Armor

^{PART ONE} FELIX

He drank alone.

Which was odd since he didn’t have trouble with people. He had always managed to make acquaintances without much effort. And, despite what had happened, he still liked people. Recently, he had even grown to miss them again. Yet here he was, drinking alone.

Maybe I’m just shy, he thought to himself and then laughed at such a feeble attempt at self-delusion. For he knew what it was.

From his place at the end of the long bar he examined the others in the crowded lounge. He recognized a handful from training. Training was where it had begun. Where he had felt that odd sensation descending upon him like mist, separating him from all those thousands of others around him in the mess hall. It was a dull kind of temporal shock at first, a reaction reverberating from somewhere deep within him. He had somehow felt… No, he had somehow known that they all would die.

He shook his head, drained his glass. If he was in the mood for honesty he would have to admit that his chances were no better. No better at all….

He paid the credits for a full bottle and then paid the extra credits to take it out of the lounge. It was strictly against orders on a battle cruiser to have a bottle in one’s personal possession. But on the night before a drop a lot of things were possible. And as the hour for the drop grew nearer, he noticed that his fellows were beginning to take their drinking more seriously.

Outside the lounge wasn’t much better. Lots of bottles had been smuggled out tonight. The ship wasn’t exactly a giant party, but there were enough get-togethers here and there, and enough legitimate crew business here and there, to make it almost impossible to find a quiet place to sit and think. After a while he had settled into an idle rhythm of walking, sipping, smoking, and hunting.

After most of an hour of wandering about the corridors of the immense ship he found himself standing beside the center template strut of Drop Bay One. Drop Bay One was the largest single room in the ship and, since the Terra was the largest warship, the largest single room in space. It was over a hundred meters long and sixty wide. Around him in a checkerboard style were the little square spaces for drop assignment. From here it all began. Thousands of men and women would go into battle from this room. At the same moment, if necessary. The overhead was ten stories above him, criss-crossed with the immense cranes that lowered the equipment of war into position. A hell of a big room, he thought. Bigger even than the Hall of Gold back home where he had first stood at age ten beside the boys and girls of the other nobles and watched the coronation. He and the other children had had a tendency to giggle, he remembered, and so had been placed at the far end of the Hall, away from the throne.

Enough of this, he said to himself. That’s over for me now. It’s far, far away…

He sighed, shook his head. He perched himself atop the center strut and lay down on his back and stared up at the distant overhead and didn’t see it.

“Enough sentiment,” he said aloud. “It’s time for brainwork. Time, in fact, for a cold logical assessment of the situation.” He took a sip from the bottle, lit a smoke, and laughed again. “Fact is, we haven’t got a prayer.”

Fact was, most everybody in Fleet nowadays was a rookie. Over sixty percent and rising. That meant six months of advanced training. Nine months tops in the military altogether.

Not much hope there.

Still, the equipment was marvelous and many were surprisingly good with it. He remembered his astonishment at discovering clearly apparent aptitude for, of all things, the battle armor. Most found the power suits almost impossibly alien in practice and couldn’t bring themselves to react in a sufficiently normal fashion. But he, and a few others, had taken to them easily, readily utilizing their potential as the long-sought key to a machine as extension of man’s own puny form.

How odd, he thought, that he should have such bizarre talents. He, of all people, had fit with Fleet’s hopes….

And from there his drunken thoughts slipped into the past like most drunken thoughts of terrified humans. He lay back on the template and blew smoke at the distant cranes. He sipped steadily from the bottle.

He feared.

The hours passed.

Lovers in niches surrounding the perimeter of the Bay took advantage of the sexually integrated warrior class. They rocked and moaned and grasped one another. It was a united, if unorganized, effort by each and all to push the tension-taut present far ahead into the horrors of the future. After a while they would rest from their labors, draining the last of the bottles and lighting the last of the cigarettes. And before thoughts turned inward each and all would notice the glow of the cigarette coal coming from the lone figure who lay on the center template strut in the middle of the vastness of Drop Bay One. They would wonder what the hell it was he was doing there.

Felix, alone and unaware of their curiosity, wondered the very same thing.

Drop was just under four hours away when Felix reached the chow line. The turnout was sparse this morning. Not surprising, considering the night before. He watched several people back out as the line advanced toward the food. As the smell grew stronger, their faces grew greener until at last they couldn’t take it anymore. A broad-shouldered woman wearing a warrior patch and red eyes got so far as to actually have a plate of the heaping whatever placed in front of her before she vomited loudly onto the floor.

She looked around, wildly embarrassed, to apologize at all others in the line, but found only Felix left. Puzzled, she nodded to him and rushed out the door with her palm clamped firmly over her lips. Felix looked around and laughed. He was indeed alone in the chow line. The young woman had actually emptied the place out.

He wasn’t surprised, but neither was he affected. He stepped over the grumbling clean-up crew and, to the cooks’ amazement, ordered them to heap whatever it was onto his tray.

“I’m hungry,” was the only response he would make to their pale faces.

Actually, he was just lucky. Two hours before the rest of the ship had reveille, he had been rudely awakened by the chief of Drop Bay One who had wanted to know just what the hell he was doing sleeping on the center strut. That early start had allowed him to miss the long lines at Medical for a little something for his stomach.

After he found an empty table a fellow from his squad bay, whose name might have been Dikk, appeared beside him.

“Felix, right?” the man asked.

Felix nodded without interrupting his eating. That foamy something the meditechs had given him made him ravenous.

“Well, I’d be careful with all that food if I were you,” said Dikk as he sat down. “It’s supposed to be real bad for you if you’re wounded. Like in the stomach, you know?”

Felix nodded that he knew and continued eating. He didn’t want to say that he thought the idea of not eating before this battle was incredibly naive. As far as stomach wounds were concerned… Anything that could tear through battle armor would leave not a wound but a tunnel.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate doctors. He did. He was impressed by their knowledge, dutifully in awe of their equipment. But doctors didn’t make drops. Doctors didn’t have to fight for days at a time without eating anything but what they could carry. Come to think of it, neither did he. Or at least he hadn’t until today.

He looked over at Dikk’s nervous face and at the hunched shoulders of the handful of others who sat about him in the mess.

None of us have had to fight yet, he thought. But maybe that part was not so bad. What was bad was that they weren’t ready.

Something in his face must have made Dikk uneasy. He mumbled something and left the table. Felix realized he had never said a word to the guy. He had a sudden urge to get up and catch him, to ask him if his name really was Dikk after all….

But he didn’t. He sat where he was and finished the plate and lit a cigarette and watched the silken plumes rise and twist.

A few minutes later his thoughts rose to him out of the daze of smoke and fear. “We’re not ready. We’re not even close.” Then he started, looking around to see if anyone was nearby. To see if anyone else had heard him. For he wasn’t at all sure that he hadn’t said it out loud.

Felix stared at the black scout suit with the unsurprised attitude of one whose emotional spectrum has retreated to just two colors: frustration and disgust. Fear at this point could no longer be thought of as an emotion. It had more the consistency of gravity.

He sat down on the bench across from the now-gaping maintenance chamber that served as long-term lockers. When sealed, an elaborate testing system would commence. An amazingly varied series of forces—from hydro-thermal to magnetically directed laser probing—would come into play. The testing would continue on a more or less constant basis until the chamber was reopened. Most of it was to find a leak. Which was silly for a scout suit, thought Felix. After all, plassteel doesn’t leak. You could vaporize it, warp it, tear it even (if sufficient forces were applied just right). But it didn’t leak. And scout suit outer armor was 100 percent plassteel.

He snorted. Scout suits. A damn scout?

“Shit,” he said out loud, No one could hear him inside his cubicle, so no one could appreciate his display of disgust.

From under his arm he took a wad of crumpled writ he had taped there before drop inspection. They still held inspection, even though everybody already, knew it was suicide to carry personal belongings inside the perfect fit of battle armor. They had shown that one to the troops over and over, always dwelling on the scenes of the surgical teams trying to remove religious medals crammed halfway through some idiot’s rib cage. Of course one could wear jewelry on one’s nose and such where there was some freedom of movement. And many did. But Felix’s interest in a nose ring was the same as it was for a religious medal—none at all.

He produced five cigarettes from the writ and lit one and stared at the suit and thought about why he wasn’t surprised he had drawn scout duty.

Training again, he decided, the source of many first clues. He recalled their excitement at his scores, at his times. They had made him run the tight course twice more before they were convinced.

“Sure got the reflexes for this… uh, Felix, is it?”

He had nodded. He should have caught on then.

And later, when that same officer had called him into his own quarters and talked to him about “natural leadership abilities.” Cigarettes were offered him. And something cool to drink for the first time in many days. He had accepted both and refused everything else.

He was furious with himself for not having been more careful.

The officer kept trying, kept spouting garbage, but Felix wouldn’t budge. He knew it wasn’t for him. Though capable of giving orders and probably having them obeyed, he was, of late, an uninspiring man. Not at all what a leader, a real leader, should be.

He sighed and puffed on the cigarette. Looking around he had seen several such men and women, he supposed. But though admiring of their energy, he had little faith in their potential effectiveness. With such a bunch, that kind of leader could likely get chewed in a battle long before decoration time.

And Felix wanted to at least try to live. No blaze of glory. No blaze at all.

So of course they had gone and made him a lousy scout anyway!

He sighed, resting his face in his hands.

His world shrank toward him. He panicked, as he always had before. Sweat poured down his face. His lips trembled. It was completely, terribly, dark.

He keyed the master switch with a dry tongue. Air, heat, light… life began again. For a moment he paused as he always did and simply breathed and stared. It was a foolish fear, he knew. But it was very real to him. Each time he felt the suit close about him, felt the armor seal itself about him, he also felt a deep inner terror that no amount of training could prevent. For with the simple fright of claustrophobia came something else: he feared the suit.

It was a machine. It did not care. It would work if told to. It would not if not. It was no serpent. It would not crush him. It did not crave his flesh.

But still he feared. And later simply breathed and stared and felt relief. This time, as at other times, the suit had chosen to obey him.

He examined the holos on both sides of the faceplate. They seemed far away, deep and wide in their illusion of three dimensions. Thousands of bits of information could be displayed on them. Maps of terrain. Known enemy locations. Distances and probable routes to Retrieval points. Many, many facts. They were blank now.

He worked the keys on the inside of his forearm and the holos showed him where he was: Starship Terra, Deck AA12, Warrior Section, Armor Vault One. He ran through the Function series. He made exaggerated gestures with arms, legs, head. Everything worked.

He made Connection and watched the gauge swell as he and his suit drew from the very heart of the ship the thing that seemed in awesome abundance everywhere: Power. Power throughout the ship for thousands and thousands of different uses. And more Power in the combined form of Fleet. And even more from home. Power. Everywhere, sheer Power. Force. Might.

He thought of the tiny sparks that moved and thought and eased more sparks together to form and ease even more sparks, the strength of which would ease together still more, tinier, sparks which, in proper conjunction, made Power. The tiny sparks would then ease beside Power. And together, with awesome brute force and intricate silken precision, wonders could be created. Wonders like the Starship Terra, whose marvelous stature and beauty could serve as man’s ultimate loving gesture to the darkness which surrounded him—We are good. We are hopeful. We have built this. See her, the Starship Terra, the jewel of our being.

But jewels did not long shine when Power was still about. Not when any fool could reach it. Felix, deep within the jewel already, could rend and tear her. He could grind her workings to rubble, blight her glowing entrails. He could disembowel this jewel of Man.

For he had Power.

Inside these layers of plassteel armor even a fool such as he, a dumb broken sonuvabitch with no future and a past he refused, could stomp the idol to clay.

Such power had thrilled him at first. Later, he was appalled. Now… now, he didn’t care.

Felix read a dial. It was time. He left.

The Briefing Room mirror created what was termed “Positive Psychological Feedback.” It allowed a simple soldier to see what a monster he was in battle armor. Some psyches had felt it would have a negative effect on some warriors, particularly the females. It was a stupid notion, immediately overruled. All killers like to look the part.

They did. Two meters tall, they weighed six times their norm. Their armored powered hands could crush steel, stone, bone. Armored legs could propel the fastest around 100 kilometers per standard hour. The suit protected them as well, automatically and instantly distributing most concussions in an evenly expanding pattern from the point of impact to the entire surface of the armor. Standard warrior armor carried blaze-rifles on each sleeve. Hold the arm out, palm down, drop the wrist: blazerfire. Even plassteel would boil before it. The blaze-bombs clipped on racks on their backs provided not only an explosion, but spherical delivery of blazerfire in a single heartbeat.

And there were other gifts. They were, for example, complete. They carried with them all air, food, etc. Deepest ocean or vacuum. They needed no help from home for five standard days. Three, with a major battle a day. Only one, if always fighting.

The mirror helped. They were monsters, they could see that.

Felix took the blaze-rifle, the blazer, from the slot in the long row which had a number to match the one pulsing inside his helmet. He checked it for charge, attached it to his back. Scout suits, much smaller than standard issue, had no blazer capacity built in. Scouts carried rifles used by open-air troops for thirty years. Also, they had fewer blaze-bombs—only nine as opposed to the two dozen the warriors carried. Scouts must be fleet, must be able to realize their much greater potential for speed and agility. And, where warrior suits bore different colors for rank and group, all scouts were black. Flat black. Dull, non-shiny, space black.

Death black, Felix thought as he watched the five other scouts collect and attach their rifles. Then he followed them out of the armory alcove into the Briefing Room proper. The room held twenty-one warriors, group leaders representing two thousand line warriors and one assault commander. Each bore the broad colored stripings of rank and its attendant responsibility. As scouts had no effective rank, they likewise possessed no real niche in the line of command-—Warrant Officers technically, but with no command in standard situations. Many enlisted personnel requested scout duty. They sought the partial privileges of officer rank and the chance for rapid advancement much-heralded by the grapevine. In truth, no scout advanced more than a step or two. Instead, they died. Even Felix’s paranoid fatalism had not considered this. Though he had heard, as had all, that the scouts’ survival rate was considerably less than line warriors’.

“A lousy scout,” he mumbled disgustedly.

The Briefing Officer’s helmeted head glanced up at the muffled sound. He surveyed the ranks. There was no way to tell who had spoken. All were on Proximity Band. He returned to his briefing.

Paying attention at last, Felix was surprised to hear that the man had not yet begun to discuss details of the assault. Instead, it was a pep talk. Felix realized this alarmed him.

It wasn’t the pep talk itself which made him uneasy. It wasn’t the Briefing Officer. It was something in that positive, no-nonsense tone of his. Something. …

He doesn’t believe, thought Felix suddenly. He doesn’t believe in the plan. He doesn’t believe in us. But he’ll be damned if he’ll let us carry that. So he’s trying to make us believe instead of him.

Felix admired the officer for his concern and for his effort. He also hated him for failing.

The pep talk mercifully ended.

“All right,” snarled the Briefing Officer in his best Drill-master manner, “it’s time to get down to it.”

On the wall behind him a large screen warped into light with a holo display of the target area. Felix noted the code on the lower corner of the image and keyed it onto his own holos. The map showed a peninsula some forty kilometers long jutting due north into a vast expanse of ocean. The peninsula terminated in a formation the shape of a large, three-fingered, hand splayed flat over the surface of the water. A choice spot, thought Felix, on Earth or Golden or any other human planet. Loads of sunshine and beach. The ocean frontage would supply fresh sea air to sweep leisurely across sculptured terraces where happy vacationers would collapse contentedly after a long day of water sports and laughter. A choice spot.

Except it wasn’t Earth and it wasn’t Golden. It wasn’t a human place at all.

It was A-9.

And the water wasn’t water. It was poison. And the fresh sea air would kill an unsuited human in a second—more poison. And the sunlight did little human good in a place where the average temperature was -20° at high noon. And the breezes were a near-constant hurricane that drove the noxious atmosphere deep into the sandy soil, carving vast furrows into the land, forging riverbeds overnight, toppling mountainous formations in handfuls of years, and giving this nightmare place its name: Banshee.

