John Steakley - Armor

I really wanted to disappear. But Holly didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed.

“Everything in the suit,” he said.

Felix nodded back. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and regarded it lovingly. Then he tossed it away.

“Kent put me on the ship and sent me off, still in his armor the whole time. When they tried to find out what was going on, he blocked them.” Felix stared, remembering. His voice was very quiet when next he spoke. “I saw what happened from the port. They cut him in half.” He shrugged, almost violently. “But I was long gone by then. To here.”

“And all this time…?” I wondered aloud.

He smiled. “All this time. Have I got water? I notice I’ve got everything else.”

Holly nodded. “Fully operational.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

He blushed, looked at Felix. “I suppose you think that’s sick.”

Felix grinned, then laughed, then giggled wildly, almost falling over. “Holly? How the hell would I know?”

Then he lay down in the suit. And it closed over him. Then they both stood up.

It was terrifying.

“Is… is it all right?” Holly stuttered.

The black helmet nodded. The amplified voice was harsh and deep. It echoed loudly. “It hurts. I’m out of shape.”

He walked loudly and heavily over to the seal and paused with a huge black finger poised over the panel. “Just key it open?”

Holly nodded.

I tried to pull myself up, slipped back down. “Felix…?”

“What?” boomed back, not unpleasantly.

“Uh… nothing. Later.”

“Later,” he echoed. I couldn’t read it.

He sighed loudly, electronically. “I wish you could smoke in here.” Then he pushed the key and the door opened and he was gone. We heard the blasts begin almost at once. The door, set to close behind him, cut out everything afterward.

“Come on,” shrilled Holly, stumbling across the floor to the Control room. “I want to see.”

I followed. So did I.

It took us a long time to clamber inside and get the panel working. Our own monitors were long evaporated by battle. And Borglyn had cut us off before. So we missed a lot of it. But Holly managed to jump into Borglyn’s signal anyway. We tried several angles, but none of them got what we wanted.

Finally, we managed to get our old perspective, from the monitor over Borglyn’s shoulder. We could see what he could see. It was great.

Felix was incredible.

He was everywhere at once. Borglyn couldn’t keep track of him cleanly from his monitors. There were just scattered images. Bodies flying through the air… blaze-bombs or grenades exploding with no one around… blazers cutting off abruptly, shattered and bent… Felix steaming right at the monitor as he reached the edge of the river and leaped across it, all twenty-something meters of it…

Then the main camp scurrying about and the mortars going off and somebody yelling in a high-pitched strident tone of growing terror that there were no targets, where the hell was he and….

“Omigod! There, there, there !”

Felix was great!

Borglyn, on the other hand, was terrified.

“Lift! Lift, goddammit!” he yelled to one and all and the Coyote began to rise.

One of his henchmen, in the Control room with him, said something about running scared and the sumbitch not being able to hurt a starship anyway.

Borglyn hit him, a loud back-handed smack across the face. “You said he’d never get across the river! Lift!”

But the ship was already rising, a few meters up already and then I heard Holly hiss beside me, “No!” as we both saw the black suit still coming, loping incredibly fast across the ground. And I knew what he meant. I knew what he feared.

And Borglyn knew what to do.

“All tacticals,” he yelled to unseen crew around him. “Discharge them all at once. Now!”

On the screens the wall of fire blocked the sight of everything as it swept down across the camp, boiling the mortars and the commandos and the land and everything else.

Then the view was eclipsed by interference as the Coyote vaulted suddenly upward into Sanction’s sky.

I just sat there.

But Holly evidently could not. He began to furiously work the keys, trying blindly, desperately, to restore our view. He almost got it a couple of times, though not well and not clearly. And our fix on the monitor we wanted was clearly lost. We got random snowy pictures from all over the ship, corridors and bulkheads. No sound. No pattern. And no hope. The ship was pulling out of our range.

But that was the least of it anyway. I reached a hand over and lay it gently on Holly’s. I couldn’t stand to see him torture himself, or me, by trying for….

He went stiff when the screen went sharp and clear.

I looked where he looked.

The image was from the outer portside monitor. It showed the length of the outer hull illuminated against the backdrop of daytime Sanction. And silhouetted against that, right in the center of it….

The black suit had one plassteel hand gripped vise-tight on a warp bleeder conduit. The other was clenched into a black fist that hurtled toward the monitor’s single eye.

And then all was dark.

We have never found the Coyote, of course.

Sure, it took us a long time before another ship came and we could even begin the search. And space is big and the ship was out of fuel anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference.

But still we looked.

So do the people from Golden. Yes, they showed. About a month later. Reluctantly, we told them the story from the beginning when we found the suit until the end when we lost it. And we said we understood how reluctant they must be to want to spend much time searching for the remains of the dead and fuel-less hulk. That we would be staying and if anyone ever reported anything we would be sure to let them know.

They looked at us like we were crazy.

“The Archon was not seen to die, is that not correct?” the representative asked Holly.

Holly said that, yes, that’s true, but… There was no fuel. Not to mention the terrible damage the ship undoubtedly underwent. “I mean,” Holly blustered on, red-faced, “There was a battle we didn’t even see.”

The Rep eyed him coolly. “But the Archon was not seen to die?” he asked again.

Holly looked at me and shrugged. “Well, no,” he replied.

The rep nodded. “So. We shall continue the search.”

And they have. They stop by here now and again.

A couple of other things:

We’re not a part of Fleet any longer. In no way. They’re mad about it. Fuck ’em.

We traced the rumor about “Lewis’s” rich-kid past to—surprise—Lewis himself.

We have a growing colony. A government. Holly and I are on what they call the Council of Elders. But they don’t call us much.

Lya is pregnant with her second. Her first is a girl with her looks and Holly’s brain.

Karen is not pregnant and won’t be. Yes, we’re still together. But we are not, repeat: not, happy. But I guess we’ll keep at it anyhow.

I never saw Eyes again.

The Antwar continues.

What about me? Besides the fact that I’m getting fat and thoughtful? Not much else. Both traits are, understandably, fulfilling.

What I eat is everything. What I think about…

The past, of course. My life and what it’s meant and what it will mean from now on. And Felix. I think about Felix a lot.

And about the Masao and what he said, about there being no protection from what you are and all. And I think I may have something to add:

There is no protection from what you want.

Hell, they keep searching, which is dumb enough. But when I think about the certain look in that Rep’s eye, in all their eyes when they drop by to question again and again. And when I think about all of it—from Golden, to Banshee, to Sanction…