remember if he had ever seen any of the robots floating around the ruined landscape.  He thought he remembered some flickering or little glimmers as he fought his opponents, but he put it down as wishful thinking.

“Why do you do that?  Aren’t you going to get in trouble with the Commission for destroying all of their cameras?”  Roberts looked over at him and shrugged.  He had never thought about it but it didn’t really matter.  He wasn’t ever going to have enough money to get out.

“Well, I guess they can bill me later.  Let’s go,” Roberts said before starting into a light jog.  Jenkins followed behind and Roberts looked around the battlefield.  There wasn’t too much cover for the last kilometer, probably why Norris had chosen this spot to use his rifle, and it didn’t make the boy soldier feel comfortable.  The youngest Crow was about to increase his speed and try to sprint the last three-quarters before the pain hit him.

It was worse this time.  He had thought the episode in his room was the worst pain he could experience, but this set of spasms made mockery of that thought.  Roberts’ spine arched as the convulsions made his body go rigid.  Whatever thoughts had been in his head were replaced by those concerned with the pain that swept through him.  For a few horrible moments twisting in the air the boy soldier forgot to breathe.  His lungs simply wouldn’t function during that first episode in terror.

Jenkins watched as his comrade stumbled and slid through the wreckage.  The soldier had quite a bit of momentum from the sprint and slammed into a piece of siding ten meters from his fall.  The older Crow rushed to the man’s side and saw before he reached him that Roberts had no control over his body.  The way the boy soldier’s body twisted and curled was unnatural.  It was grotesque.  Jenkins thought of all the things he had seen since coming to Eris.  He remembered all of the blood sprays and flying limbs and the disemboweled soldiers trying to scoop up their intestines.  He remembered all of the atrocities and nightmarish images that he’d seen play out in front of him.

Seeing Roberts was almost worse than all of it.

Jenkins slid to his knees and tried to help the man control himself.  Roberts unwillingly fought against him and his strength was considerable because of the power armor covering his body.  Every time that Jenkins would place his arms to his sides, Roberts' limbs would lash out again and strike against his comrade; the boy soldier wasn’t even aware that Jenkins was kneeling next to him.  Jenkins hurriedly tried to think of anything he could do to help and started shouting at the soldier.

“Chris! Do you have any pills on you?! What can I do?!”  The second question wasn’t to Roberts.  He was asking the universe.  Jenkins was giving in to the despair which had haunted him all this time; he couldn’t fight it anymore.  Roberts was gagging in front of him and Jenkins couldn’t help him.  Almost too late Jenkins realized that Roberts was trying to speak.   The boy was trying to fight through the pain and the spasms.

“Pil……poc…..leg….” he said between bursts of flailing and twisting his body.  He couldn’t help himself; he knew that.  Roberts could only rely on the drugs.  They were the only thing that could stop this infernal pain.  Jenkins took a second to realize what the tormented soldier was saying and then checked the satchel attached to Roberts' leg.  After a desperate moment Jenkins had a dozen pills settled in his palm and he contemplated how many he could give the man without repeating the overdose.  The Crow decided that four would be ok; he would much rather Roberts experience the remnants of pain than die in his arms from the medicine. 

Jenkins realized after counting them out that he had to remove Roberts’ helmet.  He set the pills down on the ground and tried to unclasp the man’s protective gear.  Roberts’ arms struck him around the shoulders and his head slammed back against the ground before coming up to greet Jenkins, but eventually the Crow was able to unclasp the protective gear.  Roberts’ eyes were wide open and wild and it took Jenkins off-guard, but the older man grabbed the pills from the ground and shoved them inside the boy soldier’s mouth.  Two went down easy, but the other two were spat right back out from one of Roberts’ convulsions.  Jenkins grabbed them again and shoved them in the man’s mouth and forced it closed with his hand.  Roberts tried to spit them out again but ended up with Jenkins’ armored fingers stuck between his teeth.  Jenkins winced from the pain and looked down at Roberts.  His gums were bleeding from biting metal and Jenkins couldn’t help but be overtaken by pity.

It was another few minutes before Roberts’ body fell limp.  The boy was still in a considerable amount of pain, but he could control himself now.  His eyes were closed as he whimpered at Jenkins’ knees.  Jenkins looked around at the war world, wondering what kind of monster could force this on another man.  The Crow realized that he was surrounded by these monsters.  Every person who operated these games cared more for profits than the misery they enforced upon these helpless soldiers.  Even the official or the guards who were just doing their jobs couldn’t be bothered to think about the poor souls on the battlefield.  Jenkins looked down at the soldier curled up in pain at his knees.  He clenched his teeth and curled his fingers into fists.  The young Crow was squeezing so hard that his knuckles hurt.

Jenkins looked towards Norris’ beacon and knew that he had to get there.  He also knew that Roberts would do nothing to help that.  Jenkins contemplated leaving the man but quickly pushed the thought aside.  He wasn’t going to just look out for himself; he wasn’t going to be one of
them
.  Jenkins looked down at the ground and wondered how he was going to carry Roberts the rest of the way.  He sighed and looked back at the horizon to see a glimmer ten meters to his left.  He growled as he realized that the two of them were being filmed for the enjoyment of eight cruel worlds.

Without a word or another thought Jenkins brought up his rifle and shot at the glimmer.  The first shot disabled the cloaking device and from there it only took two more shells before the machine fell out of the air.  He looked back down at the crippled man at his knees.

“They’ll bill me later.”

-

Sweat poured down Jenkins’ face.  His helmet was stifling and the added effort of carrying and dragging the semi-conscious Roberts the last half-kilometer had been a trial.  He would have carried the boy the entire way, but Jenkins had ended up using too much energy.  When the young Crow looked up after a burst of activity he noticed that they were only two hundred meters from Norris’ position.  Even with the power armor helping his motor functions, Jenkins just couldn’t keep moving across the wasteland with his comrade in tow.  Jenkins wasn’t that big; he wasn’t that strong. 

The young Crow felt an inkling of nausea set in and he let Roberts slide to the ground.  He could feel the cramp aching through his side starting to recede as he sat on a nearby rock.  The soldier laughed as he realized it was one of the biggest rocks he’d seen on the surface.  It was usually all metal, trash and scrap with the occasional dead body or parachute to color the landscape. 

He looked over at the ridge where Norris was set up and cleared his throat before opening the common channel.

“Hey, Norris, Roberts is pretty screwed up.  I’m bringing him up to your position and maybe we can tide over the rest of the game.”  Jenkins waited for Norris response and let himself breathe easy.  He was almost in relative safety.  After a few moments he heard a crackle and the aloof Englishman laughed over Comms.

“You cowards.  Yeah, that’s fine; we have a pretty good position up here.  Only a few little hills and blind spots.  Nothing we can’t han- what is it, you bloody wanker?”  Jenkins let himself smile as he looked back at the sniper’s holdout.  The Crow was still grinning as a rocket slammed into the ridge and bathed it in fire.  Jenkins’ smile melted away and was replaced by a look of disbelief.  He slowly turned his head to see a metal machine ambling towards the ruined hillside.  Jenkins’ thoughts spiraled into despair as he realized that they had come face-to-face with the monstrosity they were trying to avoid.