Only the enemy thrived here. Still another reason, thought Felix, not to go.

“B-team,” began the Briefing Officer, “will drop here on the western edge. They will drive northward in a clockwise manner to rendezvous with C-team, who will drive due south to meet them from the northernmost section, the tip.

“The B-team, C-team, rendezvous will take place here, four kilometers due north of the Knuckle.” A tiny arrow appeared on the holo showing first the rendezvous point, then the Knuckle itself, a steep crag one thousand meters high in the exact center of the splayed hand.

“We expect only moderate resistance during this stage of the assault. The bulk of the enemy is concentrated around the Knuckle. Nevertheless, there is more here to cover on the western edge than the eastern. And for that reason both B and C teams will carry nine full groups and two scouts apiece.”

A flood of hatred rose within Felix as the A-team insignia appeared on his ID screen. Simple arithmetic left only two groups for A-team. Only two hundred warriors for half the area.

“Now before you members of A-team get too excited” —too late in Felix’s case—“we want you to know that there has been absolutely no evidence of enemy activity on the eastern side. None at all. Your job will be mostly sightseeing.

“So… you will be split up to cover the eastern half. One group, with scout, will drop here, on the far eastern edge. The other group, with scout, will drop here, ten kilometers south. The two groups will converge here, due east of the Knuckle, to await rendezvous with Assault Main, driving northward up the peninsula.

“Don’t worry about the lack of back-up. As I have already stated, there is nothing there. You should spend a boring few hours simply waiting.”

It was then, for Felix, it began. The hatred for the Briefing Officer had expanded to include his superiors, the Captain of the ship, the commanders of Fleet itself, and finally the thick-headed idiot humans who had undertaken something as asinine as interplanetary war in the first place. The hatred blazed brightly, then vanished. From somewhere inside came then a shock of all-consuming rage, the nova-like intensity of which startled even him. But then the rage was gone, too. It seemed to shoot away like a comet or a torch dropped flickering and shrinking into a bottomless well. What replaced the loathing and fury was something very different, something cold and distant and… only impersonally attentive; It was an odd being which rose from Felix and through him. It was, in fact, a remarkable creature. It was a wartime creature and a surviving creature. A killing creature.

From a distant place, the frightened Felix scanned himself. He recognized little. Still, what he saw was a comfort of sorts and he concentrated himself toward it, toward the coldness, the callous machine-like… The engine, he thought. It’s not me. It’s my Engine. It will work when I cannot. It will examine and determine and choose and, at last, act. It will do all this while I cower inside.

With furious concentration, that which kept him Felix gave itself as fuel to that which could keep him alive.

There was more to the briefing. More figures of time and distance, more numbers of men and probabilities of enemy. The Engine heard and made note. Felix, watching himself, fueling himself, psyching himself, felt disgust at all that was about to happen and all who had caused it. And once more felt the distance between himself and those about him. Again, as he briefly scanned their armored forms filling the chamber, he thought: They’re all going to die.

It stood three meters tall and weighed, on average, four times more than a human being—damn near as much as a suited warrior. It had six limbs, two for walking upright and erect, four for work. The upper limbs, call them arms, were incredibly massive, hanging down one and a half meters from two titanic shoulder joints. The arms ended in huge, hulking, two-pronged claws twice the size of an armored human fist. The middle arms were smaller, approximately human size. Curved, two-pronged pincers here for delicate work. The legs were the size of tree trunks, ending with semicircular pads splayed flat to the ground. There were two knarled knobs on each. Each limb, upper, middle, and lower, had three joints.

The body had three sections: shoulder, abdomen, pelvis. Each was covered with coarse, hairlike fibers spaced widely apart.

The head, half again larger than a warrior’s helmet, bore a dull globular eye on each side. The mandible-mouth opened in three vertical sections of varying width and shape. Closed, it resembled nothing so much as a smooth-sheened, toothless, human skull. The skin was not skin at all, but bone. Ectoskeleton. The muscles were inside. It was awesomely powerful.

It was the Enemy.

It was an ant.

It was called something else, something long and technical and dreamed up out of range. But scientific jargon had nothing to do with what men had felt when they saw it move, saw it coming. It didn’t matter that it had no antennae and walked upright and was too, too, damn big. From the beginning, men had called it an ant.

Felix saw no reason to change that. He stood watching the holo of the enemy in the wall of the passage leading from the Briefing Room. The others had long since filed past. They used their last minutes before drop as a time to be with friends or check equipment or fight panic or yield to it and vomit or to pray with undreamed-of piety.

Felix, alone, watched the ant.

The screen on the back wall of Drop Bay Four was purely representational. It served no actual purpose in the mechanics of Transit. It merely informed the dropping parties of the various stages. First it would glow white: Attention. Next would come yellow: Transit beginning. Then the yellow would be interspersed with flashing bands of red light: thirty seconds. As the ten second mark arrived, the red bands flashed the countdown. They would turn slowly inward across the surface of the wall until a square had formed. The square would shrink, coalesce, brightly pulsing all the while. If all was well, the red square would turn bright green at the two second mark and the drop party would step quickly forward toward it.

Actually, they were trained to all but throw themselves toward the green square. “Try to bust that wall!” the Drill-masters had demanded. And they would try, surging forward en masse. But they never actually touched the screen, never even left their drop squares. Instead, they would Transit. To the next room, to another Drop Bay, to another ship. To another world.

The presence of Banshee loomed uncomfortably as Felix entered Drop Bay Four and stepped through the others to the scout position at the very front of the formation. As he took his place, he appreciated at last the decision not to forewarn him of scout duty. One could do anything at all for a warrior’s supposed sense of confidence—show him his high test scores, pat him on the back, tell him he was superhuman. None of it would affect in the slightest the growing sense of desperation that began the instant he realized he was going to be the very first of the bunch to touch down on alien soil. Given a few days’ notice, the candidate would be, at the very least, hallucinating by drop time. Given a week, a basket case. Given two weeks—nobody would show up.

By springing the assignment on the morning of the drop, there was, presumably, too little time for such paranoia to develop.

Enough time for me, thought Felix sourly.

But only a small part of him thought anything at all. The rest of Felix thought nothing. The rest of Felix was psyching, psyching. Becoming the Engine.

For no amount of reassurance, no amount of technical data, or surveillance figures or probability curves or anything else—however thorough—had convinced him that he would not be slaughtered a split-second after Transit. And if they were to try for another year, the result would be just the same. Nothing they could say would make the slightest difference to him. For they, They, stayed put. They computed. They theorized. They were pleased at Their brilliance or stunned by Their failure. Perhaps even guilt-ridden at the result.

But from the ship.

Psyching… psyching….

Dimly, he had been horrorstruck by his fellow warriors’ attitudes. Some had actually complained at being left out of the “big show.” None of them, it seemed, felt as he did. They stood about talking, gesturing, laughing. A slight hint of nervousness, of course, but that was damn well not enough.

Are they insane? he wondered. They actually have faith in fools who would throw us into armed combat—by the thousands—after less than a year of training? Madness, he thought. But, again, only a small bit of him thought anything at all.

Psyching… psyching….

The wall, formerly a bland shade of confident blue, turned suddenly white. The hundred regulars assumed formation behind him.

“Attention,” said the CO unnecessarily. His voice sounded deliberately bored.

Psyching… psyching….

Yellow light appeared at the edges of the screen. It flowed smoothly toward the center in what the psychs had called “color comfort pattern.”

“Look alive,” said the CO. Someone coughed directly into his microphone. There were several nervous titters. “Shut up, there,” said the CO.

Psyching… psyching….

Red bands began their pulsing march across the screen.

“Good luck, ladies and gentlemen,” purred the even-toned voice of the Transit Control Officer.

“Go get ’em!” urged someone else in the booth.

“Don’t worry,” assured a warrior, a fierce female voice.

“Shaddup!” growled the CO with a nervous edge to his tone.

Psyching… psyching….

As the red squared formed and pulsed, Felix, against all orders and procedures, reached behind his back and disengaged his rifle. He held it in front of him at the ready, safety off. Someone cleared a throat to speak, possibly to object, to chew him out, to….

But it was too late. The red square flashed to green and all were moving forward and there was loud breathing from some and no breathing at all from most and stunned shock from the inhabitants of the Transit Control Booth when they saw that the lead man, the scout, had goddamn near hit the far wall and…

…and ANTS! ANTS EVERYWHERE!

Felix fired and fired, the blue beam slicing through the ectoskeleton like it was butter and long stiff tentacles slammed into his faceplate as he collided with their hurtling bodies and he tripped on one, still firing, and felt himself fall and, in a desperate lunge to remain upright, brought a plassteel leg forward with such brutal speed that the toe of his boot tore completely through the stumbling ant’s midsection. Black fluid spouted but Felix was already gone. …

Slamming forward into them, firing wildly about, he had to get, to get out of them, had to, had-to… Mandibles flashing by him and at him, tree-trunk arms and legs and claws crossing in front of him…. Most didn’t seem to know he was there and the few who saw and reacted were blazed down or passed by but still there were more to come and more still, rows and rows of them, he’d been dropped right into them and the overworked blazer was signaling frantically of overheating that he swore he felt right through the goddamned plassteel and still there were more—he must keep moving, he must and then—

Then he was through them and past them and in front of him was a long dune of that sand. Without conscious thought he leapt over it with a quick, powered, leap. The dune was perhaps three meters high. His leap carried him perhaps half that distance above it and he was down again, blazer ready, spinning around to cover all directions at once but….

He was alone.

No ants here at all. He was in what looked like a dry river bottom and he was alone. He blinked, straightened up from his crouch, took an instinctive step back toward the way he had come.

And the ants appeared. First one, then three, then nine, a dozen, all clambering over the dune toward him. He blazed them all, severing limbs, melting giant skulls. More came and he blazed them, too, and then more and more from each end of the dune and he was having to swing the gun back and forth to cover them all and it was getting to where he could just barely get the ones at the far ends and then one vaulted at him from the center and he ducked and flashed blazerfire and the headless torso careened into him and he ran.

He stomped madly down the riverbed. The dune, he now saw, was a ridge of sand forming one wall of the bed. He looked for a break, thought of leaping again. But wouldn’t that make him a target? Wait! Was he a target now? He twisted to look back over his shoulder.

Dozens of ants rushed toward him, jamming the narrow passage with their writhing flailing legs and heavy swinging arms and huge claws…. Globular eyes bore down on him….

The Engine Felix skidded to an unexpected stop, took careful aim, and killed them.

There was no place for them to go, no cover to hide behind. They were all jammed together, all headlong urgency and targets doomed. Only when he had gotten them all—forty, eighty, two hundred twitching bodies?—only then did he think to notice that none of them, not a one, had been armed.

He stared at the remains for a moment. He had been told to expect blasters, heat rays that could, eventually, boil his suit on his back. There was nothing here. He ran on.

A gap in the ridge appeared. But it was on the wrong side, back toward the ants, and he thought he should just rush past or maybe sneak by or maybe leap over the opposite wall. Instead, in his indecision, he ran into the open without altering his stride.

It was terrible-terrible, awful-awful…. Ants still, more ants still in columns and rows and marching and they saw him and turned toward him, so many seeing and turning at once like they knew him personally and expected and as they burst through the gap he was past it with powered kick and stride. Coming for him—that was bad, very bad, but what was worse was that sight, that terrible-terrible, awful-awful sight, that split-second sight back along their horde to where he had been and where the others were still. The ants were swarming over the others, the dead and dying warriors, his fellows, his humans, being peeled open and apart by too many claws and pincers and mandibles snapping, plassteel shredding and no one getting a chance to fire enough to stop the peeling, shredding, swarming mandibles with globular eyes….

They were all dead or all dying back there.

The riverbed turned, bent to the left and then the right and he came to another gap—on the wrong side again—and ground to a stop, staring-stunned-shocked….

Six endless rows of ants poured up from out of a squat cubic structure sitting half-buried in the sand. Those are supposed to be supply dumps! They told us they were only supply dumps!

From behind him came more ants boiling around the bend and he blazed them at first but his blazer got immediately hot—Oh-oh, overload!—and he thought of running and he thought of leaping out of the riverbed and he thought of using a blaze-bomb and it was already in the air, a line drive straight into the crowd at the bend. He dropped and flattened himself and it blew.

They died, the ants. The ridge walls, narrow here, crumbled and closed the riverbed off. But the other gap! He turned and through the new gap they were coming—so many. He threw another blaze-bomb into the ranks and it blew as he crouched, ants flying everywhere but still more and more from the cube in the sand, globular eyes, and he aimed more carefully and missed—too much adrenalin—but the next bomb flew true with a slight arcing trajectory only meters above their heads and down into them and right into the mouth of the cube, right on the upward sloping ramp, and blew just right.

The sides of the entrance disappeared outward. The roof kicked high, lifting and opening and then falling and shattering and then the whole damn cube collapsed on itself.

Another blaze-bomb over his shoulder to the other ants already out and coming and he was off and running again. The riverbed veered to the left and left again and dropped downhill. He was accelerating, really moving now. And when he burst out into the open space beyond and accelerated even harder, harder, to the best he had, he knew he had lost them. They couldn’t keep up and he was safe now, for now, but alone and the only one left and he concentrated hard on the vision of the collapsing cube and what he could do to them instead of that other vision, that terrible-awful sight of peeling plassteel and what they could do to him.

Alone on a hostile planet, Felix the scout, the soldier, the Engine, the killer, ran.

He ran and ran and ran.

Felix stood on the uppermost tip of a sand-blasted crag which rose three hundred meters above the desert floor. He stood with his black-helmeted head thrown back, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his legs braced far apart. His eyes peered intensely into the gray-yellow sky. Inside the helmet he worked frantically at the Emergency Recall key between his teeth.

After several moments he changed frequencies again, as he had done countless times before. And as before, there was no response.

Not on the Emergency Recall.

Not on the Command Channel.

Not on the ship’s beacon.

Nothing. There was nothing.

He lowered his head and gazed, unseeing, at the breathtaking drop millimeters away. He had to admit it. He was just what he appeared to be. Just what he had been every second since, from the first few moments after Transit to now, standing alone atop this majestic, totally alien, peak. Alone. He was completely and utterly alone.

He had hoped the altitude might make a difference to communications. He had hoped to climb above those blinding torrents of sand and any interference they might have caused him. But perhaps the sand had already done its job. Perhaps it had managed to infiltrate the suit and jam the relays. Or maybe it had that blaster-fire or the impact of those bludgeoning claws. He doubted the last. Despite it all, he was physically unharmed. The suit had held. It was probably the interference from… what? The sand? How?

Could be the magnetics, too. Something wrong with them here, they had said. Irregular, shifting, the polar interval was never where it was supposed to be. It was why missiles wouldn’t track.

“Unless they’ve figured it out, too,” he muttered at last, voicing it outright. Unless they, too, those masters of warfare at Fleet, had discovered what he had known for hours: they had no chance.

None at all.

“Not here,” he said, gazing blankly at the western foothills. “Not on Banshee.” For even in this supposedly deserted area, he had seen thousands upon thousands of ants.

The blazer-rifle lay at his feet, useless. It’s barrel was warped from the heat of overload. The stock looked worse, crumpled and split from having been used in a way its creators had never intended—as a club. The suit had also been changed. The left shoulder was now dark green instead of black where a full twenty-second burst of heat ray had ruptured the thin outer covering of the plassteel. Other parts of the suit bore gray-brown splotches of the sands which had clung to the black ant blood which had clung to the armor. The splotches were mostly thin, irregular streaks, except for those on his arms. There a dense unbroken coating of sand covered the plassteel completely, from biceps to fingers.

Many, many, ants.

Idly, he kicked at the remnant of his blazer and watched it for the long seconds it took to fall. He sighed. Incredibly, he had but 63 percent power remaining after a mere five hours on the planet.

Maybe they have figured it out, at that. And run away. I would.

He turned around and began the long difficult descent with the unhurried manner of a man with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

“I would,” he said to the wind.

