Armor (42 page)

Shoen caught him outside in the passageway.

“Where you goin’?” she wanted to know.

He said something about being on duty in two more hours and too much to drink and such.

She took a step closer and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Have you forgotten how to have a good time?” she asked.

He ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He smiled badly. He said he hadn’t forgotten.

Shoen eyed him suspiciously. “Are you sure that’s true?” she demanded.

He paused. “Sure it’s true,” he exclaimed. He smiled again. He patted her on the shoulder. He walked away.

And it was true, he said to himself as he entered the lift. He did remember. He did. He just wasn’t sure that was enough.

He smoked and dripped, watching himself in the mirror on the far wall. He watched without passion. Numb. Tired.

Suspended between. Somewhere out there were so many, many things. The horror of the ants. The legions of their dead strewn about on the sand. The memory of how it was done and of how it had been done in the past. The past. That was out there, too, hovering between the laughter of the childwarriors and their party and visions of killing ants one by blackbleeding one.

Kent came in. They stared at one another in the mirror. Finally, Felix indicated a spot on the bench before him and Kent sat there. He was holding a bottle. He offered it. Felix drank. Then he spoke. He told Kent about Forest. He told it straight through, without pause, without emotion. His voice echoed hollowly in the empty chamber. Kent began to cry. After a while, Felix did, too. But he didn’t stop. He finished it. He emptied it out of himself with his voice.

Then Kent hit him.

No! No! he thought as he crashed backwards over the benches to the floor. It couldn’t have happened! It wasn’t possible! He peered uncomprehendingly upward at Kent, his mind racing desperately for an alternative.

There was none.

“I know what you think of me,” groaned Kent, his voice rasping mercilessly. “You think I killed her because I. . . I didn’t kill her. Who cares I loved her too maybe. . . Not like maybe I. . . I didn’t. . . You bastard!” he screamed, and slammed his foot into Felix’s side. “It doesn’t mean I’m small!!!”

Felix cried out in pain, sharp, strident. Helpless again.

He fainted.

Dominguez found him and questioned. Felix told him too much to drink, he was fine though. Dominguez watched his face a long time before answering.

“Sure, man,” said Dominguez and helped him to his feet.

Felix was once more at Observation Post One when, at twenty seven minutes into the thirteenth hour, the third attack began. It was pitiful.

The ants were, quite literally, pale imitations of their former selves. Their hides appeared unformed, almost translucent. Their awkward gait was barely sufficient to carry them up out of the darkness toward the waiting warriors. Fewer than two hundred ants appeared.

Felix glanced at the dozen warriors inhabiting the vastly enlarged OP with him. He decided their makework project of expanding the OP might come in handy.

He tongued the Command Frequency and told them about the attack. Then he told them he and the dozen warriors, could handle it on the spot.

The reply was lost to him the first time. It was the Siliconite, he had been told, that was responsible for the gradual deterioration of communication. He waited a couple of seconds and tried again.

This time the voice from the Command Platform came through. Distorted, but coherent enough. “Go ahead,” a bored voice advised him.

Suddenly, another voice grated onto the circuit. Felix recognized Major Aleke’s businesslike tones.

“Don’t attack! Repeat: Don’t attack! Let them through.

You hear me, Felix?”

“I hear you. Major. You want us to let them through?”

“Right?”

“Why?”

But there was no answer. Static, possibly. He told the others.

As they gathered up the gear and prepared to pull out, one of the warriors turned to Felix. “How come. Scout? What’s the point of not killing ‘em now?”

Felix said he didn’t know. But he should have seen it. It was the press. They had already taken vids of the battlefield, carpeted with blasted ants. They had gotten the warriors, too. And the bunker and the walls and, recently, Kent’s ribbon ceremony. Now they were going to get a real life ant slaughter.

Felix and Dominguez stood side-by-side on the wall among the jumble of reporters and tourists and watched the cannon crews toy with the last of the enemy.

“Holy shit!” Dominguez exclaimed suddenly. He slapped an armored hand against Felix’s back. “We beat, ‘em, Felix!” he said, amazement in his voice. “We beat ‘em.”

“By God,” said Felix as it also dawned, “you’re right.

