Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (9 page)

He was angry.  He was angry at the situation, he was angry at the chainsaw-wielding maniac and he was angry at his father.  If not for Tobias Roth, Percival could have just been happy working somewhere safe.  If his father hadn’t pushed him, Roth wouldn’t have pushed back and hopped on a spaceship to the other side of the system.

Roth’s consciousness started to fade; he realized it wouldn’t be much longer before he was dead.  The suit wasn’t able to hold back the blood pouring out of his arteries any longer.  He realized that it was somewhat peaceful.  Roth could slip away and no one would criticize him.  His father couldn’t look down on him; not on his deathbed.  And the best part was that he would come right back.

He smiled just before an explosive shell hit his midsection and burst him to pieces.

-

Carver was getting ready to lend his support behind Jenkins’ idea when they were interrupted by a massive explosion to the North.  That artillery was
not
in a different game, but they were still alive.  Cortes looked over the broken wall and tried to find Roth’s tag.  There was only smoke where it had been.

“Oh, c’mon!”  Jenkins was more than just dismayed.  Carver looked at the young soldier with a bemused grin on his face.

“Sudden death artillery, kid.  Yet another lesson that life ain’t fair.”  Jenkins looked down at him with eyes full of fury.  He grabbed at his rifle and gripped it until his hand hurt.

“The new plan is we’re going to hunt down every last one of them or die trying.  We’re going to give the audience a fucking show.  I’ll be damned if I’m going to be blown to bits by artillery because I wanted to take a nap in a house,” Jenkins turned to leave and started down the stairs.

“Come with me or don’t, just don’t be surprised when I use my new body to kick your fucking asses.”  Carver smiled at the soldier’s back and rose to his feet.

“Well, yes, sir.  We wouldn’t want that,” he said as he started to the stairs.  He looked at the stragglers and shrugged.

“Might as well get up, boys.  You have nothing else to do.”  Carver looked at the two soldiers for a moment before Warner angrily sighed and picked himself up with difficulty.  He growled at the gunshot wound in his shoulder; it was not helping his sunny disposition.

“Fuckin’ souvenir from those cunts.  I guess I can give ‘em some payback,” Warner said as he hobbled towards the staircase.  Carver smiled and shook his head.  The ex-convict had a way with words.  The old man looked over at Cortes and knew exactly what the man was thinking.  The Spaniard looked up from his seat and shook his head slowly.

“Yeah, I figured.  Don’t complain if things go sour, though,” Carver said before walking down the staircase and joining his comrades.  This was not going to end well for any of them.

-

Jenkins was scared shitless.  He might have acted tough back in the building, but he didn’t have any semblance of false confidence left.  Luckily Sudden Death rules made it much easier to find his opponents as their tags became visible in his display, but he still felt iffy about his plan; mostly because there wasn’t one.  He’d have much preferred to follow Carver around, but leadership had been thrust upon him.  The crown did not rest easy.

Jenkins was not happy that there were only three of them running towards the blast site.  Cortes had opted to stay behind and die in relative comfort, it seemed.  Jenkins had thought about arguing with the soldier and slapping him around but he had been stopped by Carver.  The elder man had merely put his hand on Jenkins’ shoulder and shook his head.  The three left without a word to the soldier.  No use wasting any on a coward.

The artillery shells continued to fall in the war zone.  They were in a random pattern at first; enough to scare the remaining soldiers into killing each other.  Roth had been unlucky to get caught in that first blast; or maybe the powers that be had decided to make an example of the man.  Jenkins wouldn’t have put it past them.  He just hoped the shells would keep falling
around
him instead of
on
him.  They just needed to kill the four Hawks that were six hundred meters away.

They broke their force march a hundred meters from the Hawks.  It hadn’t taken long to reach them as the opposing team was also sprinting towards the remaining Crows, but now they were at an effective stalemate.  Neither team wanted to poke its head out first and have it blown off.  Jenkins’ courage had gotten him this far, but now he was too nervous to even think about volunteering for scout duty.

Jenkins was perched on a small outcropping of cement and glanced anxiously in the direction of the Hawks.  He couldn’t see them, there was a pile of wreckage in the way, but he half-expected them to vault over and kill the three of them at any second.  The half-rotten corpse to his left didn’t even register with him in comparison.  Jenkins had run into plenty of corpses in his short time on the asteroid, so he had become desensitized to a point.  The only thing he was nervous about was finding his own corpse; he didn’t know what he would do with himself.  Thankfully he hadn’t died enough to make that a possibility.