The warrior, a blonde woman, was dead. But the ant didn’t seem to realize that—it kept killing her. Her body shimmered gruesomely beneath the blaster’s effect, exposing a meter-long gash in the armor. Scattered randomly about her on the hard canyon floor were the remains of other warriors, some twenty-five in all.

A-team One, thought Felix from his hiding place at the far end of the enclosure. Now it’s just me. I’m A-team. He sighed. And then, Engine once more, he pulled his attention away from the carnage, away from the grotesque sight of his fellow humans, some halfway out of their armor, their swollen features fast-frozen in the thin alien air. He would not, could not, stare at them any longer.

Instead, he watched the ant. And waited. He had to. He needed power.

After only ten hours on Banshee, he was down to 24 percent of capacity. At that rate he had less than four left. Four hours until the Larvafern, deprived of laser-induced photosynthesis, would cease to emit oxygen. However, he needn’t concern himself with that. He would be dead long before that. The ants would kill him first.

Two hours, perhaps. Two hours before the suit began to slow down. He would no longer be able to fight, no longer be able to dodge and duck. In two hours, he would no longer be able to run. They would have him. He would lie down somewhere. The weight of the armor would force him down. And in some canyon or gorge he would lie and wait, a helpless statue, for the ants. Shuffling slowly up to him and around him, gesturing to one another with heavy claws and snapping mandibles. They would prod him, poke at him, lean over and stare into his helmet, great gray globular eyes his last living sight.

And then, pulling together, they would split the plassteel like a ripe fruit and he would blow out dying, his scream falling about him like frozen ice crystals.

There was no question of hiding from it, no hope of a dignified sleep. Somehow they would find him as they always had before. Felix suspected they could detect armor by some natural process, given enough time. Never having any equipment—only a handful with blasters even—they must possess some inbred instinct. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. What counted was the fact that, so far, they had always, always, found him.

He needed power. He waited.

Three more ants, unarmed, appeared at the far end of the canyon. They gestured. The ant with the blaster stopped killing the dead girl and joined them. They left.

Felix was out of the shadows in seconds. He inspected the corpses. Armor that had retained its integrity, he had been informed, also retained its energy supply. He found a charred warrior and lay down beside it to make hip-to-hip Connection. There was an instant’s brief hesitation as the young man, recalling the constant fighting and fleeing of the past hours, screamed silently. Why?

Why continue? He was alone and lost and without hope. Why string it out?

The Engine ignored this, grasping the armored shoulders before him and muscling the corpse into the bizarrely sensual embrace of Connection. The Engine smiled as the power surged to 42 percent. The Engine refused to die.

A black warrior still carried twelve blaze-bombs. Felix removed nine, made Connection, and raised power to 60 percent.

A sergeant with a broken neck brought it to 71 percent.

The CO’s command suit brought it to 87 percent.

Disgusted at gaining only 4 percent, he shoved the next corpse angrily away, refusing to recognize Dikk from the mess hall.

The last possible source was an Asian girl looking far too young to be there. Her legs were twisted under her back, forcing him to lie with his faceplate against hers. He gazed blankly at her delicate features, then made Connection. She screamed.

Felix vomited against his screens. Then he jerked as though electrocuted, throwing himself back and away. But Connection was made and her face stayed close to his, wide and screaming. He gagged and panted and, for just a moment, could not move.

Until at last he, too, screamed, a hoarse sound. “Shut up!”

She shut up. He paused, took a deep breath, and hit the stasis key. In seconds the helmet was, except for a fading odor, clean. He looked at the girl again, who was just then seeming to realize what he was.

“You… you’re a man?” she asked timidly, like a small child.

“Yes,” he replied, nodding.

“I thought you were….”

“I know.”

“You’re a man,” she repeated. “You’re human.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not the ants again.”

“No.”

“I thought you were…” she whispered and her eyes flared with growing hysteria.

“I’m Felix,” he said quickly, trying to disrupt the momentum of her panic. “Scout, A-team Two.”

Her calm firmed somewhat as she focused on this information.

“I’m Taira. Warrior. A-team…. You said A-team Two? You’re A-team Two?”

“I am,” he replied impassively.

“Oh, thank God, thank God! We thought…. I thought I was… alone! A-team One is… is….”

“Hit your tranq key,” he said quickly.

“…they’re all dead! All! The ants were… Oh, God!!”

He growled. “Hit your tranq!”

“Huh? What?”

“Key your tranq! Now!”

She blinked uncertainly, obeyed from instinct. From just above her elbow a tiny stream of compressed air shot against her skin, opening a pore and injecting the drug. Felix watched her pupils swell and contract as the tranq took effect. Taira blinked again, shook her head, blinked once more. Slowly, she pulled herself together.

“How many made it?” she wanted to know.

Felix ignored her. “Are you able to move?”

“No,” she replied brusquely, businesslike at last. “My legs are broken.”

Judging from her contorted posture, he could well believe it. “I suppose I could carry you,” he mused aloud.

“How many are…. What’s your name?”

“Felix. What’s your power level?”

“Uh… 84 percent. Pretty low.”

He laughed dryly, felt the disgust welling.

“Okay,” he said. “Key your painers. It’ll be a rough ride and….”

“Felix,” she said slowly, her voice now as cold as his. “You’re alone, aren’t you?”

He met her gaze. He nodded, She stared a moment, then closed her eyes. She sighed loudly.

“Two hundred and four people,” she whispered to herself. She opened her eyes. “Two left.”

He said nothing. His eyes were blank.

“And you’ll carry me?” she asked with more than a trace of bitterness.

“I’ll carry you,” he replied in an even colder tone that told her she was right to think what she thought.

She grimaced, taken aback. Then she relaxed. “All right, Felix,” she said wearily. “I’ll be all right here. Just g….”

“Freeze!” he barked suddenly.

“Oh, come now, Scout. I know what you think you…”

“Freeze!” he snapped again, looking past her down the canyon. “Ants!”

Just around the corner of her helmet, he could see the four ants coming back into the canyon. He was in a lousy position to see anything, but he was afraid to attract their attention by shifting. He settled for severing Connection, a slight movement.

“Don’t move,” he said. “They’ll come right by us.”

“I can’t move,” she replied softly. “Where are they now?”

“Shut up!” he ordered bluntly, watching them shuffle across the hard-packed sand. The one with the blaster was trailing behind, he noted.

“Are they close? Do they see us?”

“Shut up!” he snarled.

“Tell me!”

Her tone of fear—and pleading—got through. He looked at her. His eyes relaxed a bit. He looked back to the ants. “They’re coming right past us. You’ll probably see ’em when they go by. My view is bad. About twenty meters now….”

“How many are…?”

“Four. Quiet. About fifteen meters, ten. The last one’s back a ways. It’s got a blaster. They’re not looking at us. Five meters… There they go. See ’em?”

“No. No, your helmet is… Yes! Yes, I see one! Don’t move! Don’t…Okay. Okay, it’s moved off. I only saw one… and it’s gone past.”

“All right,” said Felix in a dead voice. He took a deep breath. “Sit tight.”

For several seconds their two pairs of eyes flickered about straining to see. They kept their bodies rock-still. Occasionally, they looked at one another. Once, Taira smiled. Felix looked away.

“All right,” he said at last. “There they go. On my side.” He felt her relax. “They’re going away. It’s okay.” He found he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a rush. “Okay… okay, there they go. The one with the blaster is first. Now… the second. Good. There’s the third right behind him.” He glanced quickly at her, his lips forming a pale smile.

Her eyes shot wide with terror.

He was already moving when the claws clamped down on his shoulders, moving back from her and up. He struck out with a boot, hitting something. He kicked again, felt the claws quiver against the plassteel. He kicked a third time, striking solidly. He spun about, sprung free, and slammed a forearm into the hairy abdomen.

The ant loomed over him. He took a step back, retreating, but the ant closed, grasping his waist with its smaller middle pincers. One of the claws slammed thunderously against the side of his helmet. He ducked the following blow from the other claw and lunged forward. He planted a boot, quite randomly, atop one of the ant’s footpads, pinning it in place briefly. Then he drove upward, slamming his open armored palm against the flat chinlike space below the mandible.

The ant’s head popped off.

Felix froze, staring unbelieving, as the gushing torrent of black blood erupted from the gaping spinal shaft. And then the ant fell backward. To his horror, he found himself being pulled along. The pincers still held him tightly to the ant. They landed brutally against the hard canyon floor. Felix twisted wildly, trying to break away. He stole a glance over his shoulder, saw the next one almost upon him.

He groaned. He wrenched back, got a knee against the abdomen, and lurched to his feet. One pincer tore loose from its grip. Another, still clamped to his waist, tore loose from its socket. Felix spun around, to meet the charge with at least….

The second ant crashed into him like a tank, knocking both of them rolling across the headless stump of the first. Felix spun himself on top and clamped an armored hand viselike around the thorax. He shouldered aside a grasping claw and drove a powered fist through the center of the right eye all the way to the brain case. The creature shuddered violently, then became still.

Felix planted his boots on the midsection and leapt forward to meet the rush of the third ant. But he was all wrong, too straight in the air. He collided full-faced with the hurtling ant. Even through his suit, the concussion shook him. The ant seemed to feel nothing. The pincers clamped onto his sides firmly, holding him fast while the upper claws pinwheeled in unison, bashing his helmet from side to side with tremendous force.

Felix felt himself rising helplessly as the ant lifted him off the ground. He had no leverage, no place to run or dodge and the claws kept slamming into him and he reached out, groping for those hideous eyes. But they were too far away, he couldn’t reach, and the blows kept coming and his vision blurred… and he was losing it, losing all sense of what to do or how, losing, about to die.

And then the two of them, man and ant, were suddenly enveloped in the crimson beam of blasterfire. It was incredible. The last ant was boiling them both to kill him. He felt the intensity increase as it rushed forward to finish it.

Felix, encased in plassteel, could take it a lot longer. The arcing claws became erratic as they, and the rest of the ant holding him, began to literally fry. One claw fell to its side, useless. The other swung, missed, missed again. The ant slumped, stumbled to one side. He felt one boot, then the other, touch the ground. He braced them firmly, grasped the simmering-oozing form before him by thorax and pelvic joint, and lifted it high into the air. The pincers at his waist stretched, disintegrated. Still holding the ant high, he threw his weight backwards, twisting around, and hurled the broiling monster directly into the source of the blaster-fire.

The heat ray ceased abruptly as the last ant staggered backward, clawing at the bubbling ectoplasm spattered about its skull and shoulders. Felix leapt forward and tore the blaster from a claw. He swung it mightily, in a long arc, and slammed it against a leg joint. Exoskeleton splintered loudly and the joint gave. But the ant flung itself forward anyway, against Felix, and the two of them banged to the ground atop one of the armored corpses.

The ant grabbed the blaster, triggering it into the sand below them. Holding the barrel away from him, Felix pounded his free forearm into the side of the thorax. The ant shuddered, stunned, but did nothing to evade another blow. Instead it tired to grasp control of the blaster, discharging it harmlessly all the while. On a sudden impulse, Felix moved the barrel within range of the other claw. The ant grasped it hungrily, both claws on it now, and still firing at nothing.

Felix reared back and slammed out with his forearm again to the completely exposed thorax. The ant shuddered again but kept both claws on the blaster. So Felix hit it again.

And again. And again. The creature slumped, sagged, as Felix pounded his target over and over with every bit of power at his command. After a while, the claws relaxed their grip, the gray eyes convulsed. The ant collapsed.

Felix clambered to his knees, dragged the blaster free from the lifeless claws… and froze.

For a long moment he didn’t move. Then he gently lay the blaster on the ground beside him like in some somber ritual. He paused, then gripped the dead ant and dragged it to the side. He sat back on his heels and stared.

It had not been a corpse he had fallen upon. Not then. And the blaster-fire had not been, after all, harmless. Gently, carefully, he picked up Taira’s armored arm and lay it across the gaping, smoldering, hole in the center of her faceplate.

“Damn,” he said softly.

It took him six more hours to travel eight kilometers westward for the terrain rose treacherously and there were many ants. He had only 49 percent power remaining. There were no blaze-bombs left. Idly, he wondered why he didn’t care.

He sat down in a sand drift and machinelike, Enginelike, went through a communication check. For diversion, he decided to try the ship’s beacon first. Nothing. Next came the Emergency Frequency. Nothing. Last came the Command Channel. Unexpectant, unhopeful, and, frankly, bored by it all, he keyed it on.

As if in response, the ground suddenly rocked beneath him from a tremendous explosion less than five hundred meters away. Before the rumbling echo could die, he heard, clear as a bell, a man’s bitter voice saying:

“I don’t care about it, goddamnit! You hear me? I don’t care! And I ain’t fighting ants any goddamned more! Fuck Earth, anyway!”

Felix stood up. He looked in the direction of the explosion, at the distant and majestic spire. He smiled. He was no longer alone.

He began to run toward the west. Toward the Knuckle.

The bands were jammed with a hopeless overload of garbled voices. There were frantic exchanges between warriors, impatient officers’ directives, sergeants’ flat commands. Underlying each was a growing tone of panic. It had been a sporadic chord when Felix first detected it. Now he heard it everywhere—a faint coating.

War sounds were also constant, rumbling, thundering waves of noise occasionally punctuated by another of those heart-stopping blasts that had first told him where he was. After each of these, the chattering would cease for several seconds. And despite himself, Felix would each time envision all having been killed by it. Then, seconds later, the chattering would begin again, a little more desperately.

He was homed in on the center of the transmissions, a point just south of the Knuckle. He had to stop often to check his bearings, for the terrain had made anything resembling a straight approach impossible. A seemingly endless series of eroded gulleys and draws produced what amounted to a maze of narrow alleys between random groupings of walls five meters high. There was no pattern to either level or direction. And there were many dead ends.

He had just completed another bearing check when he noticed he was no longer alone.

Two warriors stood shoulder to shoulder in a clearing a few meters in front of him. Felix stared at them, too delighted with their very existence to speak. By the time he had gathered his wits enough to call out, one of them was already speaking.

“Don’t try to stop us,” said a man’s nervous voice.

It was the last thing he would have expected to hear. He took an instinctive step toward them, then stopped. There was something wrong with these two. They seemed to edge away from him, like children, like schoolboys caught…. And then he had it: deserters.

“Don’t try to stop us,” said the nervous voice again.

“All right,” replied Felix dully.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” said a second voice, equally as strident as the first.

“Then don’t,” answered Felix blandly.

The two exchanged glances, then stared at him some more. They were privates, he saw from their markings. They began to ease by him slowly, not trusting him.

“Don’t try anything,” warned the first.

“All right.”

“We don’t want to fight you,” said the second.

“Fine.”

“We’re going now,” said the first.

“Where?”

For just an instant, they hesitated and Felix thought he had gotten through to them. But then they were gone around a bend and out of sight.

“Where?” he asked again. “Where will you go? This is Banshee!”

There was no reply.

He keyed a dose of stimule into his system. He had had another less than an hour before, but suddenly he felt very weary.

* * * * *

The war sounds increased as he grew nearer. The great blasts had continued as well. The floors of the gulleys were being filled by the cascades of sand pouring down from atop the shaken walls. He must be getting very close. He leapt easily over a particularly large deposit and hurried down the widening passage beyond. And then he was surrounded by perhaps a dozen warriors stomping past him from the opposite direction. He held out a hand to stop them. A heavy warrior’s glove slapped it away.

“Get out of the way, damn you,” shouted someone. “Can’t you see the beacon?” The group disappeared the way he had come without slowing.

Dismally, Felix considered the possibility that the entire assault force was now composed of deserters running away from this battle only to encounter, inevitably, more fighting. Each would, in turn, flee from the new battle, only to run into another and another. For where, on a hostile planet, can a warrior desert to?

He noticed the Transit Beacon for the first time. Beacon? Why, he wondered, would they run away from that? Transit was the only way home. He raced off toward the source, the way he had been headed all along.

