Murder of Crows (Book One of The Icarus Trilogy) (10 page)

The coward lives on.

Cortes couldn’t help the tears forming underneath his helmet.  He wouldn’t have wiped them away if he could.  The saying was about him; it was always about him.  He was just afraid to die.  Cortes sniffed and tried to regain his composure before heading towards the stairs.  The beacon for the airlift was four hundred meters away and he needed to get there eventually.

Halfway to the beacon he saw his younger brother in that same orange shirt he’d worn the day he died.  He looked disappointed in Cortes.  Cortes tried to convince himself he wasn’t there.  He tried to just walk by.  The vision decided to make itself known.

“Why is it always you?”

-

“Welcome to the best show on the web!  It’s
War World
with Eric Jones, Samantha Bishop, Franklyn Stone and, of course, our senior game correspondent Patrick McEwen!”

Douglas hated that voice, hated these people.  It was unfulfilling work being the announcer for the program, but it paid so very well.  Not as well as being one of the talking heads in front of him, but he couldn’t really complain.  Douglas had a voice for it, after all, even if his name didn’t match.  The disheveled announcer for the sports program was wearing loose fitting clothes and a four-day beard.  His ruddy, brown hair could have used a comb and his gut which he acquired through drinking and pure laziness was bunching up beneath his shirt.  He sighed in self-loathing and looked at the talking heads.

“Thanks, Sean, we’ll take it from here,” Eric said, donning his plastic smile.  He was picture-perfect; nicely combed light-brown hair and a trim body made for wearing a suit.  Douglas’ eye twitched at the false name.  The announcer wondered what was so bad about Douglas that they had to call him Sean.

“So today we’re gonna talk about a few games.  We had a great one with the Tigers and the Wolverines and I can’t wait to talk about that later on,” Eric said before getting interrupted by Franklyn.

“Real bloodbath, there,” he said, just to make noise.  Douglas could see a flicker of annoyance on Eric’s face and that made the announcer smile.  While Douglas was not the biggest fan of Eric Jones, he hated the black man for a variety of other reasons.  Eric was a shallow man-whore; Franklyn was an intelligent man who played the stereotypes so that he could be popular and have a bigger check.  Douglas couldn’t quite decide which one was worse.

“Ha, hah, sure was, Frank.  We also had a crazy match between the Grizzlies and the Hammerheads with some full-on mech-suit action,” he said, doing his best to dismiss the man’s comment.  An image of a monstrous machine piloted by a slave soldier flickered on the television behind him in order to highlight the game.

“Some great plays in that one,” Samantha added, not realizing how vapid it made her sound.  She was only there so that the network wouldn’t get angry letters from women’s rights groups; just a cookie-cutter blonde girl with a big chest.  Douglas had tried to talk to her once hoping for more.  He realized quickly that he was better off talking to himself.  She had taken one look at him, thought Douglas was a janitor and walked away.

“Not wrong on that one.  But we’ll get to those in just a bit.  I have to talk about this game between the Hawks and the Crows.  Fan-TAS-tic game, here. And I know what you’re all thinking at home.  The Crows have a much higher ranking than the Hawks, but the Commission decided to give those underdogs a huge boost,” Eric said, doing his best to dismiss Samantha’s comment.  The man positively oozed excitement. 
One of the greatest actors of our generation, surely
, Douglas thought.  His attention turned to Patrick, who seemed to have woken out of his stupor.

The old soldier’s mind was mostly gone, now.  He’d been a big winner in the games; a true success story.  On massive TVs around the planet McEwen had decimated his opponents and caused many men to lose their lives.  The former Crow had paid his way off of Eris and been offered a permanent spot on the program.  It was too bad his brain was addled from numerous resurrections.  To add insult to injury the producers shoved medication down the old man’s throat so that he wouldn’t say anything inappropriate on air.  When he sat at the table on the set he sank into the chairs.  His hair was white and if not for the people in charge of makeup his beard would be scraggly and the liver spots would show.  His blue eyes only held a small spark of what he used to be.

“Damn fine game.  Handicaps weren’t around back when I was fighting, but it’s nice to see the hustle out there.”  Eric allowed the old man his time, but couldn’t abide being out of the spotlight for very long.

“Sure was, Pat.  Great plays on both sides and you couldn’t ask for a better annihilation match.  Only one soldier walked off of that field.”

