John Steakley - Armor

He was urging no particular direction—he had no plan. He was just… calling the Engine. Beckoning. Beseeching.

He moaned as he tripped over something he couldn’t see and banged his chin. It didn’t hurt, of course. He wasn’t hurt. He was just falling apart, cracking like the goddamned bunker.

More ants stumbled toward him. He turned away. Distantly, he heard Kent’s faint voice calling. The debris and the Siliconite had finally cut him off completely. He tried once to understand what Kent was saying. But it was too faint. Too faint and too late.

He remembered the fissure. He turned his head. It was there. Small and narrow—too narrow. They’d catch him up there, he knew. Sure as hell, they’d come up and pull him down and….

“Shut up!” he barked loudly. He stomped through the cloying sand to the sharp rays of sunlight. What choice was there? Sit and wait for ’em? Not these bastards, he thought angrily, as though he both knew and disliked them personally. He paused beneath the fissure. The first part looked possible. He leaped and grabbed the edges. He pulled himself up, wedging past the first bottleneck with considerable difficulty. The Siliconite again. It made it hard to shove through. The sand was firmer, less yielding. He looked up. It got narrower. He’d never make it all the way.

What else, then? Pop his suit when they came? Damn.

He planted his boots and wedged himself up past the second bottleneck. He stopped halfway through, caught. He’d hung up on something. He reached back and unclipped the culprit, his last blaze-bomb. He re-attached it on the other side.

Why’d you bother? he asked himself when he’d finished. Planning to end it that way? A blaze-bomb would do breathtaking things in this rathole, sure enough. Entomb him, for one.

“Dammit! Damn you! The goddamn ugly sky is right there. Move!”

And he lurched upward. He jammed himself up, kicking and twisting, carving ruts in the sand with the outline of his suit. In seconds he had to stop, exhausted. He looked up. He had come maybe two meters. He still had another seven or ten to go. He looked down. The ants had massed in place. Two were climbing atop others to try to reach him.

Which they would, of course. About sand, ants were practically overqualified.

Come on! Don’t just watch them….

He strained and shoved himself up some more, feeling a prolonged shudder of claustrophobic panic when the narrowness stopped him suddenly. He couldn’t move. It felt, even through the suit—which was insane—as though the entire weight, the entire crushing mass of Banshee held him. The planet had him, pinned at chest and back, waiting for the mood to strike and the cavern to shift… The suit would resist, resist, crumpling more and more before the planet would grow bored and slam him flat like two palms. Would he feel it? What would he feel? His organs spewing through his mouth, perhaps?

“Damn you, Felix.”

And he flung himself up once more, either to pop loose or to jam irrevocably. One or the other.

He felt something touch his foot. He jerked it up, looking down. An ant was just below. But… it seemed to be jammed as well. Experimentally, he lowered his foot again. The ant strained its claws upward and… grazed the sole of the boot. Nothing else. It couldn’t reach him yet.

Not yet. But it would. It would work its way free. And soon.

He arched, bucked, warping his spine and dragging at the Siliconite sheen. He thought he felt something give. He mustered his energies for one major push.

The land, the cavern, the walls of the fissure—all shuddered with the sudden tremor. The walls closed in on him. Just a bit. They stopped, shaking. Then they closed in a bit more. And then some more. Then it stopped. The last movement, the last shifting. The last hope. If he hadn’t been caught before, he was now.

I’m dead, he thought and rested his faceplate against the sand. He closed his eyes. Odd how he could hear nothing, even with the sunlight on him. Siliconite was a great tool, all right. Like those concussion cellars. He sighed. I’m so tired, he thought.

And then he thought: Kent, you worthless, timid, everybody’s hero bastard!

Oh, but why not? Why the hell not? If it had been the other way around, he’d have done the very same thing.

Except, of course, he wouldn’t have, he realized with a mournful groan. He would’ve helped; that’s what hurt. For Kent, Fleet’s Kent, Forest’s Kent, he’d have hopped down that hole swinging. In a scout suit, no less. Never mind the awesome might of Kent’s custom-built.

But why? Why? How had this happened? How had he folded so badly and… so quickly!

He glanced down. A second ant had joined the first. Not long now. He glanced at the time, shook his head, looked again. He had been alone almost half an hour! He was sure of it, because he remembered looking before when he had to stop and transfer the…

What an insane idea!

Quickly as a striking snake, his hand reached down and snatched the blaze-bomb loose. He held it firmly pressed against his faceplate. Exhilarated, sweat broke out.

No way, of course, he thought, grinning delightedly. Still, it was nice to kill a few.

“Yup,” he said to the bomb, “killing them is better than getting peeled. In fact, killing them is better than not killing them. Killing them is fun.”

The narrow gap between the two beneath him would require a little delicacy. No good to have it get hung up on them. Plassteel was very nice. But two meters away from a blaze-bomb, it was about as protective as cotton.

“Of course, it would unstick me.”

Maybe it didn’t matter. Thus confined, even from so far away as the cavern floor, the bomb would almost certainly kill him. Either with the blaze or the compression or by shaking loose the pinning walls, driving them suddenly together to squash….

“What the hell,” he said, keying and dropping the bomb in a single motion. It fell cleanly between the two monsters. Well, that was something anyway.

The blaze killed the ants instantly. It also boiled their hides, fusing them into a single hurtling mass that rushed like an artillery shell up the fissure. Felix was aware of light, noise, and, finally, movement. Then all was dark.

Was he dead? It sure hurt.

He opened his eyes. The light streaming through from above was a searing on his retinas. His eyelids fluttered. He tried moving, found he could do that. So he looked and moved together and found out where he was—the last part of the fissure just below the surface. He was hanging—sagging—down into the crevice, too wide to slip through and fall. But… he had to have come that way.

The ants were everywhere, plastered to the sides of the fissure and, he noticed distastefully, to him. Mostly on his legs, but his back and hands and even his chest had ground ant packed on them. He was surrounded.

He propped a boot against the curve of each wall and raised himself erect. He examined the exit, glaring brightly and painfully. Not too far. He glanced again at that last narrow section between his boots. It wasn’t wide enough for his helmet. He shuddered, turned back to the light. Better not to think about it.

It took him several tries to get a grip on the sides of the opening. The pain steadily increased in almost every area. And his muscles had begun almost immediately to tremble and knot.

Hurt bad, he thought dimly. Really, really, bad.

He began pulling himself up and knew at once he wouldn’t make it. He was too weak. He was too tired. It hurt too much. He had no idea how much power was left in the suit—he couldn’t read the dial. He tried marshaling a final effort. Nope. Falling. Colors flashed dizzily across his eyes, followed by rhythmic waves of feverish heat. Falling. Straight back, his grip going and lost down here…