He dashed around a corner of the maze and collided head-on with something coming the other way. It was another black suit.

“Come on! Get up!” cried the other scout, a woman. She grabbed his shoulders and tugged.

Felix leapt to his feet unaided. “Go on, if you want,” he said disgustedly. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Huh?” asked the other scout, genuinely puzzled. “Tell who? What?”

“Never mind,” Felix answered, starting off again toward the beacon.

The scout stopped him with a gloved hand on his arm.

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

He shook his arm free. “Are you?” he retorted angrily.

A split-second before the shock hit them, he saw it coming.

And then he was flying sideways in the air against the side of one of the embankments which was already crumbling as he hit it. Great chunks of sand fell down upon him, covering him. He struck out wildly, shoving at the sand, trying desperately to keep from being buried, from disappearing beneath it forever, trapped and held by Banshee herself, for her children the ants and more sand fell on him and around him and the ground trembled with a terrible sense of fragility and then it was over.

He sat on the floor of the gulley, buried in sand to his waist. Directly in front of him, the other scout’s helmet bobbed abruptly into view with a hissing rush of sand. Felix got to his feet and helped dig the rest of her out.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Another goddamn tank. What else?” she replied bitterly.

“A tank…? he repeated dully.

She looked at him closely. “Don’t you know?” she asked. “Where’ve you… Uh-oh! Another beacon.”

Felix saw it on his own holo. The beacon was quite near this time.

“Damn!” she exclaimed. “It’s right on top of us! Come on!” She made a step in the direction she had been traveling before—away from the source.

Felix hesitated, bewildered.

“Move!” she commanded desperately and he found that he was already moving with her, blindly following.

They raced down several passages, careening wildly around corners, bouncing off walls, until they slammed together against the solid bank of a narrow cul-de-sac.

“Shit!” she spat bitterly. “Another dead-en….”

This blast was closer. It was much worse. They thudded back and forth against the walls of the cul-de-sac like insects shaken in a bottle. The walls swayed, warped, bowed outward at them… but held. They were not buried.

It took him a moment to clear his head. He found her on hands and knees at the base of the wall across from him.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded.

She raised her helmet slowly to eye level and regarded him for a beat. Then: “You really don’t know?” she asked in a quiet, thoughtful, tone. “Where have you …? Who are you?”

“Felix. A-team.”

She sat up. “A-team? We thought they were all dead.”

“They are.”

“Huh? But you just… Oh. You’re it, huh?”

“Yeah.” He paused, seeing it all, briefly, once more. “Tell me about the tanks.”

She straightened, rose slowly to her feet. “The ants get the Transit Beacon somehow. They home in on it. I don’t know what this is they’re using. Not like their mortars, obviously. Some kind, of rocket, maybe. They don’t have any exhaust, though. I’ve seen ’em. More like a streamer….

“Anyway, we all run like hell when we see the beacon indicators ’cause we know what’s about to happen. Now you do, too. The Hammer is about to fall.”

Involuntarily, Felix glanced upward. “Why don’t you just tell the ship to stop Transit?”

“What ship is that?”

“Huh?” He turned and stared at her faceless helmet.

“The Terra was hit. We haven’t heard from her in… not in a long while, anyway.”

“But the Transit….”

“Those are the jeep carriers. Automated. Robot pilots.”

He stood there for a second or two before saying: “Damn,”

“Uh-huh,” replied the scout. “Damn. Well. I have a place I’m supposed to be. We’ve a rendezvous of sorts.” She read dials. “It’s not far.”

She led the way through the maze, stopping often to check her bearings. Twice he thought he heard her mumble to herself, but said nothing to prompt her. They saw no one else for several minutes.

Suddenly she stopped.

“They’ve figured it out,” she said, half to herself. “They’ve stopped shelling.”

Felix listened, nodded. “They’ll be looking for us.”

“Yeah. Then we fight again. And then we move again. Then we fight.”

“You’ve moved before?”

“Twice. It delays things a little, not much.”

She turned and faced him then, shoving out a gloved hand.

“I’m Forest,” she said. “Third Scout, Forward Group One.”

“Felix,” he said, returning the handshake.

“You want to hear it all? The whole deal? We won’t have time later. Or maybe you don’t care?”

He found himself smiling. “Maybe not. But give it to me anyway.”

“Right.” said Forest, leading off again through the maze. “First of all, it was easy.”

Ten thousand warriors had made simultaneous Drop on the “wrist.” They drove due north toward the Knuckle, arriving at the edge of the maze well within estimated time limits. They quickly arranged themselves within the classic semicircular battlefield pattern and waited for A, B, and C Assault teams to arrive. They had excellent communication with the Terra, good morale and, at that point, nothing to report.

An hour later, the Terra stopped transmitting abruptly, in mid-sentence. All efforts to reopen communications were to no avail. No one was really worried though. The weather, someone suggested. Two hours later, however, and all were getting awfully nervous about being alone. The idea of losing contact had, frankly, never occurred to anyone.

Nervously, all eyes turned to the Knuckle.

And, on cue, it opened…

The ants came in waves that were perhaps half as wide as the Warrior emplacements. They came right at the center of the humans’ strength. Because of clever positioning, the ants in the front ranks were clearly visible long before they reached the trenches. Also, only one or two in ten actually carried the blasters, which were of dubious value anyway considering the length of time they must remain centered on a single target.

So it was just what the human commanders could have wished for.

The first wave was literally obliterated without a single human life being lost. Likewise the second wave and the third.

The commanders could find no evidence that the ants were trying to flank them, so they drew in most of the forces from each end of the emplacement, leaving only scouts at the edges.

The fourth wave came and went the way of the others. Then the fifth died as well and the sixth and the seventh and by now everyone was having a helluva good time killing ants. It was easy. More, it was fun.

The ants stopped coming for a while and everyone cheered until they remembered that they still couldn’t talk to the ship. Until B and C teams straggled in carrying bodies and missing many more.

The officers got together and gave the warriors make-work to keep them from thinking too much and it worked for a while until there simply wasn’t anything else for them to do and they got a chance to sit down and look at what they had done.

“That’s when I knew,” said Forest. “That’s when a lot of people saw it.”

It was the bodies of the ants. There were thousands of them. Thousands and thousands and thousands. There were more than the entire loaded complement, not just of the Terra, but of the entire wing. There were too many. Too damn many.

The next wave was more than a wave. It was a solid mass. The first attacks had been only scouting missions, they realized, as they watched the choking, boiling rush swarm toward them. Just scouts.

They called it the first assault. During its half-hour length, two thousand warriors died. One out of every five humans.

“What’s incredible,” said Forest, “was that we held at all.”

But they did hold. Against that assault and against the next and the next. But by then all was a mass of warfare and death and smoke and blistered ants and ruptured plassteel and some officer got smart and called for troops to move back and dig in at another spot.

About then the mortars started falling, coming from the Knuckle itself and it got so bad that they moved again almost immediately.

“We weren’t just retreating. We were running. But then we found a real good spot and dug in a little better than ever before. We had the best of the best left, you know. And plenty of power left. And we blew big holes in ’em then. Big, big, holes.

“But, dammit, we were still getting chewed. We should have just run like hell and I told ’em so. But they wouldn’t listen to me. Those idiot officers… Felix, they still didn’t know what was going on. Not even then. They hadn’t seen the fighting from up front like the rest of us. They still thought the Knuckle was a goddamn mountain fort.”

“Isn’t it?” asked Felix, puzzled.

“Felix,” she said slowly, stopping and looking at him. “That is no fort. It isn’t even a mountain.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s a hive.”

The warriors hastily erecting the fortification couldn’t have numbered much more than twenty-five hundred.

“Where are the rest?” asked Felix.

“I guess this is it. Except for some stragglers.”

“This couldn’t…. You mean you lost three-fourths of your entire force?” Felix couldn’t believe it.

“Well, we had about twice this before the Transit idiocy. But the Hammer did a bad job on us. Hold on here, Felix. I’ll see if I can find someone for you to report to.”

She trotted off down the lines. Felix watched a squad of warriors demolishing large sections of the sandy ridges on either end of the barricade to inhibit encirclement. Another group was busy leveling the maze for about fifty meters straight out in front, to provide a flat killing area for the enemy to cross before reaching them. It looked, he thought, like they would be in a good spot in any normal encounter. But this was not normal. The ants were not…. He shook his head briefly to clear his mind of the image of those waves and waves. He wondered how it had affected those around him. He watched them go about their duties in what seemed to be a trancelike haze.

Forest reappeared. “Can’t find anybody much. Colonel said you’re with me for now. Right?”

“Sure.”

She went to a stack of blazers surrounded by piles of assorted bits of equipment. She picked out two, handed him one.

“This blazer’s almost empty.”

“Yeah,” she replied calmly. “I gave you the one with the juice in it. Clubs, Felix. Welcome to the interstellar Stone Age.”

“I thought we had plenty of power.”

“Not for blazers they tell me. Okay—we’re the backup team for this area.” She waved an arm at an area behind the barricade perhaps twenty meters wide. “The procedure is to let breakthroughs alone. The line warriors ignore them. We, that’s you and me, are supposed to get them as they come through. Go for the head first. If you can’t reach that, try for the thorax.”

“What about the eyes?”

“The eyes are good, too. Yeah, I guess you must have done this once or twice before just to get here. Well, try not to look too bored, huh? You’ll spoil it for me.”

She laughed and started toward the barricade, waving for him to join her. “Come on. We’re scouting some.”

He wanted to say something that matched her bravado. He wanted to laugh with her while he could. Or just smile. But it was too far away from him already. Slowly, but with growing speed, he felt the Engine rise, felt it gather itself and surge forward to the front of his consciousness. And once again, he felt the rest of him begin to fade.

They stepped across the barricade of packed sand and dropped the two meters to the floor of the killing area. He looked about at the scarred pattern of the pulverized dunes made by the planted explosives. The entire area held a gritty, gray-black coating that made an unpleasant crunching sound under his boots. He saw that certain areas of the sand had been shocked into something resembling glass.

“Key the command frequency,” she said as they approached the maze walls. “The CO wants to know what we see before everybody else does.”

He nodded to himself and made the connection.

She stopped when they reached the edge of the maze, gazing back and forth at the various possibilities. “We need some height,” she mumbled as if to herself. She picked a narrow gorge that rose steeply and began to climb. He followed silently.

They followed the passage through several, turns, always rising. Around a sharp bend, they came to an abrupt dead end. She turned and looked back in the direction they had come as if she could see through the walls. “Okay. This is probably far enough. Up we go.”

With that she bent quickly into a crouch, seesawed her arms for balance, and leaped to the top of the far wall. Felix gauged the height. He leaped after her. He misjudged his leap and banged a thigh against the lip, sending a spray of sand into the air. But he was up.

“The world’s greatest athlete,” she said when he had knelt down beside her.

“What?”

“That’s what they’d say on Earth if I could have done that without a suit. Look at the jump we just made. Seven meters easily.”

Felix glanced down, nodded.

“You from Earth?” she asked.

“No,” he replied.

“I am,” she said cheerily. “Born and bred. Ever been there?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him at last. She had noticed the change in him. But she felt the need to talk and began to rattle on again. It was all about her childhood on Earth and about her decision to sign up some six years before. Some of it was about some man, either a lover or relative, Felix was not all sure.

He wanted to listen, wanted to help her out. He felt her need acutely and knew it would be much better for her if he could manage to respond. Perhaps it would even be better for him. She was, after all, Third Scout for the Forward Group, quite a high rank. Perhaps she knew better. Mostly, though, he just wanted to help.

But this was a distant want, coming from a distant place where all his human thoughts were thrust during what he had come to think of as the Enginetime. The rest of him, the Engine, was scouting.

Below them could clearly be seen the entire lengths of some two dozen passages in the maze. Bits and pieces of several dozen more were also in sight. It was a good spot for them.

Felix’s eyes raked back and forth across the lines of curving passages, from left to right and back again. He would make two of these scans at a time. And then he would look upward at the most incredible sight he had ever seen.

He had no idea what the Knuckle was made out of. He supposed that it might very well be composed of the same sort of material used to make the ants themselves. He had read somewhere once about some forms of insect life that created their homes in this manner. He wondered if the same pattern would hold true for these ants, these three-meter-tall ants.

These monsters….

“Forest?” asked a sharp commanding voice in his earphones.

“Forest, here,” she replied.

“You in position?”

“Yessir.”

“All right. Look, the Can is coming down your way pretty soon. You need to make Connection?”

“Yessir. I could use it.”

“What about the other scout with you? Felix is it?”

Felix looked at her, nodded.

“Yessir. He needs it, too.”

“Very well. One of you stays while the other comes back. Then rotate again. I want someone scanning the whole time: Got it?”

“Yessir. Will.”

“Right. Out.”

“Forest out. You want to go first?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I figured you’d say that. You sure turned into the quietest damn…. Oh, shit. See it?”

Felix followed her gaze. He saw it. An ant. Then another and another.

“Colonel, this is Forest again.”

“Right, Forest. You got something?”

“Yessir.”

“Right. How many do you see?”

“About twenty or…. No, make that forty or….”

“It’s probably just a scouting party. Sit tight while I….”

“Eight, ninety… one hundred and fifty, seventy….”

“…mark the spot on the grid. Now, Forest….”

“Yessir? One ninety, two twenty-five, two seventy-five….”

“Forest, I want you two to stay put out of sight and wait until the main force arrives.”

“Three hundred fifty, four hundred, call it five hundred…. did you say something sir?”

“Yes, I did. Forest, are you paying attention?”

“Six hundred, seven hundred… I’m a listening, Colonel. You were saying something about this being a scouting party.”

“That’s right. Just scouts, I’m 90 percent sure….”

Felix watched some two thousand ants boiling throughout the maze almost underneath him and thought about idiot officers and running away.

“Colonel, this is Forest and I’m listening but I don’t think you are. Three thousand, four thousand… You hear? Five thousand ants are in sight right now?”

“Now listen, Forest. You… How many did you say?”

“Never mind, Colonel, I’ll tell you in person. We’re coming back.”

“Huh? Forest? What the….”

“Forest out,” said Forest simply and Felix heard her cut him off. Felix did the same. They turned together and slid off the edge together. They landed easily on the floor of the cul-de-sac and began running back down the passage with Felix in the lead. He could hear her panting along behind him on the Proximity band, could hear her mumbling something about that “dumb-fuck Colonel” and he thought about how much he would have laughed if it had been funny.

They crossed the killing area with only four powered strides apiece and over the barricade and the warriors behind it. As they leaped over the rows of helmets, Felix heard a Warrior’s deep bass voice muttering: “Sure as hell found us fast. What’s their blinking hurry?” and then he was past and down. He turned and faced the barricade, gripped the muzzle of the blazer and took several deep breaths.

Forest was busy talking to the group leader and gesturing with her armored arms. The two seemed to reach an agreement. She laid a gloved hand on his shoulder and turned away toward Felix.

“We’ll get the starfish first. They aren’t really much. It would take two or three to match a blaze-bomb. But duck anyway. If one were to actually hit you as it detonated, it would split the plassteel.”

Felix nodded, took more deep breaths.

“We’ve got a bigger area than most to back-up because we’re Scouts and can move so quickly. I’ll take the left for now, I guess. You all right?”

He looked at her, said nothing.

“Right,” she said and moved into position. “Don’t forget the starfish.”

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.

They must get everyone atop the mesa.

Felix and Forest had stumbled across it. It was a squat, ovular plateau of sand rising some twenty meters above the desert floor. It had walls that were almost perfectly sheer on all sides. Only a slanting drainage path, carved from erosion, provided a route to the top. If they could get everyone up there, the ants would be forced to bunch together to attack them. No more than two abreast could scale that little path at a time. We could make it damned expensive for them, he thought. But of course, they can afford it. They have the bodies to spare no matter where we are.

But did they have the time? That was the question. Surely there was someone up there doing something about getting them off the planet. Surely there was a rescue operation being implemented. And if they could just draw it out a little more, if they could stay alive just a little while longer….

