Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (23 page)

He told himself that they weren’t his friends anymore.  He closed his eyes and waited.

-

The light was pouring into his room when the alarms finally went off.  Roberts shook his head and tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes.  He was still sitting in his chair, surprised that he was able to fall asleep without actively trying.  Roberts yawned and rubbed his eyes.  They hurt from the strain of staying open but that was it.  He rubbed his face with his fingers and then tried to stand.

His balance faltered as he rose but soon enough he was on his feet.  He realized that maybe he had taken a few too many pills, but he was more concerned that he hadn’t killed himself.  It was a small victory for the pain-ridden Crow.  Roberts went over to his dresser and threw on some fatigues before exiting his room.  He was a few meters from his doorway when he realized the packaging was still on his desk in the open.  Roberts shook his head again, returned and hid the packaging before heading back down the hallway.

Roberts’ body instinctively knew where to go, but his mind was slow to follow the reasoning.  He didn’t realize until a few minutes into his journey that he was heading for the mess hall.  His train of thought was way behind his actions and that certainly was not the best situation.  Roberts rubbed his forehead and then gave himself a slap across the face.  The pain from the act was dulled by the medicine, which made the boy soldier laugh in dismay.  He would just have to go to breakfast and pretend to be normal.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

-

He entered the lunch room and found all the Crows sitting along the benches.  Some of them gave the soldier odd looks, but Roberts was quick to give them a glare before heading towards the line of food.  The boy soldier had garnered a reputation as a no-nonsense kind of guy and he depended on it with these kinds of situations.  He didn’t want anyone to know what he experienced after every resurrection.  There were only two people that he had ever told; one was his supplier and the other was a saint.  One would stay silent about it and if it filtered from the other it would be to trustworthy folk.

Before he fully realized it Roberts was past all of the food in the line and his tray was full of things he didn’t necessarily want to eat.  He scolded his body but picked up the tray anyway.  Maybe the new clone was desperate for some grits, after all.  Roberts walked over to the nearest empty seat and set his tray down in front of him.

Roberts still felt like he was floating around.  He tried to set down a mental rule that he should never take five pills again.  It was clearly too much.  He had to remind himself that these new bodies never had the tolerance that he’d built up with the last ones.  Roberts was always starting over fresh.  Unfortunately he could never remember because he was always intoxicated.

The boy soldier looked down at his tray and noticed a third of the food was gone.  He was about to look around for the culprit before he realized there was a taste in his mouth that hadn’t been there before.  Roberts sighed and resolved again that he would not take five pills right after a resurrection.  He looked across the table and saw Jenkins in front of him.  Roberts turned his head slightly as he watched the soldier.  He couldn’t call the Crow a rookie anymore, but the man still seemed so young in Roberts’ mind.

He realized the mistake there.  Roberts was the youngest one in the Crows’ roster.  Jenkins had a solid two-year lead on the more-experienced soldier, but something about Jenkins made Roberts think of happier times.  Maybe it was because the older soldier was not so far removed from his past life.  Christopher nodded to himself and looked back down at his tray.

There was no more food missing from the tray; Roberts thought it progress.  He felt glad that this little side-effect was wearing off and he was more aware of his actions.  Roberts realized quickly that the pain would return as well, but he tried to muster confidence in himself that he could dose himself properly after that first mistake.

He looked back at Jenkins and observed the man as he ate.  At least that was Roberts’ intention.  The new Crow was just moving food around his tray.  Roberts knew that behavior; he had indulged in it many times himself.  He watched the older man pushing food with his fork and suddenly the air around Jenkins changed.  Roberts no longer saw a lucky kid who had years of despair in front of him.  Now Roberts could see that Jenkins was just like him. 

Roberts felt the pain return but paid no attention to it.  He was much more concerned with the poor soul that had joined him in his sorry lot.  The boy soldier went back to eating his food and wondered what he could do to help Jenkins.  He didn’t want anyone to suffer like that.

