Armor

^{PART FOUR} EVERYBODY’S HERO

Felix knew it wasn’t going to work.

He stood up slowly and stepped again to the crest of the ridge and peeked out. A quarter of a kilometer or so below him, the hourglass shape of the Transit Cone faded luminescently in and out of sight with the shifting gusts of Banshee sand. It was an oddly dreamlike scene. He had never seen its like before. Usually the Cone was invisible to the unaided eye. But today the sun had been just right, the texture and composition of the sands just right, so that the outline became intermittently visible. He admired the sweep of lines that narrowed so tightly ten meters above the ground before swelling outward to form the skirt of the Cone. A sudden gust, stronger than any so far and bearing more sand, caused, for just a moment, almost the entire shape to form. It was very pretty.

Felix turned his head to see if any of the others had seen it. But they were busy at the bottom of the dune. Resting or moaning or simply sitting there where they had collapsed, waiting for painers to take effect and staring straight ahead and fearing.

Or dying, Felix amended to himself. At least two of the six are busy with that.

He sighed, turned back around. The gust had receded. Only the lowest part of the skirt was visible. And even that was partially obscured by the semicircle of ants standing protectively around it and waiting.

Waiting for us, he thought.

“How do they know?” said a voice on proximity band from close by.

Felix turned to see Michalk had crawled up beside him. The warrior looked terrible. The sand covered his entire suit save for the small area of the face plate. It was the blood, of course. Felix knew that. The black ant blood. It got on the plassteel and stayed there, cloying, to be covered over by layers of alien soil that would normally have slid off. And it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t affect a suit’s performance in any way. Felix knew that, too. But it was ugly. A particularly gruesome badge of battle. A ghoulish reminder of what had just happened and what was about to happen and… Felix hated the sight of Michalk because he knew his own black scout suit must look the same.

“How do they know?” Michalk repeated. “How did they learn to stand there and wait for us?”

Felix shrugged. “How do they know we’re here, as far as that goes?”

Michalk nodded, a brutal gesture in his huge warrior suit. “But they always seem to, don’t they?”

“They have since I’ve been here.”

Michalk regarded him for some seconds. “How long is that, Felix? How long have you been here?”

Felix looked at him. The warrior’s anxious eyes could just be made out behind the faceplate.

“It’s just,” Michalk added uneasily, “that some of us were wondering.”

Felix nodded. “What’s the date?”

“Huh? Oh. Uh, it’s December standard.”

Felix thought a moment. “Six months.”

Michalk stared. “Six… six months? But… Felix? You’ve been here six months? You mean six months on Active? As a warrior?”

“As a scout.”

Michalk opened his mouth to speak, closed it. He was silent for several beats. Then: “How many drops?” he asked, in a soft whisper.

“Nineteen,” said Felix. “This is nineteen.”

Michalk continued to stare. Maybe he doesn’t believe me, Felix thought. Maybe he shouldn’t. I know I don’t believe it.

“How many majors?” Michalk persisted.

Felix sighed. He had no idea. Further, he had no interest whatsoever in dredging back to find out. He shrugged, said: “Some.”

“Some?” parroted Michalk. “Most?”

Felix nodded. “Most,” he agreed woodenly.

“Shit,” whispered Michalk to himself. “I wonder where that puts you on the stat?”

Felix eyed him uneasily. There had been someone else, a long time ago it seemed, who had talked about stats. “You’re a one, Felix,” he had said. Now who was that? He shook his head. It didn’t matter. He nudged Michalk.

“How’s Gao?”

“Huh? Oh. He died a minute ago.”

Felix nodded. Down to five. “And Li?”

Michalk looked away, into the distance. “She’s going. Too tough for her own good.”

“Yes,” Felix persisted, trying to keep a patient tone. “But how long?”

Michalk looked at him. “Soon,” he said coldly.