Or maybe not. Maybe there was nothing. No rescue, no reinforcements, no Fleet. Maybe they were all destroyed in space. Or maybe they all got smart and ran like hell.

Felix took a sip of water from a tube, spit it out into another tube. No. There had to be something. There had to be someone. Now that they had found the mesa, and some kind of chance. And not when they had gotten the break with the eclipse.

He looked up into the dark gray sky. The entire section of Banshee was currently in darkness. It was not full nighttime, more like dusk or dawn. Still, the effect was similar. It had become, even for Banshee, very, very, cold. It didn’t bother warriors who could see in the dark with their suits and fight in absolute vacuum. But it, apparently, got to the ants. They had been obviously slowing down. Their movements, never graceful, were now almost ridiculous. They had become parodies of themselves with jerking, puppetlike gestures and slow-motion running. It helped a lot.

No. They had to be coming to get them. It couldn’t all be going for nothing. Not now. Not with the mesa and the cold.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was the warrior who had lined up behind him. Felix followed the pointing armored finger and saw that the line had moved along several meters while he was daydreaming. He got up and walked over to join the others.

As he sat down, he heard the warriors in front of him, all male, talking on Proximity band.

“…not like real night at all, y’see? It’s just the eclipse. The place has got four moons, you know, and it’s…”

“Whatyamean, it ain’t night. Looks like it to me.”

“Not to me. Not dark enough.”

“Give it a little while. It’ll get darker.”

“No, it won’t. It’ll get lighter. It’s just an eclipse, like I said.”

“Well, that’s just like this blasted planet.”

“Earth has eclipses…”

“Got ants too, but I wouldn’t rightly compare ’em!”

“Hey, look here. It’s our scout,” said the one closest to Felix. “You are the one, ain’t ya? Been working our end of the barricade last coupla fights?”

Felix nodded.

“Gotta be him, Obel. There’s only two scouts. This one and Forest. What’s your name, Scout?

“Felix.”

“Hello, Felix. I’m Bolov, that’s Yin and Obel.”

Felix nodded at each of them.

“Yin’s the Colonel’s aide. He was just telling us the latest.”

“Yeah,” said the one called Obel. “What’s gonna happen now? Forget the rest of that eclipse crap.”

“Well,” began Yin, “Felix already knows. He and Forest found the place where we’re moving to, the mesa.”

“Ah, shit,” said Obel. “We moving again?”

Felix nodded. “The Colonel agreed?”

Yin laughed harshly. “What choice did he have? Just after you left, he began to get down to it with the staff. Gonna be as soon as everybody hits the Can.”

“What’s this mesa?” asked Bolov.

“It’s a big hill with only one way up. We’re gonna hide up there and make the ants come and get us.”

“What about the wounded? We got more than three hundred warriors that can’t move on their own.”

“We’re gonna carry them up there.”

Obel snorted. “What happens if the ants come in the middle of this?”

“That’s what the Colonel was worried about. But his Flank figured a way. Seems there’s two sets of… kinda steps… up to the top of the mesa. We’re gonna move everybody halfway up first. Then we can take a little more time moving ’em the rest of the way up.”

“What happens to the ones waiting on the steps?”

“It gets tricky there. Colonel’s gonna ask for volunteers to defend the steps just below the landing while the rest of the moving is going on.”

“Oh yeah?” began Obel. “Count me out.”

“What’s the matter, Obel?” asked Bolov sarcastically. “Don’t you want to be a hero?”

“Fuck it. You volunteer.”

“Like hell. This looks to me like the kinda deal where somebody always gets left behind. They got anybody yet, Yin?”

“Just Forest.”

“She’s volunteered for this? Hasn’t she had enough?”

“She’s had more than enough, if you ask me,” replied Yin bitterly. “And she didn’t volunteer. Colonel just put her in charge of getting volunteers.”

“He volunteered her himself, huh.”

“That’s about it. She was mad as hell, too. She said, ‘I didn’t volunteer for anything, Colonel,’ and then he started that same old shit about needing only the best warriors and how she’s the best around and how she owes it to her fellow warriors and….”

“That’s enough,” groaned Obel. “I know the rest.”

“That’s what Forest said, too. Said she didn’t want to hear it. Walked away from the sonuvabitch.”

“But she’s gonna do it, isn’t she?” asked Bolov in a tired voice.

Yin nodded. Equally tiredly, he replied, “Oh, yeah. She’ll do it. She always does.”

“Stupid woman,” offered Bolov. “She’s gonna let that Colonel kill her yet.”

“Him or somebody else. Seems they always find a way to stick it to her,” said Obel angrily.

“Every shit duty that comes along, they ask for Forest,” added Yin.

“Why?” asked Felix, suddenly interested. “Why does she always get those duties?”

Bolov exchanged glances with the other two. He shrugged. “She came in second.”

“Yeah,” said Yin. “If she’d won, she’d be the one floating from star to star making demonstrations and meeting the rich and famous.”

“Instead of Kent,” added Obel.

The three men nodded in unison. It had meant nothing to Felix.

“What are you talking about? Second at what?”

“You kidding? the Armored Olympics. On Militar….”

“She met Kent himself in the finals….”

“Hell, she’s famous. Or should be….”

“At least she’s famous to all the CO’s in the Fleet.”

“Fat lot of good it does her,” said Bolov. “Second is just good enough that the CO’s call on her in a pinch. But not good enough that anybody else cares. Felix, I bet you never knew that she was the same Forest who met Kent in the finals, did you?”

“No,” began Felix. “In fact, I’ve never even….”

“See what I mean?” interrupted Yin. “Only the CO’s keep track of that sorta thing.”

“Especially our CO,” said Obel.

“Can you really blame him?” suggested Bolov. “She’s the best around.”

“She’s the best there is,” said Yin firmly.

“Well… Kent’s the best there is, Yin,” said Obel.

“Shit,” said Yin with sudden anger. “Friend of mine was there for the whole thing. He told me all about it. She was robbed. She shoulda won it, but the brass wanted a three-time winner.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Bolov.

“Me either,” said Obel. “You can’t beat Kent.”

“My friend was there, I’m telling you.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Bolov. “Who is it? What’s his name?”

Yin managed to look stubborn even through his face screen.

“She was robbed,” he insisted.

“Well,” said Bolov with a trace of bitterness, “that is the way her luck usually goes.”

“Yeah. Can you imagine that?” said Obel, musing. “That she’s stuck here getting the worst of the shit because of some cheat while Kent spends his time showing off?”

“That would be something,” admitted Bolov. “If it were true.”

“It is true,” insisted Yin again.

“I don’t know, Yin,” replied Bolov. “She’s awfully good….”

“She’s the best I’ve ever fought with, true. But to beat Ken…?”

“Hell yes, she’s better’n Kent ever was.”

“Nobody’s better’n Kent,” said Obel firmly.

“Forest is,” retorted Yin.

“Ah, Yin. You only say that because you know her,” said Obel.

“Fuck that. She’s the best,” replied Yin. He looked at Felix. “What do you think, Felix? You’ve fought with her. Right with her. You think she can beat Kent, don’t you?”

“Kent who?”

All three stared at him.

“Kent who…?”

“Nathan Kent, who else…?

“Three time Class One Armor Champion Nathan Kent.”

“Never heard of him.”

They stared again.

“You’re kidding. You’ve never heard of Nathan Kent?” asked Bolov.

“Where’ve you been?” asked Obel.

“Out of touch, I suppose.”

“Where you been posted? Were you a starprobe or something?” asked Yin with a laugh.

“No,” replied Felix seriously. “Nothing like that.”

“What were you?” asked Bolov, equally serious.

“A civilian.”

There was a long silence while they stared again. In a hushed voice, Bolov finally broke the silence.

“Felix,” he asked slowly, “how long have you been in the fleet?”

“Nine months.”

“Nine months? You’re a greener?” asked Yin, amazed.

“What’s that?”

“He means,” added Obel quickly, “is this your first Drop?”

Felix nodded. “This is it.”

“Holy shit,” breathed a stunned Bolov. “On Banshee.”

“But… but you’re a scout. How could you be a scout?” Obel wanted to know.

“I just drew it.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Obel with finality. “That sort of thing just doesn’t happen.”

“It might,” suggested Bolov quietly. “They needed a lot of people fast. This is a full-scale war, after all.”

“But scout duty?” wailed Obel. “For a man with less than a year? A greener?”

“How long have you guys been in?”

“Eight years,” said Obel.

“Nine years,” said Bolov.

“Five years,” said Yin.

It was Felix’s turn to be amazed. “You mean this is… your career?”

“Hell, yes,” said Obel.

“So you’ve… done this before?”

“Fought before?” asked Yin. “Sure we have. Fought the Barrm on Silo.”

“And the Zee’s. Don’t forget them,” added Bolov.

“How could I,” replied Yin dryly.

“Hell,” blurted Obel, importantly. “My very first Drop was Ervis Three…”

“But you were back-up then…”

“Yeah, yeah,” drawled Yin. “We know you’ve been around. We’ve all been around.”

“Had to have. That’s why we’re alive and talking about it,” said Obel. “You can’t match experience.”

“Felix has,” replied Yin with a short laugh.

“So far,” admitted Bolov, “it’s incredible.”

“Why is that?” asked Felix.

“Felix, you ask around. I bet you a month’s credits that you’re the only greener still alive.”

“I’d bet more than that,” muttered Obel. “And as a lousy scout, too. I still don’t see how he got stuck with that.”

“Maybe he volunteered,” offered Yin.

“He’s not that stupid,” replied Obel.

“Maybe he wants to be a hero,” returned Yin. “Some do. I bet he did volunteer.”

“Bet he didn’t,” replied Obel.

“Which is it, Felix?” asked Bolov. “Are you stupid…?”

“…Or just unlucky…”

Felix smiled slightly to himself. “I didn’t volunteer for anything.”

“You volunteered for the goddamn war, didn’t you?” prompted Bolov.

“Yes.”

“That was your first mistake,” said Bolov.

“Maybe your last,” added Obel. “Why’d you do it? You from Earth, huh?”

“Yeah,” added Yin. “Your family in South America? You here to get revenge?”

Felix stared, taken back. “No,” he said at last. “I’m not from Earth.”

“Yeah?” asked Obel. “Then why did you sign up?”

Felix stared at him, hesitant. Bolov saved him.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “He’s here now. He’s on Banshee, a scout, and fighting. Fighting damn good, too.”

“A lousy scout,” mused Obel. “A greener scout. Do you know where that puts you on the stat? at the very…”

“Cut that, Obel,” growled Bolov. “That won’t help anything.”

“I figure he’s got a right to know.”

“Oh, is that what you figure? Shaddup.”

“No,” said Felix, resigned to it all. “May as well give it to me.”

“It’s the survival table, Felix,” said Yin in a quiet voice.

“And…?”

“And…?” Bolov was hesitant. “Look, Felix, it’s like this: They have this scale that gives the odds for survival for any given warrior on any particular Drop. They change for each Drop. Like, for a greener warrior it’s a four.”

“Four what…”

“Four for ten,” offered Obel.

Bolov sighed. “It means that there are four chances out of ten that he’ll make it. A statistical survival rate of 40 percent.”

Felix couldn’t believe his ears. “You mean to say that only 40 percent survive their first Drop?”

“If it’s a major Drop,” added Obel quickly. “You know, an assault Drop.”

“Look, Felix,” explained Bolov. “There are two kinds of Drops; Major, an assault Drop. That means you’re one of the first to hit. Then there’s the Minor, or backup. The scale I’m talking about depends on it being a major with a casualty rate of at least 10 percent, and with all that being so, a greener warrior would be four on the scale if it was first.”

“Course, it changes with each Drop,” offered Yin.

“Year,” agreed Bolov. “It gets better. Second drop rates a six. Sixty percent chance. Third is seven. Fourth is as bad as the first, though. It’s four, too.”

“Overconfidence sets in,” added Obel. “Know-it-alls that figure it can’t happen to them just because it hasn’t yet. Forget to duck.”

“Yeah,” said Bolov, continuing. “Anyway, it’s… uh, four for the first, six for the second, seven for the third, back to four for the fourth back to seven for fifth. Sixth, seventh and eighth are the best. They’re all eight. Then it starts down again. Ninth is seven. Tenth is only five. You get tired, you know? Anyway it stops at ten. Nobody’s ever made more than ten major Drops.”

“And most Drops aren’t majors,” Yin reminded him. “Most are just backups. Only one out of seven are majors because they rotate you that way. The odds are a lot better on backups. Nine for vets. Even greeners get eight.”

“That’s why greeners should always drop backups first,” offered Bolov. “You get experience that way which helps you later on. It works out better, somehow. I don’t really understand it all. But say you’re like us and you do seven back-ups before your first major. The stat says you then get the same rating as if it were really your third major. You get a seven. See?”

“Vaguely,” replied Felix, understanding a little. “How many Drops have you made, Bolov?”

“Me? Eighteen. But only three were rated as major and, really, only two of them were really bad. For the other fifteen, I was rotated to the rear where it’s a hell of a lot safer. And there’s lots more warriors around you, most times. Course, none of ’em were this Banshee shit.”

“So your odds would be…?”

“I’m at eight, now. We all are. We’ve got experience, the know-how, plus we get lots of rest.”

“The more rest you get, the less chance of battle fatigue,” added Obel.

“Hmm,” said Felix, thinking aloud. “Then I’m at four.”

“Uh, no,” replied Bolov, a trifle embarrassed. “You dropped a scout. That’s different.”

“That’s worse,” said Obel.

“A lot worse,” added Yin.

“Scouts never get better than six, no matter what. And since you’re also a greener…”

“So I’m a what?”

“You’re a one.”

“What?”

“One, Felix,” Bolov said tiredly, sadly, as if pronouncing sentence. “That’s one out of ten. A ten percent chance.”

Felix stared at him, not speaking.

“You should never have been Dropped as a scout your first time,” added Bolov hurriedly, consoling.

“Not as a greener,” agreed Obel.

“You were robbed,” insisted Yin.

Nobody said anything for awhile after that. Occasionally the other three would stare at Felix, awaiting some reaction. But Felix was long past reacting to any of it. Long past lots of things, he thought.

And then the line had brought them to the Can. There were only three spaces. Felix waited while the other three made Connection. And, just as he was about to step up, Forest appeared beside him.

“You’re just now making Connection?” she asked, surprised.

“It was a long line.”

“You don’t have to wait in line. You’re a scout. You get priority.” She stepped in front of the warrior behind Felix and made Connection. “Being a scout is a lot different from being a warrior, my friend.”

Felix sighed, made Connection beside her. “I’ve heard that,” he said in a tired voice and watched his dials rise with the surge of power.

He found that he could no longer finish the stick of nutrite he had started chewing. He spit it into the tube. He rinsed his mouth out with water and spit that out too. Beside him, Forest was making noisy chewing sounds.

“I see you met our little trio,” she said after a particularly loud swallow.

“Who?”

“Bolov, Yin and Obel,” she said with a slight belch. “What did they tell you?”

“Odds.”

“Aw, shit,” she muttered. “What did they say?”

“They said I was a one for ten. Were they right?”

“Well, yeah,” she replied reluctantly. “Did that get to you?”

“Probably.”

“Well, I can see how it could. But Felix, that’s just a probability scale, you know, not a death sentence. It doesn’t have your name on it. For one thing, it assumes average ability, average reflexes. And you’re a lot quicker than that. Besides, you’ve already beat worse odds than that just by being here.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. So do you. Remember A Team? Two hundred and four Dropped, only you survived. As a scout, yet. Far as I know, that’s a first. You’re some kind of record.”

“Some kind…” he said, distantly.

“Never mind that stuff. What else did they have to talk about?”

He turned and looked at her. “They talked about you, as a matter of fact. About your athletic career. The armored….”

“Olympics,” she prompted. “The Armored Olympic Trials.”

“Yes. They seem to think you’re pretty good.”

“I am. Damn good. One of the best.”

“They think you’re the best they’ve ever seen.”