“Couldn’t get any closer to a draw, Eric,” Franklyn interjected.  Douglas could positively feel the contempt from Eric.  The smile remained on Douglas’ face.

“That’s right, Frank, and no one wants that.  Well, let’s go ahead and dip into some of those highlights.  Sam, take it away,” Eric said in a rare display of politic.  Samantha beamed at the opportunity and read from the teleprompter while clips of the soldiers fighting were shown on the screens behind them.

“Well, first, Eric,” she said with a smile and a batting of her big brown eyes.  “We have the ambush of the Crow’s sniper,” she started while images of Norris and Goldstein flickered about the room.  The Englishman was clearly messing around with his compatriot.

“A total surprise on the part of the Hawks,” Frank started while shifting in his seat.  “Norris and Goldstein don’t have a clue and then boom,” he said just as three Hawks swept around and surrounded the two soldiers, “Santiago, Yokoi and Aerin hit ‘em hard.”

“A good maneuver, to be sure, but my favorite part…” Patrick said while the soldiers continued to fight in the background.  Yokoi had stuck a knife in Goldstein right from the start.  It hadn’t stopped the middle-aged man from turning and spraying a few rounds into the Hawk’s helmet.  Norris was fighting the two remaining Hawks alone when the old man continued, “…is right here!”

Norris grabbed Aerin by the neck while the other soldier shot at him.  The Crow threw the man backwards down the hill and ran after him while the other soldier’s bullets took turns glancing off his armor and sinking into his flesh.  The Englishman tumbled halfway down the hill and fell to a spot close to the Hawk.  He unstrapped his sniper rifle while the other man groaned and pushed the barrel against the man’s helmet.  He blew the man’s head off while Patrick threw up his arms and whooped.

“That’s the good stuff, people.  I tell ya, most of the time when I was playing, us soldiers were just looking for the most stylish kills,” Patrick said with a silly grin on his face.  Douglas shook his head.  Even after seven years of working with the man Patrick’s bloodlust still surprised him.  He figured the old man had seen enough on the asteroid, but Douglas was consistently proven wrong.

“Well, in that case Norris has a pretty decent score with that one,” Eric said as the clip continued.  Norris was turning with his rifle to take out Santiago, but the other soldier had an incendiary RPG ready for the man.  “But unfortunately, he didn’t get to enjoy it,” he said as the Englishman burst into flames behind him.

“Haha, it’s still a great image for the fan club,” Frank said while shaking with fake laughter.  “Now, do we get to talk about the best woman in the games?”

“We’re getting there, Frank,” Eric said while chuckling.  Douglas rolled his eyes at Frank.  He was there for the urban demographic, but Douglas had more of a colorful background than the ethnic stereotype being filmed in front of him.  It was all just smoke, mirrors and plastic up there.  Douglas leaned his head on his hand and sighed.

“Well, we better.  I could talk about Jessica Abrams the whole show,” Frank said in a mock serious voice. 
Sure, love the white woman, Frank.  Way to represent the black man,
Douglas thought.

“Hah, since you seem so enthusiastic about her I guess we can get it out of your system,” Eric said as flashes of war flitted about behind them.  Eventually it settled onto an aerial view of Abrams, Cortes and three Hawks pinning each other down.

“Now, this starts out normal enough with a firefight,” Samantha started in her serious voice.  Every word she said bothered Douglas.  He was glad she didn’t say very much.

“Mhmm, but it stops being that way in a second,” Franklyn interrupted.  “Now we all know Cortes is a support soldier and the two of them are a good pairing, but the way that Arthur, Blankenship and Baaj have the two covered they can’t really work like they always do.”

“Yep, but this is where it starts to change,” Eric said as Abrams stayed out of cover to wait for a Hawk to raise his head.  When Blankenship rose he was met with a round from the woman’s revolver.

“Haha,” Franklyn laughed while Blankenship fell to the ground, “that’s because my girl’s there.  She’s all about evening the odds.”

“Sure is, Frank, but then things go south here,” Eric said as the two Crows sat behind cover.  “Abrams is out of ammo and they have two Hawks sitting there with guns.”

“That’s a sorry position if I’ve ever seen one,” Patrick said with a grim nod.