There was a tense quiet peppered with artillery explosions.  The shells were getting closer now; the public were impatient and wouldn’t be entertained for much longer.  Jenkins shook his head and desperately wanted the veteran to take command from him.  Carver could tell and soon enough he cleared his throat and craned his neck towards Warner.

“Hey, you sweep around left and try to figure out where they’re holed up.  Jenkins and I will follow and flank from the right.  Got it?”  Warner squinted at the man and cocked his head.

“You kiddin’ me, old man?  Why the hell would I do that?” he asked with a venomous attitude.  Carver sat back, tapped at his left shoulder and tilted his head.

“You still object?”  Warner looked at his left shoulder and did nothing to hold back the growl coming from his throat.  He picked himself up from the ground and started to leave.  Before breaking cover he turned his head back to look at Jenkins.

“Make sure it’s worth it, you faggot.”  Then he was gone.

Warner reported nothing for half a minute.  Carver took this as a sign to head forward with the pincer maneuver and patted Jenkins’ back as he passed.  The young soldier followed but not without trying to settle something in his mind.

“Why did he go?  And what was the arm thing about?”  Carver tripped a bit on his way out, surprised by the question.  He continued and lazily answered.

“He got shot in the shoulder,” he said as he climbed over a pile of rebar.

“So?”

“So he’s dead anyway.”

“It didn’t look like it’d kill him.”

“Probably wouldn’t get the chance to.  Enough questions, kid,” Carver grunted out as he climbed over one last pile of steel.  “I’ll get into specifics when we get through this.”

“Why is he dead, Carver?” Jenkins asked, suddenly feeling very angry that Carver kept leaving out details.  He wasn’t a child, no matter what the living legend said.  He wasn’t going to move until Carver answered him.  Carver huffed with annoyance.

“Look, kid.  It doesn’t matter.  This whole thing is a suicide mission and we’re all dead anyway.  Now, you sanctimonious sack of shit, move.”  He turned and jumped off of the steel outcropping.  Carver was finished talking even if Jenkins would stand there for the rest of the match.  Jenkins was furious at a number of things.  He was angry at the situation, he was angry at the people in charge, he was angry that he was probably going to die for no reason except that eight worlds-worth of humanity wanted to see him bleed. 

For now he was going to give them what they wanted.  He walked up to Carver’s position and tried to find the Hawks in front of him.  They should have been on top of them.  The display in their helmets showed that they were only twenty meters away.  The two Crows realized as the bullets started flying that by all rights they should have died right where they were standing.  They were out in the open while the Hawks were lying down in the center of a clearing underneath piles of garbage.

Luckily they had only noticed Warner’s approach; Carver and Jenkins had slid past their notice.  The convict had almost stepped on one of the soldiers before they had started firing, but soon enough the bullets tore through him and killed the man standing.  It was a painful death, but it afforded Carver and Jenkins the opportunity to catch them off-guard.

Jenkins was yelling.  He would have cursed himself for a number of mistakes but he was trapped in his own bloodlust.  He didn’t even know what he was yelling; he just knew he couldn’t stop.  There were four Hawks scattered around the clearing.  Three were on the ground while one was perched on the second floor of a ruined building nearby.  Jenkins considered him the most dangerous and sent a few rounds his way.  Carver clucked his tongue at the young soldier and threw a grenade near the support of the building.  The veteran then started spraying rounds in the beam underneath the man.  Soon enough the floor fell from under him and the soldier rolled onto the ground.

Right onto the grenade.

The explosion underneath their teammate was enough for the three Hawks to turn their focus away from shredding Warner’s corpse.  One of the men stood and turned to face the Crows.  Jenkins shot him in the knee and followed with a shot to the visor.  He didn’t want to play nice anymore.  Neither did the Hawks.  The one on the left threw a grenade right between Jenkins and Carver.  The other threw one to Carver’s other side.  While Jenkins was able to jump out of the way Carver merely sighed and tried to run forward.