Felix knew he wouldn’t get any more. He slid down the dune to the others. He hesitated when he saw Goermann, the captain, sitting hunched over against the wall of the gulley which had been eroded at the bottom of the dune. Felix was certain the man had been sitting in the exact same position several moments before when they had last spoken. Was he dead? Or just gone.

A harsh scream-groan of anguished remorse blared quickly in his earphones and receded. Felix turned toward the other end of the gulley where a medico, his blue warrior suit long covered by the same blood and sand as the rest, knelt over the frozen, spread-eagled form of a warrior whose suit had gone into Traction Mode. Felix remembered the spinal injury that had triggered the Mode. He had dismembered—in passing—the ant that had been holding Li pinned down against a rock while another ant raked hulking mandibles across her back.

The Medico, Patriche, swayed slightly on his knees. Muffled rumbles of partially controlled grief slowly faded from hearing. With a last fond pat of a huge armored arm on the statuelike chest, the Medico stood and turned away.

So, Felix thought, down to four. Time to do it. He turned again toward the still immobile captain. Time to do it, he thought again. Even though he knew it wasn’t going to work.

He knelt down before him. Goermann lifted his head and regarded him in silence.

Felix cleared his throat. “Li and Gao are dead, sir,” he said gently.

The captain continued to stare in silence.

“Captain?” persisted Felix. “It’s time to….”

“Of course, uh… Felix. Of course,” spoke up Goermann suddenly. “Of course. I was just… trying to think of an alternative… plan.” His armored right hand raised up and settled comradely on Felix’s equally insulated shoulder. “Always good to have an alternative route, you know, in case something goes wrong.”

Felix nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, willing to accept the other’s pitiful stab at leadership, or anything else, to finish this.

“Haven’t been able to think of a thing, though, uh… Felix. You seem to have grasped the situation precisely.”

Felix nodded, rose to his feet. It was true enough. He had grasped that they weren’t going to get through. The Captain rose as well, and called the other two over to run it through one last time.

“Now don’t waste time and energy,” the Captain reminded the other two, “trying to use your blazers in a pinch. We’re out of blazer capacity, you both know that. But get it strong in your mind now. I don’t want somebody trying to fire an empty gun at a crucial moment.”

The other two nodded.

“Felix will pick the spot. Don’t try to out-guess him.”

The other two nodded.

“And for God’s sake, don’t hold back on him. The only chance we have is to slam in behind him all together.” The captain regarded them. “Is that clear?”

The other two nodded. They said it was clear.

Felix wanted to laugh. He knew—they all knew—that the other three, including the Captain, were going to hesitate at the last second and leave him alone with the ants. It wasn’t simply the fear and revulsion they felt at ramming into a wall of two dozen monsters. It was… maybe Felix could do it all before they got there and they wouldn’t have to… be engulfed.

“Shit.”

“Felix? Did you say something?”

Felix looked up, saw that he had walked away from the others. Saw them looking at him. He hadn’t realized he had said it out loud.

“Did you?” the captain repeated.

“Nothing,” Felix replied. Maybe good-bye, he thought. He headed for his spot on the far left edge of the ridge. He looked back. The others were spreading out twenty meters apart. He was perhaps twice that distance away from the nearest of them, Patriche, to give him time to reach the greater speed of a scout. He sat down.

Maybe it wouldn’t happen this time. Maybe the Engine wouldn’t come.

He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that thought. He wasn’t at all sure what frightened him more, being alone with no protection at all from the fear and from the ants, or that horrible sense of dropping away, that terrible vertigo that seemed to make him feel as if he but hung at the edges of himself, watching himself, his Engineself, perform. Watching it kill.

But when he thought of what he was about to do. When he pictured himself streaking down the dune toward the wall of ants waiting at the Cone, guarding his only route to safety… When his mind’s eye pictured the massing and gathering and lumbering together of those huge stalking zombies, their grotesque mandibles groping for him, globular eyes rotating obscenely in dry sockets as big as his head…

And when he saw himself dart suddenly toward them, as he must do, and accelerate right at them, as he must do, and plow into them, as he must do…. And when he knew it wasn’t going to work. When he knew they weren’t going to get through….

