Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (23 page)

For science, of course.

-

Abrams was still panting from the exertion.  She was sitting with her legs splayed out in front of her and could see the sweat from her chin falling to the sand by her knee.  She propped up her left leg and set her arm on top before looking back up at Norris.  The Englishman was still breathing hard as well, but he kept the smile plastered on his face as he bounced around the training yard.  The warrior woman didn’t understand where the sniper got all of his energy.  She could spar with the red-headed lunatic for half an hour and he would continue to bounce around like a kid with too much sugar.

Sometimes the warrior envied the perpetual child.

As she took her time reclaiming her breath she looked around the yard.  It was situated in the middle of the complex; the off-white walls acting as a fence for her and all of her teammates.  She may have landed on this asteroid of her own free will, but it was hard not to think of herself as a prisoner while she was stuck between these walls.  She could see Corrigan finishing off the last of a set on the weight bench while Markham stood over him.  Her gaze quickly left them, as there was nothing to look at; they were just drones.

She looked back to where she had left Norris and found that the Englishman had bounced away from hearing distance. 
Just as well
, she thought. 
I’m done with the exercise anyway.
  She let her head fall back against the wall of the training yard and tried to ignore the pain in her stomach.  It was just another one of the pains from resurrection, as far as she was concerned.  The warrior woman instead let her thoughts turn to her sister.  Abrams wondered if she would ever be able to break the news to Rebecca that she was never coming home.

The warrior was interrupted from her thoughts as she heard something scraping against the wall.  She let her head fall to the side quickly so that she could peer out of her periphery, alarmed by the sudden intrusion.  The woman gave in to confusion as she realized that Carver had sat down beside her and had his back against the same wall.

“How are you today, Jess?” he asked in his usual weary tone.  The woman could not possibly fathom why the veteran would sit beside her.  They respected each other, there were no other soldiers on the team who commanded as much reverence, but they never talked.  Abrams could count on her fingers how many times they had been paired together and could not recall any conversation that wasn’t about tactics or casualty reports.

“I’m…fine, I guess.  Carver, what are you doing?” she asked without changing her position.  Carver was the intruder here; she wasn’t going to change anything just because of his appearance.  The old man sighed and scratched at the two week-old beard on his face.

“I can’t ask how you’re doing, Jess?  Does everything I say have to be important?” he asked without looking her in the eye.  Abrams lazily lifted her head and gazed at the gray clouds overhead.  The heavy atmosphere weighed on her very soul.

“I wish it didn’t, Carver.  I wish it didn’t,” she said while bringing up her left leg and propping up her arms on top of each knee.  The veteran at her side laughed weakly and mimicked her action.

“Me too, kiddo.  Me too,” he said before letting the air escape from his lungs.  The world was coming down around him, and all he could do was prepare for the end.  “There’s something coming, Jess.”  The warrior woman cleared her throat and twisted her neck to crack her spine.

“Out with it, old man.  You’ve never been one to shy away from the uncomfortable subjects.”

“Fair enough,” Carver said with a tired resignation.  “Templeton’s with the EFI, or whatever the initials are.  They’re gonna stage a jail-break,” he said before turning his head to look at the woman.  When he finally got her within eyesight, he could see a mix of shock and horror twisting her features.

“Jail….break?”

“Yeah,” the veteran said while trying to readjust his back’s position on the wall.  He couldn’t stay comfortable.  “About a week from now they’re gonna say so on War World and they’re gonna try to get us back to Earth.  Viva la Revolution, and all that propaganda shit.  We’re gonna have to fight for our lives, except this time we’re not gonna get ‘em back if we lose,” he finished as he lifted his head to stare at the same grey sky.  As he contemplated what the revolution could mean, he realized that he was at peace with it.  The most likely scenario was death, but there was that slight glimmer of hope that he could escape this life of war and bloodshed.  Either way, it was finally coming to an end.

Abrams couldn’t stop the torrent of thoughts sweeping through her head.  She had so recently given up on her desperate and naïve hopes of returning to Earth and then, seemingly out of nowhere, she was given a whole realm of possibilities.  Abrams would most likely die, but she could possibly get back to Rebecca.  She could possibly get back to St. Louis; she might see her father’s smile once more.