“Yeah, but don’t forget that Abrams will surprise you,” Frank said with a not-so-sly smile.  They all laughed then.  Douglas just looked at the screen; he was done with the four of them.  He watched as Abrams broke cover and sprinted towards the other end of the battlefield.  Baaj and Arthur were shooting at her but it didn’t quite matter; the gladiator juked and tumbled in all the right places.  Cortes popped up enough to give a slight distraction to the two men.  Abrams vaulted over their cover and soon enough her blade found its way to Arthur’s aorta.  She was shot a few times in the belly for the effort.  Douglas winced at that.  He could see that Franklyn was still making a fool of himself on the stage, but Douglas continued to watch the woman’s swan song.

She drew out the knife and plunged it in under Arthur’s chin just as Cortes’ grenade flew between Baaj and the couple embraced in death. 
A credit for your thoughts, madam,
Douglas thought before they were ripped apart by the grenade.  It was enough of a spectacle that he turned his gaze back to the talking apes.  Frank had finished jumping around in his seat and it was a tad more somber.

“Always a tough call when you have to sacrifice one of your own, but Cortes made the right decision,” Patrick said with morose approval.

“Seems to be the theme of this game, I’d say,” Samantha proclaimed to no one’s surprise.

“Pretty much,” Eric started, “but we’ll get to that in a little bit.  Let’s focus on the Hawks for a while.  They were pretty smart with their deployment this time around and you can see that with their treatment of Templeton and Roth.”

“Oh yeah, that was good stuff,” Franklyn said with a nod.

“Classic skirmisher play,” Patrick declared while shifting in his seat.

“Beautiful execution, too.  Two rangers and a melee berserker is such a powerful team.  They didn’t even get the drop on the Crows this time but they came out ahead,” Eric said, explaining the play to their, presumably, simple viewers.

“Right,” Frank said, trying to pick up where Eric left off. “So we have Morimoto and Sachinsky with rifles paired with Williams, who just so happens to have the chainsaw gauntlets.”

“I’ll be the first to say that no matter what equipment I had, the chainsaws always scared the crap outta me,” Patrick said with a nervous chuckle.

“You’re not the only one, Pat,” Eric said with an understanding nod.  “It certainly unnerved the two Crows in this play.”

“That’s a way to say it,” Samantha exclaimed with a grin. “Morimoto and Sachinsky set up a great diversion with their stand-off while Williams flanked the Crows.”

“That’s all they needed to do,” Eric interrupted with a smile.  He could permit the woman her own highlight, but he could allow himself to grace the explanation from time to time.  Samantha smiled at him and then continued while Williams rushed the two men in the background.

“They played that part well, it seems.  As you can see here Williams gets to Roth first and literally sweeps the legs out from under him,” she said as the man ran up to Roth’s side and cut upwards through the gaps in the armor behind the Crow’s knees.  The man fell onto his back as gore flew out from the wounds.

“Way to take advantage of that blindside,” Frank said in a more serious tone.

“Yep, Roth didn’t even see it coming.  Now watch this, Williams uses the opening to get closer to Templeton and then,” Eric said as he started a controlled wince, “…WHAM,” he shouted as he slammed the table, just as Williams slid both chainsaws into Templeton’s ribcage.  Blood gurgled out through the openings as the weapons ground Templeton’s organs to liquid.  The blond woman took this as a chance to take more screen time.

“Horrible way to go, but at least Templeton had the right idea and pulled his grenade pin.  You can see it happen in just a second,” Samantha said, and true to her word the two soldiers exploded into pieces.  Franklyn nodded and cleared his throat.

“Say what you will about the Crows, but they sure know how to make everything count.  Roth and Templeton are rookies but they at least did something to balance it all out,” Frank said in approval.

“Right, nothing to be ashamed of, there,” Samantha said while nodding.  “In fact, if things hadn’t worked out the way they did in Sudden Death it mighta been Roth who was the last man standing, so to say,” stumbling through the words as she realized what she had just said.  “The guy just laid there and Morimoto and Sachinsky moved on.  Just poor luck with that first artillery shell.”  Douglas smiled when he heard her poor choice of words. 
It’s the little things
, Douglas thought.  Most smiled along with him; Patrick just shifted in his seat.

“I wanna go back to how the Crows make everything count.  I just wanna remind people that I actually used to play for the Crows.  Now, I’ve only actually played with one of these guys,” Patrick started.