John Steakley - Armor

Lya called. I was too numb to think not to answer.

She hated me, of course. And she blamed me. For Holly still being there, to begin with. Maybe for him ever being there. And I was a liar too, for not calling her back like I had said I would. True, true, all of it true. All of it and more. I smoked and listened in silence, staring not at her but at the view of Borglyn’s console which he had so generously and sadistically continued to provide.

We were really screwed. They had the whole riverfront laid out, staked out. They were ready for us. They were waiting for us. They had us.

Shit.

Something in Lya’s tone had changed, I realized distantly. I looked up to see the same tears and the same aching pain. But something else had been added. Resignation. Acceptance. Whatever we wanted to do….

Huh?

“…should have realized you would never give into them. And Holly… I guess I knew all along, from that first moment when we got here to the valley and he wasn’t with us. He’s just too good a man.” She paused, whimpered, pulled herself together. She smiled weakly at me. “And you, too, Jack. You’re both too good.”

I stared. Then I mumbled something back about, well, t’weren’t nuthin’. But I was thinking what I had thought long ago—how long ago? A month?—when she had first accepted me along with all the rest of the Jack Crow smoke.

You’re a fool, Lya. Still a fool to trust me.

It made no difference that now, when it wasn’t going to help, when it was far too late for that, that she could trust me. It made no difference that I would never leave him now. It made no difference that I was about to die with him and for him.

She was still a fool. So were we all.

I was about to key off when she said, no, there was someone else who wanted to talk to me.

Karen. Dry-eyed and stone faced and good-bye, Jack.

But too dry-eyed. Too stone-faced. It was on her, too. And because of that, I guess, as much as anything else, it sank upon me at last. It was over, ever, over. We were dead.

“I lo… Good-bye, Jack,” she said and I saw the tears coming at last.

I nodded, feeling my eyes heating up and leaned forward to key off. Her face became alarmed suddenly, and she asked one last thing. She asked me to tell her that I wasn’t doing this for her in any way.

I said I wasn’t. Straight-faced and not lying much. Then I keyed off.

Borglyn began to laugh.

I looked up, startled, then furious. He was back at the console. He had been listening in.

“A peeping torn now?” I asked him. Snarled at him.

He continued to laugh. It was a deep, powerful laugh. Like the rest of him.

It unnerved me. But I lashed out as if it didn’t, about how he might as well listen in to me while he could and then in on others later because he sure as hell wouldn’t have anybody of his own from now on. Not unless you count the daughter of somebody he was beating to death in another room.

“She’ll do it, Borglyn.” I was really rolling now. “She’ll do it to keep Poppa alive but she’ll hate you. She’ll want to throw up when those fat pig hands and that fat pig body…”

He cut me off with his raging. I had hit something.

“Don’t give this to me, Pig. Give it to her. But don’t expect it to keep her from vomiting into those blue eyes. You’re dead and gray and laid open and she’ll see it.”

He was very quiet.

“Is it worth it?” I asked him and smiled ugly through dry caked lips. “Is it worth what you’ve done to be what you’re gonna have to be for the rest of your life?”

He was still quiet. And something else. I remembered the look he had given me that last moment in the ship when he had laughed with such bitterness about Banshee. I had thought Banshee was destroyed and he had laughed in that way that looked like it hurt.

But not now. No help from that now, godammit!

“And don’t start on that damned war, Borglyn! A lot of people came through that war.”

He was excited again. And angry. “You don’t know anything about it, Crow!” he roared. “You… you damned adolescent! You don’t know anything about what it was like, what it meant, how….”

His voice trailed off.

“I know one thing, Borglyn. I know it when I see it. And it’s you.”

His eyes went wide, confused. Vulnerable.

“You’re the damned war, Borglyn. You and your punks are now. You see any other ants around here?”

He was quiet for a beat or two. Then he leaned forward to the monitor and spoke in a dead voice. Bright red dead.

“You’re gone, Crow. Gone. I don’t care if you try to give up now or not. Either way, I’m gonna see you stretched and bleeding.”

And then I was standing up from my stool and yelling at him and shaking my fist at the screen and saying there wasn’t much chance of that when he was in orbit and safe and hiding and… and still running away from the fighting.

Borglyn screaming back that, by God, he oughta come down there and show me just what the hell fighting really was….

And I shouted louder, shouted over his fury and outrage with fury and outrage of my own and more, with the fear the sight of him gave me. “You come down here, Pig, and I’ll cut them off and bounce them on the bridge.”

Goddammit! He was coming right now\ And he yelled at somebody to take her down and then he whirled back to glare at me and together, against each other, we reached up and keyed off.

Men are so cute.

I woke Holly. Borglyn was sure to lighten a bit on the way down. And it was never going to be a case of dueling pistols anyway. I was going to have to get to him on my own. But he would be there! He would be on the planet and in range of some kind of chance, some kind of scheme….

I laughed. The Plan had raised its throbbing head at last.

Holly refused unless he could play too. He looked at me with those bloodshot darting eyes and refused. He was pale and shaking and hurt. But still he wouldn’t.

“You’re gonna have to have some support fire, Jack. You haven’t got a chance without it.”

“Dammit, Holly! I haven’t a chance anyway. Stay out of it. Just show me how to blow what’s left of the outer room and…”I got a bad thought. “What about after that? Will I be able to get the door open once I’ve blown the bastards in front of it?”

He smiled weakly. “The door will spring,” he assured me. “I’ll do it for you.”

I stared at him. “No need. Just tell me how.”

“No.”

Damn! So cute.

It took a lot more painers to get him going again. That and stimules. On second thought, I took a bunch myself. Why hold back now? I loaded up on other things, too. On blaze pistols clipped on everywhere. And a rifle with extra charges and a row or two of concussion grenades. Not enough to get me across the river to the Coyote—there weren’t enough in the universe to do that alone—but maybe enough for my little Plan. Maybe enough to get to one of the commandos wearing that open-air armor. Anybody could wear open-air. It wasn’t like Felix’s specially built black suit. And once I had that on, and with perhaps a break or two…

And then we were at the door, me loaded down with goodies and Holly equally burdened with two blaze-rifles and the medigrips piled around his leg and other places, making him walk bowlegged behind. I didn’t want to waste any time on the off-chance that Borglyn would tell them I was coming out. I didn’t think he would mink of it. But still, I knew the people outside would never expect it.

I stood crouched before the door and nodded to Holly, by the panel. He keyed the blast. It shook the floor and the door. It blew, according to Holly, the outer room, floors and ceiling and gash and commandos down the hill toward or in the river. It was very loud.