We did. We really did.”

The two of them thought about that in silence awhile until Shoen appeared beside them.

“I want a sample or two as soon as possible,” she said. Dominguez laughed. “Hell, Colonel, it’s possible right now,” he said and hopped over the wall. The battle, such as it was, was still going on and for one heart stopping instant, Felix thought the man would get a cannon in his back. But the crews spotted him in time and held their fire. Then Dominguez proceeded to take three samples of ant spines before the eyes of mankind. There was much cheering when he hopped back over the wall carrying the snips. Reporters converged on him as if magnetized. Felix and Shoen laughed, applauding awkwardly with plassteel palms.

Felix spent the early part of his fifteenth hour of the drop on a solo scan of the area surrounding the Dorm. He found no ants, no signs of them. He was alone. On his way back he found an ant blaster. On impulse, he retrieved the heat weapon.

Inside the fort, the reporters went crazy over the alien instrument of terror. The brass, seeing the possibilities, decided to debrief their scout while surrounded by vids. Felix went along, telling before the crowd what he had just finished saying to the brass alone: no ants. He was amazed at how many different ways Major Aleke used to draw the session out. But he played along. “No ants” was reported many ways.

Later, they wanted an interview inside the bunker. Felix knew better than to expose his face. He declined, answering questions in his suit instead. The first interrogator sought patriotism.

“I bet you’ll be glad when Banshee is ours, won’t you.”

Felix said that would be good.

“Aren’t you excited by the prospect?”

“I guess.” Felix replied. “But I wouldn’t want to live here. Would you?”

“Living here afterward is hardly the point of the fighting, soldier.”

“I hope you’re right,” replied Felix with apparent earnest. Another reporter wanted to come along on the next scouting mission. Felix asked her if she wanted to die.

“What do you mean?” she scoffed. “There aren’t any more ants, are there ?”

“I didn’t see any,” he corrected. ‘But you’re wearing a p-suit. You don’t need ants to get killed in that.”

“Hub?”

“You could cough a hole in that.”

She looked alarmed. She fingered the material with concern.

“You really think so?”

Felix really thought so. “It’s a towel,” he assured her.

She walked away looking fretful.

Given an hour off, he went indoors and took another shower. Shoen was there when he stepped out. They talked while he dried. It was only when he started to go that he saw it.

She blocked the door. “You knew what I was up to at the party, didn’t you? That’s why you ran off.”

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t. . . .

“I had thought it might be a little war injury or some such,” she said with a cackle, blatantly eyeing his nakedness.

He looked at her, becoming conscious for the first time of her appearance. Blonde hair, blue eyes, beauty. Canada. He touched her face.

“Before that,” he said gently.

Then he shuffled quickly past her, unwilling to summon more.

“Again?” he asked.

“Again,” Colonel Khuddar assured him. “We’ve already got the OPs manned. But we want another run at the Dorm itself. You’ve got the experience. You’ve got the job.”

“Yessir,” he replied. Why not? There was nothing else to do. And they wouldn’t be leaving, the Old Man had announced, until the eighteenth hour.

“Our job here,” he had announced with classic drama, “is done.”

Evidently, Felix’s was not. He hopped over the wall and trotted the length of the runway to the ridge. When he reached OP One, he was given the unsurprising news that nothing had happened. Khuddar had told him to check in when he reached the OP. He did.

“Very good, Felix,” said the Colonel with great deliberation. Even through the grinding static, Felix gathered they had an audience. The press, he figured. “Now make another turn around the Dorm perimeter, if you please.”

Felix was pleased to do that. Why not?

He reported again when he’d finished. Still nothing to see. “Very good, Felix,” sounded, crackling, once more from Khuddar. “Now if you would. I’d like an eyeball of the immediate area in front. Inside the crater.”

Okay, he could do that. Why not? And he did. The area in front of the dark and gaping triangular entrance was absolutely smooth, absolutely flat.

Felix reported the neatness of the ants.

“Very good, Felix,” intoned the Colonel one more time.

Then, “How about taking a look inside?”

Felix shrugged. How about it? Just a quick little. . . . He froze. He had actually taken a step to do it. He peered into the darkness looming over him. The bunker had been a good idea after all. The drop had been one of the easiest he could remember. The party had been fun. But no more. Not one step more.

