Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) (60 page)

“He’s coming for me and he’s coming for you.  Ryan Jenkins will save those worth a damn and kill the rest,” Douglas said before laughing and realizing that he wanted to live to see that day.

“I just have to wait until he gets here.”

-

“Templeton!  Come here!”

Jenkins heard the pilot screaming from the cockpit and wondered what required Templeton’s attention.  It wasn’t exactly like there was anything that the black revolutionary could do while they were in the middle of space travel.  The messiah figure watched as Darius unclasped his restraints and then pulled himself through zero gravity to the cockpit just a few meters away.

Jenkins looked across the aisle and could see that Carver was wearing a concerned look on his aged face.  The young Crow didn’t remember his mentor looking so old, but maybe that was just his own memories.  As he thought about it, Jenkins realized that he felt a few years older, as well.  This last day had been far too eventful.

The messiah figure looked down the aisle, seeing what was left of his teammates.  Norris and Abrams were sitting next to each other, the Englishman’s hand covering the woman’s unharmed forearm.  Jenkins hoped that the two Crows would recover from their wounds, but he didn’t hold much hope for the warrior woman.  Ryan had heard that the woman’s elbow was full of shrapnel and that Charlotte had insisted she stay behind in the clinic, but Abrams wouldn’t hear of it.  After all this time, she needed to be on the first ship back to her sister.  No one wanted to argue with the woman.

The young Crow looked further down the transport and could see Goldstein sitting by himself.  Even on this transport filled with his closest friends, the former merchant still preferred to be alone.  Jenkins wondered if he would ever be able to fully trust the man, but his thoughts were interrupted by Templeton’s voice.

“You…. you gotta be kidding me….”  The remark was said under the revolutionary’s breath, but every single soul in that transport was able to hear it clearly.  Jenkins turned his head past the other revolutionaries dressed as EOSF officers and focused in the direction of the cockpit.  He knew something important had happened; he knew that something had gone wrong.  The messiah figure didn’t know what, and he didn’t know how, but he could just feel that he needed to know more.

The young Crow deftly unclasped his restraints and then pushed off his mooring towards the front of the craft.  He was so focused on his task that he didn’t notice the hand fly out and grab at his leg.  The messiah figure turned in annoyance to see Carver looking at him with despair haunting his blue eyes.

“Are you sure you want to go?” the old Crow asked.  Jenkins knew that the old man was thinking the exact same thing, but unlike Carver, the messiah figure didn’t give into his fear.  Ryan nodded gravely and looked directly into the old man’s blue eyes.  The veteran grunted softly before removing his hand from the young man’s leg and closed his eyes.  He had already made too many decisions for the boy.

Jenkins turned back to the cockpit and grabbed at the railing that passed along the ceiling of the craft, using it to propel himself forward.  As he entered into the bay of the cockpit, he noticed that Templeton had buried his face in his hands.  When Jenkins cleared his throat to make himself known the revolutionary looked up at him with his one good eye.  Ryan could see fear and sadness and misery contorting every single feature of the revolutionary, but he couldn’t stand not knowing what had happened.

“Ryan….I can’t….”

“What happened, Templeton?”

“Hamlet is there?” a voice piped up over the radio.  Jenkins completely ignored the two pilots sitting in the cockpit as he turned to stare at the instrument panel.

“Don’t call him that, Atlas.  That’s over.  He’s just Jenkins, now.  No need to make him a messiah anymore,” Templeton said as he looked down at his hands, giving into his sadness.

“He can’t hear this, Templeton, not yet,” the masculine voice said with urgency, but that just made Jenkins want to hear this new information even more.

“What happened, Templeton?” Ryan asked, not bothering to look at the thin revolutionary.  Instead he just continued to glare at the instrument panel.

“I…. I can’t do it, Ryan.  I can’t be the one that tells you.”

“You can’t be the one to tell me what?” the newborn messiah asked with annoyance.  He was not going to have this withheld from him any longer.

“Ryan…” Darius said as he gestured over to the instrument panel with his right arm.  “This is Atlas.  He’s the leader of the EFI.  He’s the one who…”

“Templeton,” the voice said quietly, but the thin man interrupted him before he could say a thing.

“No, Tom, I can’t.  He has to hear this from you.” Darius said before burying his head between his knees and his arms.  Jenkins looked at the man and dreaded what could make the headstrong revolutionary give up like this, but he had to know.  He floated over to the instrument panel and held onto the handles nearby.

“Atlas, huh?  Nice to meet you, I guess.  Now tell me what happened,” Jenkins demanded, knowing that there was no way he was possibly prepared for the coming revelation.  The world felt like it was ending.