“Try” was the operative word; the grenades flung the old soldier forward when they exploded under his feet.  Carver’s leg was blasted from the old man’s body and the force itself had killed the man; it was just a corpse that fell between the Hawks.  One of the Hawks kicked Carver’s body over to look at their work but was met with a surprise.  Jenkins popped out of cover long enough to see Carver’s body roll over and expose the grenade he’d armed before getting launched.

After the dust had settled Jenkins was alone with the last Hawk.  It was up to him to finish the match.  He couldn’t rely on his teammates; they had already done plenty.  Jenkins steeled his nerves and stood up out of cover to end it all.

He felt a number of rounds tearing into his chest plate.  Jenkins had fired, as well, but he doubted his accuracy.  He had failed his teammates.  That realization was quickly followed by the explosion of an artillery shell directly between the two soldiers. 

Jenkins died from the blast almost instantly; his opponent didn’t last much longer.  The explosion had launched a piece of hull plating cart-wheeling towards the man.  After bouncing along the ground it spun through the man’s groin and relieved him of his left leg.  He bled out soon afterwards with no one to witness but the cameras.

-

Cortes wondered what was taking so long.  He heard the explosions all around him but couldn’t be bothered to move; he wasn’t the type to run from danger or to it.  No reason to rush things.

The Spaniard felt bad for disappointing the new kid.  Jenkins seemed like a good guy, but Cortes’ heart just wasn’t in it.  It never was.  He had the worst kill-to-death ratio on the team, and that wasn’t even counting his record from the other teams.  He hated the whole idea behind it; he never wanted to kill anyone.  Cortes would usually just aim around people and let the others get the credit.

 After all, he wasn’t here for money or bloodlust.  He was here to atone.  He couldn’t think of a better way than dying painfully over and over again. The Spaniard sank against the wall and looked at the broken ceiling.  He could see gray clouds overhead.  It always seemed like it was about to storm on Eris.  The coward always called it by its true name.  No reason to give in to the advertising; the asteroid didn’t need to be sullied like that.

Cortes looked back at his feet and sighed.  The Spaniard was sick of the waiting.  He’d have run to one of the blasts but he didn’t want to seem too eager.  Cortes was paranoid that those resurrection scientists would mess with his head if he showed he was suicidal.  He’d seen what they’d done to Norris.  The red-headed sniper used to be a friendly guy.  Now he was a bloodthirsty sociopath.  The lab coats must have done something to the man.

Besides, it was still a sin to Cortes.  He couldn’t kill himself.

He heard his brother’s laughter.  The Spaniard knew it wasn’t actually him; he knew he was hearing things.  He hated that his grasp of reality was based on knowing his brain was lying to him.  Cortes wanted to yell at his own brain; wanted to strangle it and shout that he knew he should feel guilty.  The soldier didn’t need a constant reminder that he had killed his brother.

It was an accident, of course.  Cortes was running in a gang and they were putting him through initiation. All he had to do was kill his target, Miguel Garcia, but Hector Cortes ended up holding his younger brother while he died.  His parents disowned him and he didn’t blame them at all.  Cortes didn’t feel like he deserved to live, even if it was slave labor on the asteroid farms.  He chose his punishment accordingly.

The slave soldier never regretted that.  He was more than willing to atone endlessly.  Hell was an abstract to him, but Eris was as close as he could get with certainty.  But this infernal waiting was irking the soldier.  He should have been blown sky high by now.  Jenkins should have made his desperate gambit and killed everyone or die trying.  Instead Cortes was left just sitting there looking at the torn supports in the ceiling.

He threw away his gun in disgust and sighed inside of his helmet.  It was stifling.  Cortes was just about to unclip the thing and throw it away to join the gun when the announcement flashed across his display.  A smile spread across the soldier’s face.  The fool had done it.  Cortes walked over to his gun, ready to sling the strap over his shoulder when the AI’s feminine voice shocked him.

“Results of the Annihilation Round.  Hawks: 0, Crows: 1.  Congratulations, Crows.  Head back to your Rendezvous point.”  Cortes couldn’t believe it at first.  If there was only one Crow left that meant it was just him.  His shoulders dropped and he stared blankly at the floor.  He was ashamed of himself.  Jenkins had gone and taken care of the threat and Cortes had just waited to die.  It wasn’t fair.  He struck out with his fist against a nearby support beam.  It cracked from the strike, but he didn’t care.  He was furious.  A voice came to mind, his father’s this time.  He remembered when his father had first said it; the family’s credo.