The sudden nauseating spasm doubled him forward onto his knees, his chin plate struck his chest with a grunt. He thought his stomach would pull him in half. My God! My God! You’d think it would get easier! But every time it’s even more wrenching than before.

His head swam, the vertigo shifting him randomly in eddies of its own. He closed his eyes, gripped his sides with his elbows. He gasped.

“Felix?” sounded the captain’s frightened tones. “Felix! Is there something wrong?”

He stood up, his muscles still taut but released. “Fine,” replied the Engine.

“Very well,” said the captain. Felix saw him raise an arm, saw the others acknowledge the preparatory gesture. A second later he saw the arm drop and he was up and over the ridge and flying down its side, his piston-driving boots tearing angrily precise gashes in the sand.

Bolov, thought Felix suddenly, in a last plaintive desperate attempt at irrelevance. It was Bolov who had said he was a one. Bolov!

The man I threw away.

And then he had receded with his fear and .guilt, had slipped back into his cowering. The Engine was on the move.

Below, the ants reacted en masse, jerking to ghoulish attention. There were maybe thirty of them lined up side by side and they shifted and bulged toward the direction of his approach, massing for the collision. The bulge flattened abruptly, however, as the other three were sighted as well. The ants scrambled uncertainly for a moment before flattening out their line once more into a semicircle. Every approach was guarded, covered. Thus thinned out, the barrier they formed looked deceptively vulnerable, as if it were only a line of men and not exoskeleton horrors.

He brought himself to the right with a slight lean and an added burst of acceleration. He must go faster! Faster! And his legs flashed beneath him.

To his right the other three had already, prematurely, begun to veer in his direction. The captain was watching Felix so carefully he stumbled and almost fell. Patriche, he noticed, had already begun to slow up. Damn!

Only Michalk at the far end of their sweep, followed the plan. Head forward like a bull, he sprinted determinedly down the hill straight toward the ants.

Distantly, Felix wondered if it might work after all.

The Engine, uncaring and unexpectant, chose that moment to dart viciously to the right in front of the others. He picked a spot to strike the mass, saw the ants swell in anticipation, accelerated harder, gritted his teeth, considered a fake back to the left, discarded the thought along with its image of tripping and sprawling into the nightmare at one hundred kilometers an hour, out of control and flailing as they leapt to absorb him, pouncing….

The last fifty-meter stretch of slope gave away abruptly to the flatlands, jolting his stomach but adding immensely to his speed. He strained even harder. Faster, faster, he must slam into them! Slam into them, tear them back and….

And, at 120 kph, the Engine did just that. At the last second he leapt forward, wrapping his limbs into a lethal torpedo, and hurtled into the first ant. It seemed to simply disappear before his faceplate, crushed flat. Behind the first were two others leaning toward him. Not bracing or preparing, but just ants, dumb stupid mortal things that simply reached for him, the thing they were here to want and Wham! he was through their splintering bodies, exoskeleton disintegrating in the alien air and he was tumbling to his left and his legs were rolling up over his head out of control and the next ants rushed before him and he struck them faceplate-first, the concussion so staggering that for just an instant he saw nothing but lights and patterns on his retinas and Wham!—Wham!—Wham! he crashed into the last, decelerating massively in a single second until silence and stillness for a precious half a moment.

But as he jerked himself to his feet they were already reaching for him, crowding around him, groping, their mandibles clacking and clattering against the plassteel, huge globular eyes blocking out the ugly gray sunlight with ugly black menace. He bashed the flat of his armored hand through the thorax of one, slashed sideways with his elbow against a midsection, felt the splintering, twisted away underneath a massive looming mandible, gripped and jerked and tore loose a pincer wedged clinging into the waist seam, spun again out of still more grips, felt them close up behind him, all around him now.