Unconsciously, he backed to the edge of the perimeter, his eyes still riveted on the blackness, on the depth of it. Every instinct told him that first step through would be that one step too many.

Suddenly, the idea of doing it, of almost having done it, clutched him. His mouth went dry. He trembled. He refused.

“What if I made that an order!” snapped the colonel, his voice fading slightly.

“Make it a threat if you like,” Felix snapped back. “I ain’t going.”

There were several clicks and pops having nothing to do with the static. He assumed the press people were no longer eavesdropping. “Felix,” said Khuddar, “go down that hole.” “Colonel,” said Felix, “no.”

There was a pause. A different voice sang out. “Return to the OP and stand by.”

Okay, he thought. Why not?

It was the Old Man’s voice, he realized at once. The

Brigadier. Hammad Renot himself. And he was making it a threat after all.

“If I have to get someone else,” barked the CO, “it’ll cost you. I can promise you that. Now, I want you to apologize, publicly, to Ali. . . Colonel Khuddar, and carry out your mission. Is that understood?”

Felix sighed. “I know what you want, if that’s what you mean. No.”

A pause. “Mr. Felix, is that you’re final word?”

“No, it isn’t,” he snapped. He was suddenly furious, livid with rage. “Old Man, you shoot some other hero down that hole and you kill him. I know. I know ants and I know Banshee and I know you do not. So listen.”

“Now, you just shut your …”

“How many drops you had. Old Man?”

A pause. Felix went on. “I’ve had twenty. You send somebody else and you kill him. I know it. You should know it. And when he doesn’t come back and you can be sure he will not everybody else is going to know it.”

Another pause, longer. The circuit severed.

A few minutes later, the five warriors manning OP One were recalled. Felix was told to stay put in the same breath. No explanation.

Half an hour later. Colonel Khuddar called. Even through the interference, Felix could tell he was making great effort to control his anger.

“Since you’re not obeying any more orders, Mr. Felix, allow me to ‘suggest’ you stay where you are until called. Which won’t be, I’m reasonably certain, until our guests have departed. Can we expect your. . . cooperation?”

“Of course,” replied Felix pleasantly. “When do they leave?”

“Hour eighteen.”

“Fine.”

“One last thing, Felix. A personal item.”

Felix groaned. “Is it necessary?”

“I believe so,” retorted the Colonel, his voice an icy whip. “This may be my last chance to tell you what I think of you. . . .”

“Aw, well, Ali,” Felix drawled. “I was hoping it’d be about those warriors you lost at the Dorm this morning.” Another click. Decisive. He was alone again. He sat.

When he saw Kent coming, he checked the time. Amazingly, over an hour and a half had passed. He blinked, considered. But he could not recall a single thought he had had during that period. He stood for Kent.

The apology was stumbling, but sincere. Felix’s acceptance was equally sincere. But Kent kept apologizing.

“Every time I think about what I did, I throw up,” he said.

Felix laughed.

“Don’t you believe me?” asked Kent stiffly.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Felix. “It’s you.” He sat, motioned for Kent to do the same. “Forest would say it’s the best of you.”

“It’s not the me I want,” said Kent unhappily.

“ ‘You’ want?” echoed Felix.

“Yes. Me. I want to be. . . more. . . Tougher, I guess.” Felix laughed again. “You were pretty tough a couple of hours ago.”

Felix could almost feel the other man’s face crimson.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” said Kent.

“Yeah.”

Kent shifted. “I want to be more like she was, I guess.

Like you are.”

Felix stared at a patch of sand between his boots. “Like her, maybe. Not me.”

“You’re a helluva fighter, Felix,” insisted Kent. “You’d have to be. . . And, anyway, Canada saw you.”

Felix laughed shortly. “Canada Shoen combat vet?” Kent laughed, embarrassed. “Well, she knows what she saw….”

“No, she doesn’t!” Felix heard himself suddenly snap. “None of you. . .” He stopped, paused. Kent had tensed like a spring, he saw. “Aw, well,” he began again. “So you want to be a combat soldier and you feel bad that you haven’t been.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”