-

  Jenkins had been watching Roberts from his periphery.  He didn’t want to antagonize the man; his erratic movements were probably the result of a drug-induced stupor.  Jenkins felt sorry for the boy and wished the soldier didn’t have to deal with that addiction of his.  The new Crow only briefly thought about the soldier before returning to his own thoughts.  Jenkins tried to eat the food in front of him but none of it looked particularly inviting.  The background pain from his resurrection was not helping his appetite.

He sighed and looked around the room.  Jenkins tried to observe his fellow soldiers as they went about eating their breakfast.  There was only one of them who ever really talked during those times; Norris would always have his stories.  Jenkins wondered if it was all an act or whether the stories were true; Cortes had mentioned that Norris had been the product of behavioral experimentation.  The young Crow was curious, but he never wanted to broach the subject to the sniper.

The slave soldiers started to file out of the mess hall and after a few moments only stragglers were left in their seats.  Unfortunately for Jenkins, Roberts was still sitting across from him.  Jenkins couldn’t help but think about what went on inside the man’s brain.  The thought completely ruined his appetite and when he looked down at his tray he didn’t want to eat anything on it.  Jenkins picked up the metal tray and deliberately didn’t look at the soldier sitting across the table.  He was turning when he heard the boy’s voice.

“It’s ok.”  Jenkins turned to look at Roberts and found the boy’s eyes filled with a lucidity that had been absent only moments before.  If the boy was under the effects of his addiction there was no way to tell.  Jenkins stammered and couldn’t possibly think of a response.

“It’s ok, Ryan.  I understand,” Roberts said before picking up his own tray.  He nodded at Jenkins and turned on his heels to throw away the rest of his food.  Jenkins stood there as the soldier stopped by the trash can and then left the room.  He didn’t quite know what the soldier meant.

He wondered how the boy soldier knew his first name.

-

Jenkins walked back from the shower towards his room.  The young Crow was still digging in his ear with his pinky to get water out when he noticed that Carver was leaning against the wall near his doorway.  Jenkins’ eyes narrowed and he halted for a moment.  Carver heard the other soldier approach and pushed himself off the wall.  He walked to the young man and put his hands in his pockets.

“I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he said.  Concern was virtually absent in the veteran’s eyes, but Jenkins could tell the old man meant it. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.  It’s just a new body,” he said before continuing on past his mentor.  He wasn’t trying to avoid confrontation, but he knew the old man would say his piece whether Jenkins wanted to hear it or not.

“Of course, and we know what happens there,” Carver said as he turned to look at the young soldier.  Jenkins had opened the door and set his arm on his desk chair.  He looked at the old soldier and bit his lip.

“Yeah, we do.  What’s this about, Carver?” Jenkins asked.  He thought the old man would appreciate the blunt nature of the question.  The old man was taken off guard but then shrugged at his compatriot.

“I wanted to see if you were alright, is all,” he said before looking Jenkins in the eye.  The Young Crow looked right back and crossed his arms in front of him.  Carver let a moment pass in silence before shrugging and picking at the paint of the doorway.

“Fine, kid.  I wanted to make sure you’re not thinking of anything stupid after that last death.  The first time
they
kill you is a little hard to handle,” he said before scratching the back of his neck.  Jenkins could tell the old Crow felt awkward having the conversation so he decided to end it as soon as possible.

“Look, I’m not happy about it,” Jenkins said before sitting down in the chair, “but that’s how it is.  Sometimes it’s just not fair.  Maybe things will turn around,” Jenkins said before looking Carver in the eye.  The old man’s eyelids narrowed and he stood up straight in the doorway.

“That’s ... pretty optimistic for you,” Carver said with a note of suspicion.  Jenkins shrugged and rubbed the surface of his desk.

“Feldman helped me put it in perspective.  Made it seem better,” Jenkins said before propping his head up on his hand.  Carver shifted his weight and sighed before looking at the floor.

“Feldman, eh?  He’s a smart guy, that one,” Carver said before turning to leave.  “The problem is that he’s smart enough to convince himself of anything.”  Carver departed without another word and Jenkins was left to understand the veteran’s meaning.  He wondered what the old man was talking about.  He was confused as to why the soldier might think poorly of Feldman.

Most of all, Jenkins was starting to get agitated that people thought he knew what they were saying.  First Roberts and now Carver.  It seemed that every person he talked to thought they knew best and that with a few paltry words they could completely alter Jenkins’ life.