But as she thought about her family and St. Louis, her thoughts flickered back to that stormy day in October.  She remembered the fight between her father and her mother.  She recalled the anger, the fury, the dignified poise of that woman in her memory.  Abrams remembered the grim and determined look of her mother as she placed Jessica’s face between her open hands.  The warrior woman remembered her mother’s last words to her.

I’ll be right back
.

Abrams had lost her mother to the riots.  The Free Soldiers movement and a number of others had crashed and burned to the ground.  She had thought the EFI had gone down with them.  When Abrams had tagged along with her father to identify her mother’s body, the strongest man Jessica had ever known had broken down at the gurney.  He couldn’t even bring himself to lift the sheet back over the mother of his children.  Abrams had had to console her father, place her hands on his shoulder as he wept; she stood strong as iron as the tears fell down from her eyes.

“It’s suicide,” she said, her eyes not focusing on the ground beneath her.  She didn’t even notice the dark spots in the sand where her tears had fallen.

“Nice to see you know the odds.”

“Why?  Why do they think they can win?” she asked, remembering how the bodies had stunk up the market streets for weeks after.  Carver let his hand fall to her foot and patted it, not knowing what else to do.

“I think… I think they just know that losing is better than this,” he said before turning to look at the warrior woman.  She lifted her head and gazed at him with the tears still welling up beneath her eyes.

“We’re going to die, Carver.  Even if we don’t fight.  They’ll make examples of us,” she said, unable to breathe normally.  She felt an enormous pressure on her chest, like she wasn’t able to get enough air.  The veteran nodded and patted her foot once more.  “Carver, they
will
kill us.  St. Louis…”

“I know, kiddo.  I know.  But look at it like this.  We’re not getting out of this anymore.  I spent all my money on Jenkins.  You’re stuck here; we’re all stuck here.  Sure, we could die, just like we die every day.  Except, Hell, if we make it, well, we
make
it.  We’re out.  You could see that sister of yours.  There’s a ship coming in a week, Jess.  We can at least try to be on it,” he said before looking down at his feet.

“Aw, Hell,” she said as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.  She let herself submit to hope once more.  “I guess you’re right, old man.  We’ll just have to see how it plays out.”  She swallowed back the pain in her throat and remembered the determination so visible on her mother’s face.

I guess it just runs in the family.

-

Warner couldn’t help but let the rage grow in him.  He was finding it increasingly difficult to make it through the day without wanting to beat the life out of something.  His knuckles were battered and bruised from striking against the walls of the training room.  The concrete had not given way, of course, so little micro-fractures had occurred underneath the torn skin.  Warner had a habit of taking his aggression out on his surroundings, but it just wasn’t working today.

It always came back to Jenkins.  Warner was already having a rough time on Eris before the golden boy had made his way to the Crows, but now it was everything that people would talk about.  Warner recalled how he had almost made it off planet, but getting paired with the young soldier was enough distraction for a lucky bullet to find its way into the convict’s brain.  It had cost Warner his potential freedom.

But Joseph Warner was past that.  It was his own mistake, even though it took him a week to forgive the new soldier.  Warner was just angry at how the memory of Jenkins had become so saintly.  The boy was a good soldier, Warner had to admit, but he wasn’t that great.   And, in what was the most irritating turn of events, the other soldiers pitied him even
after
the boy had opted out.  The young soldier wasn’t man enough to even stay alive; Warner couldn’t be bothered to care about a weakling like that.

It was downright infuriating for the convict.  He fought alongside all of the Crows day after day, suffering with all of them, and, except for the drones, he held respect for all of them.  Even Goldstein was a smart guy and could be counted on when the Jew wasn’t counting his money.  Warner couldn’t be mad at any of them; they did their job.  Jenkins was a failure of a man, and they
worshipped
him.  They respected him.

They respected that willing corpse more than they respected the convict.

Warner growled as he made his way through the hallways.  Even his workout in the training yard or his hour pouring out his aggression in the shooting range wasn’t enough to spend his fury.  He needed to write.  He needed to let loose the words like an avalanche of fire, a whirlwind of rock and lava.  He needed to break the very laws of nature with his words and reclaim his mind from this inescapable anger.

