John Steakley - Armor

Armored hands on his upper arms lifted him easily, miraculously, into the open air and sunlight. He squinted from side to side, vaguely recognizing the shapes of the warriors beside him. He nodded to them. He straightened up proudly. He crumpled, without warning, onto his heels.

Alive. Even now. Even this. No pity.

“Felix!”

He recognized the voice. Forest? No. Shoen. Canada. Her shadow blotted out the bright light as she leaned over him.

“Felix, you made it! You made it! We thought you were lost! Nathan thought you were lost! Oh, Felix!” And she hugged him, awkwardly. Painfully. He groaned and tried to pull away. But she wouldn’t let go. She hugged him again. “Oh, Felix! They should give you a medal, too.”

The second shadow before him was Kent. He saw it hanging on the front of the great blue-chest armor. Even though it wasn’t there, he saw it. It glinted in the sun.

Perfect.

Now was the time to pop his suit, he thought in a wave of scalding bitterness. And with that thought, the dark and the cold and the strength of both returned at last, slamming in from all sides at once, protecting and separating him once more.

With a vengeance, the Engine had returned.

He slept.

Shaking pain. Shaking and pain. He awoke only because he had to and there was the psychotech, red-faced and shaking his shoulders and screaming.

“I’m so sorry! So sorry ! Oh, God, I am! I am !!”

Two meditechs dragged him away. He struggled with them to get back. “You don’t understand!” he shouted at them.

A doctor-type bearing white-haired authority appeared. He tried to soothe him.

“You don’t understand,” the psychotech pleaded. “It’s my fault.”

“Nonsense, son,” purred the Doctor. “The ants did this to him.”

Felix smiled.

“No, no, NO! It was me!”

A third meditech pressed something against his arm. Almost at once, the man began to calm. His shouting fell to unintelligible mutters. Soon he was slumped between the two meditechs. They hoisted him away.

“See to it that he’s looked after,” the Doctor called to them.

“Yes, Doctor,” one of them called back.

Felix realized he was still lying in his open suit. They must’ve just brought him up. White-gloved hands appeared overhead and fiddled around him. He couldn’t see their owners. Maybe there weren’t any.

A second doctor-type, older and female, appeared beside the first. The emblem over her left pocket was huge and colorful.

“Sorry, Chief,” the doctor told her.

“Don’t give it a thought,” she replied soothingly. “These things happen in war.”

Felix smiled again.

The doctor turned to another woman, hurrying past. “Leclere,” he called. “What happened here?”

Leclere was pretty. Not blonde, though.

She shrugged her shoulders. “That psychotech evidently worked with this man. He felt responsible for sending him down again and having this…”

Felix regarded the banks of flickering lights all around him. One of the magic gloves reappeared. It placed a clear nozzle into the suit beside his chin. It sucked and gurgled.

Leclere was still talking. “…screaming and shouting about how he’d already been through too much…”

“The psych?” asked the doctor.

“No,” replied Leclere. She pointed a clipboard at Felix. “This guy. The scout. Said he’d already had four major medicals and some ungodly number of… Hey, he’s awake!”

“Four major medicals?” echoed the older woman, the Chief. She looked at the older doctor unhappily. “How’s that possible?”

“It’s not,” the doctor assured her firmly. “It’s not.” Then he leaned forward over Felix and became fatherly. “Son, have you ever been in Intensive Medical before now? Do you recognize this room?”

Felix couldn’t speak. But the Engine could still smile. It did. It seemed to scare them.

Good. He slept.

It was perfect.

He recognized the voices because he had gone to sleep hearing them. He recognized their problem the same way. It seemed a great deal of trouble to open his eyes and since he could already enjoy their uneasiness without it, he didn’t.

He was a computer glitch and it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Still, something had to be done. His group, his A-team, had been reported wiped out so he, Felix, was too. Only he wasn’t—his number was still in there somewhere in the other banks and that’s why they kept calling him because they called everybody from those outfits that weren’t there—why take them out of the computer? But anyway, that’s how it happened. It’s a tragedy and unfair but what are we gonna do about it when they find out? It’ll be our necks either way, you know it will, Chief.

Chief agreed. Something had to be done. But what? the doctor wanted to know. Chief had an idea and the doctor didn’t like it but how did he think the Chief felt about it? It’s just that their only chance was in the records themselves.

No option.

They decided to leave him with twelve drops instead of twenty. Five majors instead of thirteen. One major medical instead of five.

It was the only way.

Felix heard it all. He pronounced it perfect.

He became aware of days. Different meditechs came at different times and then all again. One day he awoke to a solid ceiling instead of the clear curved dome of Intensive Medical.

A meditech came to give him an explanation of his condition. There was a long list of injuries in it. Felix was enjoying watching the man’s lips work—so elastic—when, suddenly, they stopped.

“You’re not even listening,” accused the irritated man. “Don’t you even care?”

“Of course,” replied Felix in a clear, strong Engine voice.

There was a commotion in the corridor outside of his room. He heard the name Kent and opened his eyes as the shaft of light crossed toward him. There he was, huge shoulders silhouetted. A meditech stood beside him.

Something odd. They had stopped talking. They were staring at something beside him. The meditech ran off in a hurry. Felix rolled over on his side and saw the crumpled psychotech, blood still pulsing from his wrists.

Felix rolled back onto his back and closed his eyes. He needed all his rest if he wanted to kill ants.

He had to work out in secret because the physitech didn’t understand and would make him stop. The physitech had never dropped and he didn’t know the shame of a body that just kept failing.

He visited his suit often. It was fine.

In his new squad bay—they were always new—all the kids could talk about was the Masao being aboard. It was supposedly Top Secret. But everyone seemed to have found out about it the instant he had arrived. It was hard to hide an Imperial yacht, of course.

The ones who knew almost nothing about the Masao, either the planet or the man, enjoyed great status while telling about it to those who knew even less. Felix soon learned that this pattern was unavoidable. Everywhere he went, the squad bay, the mess, even the gym, the same thing was going on: wide-eyed kids asking other wide-eyed kids if it was true what they said about the Masao. Did he really own the planet? That whole wealthy planet and all fifteen million people? Was it true they practically worshipped him? He could change anything the regular government did just like that? What’s a samurai? Was that the same thing as being from Japan and how come everybody on Masao practically was Japanese?

Did everybody have to call him Great One? Even the captain?

When they asked Felix about it, the way they asked him about everything else, he just shrugged. Like always.

The screen at the foot of the bunk finally gave in. It was time.

“Good luck, Felix,” said one of the kids.