“I probably am at that.”

“They seem to think that you should have won that thing. One of them thought you’d been cheated. Were you cheated?”

“I was beaten. Badly. Cheated, huh?” She laughed softly, a pleasant sound. “What a lovely thought. Felix, I was never really in it. He slaughtered me.”

“He?”

“Kent, Nathan Kent. You’ve probably heard of him.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Really? I’m surprised. He’s quite famous. Not just on Earth, either. He’s recognized on sight on about a dozen planets, and his name is well known on about two dozen more. People care about him that aren’t even sports fans. Everybody’s Hero, he’s called.”

“Everybody’s Hero?”

A warrior with corporal’s markings appeared beside them.

“What’s all this about a hero?” asked a feminine voice. “Who’s a hero?”

Forest laughed. “What for, Lohman? You volunteering?”

“Not a chance,” replied Lohman. She sat down on the sand in front of them.

“Lohman, meet Felix.”

“Howdy, Felix.”

“How do you do?”

“So who’s the hero?”

“We were talking about Kent,” said Forest.

“Oh, yeah,” responded Lohman dryly. “He’s a hero, all right. Everybody’s Hero.”

Felix found himself drifting, wanting to be alone. But he was determined to stay and try.

“I suppose every war needs heroes,” he offered.

“Especially this one,” said Forest and Lohman, in unison. Then they looked at each other and laughed. Felix managed a small grin.

“Well, we better take care of him. Can’t lose him now,” he said.

Lohman laughed again at this, but her laughter had an edge of bitterness to it. “Lose him? How? He’ll never even see an ant.”

Felix looked at her. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“Can’t lose him,” said Lohman sarcastically. “Not the darling of good old Earth. Hell, if something happens to Kent, the people back home are liable to figure out that we aren’t invincible like the politicians have been telling them. No. They’ll be real careful with Kent. Treat him like a newborn baby instead of a warrior.”

“That’s not fair, Lohman,” said Forest quickly. “He’s doing his part.”

“Really? By staging more phony demonstrations while people are getting killed? He’s not a warrior anymore. He’s a joke.”

“He could tear you in half with ten percent power,” said Forest evenly.

“Sure he could,” snapped Lohman, undismayed. “He could wipe me out. But ants are the enemy. What’s he done to them? Where do you think he is right now? He’s so far away, he couldn’t see Banshee with a star-probe.”

“I don’t see why it should bother you,” said Forest.

“Oh yeah?” retorted Lohman. Then, suddenly, her voice became gentle. “Well, what I’d like to know is why it doesn’t bother you, Forest. You did pretty well yourself, but all it gets you is the dirty jobs. Doesn’t it bother you? Don’t you ever wonder why you’re stuck here about to die when the warrior with the best odds for survival in the Fleet will never get a bruise? Just because somebody decided he was gonna be our symbol?”

“Somebody didn’t decide, everybody decided. Or maybe he decided it. He is the best, you know.”

“I know,” snapped Lohman. “That’s the point.”

“Lohman,” asked Forest patiently. “Do you really think he has any choice about where he’s sent? Do you really think he’s a coward?”

“No, of course not. But just the same, I’d like to see him make a Drop.”

“Suppose he did. We could all say: Lookee there, he’s just a regular warrior like the rest of us. Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“Would you? Would you really?”

“I said, yes,” snapped Lohman.

“Fine,” said Forest, sitting up straighter. Felix noticed that she had become quite animated all of a sudden. “So you’d be happy for a while. But what if he bought it? What then? That would be pretty bad, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course it would be bad. I wouldn’t want….”

“You’re goddamn right you wouldn’t,” retorted Forest with a growing fervor. Felix looked at her. “And you know why, too, Lohman. Because he’s not like everyone else and you know it. He’s not. He is a symbol. He’s everybody’s symbol. And more. It’s like… he’s the kind of thing that we all…that’s all of us put together to….”

“ ‘He’s the best of us,’” said Felix, reciting. “ ‘The best of our best, the best that each of us will ever build or ever love. So pray for this Guardian of our growth and choose him well, for if he be not truly blessed, then our designs are surely frivolous and our future but a tragic waste of hope. Bless our best and adore for he doth bear our measure to the Cosmos.’”

“Hot damn,” shouted Forest. “That’s it. That’s exactly it.”

“Where did that come from, Felix?” asked Lohman, equally touched. “Is that a prayer?”

“Not precisely. It’s part of a coronation ceremony.”

“Coronation?” repeated Lohman. “You mean like royalty? Like a King?”

Felix wished he had kept his mouth shut, replied evenly. “A king in a way. The title is Guardian.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Forest.

“Yeah,” agreed Lohman. “But what’s that part about choosing? You don’t choose royalty. Don’t people just have to okay it, no matter what?”

“No,” said Felix. “They can refuse a potential Guardian before he assumes the title.” He was lost, then, for an instant. In the past. “In his youth,” he continued after a moment, fumbling somewhat.

The other two seemed to sense his unease.

“Sounds interesting,” said Forest.

“Fascinating,” echoed Lohman. “What planet did you say this was from?”

“I didn’t,” replied Felix curtly, deciding, suddenly, to end it.

There was a long pause while the other two exchanged glances. Finally, Lohman broke the silence.

“You’re a strange one, Felix. What are you doing here anyway?”

Felix lifted his helmet and met her gaze as best he could through their two face screens.

“Fighting ants,” he replied evenly.

“And what else,” Lohman wanted to know.

“Fearing ants,” he added.

“Hmm,” said Lohman after a slight hesitation. “Well, I must be off. Nice meeting you, Felix.”

And she was gone. Forest got up then too, mumbling something about some sort of duty.

Felix sat there alone and tried not to think but, of course, could not help it. He thought and he wondered and realized that he couldn’t really conceive of what Forest had meant when she had spoken of Kent. He was totally unable to effectively associate what he was doing with symbols or inspiration or… love. For it was a form of love that he had seen in her voice. Perhaps, he thought, it’s because I didn’t start this with any of those things in mind. Or more likely, it’s because none of those things have anything to do with me now. Maybe they never did.

He lay back prone on the sand and gazed up into the artificial twilight caused by the eclipse. In his mind he saw the names of Forest and Kent and Felix and tried to feel some sort of connection between the three of them, some common … something. A little while later he gave it up. And a little while after that, he decided that it didn’t matter at all.

“I’m sorry, Felix,” said Forest.

Felix said nothing. Instead he watched the retreating form of the Colonel, ambling up through the gorge past the jostling lines of warriors passing casualties head over head to the top. It was an awkward exercise. Battle armor was bulky and difficult to get a good grip on, even for similarly suited warriors. Those wounded who were awake helped as best they could, which was little enough. For some positions, though more convenient for the carriers, were quite painful for the cargo. The unconscious were worse since suits were programmed to spread eagle when a warrior lost consciousness in order to keep the spine erect and avoid complicating possible fractures. This posture with arms and legs outstretched wide, made for a cumbersome package. Passing these people along, already a tricky piece of work, was further complicated by their potential delicacy.

Like dolls, thought Felix, as he watched the hurried loading. Mannequins, or cookies. That was it: cookies. Giant gingerbread men.

The Colonel, he noticed, had stopped on the lower section of the landing. He was busily directing the loading, or attempting to. His blue and white striped arms, symbols of his rank, made exaggerated gestures to punctuate his instructions. No one seemed to be paying any attention to his orders, or even acknowledging his presence. Felix turned away, wearied by the sight.

“I’m sorry, Felix,” repeated Forest. “He shouldn’t have ordered you. He should have waited for you to volunteer.”

He looked at her, looked away, said nothing still.

Forest persisted. “It’s not that he’s got anything against you personally, Felix.”

“He said that,” Felix answered at last.

“It’s just that you’re a scout, with a scout’s ability to maneuver.”

“He said that,” Felix replied.

“Felix,” said Forest with some emotion, “try to look at it from his point of view. We’ve got all these casualties to worry about, and you’re damned good at this, you’ve got to admit and….”

“He said that, too. He said it all.”

“Oh,” replied Forest hesitantly. “Well, I can see how you must feel about it. He was wrong. He should have waited for you to step forward. He was wrong.”

“No,” said Felix in a tired voice, “he was right. I wouldn’t have volunteered.”

He turned then, and faced her squarely, closely, so that their faces were dimly visible to one another. For several seconds, warrior faced warrior, pragmatist faced fatalist, silently, eloquently.

“Yes,” said Forest at last, averting her eyes as she spoke, “he was right.” She turned away and started up the hill behind the last of the casualty bearers. “Come on. I’ll explain the procedure.” Felix followed.

At the halfway mark of the gorge, a broad, smooth-faced chunk of tightly packed sand formed a two-tiered landing of sorts. Forest stepped from the gorge onto the first, lower, section and stopped. Six warriors, evidently the actual volunteers, stood in a row, waiting. Felix eyed them curiously.

“This is our station,” Forest began. “I figure they can only get to us in two ways. From the gorge directly, or by using that ledge there.” She pointed to an outcropping of sand which ran the lower length of the landing. “We’ll try to hold them here first. If we can’t, then we move up there to where they’re loading. We only have one route to defend from there.”

One of the warriors stepped forward. “Why not just start up there?” he asked in a high-pitched tenor.

Forest shrugged. “The CO wants us to try to stop them here, before they even get close to the helpless.”

“Figures,” muttered another, deeper voice.

“Okay,” said Forest calmly. “If it gets to be too much, we’ll move in a hurry. Just remember to keep the escape route open. Don’t let anything get behind you.”

“Don’t worry,” said a third voice.

“Maybe we won’t even have to worry about it,” offered the tenor hopefully. “It’s still pretty dark and it looks to me like they’re moving ’em pretty fast.”

“Hey, yeah,” said someone else. “We might get lucky at that. Look at ’em up there.”

“No,” said Felix coldly. “Not up. Look down.”

All turned to look in response to his statement. Below, the ants were steaming toward them from the edge of the maze.

“Okay,” said Forest hurriedly. “You three get with Felix over there on the right side. Cover the ledge. And you three stay with me. We’ll take the gorge. Get moving.”

Felix stepped over into position. He stood stone still, and waited. The others in his group were considerably more animated.

“Wish we had our blazers working….”

“Lucky it’s still dark. Look how slow they’re moving….”

“Fast enough for me….”

“Damn, I haven’t fought ’em hand-to-hand before….”

“Just club ’em with your fist. Give ’em a taste of plassteel….”

“I don’t want to encourage anything….”

There were several nervous giggles in response.

“Shut up,” said the Engine firmly. And all were silent as they waited and watched.

The ants streamed steadily up the gorge, with only one in the lead. Forest, deciding apparently to take a chance, leaped down a few meters and clouted the lead ant on the side of the skull with the toe of her boot. The ant was caught off balance. It literally climbed upward into the blow. The right side of its skull caved in instantly. It slumped, twitching, into the path of the ants behind it.

“Hot damn,” shouted one of the warriors beside Felix.

“See?” said Forest with a quick glance over her shoulder. “There’s nothing to it. Get ready. Let’s hurt ’em.”

The warriors beside her took heart in her words and shuffled eagerly forward to help. They pounced on the ants as they appeared. One grabbed hold of a claw while another pounded awkwardly at the skull. That ant fell, and then another fell to Forest’s forearm and then there was too much happening for Felix to continue to watch.

He met the first ant on the ledge with a wide swinging blow with the open palm of his glove against the left eye. The eyeball burst, streaming. Felix finished it off by simply shoving the creature backward off of the ledge with his foot. He grabbed an awkwardly groping claw from the second and dragged the creature forward into a thunderous forearm smash that shattered the thorax. Without waiting for the ant to fall, he turned to the next.

Beside him the other three plunged bravely forward. They slammed at the ants with their much more powerful warrior armor. They punched and kicked and gouged, missing often, sometimes way off balance. But in that limited area, the ants couldn’t reach them en masse and their crude efforts were effective. Noting this, Felix elected to let the heavier, bulkier warriors match the initial brunt of the attack. He skipped back and forth between the three, lending a well timed blow to each individual struggle. The warriors had a tendency to become entangled with the grasping claws and pincers. But before the embrace could become lethal, Felix was able to step in and make the kill.

At first the warriors would verbally acknowledge his aide, but as the height of battle slowly grew, the acknowledgments were limited to grunts and then finally silence.

The battle continued in this manner for several moments. Despite the lack of skill of the other three, Felix found that they were managing to hold their own. The ant bodies were stacking up onto the ledge, making further attacks more difficult. And when the bodies were used as stepping stones to reach them, Felix stepped down onto the ledge itself and heaved a large, twittering stack over the side. That effort brought a rousing cheer from all three of his fellows, a sound that the engine was no more aware of than it had been of the earlier sounds of gratitude.

It got tougher after that. The ants became more numerous, more insistent in their rush. The time to retreat would obviously have to come soon. Still, it would be awhile. And time was what counted. All seemed to be going well.

And then the Hammer fell again.

Felix had managed to notice the transit beacon’s flickering light a second before the concussion. He had thrown himself and one warrior to the ground and shouted for the others to do the same. But in the excitement of the struggle, the other two had merely looked in his direction, not really thinking about what he had said until it was too late.

The landing shook and rocked and skittered off to the side. A great cloud of sand splashed up the slope into the air around them. There were several horrible cries mixed in with the thunderous roar. Felix stood up as soon as the tier stopped shaking beneath him. Through the cloud of dust and sand he saw that Forest still had two warriors with her. He looked quickly around. His other two men were nowhere in sight.

“Back up to the others,” shouted Forest. “Get up there.”

“But where are the other two? They were right here” —blurted the one man left from Felix’s group, the tenor.

For answer, Felix hauled him to his feet, and shoved him stumbling toward the upper section of the tier. At the steps, the tenor turned to protest. Felix ignored him, lifting him bodily onto the next step. Forest beside him, was similarly hurrying her charges.

“Move it,” she urged in an icy tone. Then, “Oh, shit,” as she turned back around to the edge.

The ants, only momentarily stunned by the blast, were now shuffling five abreast toward them across a recent break in the tier.

“Heads up, Felix,” she said as she met the first ant.

Felix slammed a boot through the first ant, effectively stepping right through its severed midsection, and bashing the one beside it with a backhand blow to an eye. He spun around, freeing his foot, and jammed an armored elbow at a thorax. He took a step back, then leaned quickly forward and rammed his shoulder into another. He lifted the ant and flung it away from him into the paths of several others. He took another step back, then another.

The Hammer fell again.

The tier rocked mightily, ants and pieces of ants were catapulted through the air, some ramming him. He fell to the floor of the tier just as it broke loose from the face of the mesa itself. A crack appeared in its face. There was another quick jerk, the sound of more ripping sand, and Felix was flung into the crack.

Forest struck the wall beside him, tumbled sideways by the tilting sand. A half a dozen ants followed.

They grasped at him, scraping loudly against his face screen with their clattering pincers.

He shoved at them, grabbed at exoskeleton and twisted and heard the sound of it splintering. But there were so many and so little room and then he saw Forest was holding on to an ant that had fallen across his face and he took hold of it too and they both pulled and there was a snapping sound and the ant came apart. He struggled to his feet, felt the ground rumble beneath him. He held out a hand to Forest, saw that she was engulfed by claws and skulls. Again he grabbed one end and she grabbed the other and again there was that sound and again and again and then they were suddenly alone in the crack. Both on their feet now, Forest in front, as they tried to clamber out and once again, the Hammer fell. The tier they had vacated tilted wildly, shuddered and finally sheared loose completely, rolling and tumbling down the slope, crushing hundreds of bodies of the thousands of stunned ants that packed the gorge.

Together, they grasped the edge of the upper tier and heaved themselves up onto it. “Goddammit,” shouted Forest breathlessly. She grabbed one of the able-bodied loaders who sat frozen, holding the floor of the tier for dear life.

“Move it, goddammit. Move these people.”

