Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (18 page)

He still had a great deal of exercise left to do in the training yard.

-

Jenkins had an uneasy feeling about this game.  He’d been paired with Goldstein and the merchant had a bit of a reputation for taking advantage of every situation.  Jenkins hadn’t appreciated how he had talked to Abrams, either.

The two Crows had been midway through the deployment queue, so they were doing what they could to strike out on their own.  After they landed Goldstein took point while Jenkins followed into the unknown territory. 

It was a bit of an odd pairing.  Usually the powers that be tried to pair up soldiers with different specialties but both Jenkins and Goldstein were riflemen.  Trading bullets would be the most interesting thing that could happen, but that wasn’t any of Jenkins’ concern.  It was his job to survive.

Jenkins hoped there would be little enemy contact.  He didn’t want the excitement that came with the annihilation match; not any time soon, at least.  He guessed that the other soldier would likely agree with him.  Goldstein didn’t seem the type to stage heroics for anyone else.

Soon enough Goldstein hunkered down near a pile of scrap metal and motioned Jenkins to do likewise.  Jenkins knelt down and tried to guess why Goldstein would have stopped in the middle of the battlefield.  Maybe the older man had heard enemy movements beyond cover.  That idea was tossed aside when the soldier plopped down onto his butt and leaned against the scrap pile.  Goldstein unclasped his helmet and set it in his lap.  The man then took out a cigarette and ignited the end with a lighter that seemed to appear from nowhere.  Goldstein took a drag and puffed it out towards the gray sky.

“Did you want one?” the merchant asked while staring at the cloudy sky.  The smoke from his lungs seemed to fade away as soon it rose above him.  The young soldier by his side shook his head, more out of bewilderment than an actual response.

“No, and what the hell are you doing?” the rookie asked.  Jenkins was starting to get annoyed with the soldier.  The middle-aged merchant raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

“Smoking.  Thought that was obvious,” he said before taking another drag.  He looked at the cinder at the end of the cigarette and shook his head.  “Mental addiction, that’s what it is.  My body hates me every time I smoke one of these things.  I don’t even get the nicotine high.  Yet somehow … I’m compelled,” he said as he took one last drag and threw the dying cigarette into the wreckage.  “I’m not complaining in any case.  Just thought it was weird.  It’s not like cancer’s gonna get to me anytime soon,” he said with a chuckle.  Jenkins just looked skeptically at the man.  The soldier just laughed and looked at the helmet in his lap.

“Oh, don’t you judge me for this.  I don’t like to start killing people without getting a smoke in.”  He stretched out his arms and put them behind his head.  Jenkins sighed at him.

“All of our teammates are playing.  Why don’t you pitch in?” Jenkins asked.  The soldier in front of him seemed like the laziest waste of training Jenkins had ever seen.  The man just shook his head at the young soldier again and scoffed.

“Why are you in such a rush to die?  You’re not going to get much money for killing those Tigers out there.  If you die you’ll owe even more money.  I would think that you would be more likely to run away and hide.  It doesn’t much matter if I die again; I’m swimming in money.  But just the same I’d rather not go through another resurrection.  Even when playing the long game it’s good to have short-term goals.”  The merchant continued to look at the sky above him.  Jenkins could have sworn the man was smiling.  Jenkins eyed the soldier in front of him and thought of a few things the man could answer.

“Swimming in money?” Jenkins asked as he crouched above the older soldier. The merchant looked at him and brought his hands back down to his helmet.

“Indeed.  I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I have a fairly lucrative side project going on here.” 

“I’ve heard something like that, yeah.”

“Well, let’s just say I don’t really need to worry about the games anymore as long as I don’t fuck up too bad.  It’s almost just something to pass the time,” Goldstein said as he tossed his helmet from hand to hand.  It was more amusing than twiddling his thumbs, at the very least.

“Then why are you here?” Jenkins asked.  He couldn’t comprehend why anybody would stay here willingly.  Especially if Goldstein had as much money as he said he did.

“I guess I’m just greedy.  I want a nice beach house on Solaria and some servant girls.  I think that’d be pretty fun,” Goldstein said before winking at the young soldier.  “And believe you me, kid; that is a pricey dream I have.”  Jenkins thought about his own dreams of escape to Solaria.  He’d only aspired to be a pool boy.  Goldstein wanted to own the pool. 

