John Steakley - Armor

Felix was still wondering what starfish were when he saw them.

The air was suddenly filled with a cloud of what looked like six-spoke rimless wheels that arced gracefully against the sky from somewhere in the maze. Most landed short, in the killing area. There they had a harmless effect. But several did manage to get over the barricade and the sounds of the explosions were quite loud all of a sudden. There were some screams when it had stopped.

“Here they come,”

Felix lifted his helmet up. He saw the first wave.

It had to be waves at first. The tight passages of the maze allowed little room for a full maneuver. Instantly the warriors began to blaze away at the open mouths of the tunnels. The bodies of the ants began to pile up and for a fleeting instant, Felix thought that they would get them all by killing the handful that could squeeze through effectively.

Then a full wall collapsed in a rush of sand and dust. And then another and then there was a single line of scurrying, swarming ants coming at the barricade.

The bodies began to pile up on the killing area.

Different piles began to swell until it was all one long, wide pile. Then that pile began to swell and move and flow… closer and closer.

With astonishment, Felix counted five thousand bodies dead in his section alone. Thousands and thousands….

The ants made no attempt to protect or shield themselves. Only one in five carried blasters and those were ineffective at that range. But still they were advancing. Closer and closer.

There were just too many targets.

Within moments, the mass had reached the barricade. And from there it stretched straight back into the openings of the maze without a break. The human Felix was stunned, awed by the sheer immensity of such numbers. A tiny thread began to well up, the only sane reaction.

The Engine, unsane, ignored it all. Instead, it leaped forward and drove the muzzle of the blazer into the left eye of the first ant to break through. Without waiting for effect, he turned and slammed an armored forearm into the thorax of an ant that had lost a claw in its rush. And then there was another to the left. Two to the left. And then one to the right. He swung the blazer, slammed it against enemies. He drove plassteel fists into eyes, alongside great staring skulls. He killed, rupturing and splintering exoskeleton, bursting those globular eyes, ripping and tearing limbs from their sockets, he killed.

and again and again…. He killed.

He grappled a midsection, twisted about, and flung the ant back over the barricade. He turned to meet another and heard a click as the CD’s override cut in:

“Down-everybody-down-bombs-now-repeat-bombs-now…”

Felix ignored the ants around him and dropped full length into the sand as two hundred blaze-bombs flew high and deep and landed in the center of the killing area.

The explosion, even with automatic mufflers, was deafening.

Felix started to rise. Someone shouted at him to hit it again. He hit it, just as the remaining warriors turned their fire inward toward him. The blazerfire scorched the air over his head, slicing the relative handful of ants around him that had gotten through. It lasted only a few seconds.

“All clear,” said the CO’s voice.

Slowly Felix rose, saw everyone had stopped firing. All seemed to be relaxing. He stood and stared, dumbfounded, past the barricade.

Dead ants, or rather pieces of dead ants, covered the entire killing area. Not a single living enemy was left. Instead, there was a twitching, squirming mass of crushed and burned ectoskeleton that stretched all the way to the mouths of the maze. The height of the stack brought it to just under the lip of the barricade itself.

Forest stepped up to him, gesturing over her shoulder at the carnage with a plassteel thumb.

“Ain’t that something?” she said in a wry tone. She clapped him on the shoulder, turned away and looked out over the sight. He heard the beginnings of a dry chuckle.

And then, abruptly, she sat down. For a few seconds she didn’t move. Then she looked up at him and gestured for him to sit beside her. On impulse, Felix obeyed. He peered hard at her face-shield, at the vague outlines of her face. He had expected her to speak again. Twice he thought she was about to. At last, he started to break the silence when he heard the sobbing.

She cried, and her great armored shoulders shook with the wretched agony of it. She cried and then cried some more. Then she simply lay down on the sand and shuddered.

Felix sat watching her framed against the broken alien bodies. He saw that her head was resting against-the skull of an ant. He started to move it, then saw that he, too, was resting on the body of another. He looked around. The area was covered with the crushed parts of enemies, the sand drenched with their black spouting something. He shivered, stood up.

I can’t lie on that, he thought. Dammit, I can’t even lie down….

It was some time before he noticed the tears in his eyes.

Because it was all going to happen again.

“It’s a deathtrap,” said the Colonel bitterly.

“It’s all we have,” replied Forest in a patient tone.

“There’s no way down once we’re up there. There’s just that one set of steps…. ”

“…and only one place to defend.”

“What if they decide to dig straight up through?”

“That will take awhile. Even for ants. Either way, we buy some time.”

“I don’t like it.”

Forest snorted disgustedly, a harsh blast of white sound into Felix’s earphones. “Dammit, I don’t like it either,” she retorted. “But there simply isn’t any other place to go but the mesa. We ought to get started moving the casualties as soon as the able-bodies have made connection.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like not having any avenue of retreat.”

The Colonel looked up at her then, startled. For perhaps five seconds the two stood there, commander and scout, and traded glances. At last the Colonel looked away. He sighed.

“It’s a deathtrap,” he said again.

“It’s Banshee,” said Forest, simply.

Felix turned away and walked down the rows of casualties toward the Can. He was down to 37 percent power. He found a long line of warriors lounging about on the sand. He asked the first, found out that this was indeed the line to make Connection. He sat and waited.

He wondered why Forest bothered to argue with the Colonel. “Why waste your breath?” he thought. There really isn’t any choice. The Colonel had to see that. “It’s Banshee,” Forest had said, as though that explained everything. Felix smiled slightly, bitterly, to himself. As far as he was concerned, it did explain it all.

They had moved three more times. Each time, after a short delay, the ants had found them and attacked. Each time, the attacks were the same. Walls of ants choking against the barricades, a seemingly endless supply. The lines would hold as long as they could. He and Forest and others would try to keep those that broke through from killing too many. Sometimes, not always, they did a good job. Certainly Felix was getting better. He had found that he no longer needed to think before acting. He only reacted, killing often two ants at once.

And if he had gotten quite good, Forest had become amazing. Never in all his life had Felix seen anything remotely resembling her reflexes. Many times she had managed to cover not only her own area, but his as well. She was absolutely phenomenal. A real-life killing machine.

He sighed. Not that it had been enough. Not that anything could have been enough.

For despite all their combined talents and all their combined resources, the ants were slaughtering them. Each attack was merely a holding action saved at the last minute by a hail of blaze-bombs which would temporarily demolish every ant in sight. But they were running out of blaze-bombs. Soon, very soon, there would be nothing to throw at the boiling mass and they would all be engulfed.