Where the hell were they!! He was still five meters from the edge of the Cone! If they didn’t back him up now… ! They must come now! Now!

The most jolting collision yet was Michalk slamming into him from behind. Thank God—Thank God! “Michalk…” he mumbled to him or to himself, twisting again to his feet and vaulting forward through the two in front of him, straining forward, only a few meters away, they could make it, they could make it! He butted to his left, driving the side of his helmet into an eye, grasped the midsection before him, ignoring the pincers and claws slamming viselike against his sides, and lifted and pushed and shoved and strained a step, then two, then three.

Behind him he could hear Michalk grunting, and slamming forward, gasping and stomping and straining, straining to follow. There were no signs or sounds from the others.

He slogged forward, ignoring the brutal blows that rained against his sides, his head, ignoring the clutching clasping pincers, ignoring the looming globular spheres rolling monstrously before his eyes. Another step. Another. He strained and heaved and struck out and butted again and stomped sideways against a trunklike hooflike leg thrust upward at him, drawing him off-balance. Another step.

“Felix!!! Feeeeliiixxxx!” screamed… who? Patriche? The captain? “Feelixx!!!” sounded again, very close, and then cut off muffled by ants and fear and, lastly, horribly, by that most horrible Whumph! of air escaping a bursting, peeling, armored suit.

He twisted again, stomped again, strained some more and some more and whipped about breaking grips another step, clouting at last the pincer scraping his faceplate, growling and thrashing forward. The air filled suddenly with dust, a gusting blast of poisonous bile whipping the sand about him and….

The Cone was there. A step away at most. It shimmered briefly through the tangled, clutching, exoskeleton jungle. It was there. There! He could spin some more or, wait! he could spin all the way around and drive backward with the leverage—there were only these three holding him, the other ants reaching awkwardly and without purchase in their haste.

He spun completely about, ripping loose at least two grips. He dug his heels into the sand.

He screamed.

Michalk… pieces of Michalk were strewn, stretched, entangled in the ants that had torn his suit open, ripped it open to their mandibles and pincers. They had blown him open into them. His eyes had exploded outward through his faceplate. His skin had fast-frozen like burned tar.

Screaming again, Felix vaulted backward into the Transit Cone, dragging two ants with him.

Blinding Transit light. Then darkness, then the patterned heaving, but a shaking, shimmering, too, a shuddering as though his suit wanted to explode and. …

The colt bright lights of the drop bay appeared overhead. He started to reach out for….

And slammed again to the metal floor. The ants! The ants were still on him! They had stayed on him and they were they were crazy! The beam, the ship, the Transit, something had driven them wild. They shook in mad, impossibly rapid convulsions, palpitating, vibrating into a blur. They were dead. They had to be. But they still held him! They were still clamped to him with pincers and claws and as they churned and convulsed, they slammed him against them and between them and up and down against the floor.

The pain seared through him as his body rocked between them. He felt muscles tear, felt his shoulder socket quake and throb and burst loose, felt his leg being twisted… thrown, snapping, against his shoulder blades.

His suit relented at last, popping outward into Traction Mode. But still the ants held and still they shook him in their spastic frenzy and still the pain grew and he was frozen into the mode, unable to fight back or crawl away.

White-faced techs appeared over him. “Get them, goddammit!” he screamed. “Get them!” And one of them held out a tentative gloved hand toward one of the ants to pull it away but the massive corpse vibrated so it was impossible to grasp. The pain was swelling, breaking over his eyes, rushing to the top of his head, slamming into his forebrain. “Get them off!” he screamed again.

And then, as one, the ants stopped. Turned off. Run dry. Still. Dead. He was no longer churning.

He opened his eyes, not remembering when he had closed them. The tech was leaning over him, hands braced on knees and saying something about the medicos and the ants being dead and not to worry, just lie there.