“Ryan,” the voice said, pausing as it considered what it was about to say.  After a moment the man on the other end of the communication sighed.  “It might be over.  Montgomery…. He initiated some sort of fail-safe for the planet.  The whole…. The whole atmosphere of Eris is filled with poison gas.  Every….. everyone who was still on the planet is dead.  Only a handful of ships actually got any soldiers off the asteroid…we……we lost, Ryan,” the voice said, trailing off at the end, but by that time Jenkins had already stopped paying attention. 

The messiah figure choked on empty air as he realized that millions of people had died on the planet he had just left.  Every single person in McClellan and all the other support cities had been killed.  Every slave soldier unfortunate enough to still be on the planet was no longer a revolutionary; they had been eradicated before they had been able to fight.  Every single person on Eris was dead.

Charlotte was dead.

He remembered those beautiful coffee-brown eyes full of life.  He remembered them brimmed with tears.  He remembered the full cheeks that he had wanted to caress; he remembered the soft smiles and forced expressions intended to cheer him up.  He remembered the gentle laugh of the first nice and beautiful person he had met on that terrible asteroid.

And in that moment he had lost her forever.

Jenkins’ knuckles went white as he reeled from his losses.  He had lost his best friends, his saviors, and his brother in just a day.  The messiah figure had been given back his life just in time to see the people he cared about suffer and die in front of him.  He had been brought back from suicide, given back a gift that he had thrown away, and now the universe had seen fit to take everything good from the world in exchange.

He had been given his life at the cost of the woman he loved.

Jenkins couldn’t stand it.  He couldn’t stand to live in a world where this kind of atrocity and horror could be possible.  He couldn’t stand to live in a universe where pain and suffering were commonplace just so those in power could have a higher profit margin.  He couldn’t stand to live in a world where a titan like Feldman could be gunned down for no other reason than he was in the way.

The messiah figure couldn’t stand for a resistance that would fall apart just because its enemy fought back.  With memories of that beautiful woman he would never see again burnt into his mind, Jenkins gathered his resolve and breathed in deeply.

“Atlas.  We’re not giving up.”

“Ryan… we lost everyone…” the voice said, but Jenkins wouldn’t let him continue like that. 

“Shut up, Atlas.  I’m not going to let you give up like this.  I’m not going to let you fall to pieces just because one part of our organization was killed.  If nothing else, we have to fight in their memory,” he said, his voice grim and his thoughts falling back to the giant and the boy soldier lying side by side.

‘I don’t…”

“I do, Atlas.  You wouldn’t have been able to fight a revolution with just a million soldiers, anyway.  The whole population of the Earth should be on our side, and if nothing else than Eris will stand as the perfect example why they should join the EFI.”

“Ryan, there’s no wa…”

“Yes there is, Atlas, and you shouldn’t complain.  You wanted a messiah figure and now you got one,” Ryan Jenkins said, his voice resolute and determined as he thought about the woman who had brought him back to life.  Without meaning to, his thoughts fell back to that image he had seen in his resurrection chamber.  He was standing on that cliff again, with wings made of black feathers and twisted metal.  But unlike last time, the thought continued.  In his fantasy, Jenkins took a deep breath, ran forward and jumped.  The messiah figure let the thought fade away before focusing on his conversation with Atlas.  “And just so you know, it’s no longer the Eris Freedom Initiative.  It’s the Earth Freedom Initiative.”          

“I understand what you want, Ryan, but…”

“You will stop this, Atlas!  I will not stand by this injustice any longer.  I buried my friends today, just like so many others, but Eris will not just stay in the sky as a tomb for those soldiers.  Eris was everything that was wrong with our society, but now it had become the symbol of the Trade Union’s corruption.  In the name of preserving their profits and maintaining their control over their slaves, they
killed
their own employees.  They killed millions of people whose only crime was that they wanted to provide for their families.  They killed millions of people who have friends and family spread out across eight other planets.  And now they will have to pay for that arrogance.”

“I want you to broadcast something for me Atlas.  Before we were just fighting for the freedom of the soldiers on Eris and the freedom of humanity, but now we have something that everyone can get behind.  The Trade Union, The Commission and Jasper Montgomery have gone too far.  They have killed millions of people and that cannot be ignored.  We will have our justice.  We will have our VENGEANCE!” Jenkins shouted at the top of his lungs, not caring what his fellow revolutionaries thought of him.  He could only think of the kind giant, the boy soldier and the raven-haired woman.

“My name is Ryan Jenkins.  I will not rest until they have paid for the murder of Eris.  I will not forgive them for their cruelty and their abuse of power.  I am coming for them.  And if you don’t fight with me; you fight against me,” Jenkins said, his face marked by tracks of tears.  And as he said the words, his mind focused on the image of his fantasy once more.  The man who was him and not him soared back above the expanse of the ocean, his dark wings shining magnificently against the light of the moon.