He wasn’t sure if he should believe any of them.

Jenkins dressed in light fatigues and wondered what he would do with the next few hours.  As he fell onto his bed the new soldier found his mind filled with the thoughts of others and he didn’t appreciate it.  Jenkins wished that they would leave him alone and let him think for himself.  He turned in his bed and looked at the window.  The sun was currently eclipsed by the moon but the light bouncing off the other asteroids was enough to see everything clearly.  He couldn’t sleep if he tried.

Jenkins didn’t want to sleep, though.  Once he started thinking that people were trying to fill his minds with their own opinions he started to realize that he wasn’t thinking at all.  He didn’t bother to inform himself on his situation or even the state of Earth or all its satellites.  Jenkins suddenly felt guilty for wasting his purported intelligence and not giving himself the opportunity to know everything he could.  He realized that this was the reason he was on Eris in the first place.

The young Crow sat up, grunted and jumped off of his bed before bursting out the door.  He walked down the hallway without bothering to close the door behind him.  Jenkins had nothing worth stealing.  The gladiator walked past the mess hall and all the rooms of the soldiers; he didn’t want to talk to a single one of them.  They would just give him a mess of thoughts that he didn’t want to worry about.  He was determined to start thinking on his own.

Jenkins found himself in the library and looked at all the dusty tomes on the shelves.  One day, he promised to himself, he would read as much as he could.  The books would wait for him and he would explore their contents, but today was not the right day for it.  Jenkins was not in the mood to know history.  He wanted to know what was happening on his planet; he wanted to know what was happening on these asteroids.  He wanted to know the present.

Jenkins sat down at one of the computer terminals and the search homepage stared back at him.  He wondered what he would search for and what he should know.  The slave soldier was starting to get frustrated looking at the blinking cursor when he realized that he just had to start somewhere.  He typed in the name of his local paper back in New Chicago and hit the enter key.

The young Crow found everything to be marvelously boring.  He had forgotten that the New Chicago Post was a horrible piece of journalism.  There was nothing about the constant crime or murders or gang fights that Jenkins was absolutely sure were happening as he fought his fake war.  Instead they were all fluff pieces and business mergers.  He didn’t much care about the corporations trading money; they were all the same and he could hardly remember their names.  In another headline it was blatantly clear that a whale had separated from its pod and beached itself.  He read another headline and scoffed.  Another celebrity’s dog had taken the mantle of “best-in-show.” 

Jenkins shook his head and ran his hand through what constituted his hair and sat back in the chair.  He realized that he was kidding himself.  No one actually cared about what was happening.  Current events were absolutely useless to the general public and even the corporate mergers were nothing more than water cooler talk.  Jenkins wanted to know what was going on and in just a few moments he realized that nobody was going to tell him.  Jenkins closed his eyes and thought about how only minutes ago he had been one of those people.  He rubbed his right eye and sent the browser back to the search screen.

Jenkins typed in a few words and soon enough the War World website was glaring back at him.  He could see flames across the sides and bullet holes all along the screen, soldiers trading bullets at the top of the screen and a large “enter” button in the middle.  The young Crow sighed and tapped the display to find the main page.  He could see tabs and different buttons for all the information he could ever want about the games.  In a picture in the middle were the four anchors for the show and he laughed at their obviously fake antics.  He saw Patrick McEwen half-smiling at the camera and wondered what the old man felt when he watched the games; Jenkins knew the veteran had once been a Crow.  It gave him some small hope that he would get out eventually, even if McEwen was half a mummy.

He went back to the search engine and typed in “War World Retirees.”  One of the first pages led him to uncover the roster of all the teams through the course of the last fifty years.  There were hundreds on each team.  Jenkins marveled at that, especially when he considered that most of them had gotten out.  They might have been old like Patrick, but they had gotten out.  Next to each soldier was a small biography and picture.  It seemed like they had profited from playing the games.  Jenkins sighed with gratitude and wondered what he could do from the terminal.  He wanted to contact them; he wanted to talk to any of them and find out their secrets.  He wanted to know how they got out.