Phoenix Rising (Book Two of The Icarus Trilogy) by Kevin Kauffmann Page B

other for three decades.  At first Garrison had thought the old soldier had meant for him to dispose of the crop.  He had almost done it, too, but Carver had volunteered the young soldier for the Hero program.
    Carver hadn’t known the name of the program, of course.  Only senior officials knew the details of the program and how many times it had been implemented.  It was all highly controversial and experimental.  But Carver had known it existed and he had urged the bureaucrat to consider the suicidal soldier.  Garrison had been wary and unwilling to allow it, his job would have been on the line, but Carver eliminated the risk and offered to pay.
    Garrison looked at the beautiful woman sitting at the desk in front of him.  She was a magnificent thing; perfect features around the face, curves in all the right places and a soft quality to her very presence.  Montgomery had chosen well for his assistant.  She was the kind of woman that men would fight for, would write poems for and would buy expensive houses and trinkets just to keep around.  Carver could have bought her with no problems.  If he had bothered to keep his money instead of spending it on these wasted youths he would have more in his account than Garrison himself.  Garrison had money enough to spend a few weeks a year on Solaria.  Carver could have lived there.
    But now he was doomed to live out the rest of his days on Eris.  The veteran could have lived his last years with a beautiful woman like the one in front of Garrison, maybe even two of them, but he’d chosen to be surrounded by death.  Garrison couldn’t really understand the man; Carver was outrageously foolish and, really, too good of a man to live in a world like this.  Garrison shook his head.  He didn’t know why he was thinking about this when he could be thrown to the wolves by the most powerful man in the system in ten minutes.
    “Mr. Garrison?”  The bureaucrat looked up to see Montgomery’s secretary looking at him expectantly.  The middle manager gathered his business coat around him and sat up in the chair.  He was about to say something when she nodded towards the double doors next to her desk.
    “He’ll see you now.”  The woman gave a courteous smile and then looked back to the computer display on her desk.  She clearly had no intention to speak with the aging man in front of her; he was nothing of consequence.  Garrison picked himself up and walked over to the double doors.  They grew more intimidating the closer he came.  He breathed out, did what he could to calm his heart rate, and then pulled on the door.  When he had given himself enough room he stepped through the threshold.
    The office was massive.  There was twenty meters between the entrance and the end of the room, where a sprawling collection of windows stared out on Babylon below.  There were scattered pieces of aesthetically-pleasing furniture throughout the room and even a few couches for relaxation.  The wall on Garrison’s left was filled with bookcases full of tomes; the bureaucrat couldn’t make out any of the titles on the spines but figured it was a random collection.  The wall on Garrison’s right was filled with enormous displays which showed a number of different channels of news programs, all on mute with closed captioning.  It was how the old man kept informed. 
    As Garrison passed a collection of exercise equipment to his right he couldn’t help but let his gaze fall to the man sitting by the window.  Jasper Montgomery was sitting at his desk with his fingers interlaced in front of his chin.  He was older than Garrison, but looked much better for it.  His hair was white and his skin wizened, but Garrison had no doubt that the old man was in better shape.  The only feature that showed the man's true age were his eyes.  They were squinting at the new arrival and Garrison couldn’t see the irises.  Maxwell remembered that they were a pale grey, but he couldn’t see