John Steakley - Armor

“What about the eyes?”

“The eyes are good, too. Yeah, I guess you must have done this once or twice before just to get here. Well, try not to look too bored, huh? You’ll spoil it for me.”

She laughed and started toward the barricade, waving for him to join her. “Come on. We’re scouting some.”

He wanted to say something that matched her bravado. He wanted to laugh with her while he could. Or just smile. But it was too far away from him already. Slowly, but with growing speed, he felt the Engine rise, felt it gather itself and surge forward to the front of his consciousness. And once again, he felt the rest of him begin to fade.

They stepped across the barricade of packed sand and dropped the two meters to the floor of the killing area. He looked about at the scarred pattern of the pulverized dunes made by the planted explosives. The entire area held a gritty, gray-black coating that made an unpleasant crunching sound under his boots. He saw that certain areas of the sand had been shocked into something resembling glass.

“Key the command frequency,” she said as they approached the maze walls. “The CO wants to know what we see before everybody else does.”

He nodded to himself and made the connection.

She stopped when they reached the edge of the maze, gazing back and forth at the various possibilities. “We need some height,” she mumbled as if to herself. She picked a narrow gorge that rose steeply and began to climb. He followed silently.

They followed the passage through several, turns, always rising. Around a sharp bend, they came to an abrupt dead end. She turned and looked back in the direction they had come as if she could see through the walls. “Okay. This is probably far enough. Up we go.”

With that she bent quickly into a crouch, seesawed her arms for balance, and leaped to the top of the far wall. Felix gauged the height. He leaped after her. He misjudged his leap and banged a thigh against the lip, sending a spray of sand into the air. But he was up.

“The world’s greatest athlete,” she said when he had knelt down beside her.

“What?”

“That’s what they’d say on Earth if I could have done that without a suit. Look at the jump we just made. Seven meters easily.”

Felix glanced down, nodded.

“You from Earth?” she asked.

“No,” he replied.

“I am,” she said cheerily. “Born and bred. Ever been there?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him at last. She had noticed the change in him. But she felt the need to talk and began to rattle on again. It was all about her childhood on Earth and about her decision to sign up some six years before. Some of it was about some man, either a lover or relative, Felix was not all sure.

He wanted to listen, wanted to help her out. He felt her need acutely and knew it would be much better for her if he could manage to respond. Perhaps it would even be better for him. She was, after all, Third Scout for the Forward Group, quite a high rank. Perhaps she knew better. Mostly, though, he just wanted to help.

But this was a distant want, coming from a distant place where all his human thoughts were thrust during what he had come to think of as the Enginetime. The rest of him, the Engine, was scouting.

Below them could clearly be seen the entire lengths of some two dozen passages in the maze. Bits and pieces of several dozen more were also in sight. It was a good spot for them.

Felix’s eyes raked back and forth across the lines of curving passages, from left to right and back again. He would make two of these scans at a time. And then he would look upward at the most incredible sight he had ever seen.

He had no idea what the Knuckle was made out of. He supposed that it might very well be composed of the same sort of material used to make the ants themselves. He had read somewhere once about some forms of insect life that created their homes in this manner. He wondered if the same pattern would hold true for these ants, these three-meter-tall ants.

These monsters….

“Forest?” asked a sharp commanding voice in his earphones.

“Forest, here,” she replied.

“You in position?”

“Yessir.”

“All right. Look, the Can is coming down your way pretty soon. You need to make Connection?”

“Yessir. I could use it.”

“What about the other scout with you? Felix is it?”

Felix looked at her, nodded.

“Yessir. He needs it, too.”

“Very well. One of you stays while the other comes back. Then rotate again. I want someone scanning the whole time: Got it?”

“Yessir. Will.”

“Right. Out.”

“Forest out. You want to go first?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I figured you’d say that. You sure turned into the quietest damn…. Oh, shit. See it?”

Felix followed her gaze. He saw it. An ant. Then another and another.

“Colonel, this is Forest again.”

“Right, Forest. You got something?”

“Yessir.”

“Right. How many do you see?”

“About twenty or…. No, make that forty or….”

“It’s probably just a scouting party. Sit tight while I….”

“Eight, ninety… one hundred and fifty, seventy….”

“…mark the spot on the grid. Now, Forest….”

“Yessir? One ninety, two twenty-five, two seventy-five….”

“Forest, I want you two to stay put out of sight and wait until the main force arrives.”

“Three hundred fifty, four hundred, call it five hundred…. did you say something sir?”

“Yes, I did. Forest, are you paying attention?”

“Six hundred, seven hundred… I’m a listening, Colonel. You were saying something about this being a scouting party.”

“That’s right. Just scouts, I’m 90 percent sure….”

Felix watched some two thousand ants boiling throughout the maze almost underneath him and thought about idiot officers and running away.

“Colonel, this is Forest and I’m listening but I don’t think you are. Three thousand, four thousand… You hear? Five thousand ants are in sight right now?”

“Now listen, Forest. You… How many did you say?”

“Never mind, Colonel, I’ll tell you in person. We’re coming back.”

“Huh? Forest? What the….”

“Forest out,” said Forest simply and Felix heard her cut him off. Felix did the same. They turned together and slid off the edge together. They landed easily on the floor of the cul-de-sac and began running back down the passage with Felix in the lead. He could hear her panting along behind him on the Proximity band, could hear her mumbling something about that “dumb-fuck Colonel” and he thought about how much he would have laughed if it had been funny.

They crossed the killing area with only four powered strides apiece and over the barricade and the warriors behind it. As they leaped over the rows of helmets, Felix heard a Warrior’s deep bass voice muttering: “Sure as hell found us fast. What’s their blinking hurry?” and then he was past and down. He turned and faced the barricade, gripped the muzzle of the blazer and took several deep breaths.

Forest was busy talking to the group leader and gesturing with her armored arms. The two seemed to reach an agreement. She laid a gloved hand on his shoulder and turned away toward Felix.

“We’ll get the starfish first. They aren’t really much. It would take two or three to match a blaze-bomb. But duck anyway. If one were to actually hit you as it detonated, it would split the plassteel.”

Felix nodded, took more deep breaths.

“We’ve got a bigger area than most to back-up because we’re Scouts and can move so quickly. I’ll take the left for now, I guess. You all right?”

He looked at her, said nothing.

“Right,” she said and moved into position. “Don’t forget the starfish.”