“Hey, so I have a question…” Jenkins said, trailing off towards the end of the statement. Goldstein lifted his head and raised an eyebrow.

“I might answer it…”

“So you run the black market, right?”  Goldstein rolled his eyes at that.

“Well, if you want to call it that, sure, but make sure you tell the authorities, too.  Wouldn’t want them to be clueless.”  Jenkins felt silly, but since Goldstein seemed to be joking he continued with his line of questioning.

“Well, how do all the soldiers pay you?  Aren’t we all in a ridiculous amount of debt from all the resurrections?”   The merchant chuckled at him.

“Haven’t read your contract, have ya?  Basically we have an outstanding balance with ‘em.  As soon as we get a positive balance we can buy ourselves out, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spend what we make.  They don’t really expect us to ever pay them back; the balance is just there to say that they own us.  They’re fuckin assholes, that’s what they are,” Goldstein said as he drew out another cigarette.  He fumbled around in his pockets as he looked for his lighter.  “Anyway, whatever we earn in the games we’re allowed to spend.  Basically on whatever we want.  Extra rations, Earth provisions, you name it.  Anything that’s approved, that is.  For the things they don’t approve, some entertaining bets or things you don’t want them to know about,” he said before finding his lighter and setting his cigarette ablaze.  “Well, you talk to me.”

Jenkins looked at his rifle.  He tried to think of anything from Earth that he might want.  He tried to think of his favorite things when he was growing up.  It all seemed so trivial.  The young Crow just wanted to be far away from the asteroid.  He was shocked back out of his internal workings by the merchant’s voice.

“You need anything, by the way?  I could set up a ledger for you,” he said with a smile.  Jenkins just scoffed at the man.

“Nothing you can get me, Goldstein.”  The merchant laughed and took a long drag from his cigarette.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, my friend,” he said before taking another small drag and throwing it away.  He hadn’t even finished the thing.  “My lungs hate me for that shit.  Nasty little habit,” he said before getting to his feet and clasping his helmet back onto his head.  He turned back to his compatriot.

“You still in a rush to die?”  Jenkins picked himself up as well and shrugged.

“I guess I can go either way,” the new soldier said while looking off in the middle distance.  Goldstein laughed before turning around.

“That’s the spirit.  Apathy is the way to go, kid.”

-

Jenkins still walked behind the merchant.  The two Crows had taken out three of the Tigers already; they had been able to sneak up on them and throw grenades at their feet.  One fell to the floor missing a leg and the other two had been scattered from the explosion, easily picked off in their confusion.  It didn’t seem right, these coward tactics, but Jenkins had to consider that he was still alive. 

There were certainly things that Jenkins didn’t like about Goldstein, but the soldier definitely had experience on the field.  The rookie never felt like he was in constant danger like in the other games.  It almost didn’t feel like he was on the same asteroid.

As they were walking Goldstein peered over his shoulder and then looked back in front of him.  Jenkins was curious as to why he did it but soon enough realized the man was making sure they weren’t being followed. 

“Just makin’ sure, buddy, don’t worry your head off.”

“I wasn’t,” Jenkins said.  He did his best not to sound like a pissed-off teenager, but some of the sentiment came through anyway.

“Sure, sure.  So,” Goldstein said before walking along a makeshift pathway through the wreckage.  “You have five months to go on your sentence, right?”  Jenkins paused at that.

“Yeah, close enough… why do you care?”  Goldstein turned around and shrugged.

“I make it my business to know that kind of thing.  What’s your balance looking like?”  Jenkins thought about withholding the information, but he realized that it didn’t matter if the other soldier knew his debts.

“Not good.  Not sure what it’s going to look like once my sentence is up.”

“Ugh, I hear ya.  If I didn’t have the side-business I’d probably just kill myself and hope they don’t bring me back.  Those resurrections costs are killer,” he said before turning around and heading further down the path.  Jenkins followed and agreed in his head.  There seemed to be an itch way in the back of his mind, but he didn’t know how to scratch it.  He shook his head and stepped around a spur of scrap in the pathway.