The warrior looked up at her, unmoving. Forest cracked her open palm against the side of the trembling helmet. “Don’t you hear me? Get moving. You too,” she added to the other loaders, each of whom had been likewise occupied with panic. “Who’s gonna move these casualties?” she shouted, sweeping an arm toward the more than a hundred who still occupied the tier.

With painful slowness, the warriors began to react to her stinging words. They rose and grabbed at the injured and resumed their jobs. Forest was unsatisfied.

“Where the hell’s everybody else? Where are the other loaders?” she wanted to know.

Felix looked around, noticed there were only half a dozen warriors still remaining at the job. He didn’t have to ask where they had gone. He knew. They had run away. Emotionless, he picked up the crumpled form of a warrior and, despite her loud and painful protests, heaved her up onto the mesa itself. He grabbed another, this one unconscious, and cartwheeled its frozen form behind the first.

“Felix, forget that shit. C’mere,” shouted Forest. “Ants….”

He turned just in time to see her deliver a hammer of her own, a crushing fist through the eye of the first of a half dozen ants that had appeared in the gorge beneath them.

Felix lived because he was shielded by the line of warriors between him and the edge.

He wasn’t blinded because he happened to be looking away at the time. Still he saw the flash as though there had been nothing at all to obscure his view, and still he felt it, the worst pain he had ever experienced, as he was tossed far into the air, a helpless puppet. He flew perhaps twenty meters before touching the ground where he rolled and skidded and slid and when he finally came to rest he saw his power dials drop almost to zero.

He had time to lift an arm across his face to cover it from God’s angry boiling gaze and then all was darkness.

The can was only a few meters in front of him, but the body was in the way. He knew he would never make it.

Still, he tried. He focused all his concentration on the muscles of his right thigh and, with incredible effort, managed to draw it forward underneath him. He was afraid to pull it too far, afraid he would overbalance and fall off his elbows. It had seemed to take hours to get them propped up beneath him. If he should fall now, he would never be able to get back up again.

He rested then, as much as he could with the weight of five hundred kilograms relentlessly trying to drive his body into the sand. The helmet was the worst part, he thought. Fifty kilos alone right there. I’d better not fall. If I do, the helmet will break my neck.

He took several deep breaths, then held the last one. He strained and heaved and tried to move his right elbow forward. The pain from his shoulders erupted again instantly, as he had known it would. But somehow he had forgotten how bad it was.

He screamed as bolts of agony lanced through his shoulders and down his back. For a moment his vision unfocused, his head swam wildly. Oh, God, don’t fall… he thought desperately before he fainted.

Later, when he had awakened again, he decided that he was insane and that it was good. I have to be mad. I must be, to get this far. To make connection, I will have to be madder still.

He shut off his mind, then. He didn’t want to carry these thoughts, or any others, further. I will stop thinking right here. At this spot, where I have reached resolve.

And so, not thinking of the pain he must certainly feel, not thinking of the damage he was doing to himself, not thinking of the mere twelve percent power remaining, not thinking of the ants who would surely return….

Not thinking, he tried once more. This time the scream was shorter. He hadn’t enough strength to do it properly.

When he awoke the next time, and tried again, his body refused. Amazed, he tried again, but his body would not respond. This is absurd, I have strength, still, I’m thinking. I must have some energy left. But he could make nothing move, no limb, no muscle.

He became angry. He strained and groaned, sweat streamed from his brow, mingling with tears and fogging the screen and at last something gave. But he was not truly moving, only shuddering with uncontrollable spasms. This made him even more angry. He threw himself against the inside of the armor, he cocked back and forth against it, he yelled at the top of his lungs….

He fell.

He should have died. The fall should have crushed the life from him. But, in this at least, he and his body were united. Together, they refused to die. And then, still together, they slept.

Forest wanted to know where all the real Medics were.

“Dead,” said the man monitoring Felix’s physchart. Vaporized. Like most everyone else. He tapped Felix’s helmet. “You’ll live… for a while. But I’d hate to have your shoulders. What made you try to crawl in a day suit? Most of the skin around your joints is scraped off. Are you crazy?”

Felix considered this. “Yes,” he replied, and stood up.

The pain doubled him over.

“Whoo… Watch it there. Give the painers a chance. Go sit down somewhere for a few minutes. Better, lie down for as long as you can.”

“I’ll watch him,” offered Forest as she stepped up to his side.

“You’re in worse shape than he is. You’d best watch each other.”

The suits made it impossible to lean on one another, but the feeling of mutual support was strong between them as they shuffled slowly past the rows of warriors collapsed around the medical area. Felix crossed toward a likely spot, but Forest said, “No. A little farther. I want to show you something.” So they continued on past those that were wounded and past those that were dead and farther yet, past those who could no longer be distinguished as warriors.

Like a slag heap, thought Felix, glancing briefly at the fused hunks of plassteel strewn about the sand.

They reached the edge of the mesa, where the sand was glazed slick and black by an ugly film.

“Do you know,” asked Forest as they gently lowered themselves, side by side, to the ground, “what thermonuclear means?”

Felix looked around him at the hellish landscape. “I do now,” he said. Only then did he notice the shiny newness of Forest’s suit. He looked down at himself. The black plassteel had been scoured clean by the same wall of sand that had flung him so far.

“You noticed that, have you?” asked Forest, following his gaze. She chuckled dryly. “Good as new.”

He smiled slightly, briefly. “Why did they wait so long?”

“Who? The ants? They didn’t do this. We did.”

“Us? I didn’t know anyone carried atomic weapons.”

“Hell. We are atomic weapons.” She swept an arm about her wearily. “A suit did this.”

“How?”

“Overload. Somebody keyed every relay at once, and then tried to eject. Any warrior suit can do it.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You aren’t supposed to. No one is. It’s a way to go that might be too dramatic to resist. Can you imagine what this would have done to the inside of a starship?”

“Hmn. But still, what about accidents?”

She shrugged, a bulky gesture. “Shouldn’t be too likely. The odds against it happening randomly are enormous, or so I’m told. Makes sense. Some suit functions would be contradictory to others. Who would key every one of them at once and try to eject at the same time?”

“Somebody did.”

“Martinez did.”

He looked at her. She returned the look, glanced away.

“I found out about it at the Olympics. Sounds silly, I know. But there are lots more things a suit is required to do in competition. When I qualified, one of the wardens took me aside and warned me.”

“And Martinez?”

“Martinez was there. As a yeoman. He must have found out somehow. Sounds like him, anyway. Crazy guy, Martinez. We got in a lot of trouble together. See we were bunked in the same tract, right across the quad from each other….”

She stopped talking suddenly, then sat up and began to cough. It was a horrible, choking sound, the sound of something terribly, irrevocably, wrong.

Felix moved toward her as she slipped down again, still coughing. She tried to reach her panel, but failed as the spasm intensified.

“Painer… key… painer,” she managed to gasp.

He picked up her left forearm, found the panel. He fumbled with the keys from his opposite perspective before locating the switch and activating it. Slowly, too slowly, her coughing subsided. He leaned close to her and waited for her eyes to open. When they did, she smiled at him. It was not a smile he would have wanted, it was wistfully sad, heartbreakingly tragic.

“I don’t blame Martinez,” she said at last. “Being carried off by those bloody… I’d do it myself if a scout suit had the capacity.” She noticed his position, still looming over her.

“Don’t worry, Felix. It’s not as bad as it sounds.” He nodded, sat down beside her. They both knew she was lying.

For awhile there was no sound but the uneven rush of her tortured breath against her microphone. Then she rallied a bit, managed to speak.

“Poor, poor, Marty…” she began but choked it off quickly when she heard the break in her voice. Felix winced when he heard her stifling sobs, surprising himself. Why be surprised? he thought. What’s not to understand? No matter how brash she was before, this would have to terrify her now. Who wants to die?

From somewhere deep within him, a tiny voice answered, “You did.” He ignored it.

Her sobbing, now beyond control, turned to weeping. He looked away from her, gazing at the distant spire of the knuckle. It was getting light again, he noticed. Soon the ants would be back at full strength and….

He noticed the slope, suddenly, for the first time actually seeing it and realizing what it meant. This entire end of the mesa had been collapsed by the explosion. Instead of a single narrow route to the top, the ants now had a smooth, black ramp that rose at an easy, convenient angle. My God, they could come up that a thousand abreast. And, of course, they will.

“What a silly choice for a symbol,” said (blurted) Forest abruptly.

“Who?”

“Kent. Nathan Kent. Everybody’s hero.” She laughed softly, gently. Her voice had a dreamlike languor to its rhythm. “I remember the first night away from the compound. He had to buy a meal for all the final qualifiers. The people recognized him and rushed away from their food to surround him. They cheered and applauded and they all tried to touch him. And he looked at me in the middle of all this and… You know what?”

“What?”

“He was so bewildered. Completely lost. And later we talked and I knew he felt bad because he hadn’t known what to do or say.

“Oh, he was charming enough. He couldn’t help that. And funny, too. He made everyone laugh. But he wasn’t… It’s just that they wanted so much from him and… he wanted to do it for them, wanted to be a certain way for them. But… when he tried to be what he thought he should be, it came out as rudeness, like some sort of arrogant….”

She moved, to change position, he thought. But he saw her key another painer.

“He was shy. So shy. And it was so tragic. Because he wanted to be the leader. But he was shy instead. And loving and gentle and he could be hurt so…”

She broke off. She sat up. She peered at him. “I told the Colonel to order you. I used you because I didn’t want to be alone on that landing and I knew you were too smart to volunteer. I lied. I blatantly used you to save my life.”

“Yes,” he replied with soft firmness.

That seemed to exhaust her. She lay back down. She was having trouble breathing.

“I loved Kent, Felix. I loved him so, I thought I would die. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“I knew I must have,” she said and died.

Felix couldn’t believe his ears.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

The Major who had replaced the now dead Colonel as CO, looked up suddenly. “Is that what you think?” Was his surprisingly calm reply.

Felix noticed that the other members of the command staff were also watching him. He ignored them.

“I have no command experience,” he said. “This is my first Drop”

“Your first Drop,” repeated the Major idly, as if even then he couldn’t believe it. “Yes, I had heard that. Remarkable.”

Felix peered quizzically at the Major, at the others, wondering why he couldn’t seem to get through.

“Get someone else,” he said abruptly.

“There isn’t someone else,” said the Major. “All your officers are dead.”

“Get a non-com then,” persisted Felix. “A sergeant.”

“No.”

“Don’t say no, just do….”

“No,” said the Major flatly, his voice now carrying an edge.

“Why not? Why can’t you just?”

“Because you’re the one they want,” blurted the Major suddenly. The anger in his voice now bristled.

“What?” asked Felix, equally angry. “Who wants?”

“The warriors. Your warriors.”

Felix was disgusted by this. “They don’t even know who I am.

“Not your name, maybe. But they do know who you are. And they want the scout.”

Felix stared at the Major, at the others.

“This is insane.”

“Yes,” replied the Major firmly.

“You’re out of your mind.”

The Major, finally, had had enough.

“I’m out of officers, Felix. That’s what I’m out of. Now you just stand there and shut up while I give a couple of facts of war: One. Of the 642 survivors from your original assault force of ten thousand, only 285 are combat ready. Got that? Now…. Two. Of the twenty-three hundred I Dropped with, over six hundred died the first minute because of those goddamn ant missiles homed in on the Transit beacon. That so-called Hammer of yours. Of the remaining sixteen hundred or so, more than three hundred lost effective suit function or were killed outright when that maniac blew his suit. Three. Of the people that leaves me, only ninety percent are combat warriors. The rest are medical, supply, and maintenance types. Which leaves a grand total, if you can count, of less than fifteen hundred available combat personnel. Four. The Terra cannot pick us up for another eighteen standard hours. Five. This damned mesa can’t be held with what we get for one hour, even at night. And last, but not least…. Six. The sun is coming out… now.”

Involuntarily, Felix followed his gaze toward the lightening sky.

“And so, Felix—who thinks that this is insane and who is dead right about that, anyway—what the hell are we gonna do?”

We’re going to die, Felix thought. But he couldn’t say that. Or maybe, he thought again, he should. Why shouldn’t he? He looked again at the Major standing there aggressively a few meters away and thought about the man’s tone, about his fear. He said nothing, finally. He simply met the Major’s piercing gaze.

After a few seconds of this, the Major broke the silence.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Scout, what we’re gonna do. In less than one standard hour, we will assault the Knuckle en masse.”

“Assault…?” repeated Felix dully. “Attack, Felix. In one hour, we attack.”

Lt. Fowler, second-in-command, introduced him to the “volunteer.” “His name is Bailey, I believe,” said Fowler, pointing. “He’s a veteran. Four years.”

Felix only dimly heard her. He was looking at the mass of silicon plaster being hurriedly applied to Bailey’s suit by three medics. He took a couple of steps toward the group and peered down into Bailey’s screen. There was a lot of blood in there.

Felix stepped back, choking with a sudden desire to gag.

“I know,” said Fowler. “But they say he should live just long enough to do the job.”

“Does he…?” Felix began, then found he had lost his voice.

“Does he know, you mean,” asked Fowler.

Felix nodded.

“Yeah. He knows.”

“And….”

“And he’ll do it. I told you. He’s a veteran.”

Felix looked at Fowler, looked away. “Is that what a veteran is?” he asked.

“Partly,” said Fowler.

Felix, for no clear reason, nodded again.

“Come on,” said Fowler brusquely, her voice returning to a businesslike tone. “It’s time to show you the target.”

Felix followed her back to the circle of officers that served as command center. They passed hundreds of warriors preparing to travel.

“Have a seat,” offered Fowler. “And key your input relay. I’ll show you the picture.”

Felix sat, keyed the proper key. After a brief pause, his holos swelled and the three-dimensional topograchart of the Knuckle, appeared transmitted from Fowler.

The view was of the Knuckle’s southern face. The side closest to their position, at a distance of perhaps 700 meters.

Fowler’s disembodied voice began to narrate: “This is from about the center of the maze. Rather imposing is it not?”

Felix granted in response. The viewpoint altered.

“This is from the nearest edge of the maze. Notice the sides still appear smooth.”

Felix already had. Like a sculpture, he thought, gazing at the apparently sheer sides that seemed to have poured upward from the sandy soil. It was as if it had been molten ore at one time. How else could the smooth sloping texture be achieved?

The scene changed again. Now he could see the various sloping folds at the base. And something else: A black ovular hole less than 20 meters above the ground and partially obscured by a vertical ridge. He stared at the ridge—its edge looked sharp as a knife.

“That’s your target, that black oval,” offered Fowler. “There are others that you can’t see from this angle. But the computers think that this one goes almost straight through to the core underneath.” A thin dotted line appeared on the screen, running a twisting course from the sand to the hole. “That’s your route,” said Fowler. “Watch that ridge, it’s as sharp as it looks.”

“How?” asked Felix.

“I don’t know,” answered Fowler distantly. “But it doesn’t matter. It will blow like everything else.”

The scene changed again. Felix seemed to be in the air directly above the spikelike summit of the knuckle itself. The terrain at the base was clearly visible, as well as the beginning of the maze. Several small arrows appeared at various maze entrances.

“The cannon will be here,” continued Fowler. “They won’t actually damage the surface of the knuckle. But they should be able to clear a path for you people.”

Another arrow appeared.

“This is your starting point. Key that.”

Felix touched a switch. The arrow became a permanent part of his “map.” He had done the same with the dotted line showing his route.

“Well, that’s about it,” said Fowler as she stopped the broadcast. “Have you got it all?”

Felix nodded, looked at her sitting on the ground beside him. “A lot of information. Why didn’t the assault force have this?”

“They did. But they never had the right opportunity. Or,” her voice became slightly hushed, “the right weapon.”

“But we do,” replied Felix with bitterness. “Bailey.”

Fowler looked away. Her voice was a faint whisper: “Yes.”

Then she turned back toward him.

“About your command. You’re entitled to added rank. Would you like to be a Lieutenant?”

“Why?”

Fowler seemed to hesitate before speaking.

“Then you don’t care about that?”