When Warner burst through the doorway into his cell his eyes flashed and his fists clenched.  Templeton was sitting on his bed.  The thin, black man was
defiling
his bed.  The revolutionary was exactly in the wrong place.

And he was reading Warner’s journal.

Warner had written his journal every day since a quack psychologist had suggested it to him.  While his methodology and therapy weren’t enough to save the doctor from Warner breaking his arm, the convict had turned the journal into a daily ritual.  It had allowed him to temper himself; it had allowed him to stop trying to kill any man that slighted him.  It had allowed him to take a step back towards society.

But that couldn’t stop him from wanting to tear apart the man on his bed, limb by limb.  The anger absolutely engulfing his senses was the only reason he didn’t leap forward to enact that desire.  The convict literally could not react.

“Some of this is good stuff, Joe,” Templeton said with a half smile, his hands still tainting the pages held between them.  Warner leapt at the black man with an indecipherable yell.  There were no words that could be said; just an expression of pure emotion.  Templeton merely rose halfway up to greet him, turned his body to his left and forced his palm outwards, leaving the pages of Warner’s journal to scatter in the air.  The palm strike caught Warner on the right side of his head, redirecting his movement.  The convict attempted to grab the thin man’s arm as he sailed past, but the revolutionary merely swept underneath the arm and moved towards Warner’s desk.

Warner landed halfway on his bed, but the momentum caused him to fall forward off the bed and onto his head and forearms.  It was enough to stun the slave soldier for a moment, but the rage burst from his mind once more and he scrambled over himself to get to his feet.  He looked at Templeton, merely a meter and a half away and breathed in sharply.

“YOU FUCKING NIGGER!  I WILL TEAR YOU APART, I’LL USE MY TEETH IF I HAVE TO, BUT YOU’RE NOT GETTING OUT OF HERE ALIVE!” he shouted with every ounce of his being.  He had never liked Templeton, but this transgression was not just enough for a death sentence, Warner knew he could torture the monkey any way he liked.

“Calm the FUCK down, Joe!  You can’t beat me,” he said, doing his best to stop Warner’s onslaught, but it wasn’t nearly enough.  The convict jumped on his bed and tried to leap at the revolutionary once again.  Templeton huffed as he gave a quick uppercut underneath the man’s jaw, causing Warner's thoughts to scatter, and then planted his other arm and shoulder underneath Warner, using the man’s momentum and a relaxed stance to bring the man’s body up and over in an arc.  Warner landed on his back and head slammed against the tiling of his bedroom.

The convict’s vision was drowning in front of him and momentarily Warner forgot what was happening.  After half a second, Warner remembered and tried to shake his head to force his vision back to normal.  The anger was starting to cool off, but he knew that he still had to kill this man in his room.  He turned over and tried to push himself to his feet, but ended up falling back up against the wall next to the doorway.  He slid upwards against the wall as he tried to get back to his feet and looked at the revolutionary standing like a monolith next to the convict’s desk.

“Gonna kill you….nigger….”  It was all that Warner could consider.

“Back. Off.  Try to kill me later, Joe.  You’re hearing what I have to say,” Templeton stated, letting the slave soldier know that there wasn’t an option.  Warner gulped and could feel the headache starting at the back of his head.

“Fuck you, Templeton, you fucking ape,” the soldier said, still unable to stand without using the wall behind him.

“Be racist all you want, it doesn’t matter to me.  I’m just letting you know what’s going to happen,” Templeton said, letting his posture stay loose in case Warner was able to rally his strength once more.  “There’s gonna be a fight, Warner, and you’re going to be front and center.”

“Yeah, I’m about to kill you, that’s what I’m talking about, you fucking monkey,” Warner said, smiling at his insults.

“No, Warner.  Revolution’s coming.  We’re finally taking back this miserable planet and you get to do what you do best.  You get to kill people, but this time, Joe, you’re going to be killing the guys who are responsible for the games.  You’re going to get some revenge, Joe,” Templeton said, knowing exactly what kind of motivation the convict needed.