“Pretty shitty, more like,” Jenkins said, feeling more at ease now that he could gripe about his situation.  “And to top it off they hit me with an extra resurrection and I can’t override it,” he said, continuing down the pathway.  He almost bumped into Goldstein, who had turned around and stopped in his tracks.  “What?” Jenkins asked the man in front of him.

“They can’t do that.  Well, I mean, they can, but they don’t care enough to do it.  What are you talking about?” Goldstein asked.  Jenkins hadn’t realized what he said was that important.

“Well, I’ve only died in two of the games but they’ve charged me for three resurrections.  The guy at the front desk was pretty rude about it, too,” Jenkins said before noticing the merchant staring him down.  Jenkins didn’t know what he had said that had made such a mark on the middle-aged Crow.  Then the soldier shifted his weight and let his weapon fall to his side.

“Oh, fuck.  You don’t know,” the merchant said as he realized the scale of Jenkins’ ignorance.  The young soldier’s brow furrowed underneath his helmet.  Jenkins was suddenly very curious as to what the other soldier was going to say. 

“What are you talking about?” Jenkins asked before crossing his arms.  Goldstein brought up his hand to his helmet and shook his head.  Then he looked up into the rookie’s visor and put his hands on the man’s shoulders.

“Jenkins.  Trust me.  You’ve died three times,” he said, trying to be as direct as possible.  Jenkins shook his head slowly at the man’s remarks.

“No, I haven’t.  I only died twice in the games,” Jenkins said.  He didn’t know what Goldstein was going on about, but it was starting to piss him off that the veteran was talking to him like this; especially since he remembered his two deaths so vividly.

“Oh, I believe you.  But I’m saying you’ve died three times,” Goldstein said before Jenkins shook off the merchant’s hands.

“I think I would remember that,” Jenkins stated with a tone of skepticism.  Goldstein just shook his head at him.

“That’s the thing.  They don’t want you to remember that first one,” the merchant said before gaining his full height.   Now Jenkins was very curious.

“What are you talking about?”  The young soldier’s tone held an undercurrent of rage.  He was not in any mood to beat around the bush.

“They killed you before you ever got to this planet, kid,” Goldstein said before taking a deep breath.   Jenkins tilted his head and kept listening.  “They took a sample of your DNA and mapped your brain on planet.  Then they sent all that code to the clone banks up here on Eris.  Then they killed you on Earth.  In a few ways you’re officially dead, kid.”

Jenkins’ mind reeled at the revelation.  He couldn’t understand what the other man was saying.  Why would they have killed him like that?  What could they have gained?  This was not the deal he thought he had signed up for.

“What?  Why?”  Jenkins desperately needed answers.  Goldstein looked at his feet and sighed.

“Well, it cost less, that’s for sure.  They wanted perfect synchronization between your brainwaves and your clones.  It was easier just to grow up some shells for you that were specially made for the process.  As for your body on Earth, you had some stuff wrong with you, right?  You were fat or something?” he asked, grasping at straws.

“I used to have pretty bad eyesight.  They told me they put me into surgery to fix it,” the young soldier said, suddenly skeptical about the entire memory.  Jenkins had actually almost forgotten that he used to wear glasses.  He tried to remember the last time he felt the sinus pressure at the bridge of his nose.

“Well, that’s how they got you under, at least.  They didn’t operate on your eyes, kid.  They fixed the genetic code in your clones so they wouldn’t
have
bad eyes.  They weren’t going to spend money cutting up your body on Earth and then shipping it to an asteroid. It’s so much easier to send data, instead.  Unfortunately your first body,” Goldstein said before pausing.  He was trying not to piss off his new comrade.  “It was trash.  They probably burned it up and added it to a compost pile or something.  Try to remember.  Did you have any scars from growing up that had disappeared during your training?  That’s because they never happened to that body.”

Jenkins couldn’t catch his breath for a moment.  He hadn’t mentally prepared himself for the idea.  When he tried to remember his training he hadn’t even worried about the beauty mark he had received from a broken bottle or why it might be absent.  It hadn’t even occurred to him.  He wondered what else the Commission might have lied about. 

“So…” Jenkins said before realizing it was just a noise.  He had nothing poignant to say.  His brain was flooded with a thousand thoughts and he couldn’t express one of them.