Felix thought about it. “No,” he said at last.

Fowler hesitated again, then slid closer toward him on the sand conspiratorially.

“Felix, don’t worry about the command part of it. We’ve found a vet to organize your bunch. He’ll take care of most things. Just tell him what you want and let him do the ordering.”

“What’s his name?”

“Bolov.”

Felix almost laughed. “Anything else?”

“Not that I know of, unless you have questions.”

He stared at the distant spire of his destination, almost completely obscured by a rolling cloud of sand.

“Just one question….”

“Why you?” prompted Fowler.

“Yeah,” said Felix, his voice cold. “Why us?”

She breathed a long sigh into her mike before replying. “Felix, who would you use? The rest of us just got here….”

“You’ve made other Drops.”

“But we’ve never touched an ant. None of us. And you, you and your people, are the three percent, the only survivors from an assault of 10,000 warriors.”

“Maybe it’s luck. Random chance.”

“Not likely. Not in this business.”

“Business? What business?”

“War.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Why? Is it too simple?”

Felix shook his head. “Too sloppy.”

Several flashes lit the area. The light was joined by the hot, razor scream of Blazer cannon.

Felix stood up, watching as the beams arced through the air toward the knuckle. But the beams landed short, in the maze itself.

“Right on time,” said Fowler, standing beside him. “We’d better get started.”

“What’s this for?” asked Felix.

“The maze. We haven’t got time to negotiate it. So we’re leveling it up to the leading edge of the knuckle.”

Felix nodded vaguely, watching giant shards of sand vaulting wildly into the air. Soon the entire maze was obscured by an enormous dust cloud.

“Come on,” said Fowler. “The Major wants to see you before we go.”

“How much time do we have?”

“About…” She broke off quickly, listening, Felix assumed, to some message he couldn’t hear. “None,” she said at last. “None at all. The ants are coming out.”

Together, they ran to the cannon.

The Major was two hundred meters east of the carnage standing off from the rest of his people watching the battle. Lines of warriors met the onslaught of the ants without the help of the barricade—at the mouth of the channel blown through the center of the maze. The ants, jammed together in the middle of the channel for some reason, were growing steadily toward them as rolling dead piles.

Felix was impressed. They were really holding. For now.

The Major had been standing with ponderous armored arms crossed over his chest. He loosened one and pointed past the battle to the foot of the Knuckle just visible over the dust.

“That’s the last spot we can see to cover you, Scout. See it? Looks like a saddle. Or a bench.”

“Yes.”

The Major looked at him. “We’ll use the last of the cannon-fire to cover your approach down the side of the little highway we’ve made. But we won’t be able to help you in there. That ridge blocks our line of fire. But the people you’re taking should be able to hold ’em off you long enough to… plant the charge.”

“Yes.”

“Do it, Felix,” said Fowler from beside them. Her voice held muffled urgency alongside cheerleading. “Do it. We’re all counting on you to….”

Felix regarded her blandly. “To what?”

Fowler shrugged uneasily. “To… to do the job. We’re all counting on you.”

“You mean you’re all counting on me to throw Bailey down that hole, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Shut up, Felix,” snapped the Major. “That doesn’t help. And we can’t hold them much longer.”

Felix looked again at the line of blazing warriors. He saw them, then, as the desperate people they were. He felt the proximity of their panic. They’re not heroes, he thought, they’re stuck.

And he knew that they would never hold for his retreat. Once they reached the Hive, they would be alone.

His group was forming up beside them. A dozen warriors. Bolov.

Fowler faced Bolov. “All set?”

“Yeah,” said Bolov, nodding shortly.

“They all know what to do?” she persisted.

“Yeah.”

“What about Bailey?” Felix asked.

Bolov shrugged, looked at the sand between them. “I think we’d better hurry.”

Felix nodded. “Okay. Where is he?”

Bolov gestured toward the warriors. “Teare’s got him.”

“You do it.”

Bolov nodded. “Okay.”

Felix sighed. “Better get him.”

Bolov nodded again, turned to obey.

Felix regarded the warriors shifting nervously, all eyes on the battle. Or on him. He turned away.

The lines were still holding, the rolling twittering exoskeleton still coming on. He felt something he couldn’t pin down.

Not eagerness, of course. And not simple excitement. Anticipation?

Bolov appeared carrying Bailey over a shoulder.

“You ready?” Felix asked him.

Bolov laughed shortly. “Hell, no!”

Felix smiled distantly. Yes. Anticipation. One way or another, it was finally about to stop happening to them all.

“All right, let’s get down to it.” He nodded to Fowler. “Give the word.”

Fowler nodded, said something only she and the cannon crews could hear. There was a brief pause and then, with a searing scream, the remaining cannon fired. The main thrust of ants pouring through the channel died almost instantly as they were simultaneously broiled, sliced, soldered, by the intersecting hourglass beams.

Felix turned to the ones to follow him, met their joint gaze, turned away, and began the rush down across the blackened sand. He didn’t look back to see if they followed, but loped firmly ahead at a pace a laden Bolov could match. The cannon ceased abruptly as he reached and passed the holding lines. He began to accelerate as the sand flattened out before him. Ant remains smoldered in his path, thinly scattered here to the side of the reeling main body. He glanced at the jumbled mass of enemy as he passed quickly alongside their length. He was drawing no obvious surge.

He chanced a little more speed.

He was almost to the next section of maze—rand cover, past the last lines of remains, before he looked back to the others. They were right behind Bolov in the lead, stumbling up the slope.

Felix kept running, deftly avoiding the smoking ant refuse. He wanted to reach the base of the knuckle, perhaps even the bench itself, before the ants could reorganize their attack. The flashes of blazerfire from off to his right told him he had been too hopeful. The other holes, unseen from his position must already be emitting more ants.

Still, there was hope. The others were still firing, still standing fast against a certain powerful impulse to flee. And, if he couldn’t see ants yet, they couldn’t see him. Or would that matter… Wouldn’t they be able to detect his presence on the very walls of their hive? Would they actually have to see them?

With that thought, Felix leaped over the last rocky steps of the desert floor and pounded up the slopes of the Knuckle itself.

The footing was firm, the grainy surface perfect traction for his plassteel boots. He saw instantly that his proscribed route was unnecessarily cautious; he changed direction abruptly and climbed the slope to the bench in three giant powered strides. The others, he knew without looking, would follow his lead.

The bench was, for the time being, empty. The target hole loomed over him invitingly, only ten meters or so up the slope. The wall here was steeper than he had realized, but still easily navigable. Felix nodded to himself. It was going to work.

He turned and looked back, and the others were almost there. Bolov had dropped back a bit into the crowd to protect his irreplaceable cargo. Felix waved them exuberantly toward him, felt the rush of relief from those others who reached the bench and found it still empty. They turned too, and began to wave Bolov quickly forward. He heard their voices, exultant with unrestrained happiness, “We can do it. We’re gonna make it.”

And then Bolov was there on the bench itself and moving through the crowd, holding out Bailey toward him like some honored trophy, and then the nightmare began. There were screams and shouts and people pointing and firing their blazers at close range and the ants were everywhere, everywhere around them. Not from the saddleback, not from the multitudes, but from the target hole itself. Ten, twenty, fifty ants appeared in its mouth and slid, clawing and flailing, down the steep slope into them. Someone screamed again and Felix was knocked off balance as the ones closest to the attack tried to push back away. He fell to one knee, but dragged himself up quickly, yelling Bolov’s name and trying to reach him through the panicking mob of warriors.

Dimly he heard Bolov respond and then he saw him through the jumbling mass. Bolov had dropped Bailey and was being pushed away from him by the crowd. Felix and Bolov slammed toward one another, reaching Bailey simultaneously, lifting him, staggering, toward the slope and the hole. A blazer struck the slope beside them and Felix screamed for the warriors to stop firing before they killed one another or him.

He stumbled and drove himself against the crowd toward the slope, punching through at last and leaning against it, with Bolov beside him, holding Bailey’s legs in one arm.

Pandemonium. Warriors screaming and firing and trying to run all at the same time. Beams of Blazerfire struck randomly everywhere and Felix motioned to Bolov that they must climb the slope, must do it now while the slightest chance still remained. Bolov seemed to nod or at least seemed to understand for they started up the slope together, slipping and sliding and being jarred by the jostling, teeming warriors and then a mass of ants was upon him and he lost Bailey; he was covered, engulfed by the ants that slid down into them.

He struck out blindly, wildly, smashing, ripping exoskeleton, struggling to get his feet underneath him. Twice he struck not exoskeleton but plassteel and the thought of it made him shudder, cringing. He was up then, and Bolov was beside him and had Bailey and they shouldered through the ants and started again up the slope and there was a horrible agonizing scream as a flash of blazerfire split the air between them, carving a deep, irreconcilable hole through Bailey’s faceplate.

“Oh, my God, my God…” shouted Bolov and he saw that it was not just from the shock of losing their only weapon but from pain as well. For the stray bolt of blazerfire had cut not only through Bailey but through Bolov as well. A pulsing, red-hot bubble had appeared on the inside of Bolov’s shoulder. Felix stared in morbid amazement as the bubble rose and expanded and threatened to burst as it surely must. Bolov screamed again and clutched at his shoulder with his free arm and shouted over and over that he was dying, dying….

Felix had him then, dropping Bailey. He had his helmet clamped tightly to his side with his left arm as he launched them up the slope. His right arm stretched out high for some purchase, the fingers of his gloves clawing wildly at the grainy hive. He jerked and kicked and struggled and slid back some at every movement but somehow managed to get the two of them up the slope and away from the crowd.

They were several meters to the left of the hole itself, parallel to it and the ants couldn’t reach them without slipping down. The few that managed to leap toward them he met with a resounding kick that shook them free of their grip on the wall and sent them sliding down into the roar of battle below.

Briefly, Felix noted the many who were already running away, with the ants hotly pursuing. And farther, he saw that the covering fire from the maze itself had long since halted. He was alone as he knew he would be.

He struggled and kicked out at another ant, sending it sliding and at the same time pushing himself and his cargo farther up the slope. Bolov was completely limp in his grasp, moaning loudly, unintelligibly. Felix grasped him with both hands and yanked him upward onto the slope beside him. He reached for Bolov’s forearm and began to work the relays.

Bolov, seeing what he was doing, began to sob. He tried, feebly, to struggle out of Felix’s grasp. But Felix held him firmly against the slope, slapping away his futilely waving arms. Grimly, he continued to work relays. He looked up once and saw that the mouth of the hole was less than three meters away and just beneath him. He was just in the right position, the ants couldn’t reach him in time. If only they wouldn’t know to toss Bolov away….

The last relay controlled the interior light of Bolov’s suit and then Felix saw the man’s face clearly for the first time, saw that he was perhaps five years older. Saw that he badly needed a shave, saw that he was weeping openly….

Felix placed the surface of his face screen against Bolov’s.

“You know what to do?” he asked in a cold, distant, tone.

Bolov cursed him deliberately, soundlessly and Felix knew that he would do it. He nodded, almost to himself. He judged the distance to the hole, tensed his muscles. Bolov’s voice stopped him cold.

“You, Felix,” said Bolov calmly, hopelessly, “are a filthy human being.” Felix saw the lips working, saw the tongue accentuate each syllable, and felt a weight upon him growing and growing.

But the Engine only nodded in agreement. And then it rolled over, holding Bolov with both hands, and flung him into the hive.

Felix was sliding, down into the mass of humans and ants and tearing himself away and through them and then he was sliding again down the slope of the saddleback and then he was running, running, across the blackened sand toward the maze. He leaped and turned and darted through the ants and the warriors. Some were alive, some were not. But he paid no attention either way.

He shouldered past several slower moving warriors and stomped wildly into the entrance of what remained of the maze. He passed more and more warriors as he reached the levelled area. But he didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate. The fear, and only the fear, controlled. The terror….

Past the blackened sand and to the slopes of the mesa, traveling now as fast as he could travel. Arms waving, eyes flickering, tears welling up in his eyes, he ran. And ran and ran and then he was up the mesa and crossing it and he thought that it was too late now, that Bolov would never be able to do it by now. He must be dead already.

But still he ran, the terror ruling all.

He tripped at the edge of the mesa. He fell, at 100 kilometers an hour, he struck the sand and rolled. He carved deep ruts where elbows and knees dug into the sand. A great cloud erupted around him. He continued to slide across the last few meters and then he fell, completely out of control, down the long slope of the mesa.

As he struck bottom, Bolov ejected, and the battle, finally, ended.

He awoke, briefly to the sound of the Medic’s impersonally soothing tones. He was told that Connection was being made. He was told not to move. He was told of his myriad injuries. He was told that Transit to the Terra was forthcoming. He was told that he had been found at the end of the last sweep for survivors, that he was, in fact, quite lucky.

But he heard none of it. Instead he only stared at the black sky above him. Night at last, he thought. And his «yes reluctantly closed.

The Doctor eyed the worst of the cyst-like bruises, the one that completely covered his right shoulder. “You can’t wear a suit like that, no,” he said.

Felix felt a surge of relief so overwhelming that the awful pain was momentarily eclipsed. He noted the Doctor’s glowering, disgusted expression and felt his cheeks to see if they were red.

They debriefed him and fed him and were surprised to learn, from his recorder, that he was the one. They had surely thought the hero of the Knuckle suitable for martyrdom. They later became angry when he ignored their questions. They thought it was because he now thought himself to be too superior to respond. This belief intimidated one of the officers who marked his personal log with a negative entry. But Felix had been silent not from a sense of superiority, but from shame and suspicion.

They woke him up entering the bay. They laughed and joked and were nervous. Then they became hushed and reverent, when they found his lone sleeping figure at the end of the line of what they thought were empty berths. Quietly, they stowed their gear and crept out into the hall to talk. Out of respect for a Veteran.

The nightmare was odd, intangible even at the time. Some nameless formless fear was reaching out to him. It grew and swelled toward him until he admitted he was waking, that most of him had been awake for some time, and that the fear was not of some nebulous terror, but of his next Drop.

The rest of the bay was asleep. He pulled himself up out of his berth gingerly, wincing from the pain of the cysts. He padded back and forth between the rows of berths. He found he was repeating the doctor’s words over and over again in his mind. It was reassuring, he found.

The lone head of a young man appeared over the edge of a berth. The two blue eyes followed his pacing. Felix stopped at last and stared back. But the young man was not embarrassed by this. Instead he spoke:

“What’s it like?” he asked.

Felix told him to ask someone else.

“Who?” replied the young man. “You’re the only survivor from this whole group. The first one I’ve even heard of.”

“You’re some kind of first.” Forest had said.

How many firsts, he wondered, am I going to have to carry?

He left, just outside, away from the blue eyes. He wandered aimlessly about the corridors of the silent ship. After a while he realized he was naked and returned.

The blue eyes were closed, the boy asleep. Felix eased himself slowly into his berth. He slept almost immediately, the doctor’s words his last conscious thoughts.

The console at the foot of the berth had called to Drop all “available combat personnel” from his squad, his group, his sector.

And his was the only name left.

He kept the horror out of his face when the replacements read this on their consoles. Trying to keep from running, he stepped quickly from the bay. Outside, in the corridor, he skipped toward the Infirmary.

This doctor was pleasant and understanding, refusing even to notice the tremor in his voice as he spoke of computer error. She only nodded and led him to the bed. “Those must really hurt,” she said about the cysts. He nodded gratefully, managing a nervous smile.

The medics came soon and gave him salves and treatments and then a machine covered his body in an ultra-sheer, ultra-thin envelope, leaving gaps only at the necessary orifices.

At first he fought to hide his elation.

Then he was embarrassed by his needless fear.

Then he was slightly ashamed at his attitude.

Later, when he realized that the envelope was designed to enable him to wear his suit despite his injuries, he was too numb to speak, too wobbly to stand.

In the cubicle, the Black Suit embraced him. Dully, he made Connection and watched the dials respond. Then he sat and wept openly.

Heedless, uncaring, Banshee awaits.