He closed his eyes again, the pain thrusting him down into cool darkness. He fainted, his teeth still gritted tight, his last thought: Never again.

Never, ever, again.

He awoke and remembered. It hadn’t worked. Michalk….

Michalk.

No one else had gotten through. No one else had gotten close.

But I got through. I got through. I always get through.

Damn me.

Never again.

He slept.

Felix remained an extra day in Intensive Medical because his nervous system had developed immunity to the standard formula propaderm. An alternative was found and administered, allowing time for the rebuilt musculature of his left thigh to set. When he suggested to a confused meditech that his several past exposures to the vitro may have caused the immunity, she merely laughed.

“You have any idea how many exposures that would take, Soldier? At least eight. Maybe ten.”

She laughed, patted him on a cheek, and bounced jauntily away, missing his reply that it had taken, in fact, twelve.

There were no troubles with his broken bones. There never were.

* * * * *

He rode to debriefing in the Barrel, newly installed aboard the Terra. It was his first trip down the tubes. He hated it. It was not that he didn’t appreciate the idea behind it. It did cut down the traffic of stretchers in the corridors. But when they strapped him into his conveyer pod, it reminded him of the worst of the nightmares about the suit.

The meditech awaiting him at Intelligence Station had been feuding with the steno before he got there. Felix provided more fuel.

“This is just what I’ve been saying, dammit!” said the meditech, his hands jammed angrily onto his hips. “This man should be given a lot more rest before having to submit to your… whatever it is you do that you think is so damned important that you can’t even take the time to….”

“Ngaio, please!” the steno replied, arching her eyebrows in Felix’s direction. “Can’t we finish this at some other time?”

“Oh, sure!” snapped the meditech disgustedly, shoving the stretcher against her with a slap of his palm. “Excuse me for living!” he added and stomped away.

Felix, still strapped in, could only refuse to excuse him for now.

The steno was apologetic, profusely, off-handedly. Then she became businesslike, running through the Sole Survivor Questionnaire like a pro. Felix’s replies were equally businesslike; he was something of an expert at this particular routine.

Noting the time it had taken to get through it, the steno smiled at Felix and said: “You’re pretty good at this.” She patted Felix on the shoulder and added jokingly: “You must have done this before.”

“Twice before,” Felix replied, a response that would have astonished the steno had she heard it. But then came the angry return of the Meditech, complaining that he simply could not, “in the best interests of the patient,” allow this grilling to continue. The meditech plucked the cigarette out of Felix’s mouth and refastened the straps. Then he wheeled the stretcher to the access plate and stood there, grumbling to himself.

“Ngaio?” came whispered at them from just around the bulkhead. “If you could just give me a second to explain…”

It took an hour. Felix stayed strapped, out of earshot, out of mind. Out of giving a damn where he was. He slept, awaking in the Barrel.

When Felix told them he wasn’t dropping again, they sent for a fresh-faced, rather handsome, young psychotech who managed to destroy his own credibility with a single, breathtaking observation. “Whew! I had no idea these Starships were so big\ I damn near got lost getting here.”

Next he plopped down next to Felix’s bed, patted him on his recently dislocated shoulder, and produced a cigarette. “Mind if I have one?” he asked.

Felix not only didn’t mind, he offered to install it.

The psychotech’s glamorous features registered his startled surprise for only an instant before sliding quickly and easily—like slime—into the humor-him smile reserved for only the maddest hatters. His first series of questions fitted well with the smile. Felix, stone-faced and trembling, refused at first to answer. But he eventually relented. He found the man incredibly patronizing, even for an idiot. But the veteran’s need for easy trivial conversation welled up in him strongly. Clinically.

The Psychotech left after half an hour, assuring Felix he would return the next day. On his way out of the ward, he managed to catch the eye of a meditech and request Felix’s records. The meditech seemed astonished that the shrink hadn’t had them all along.

The Psychotech clapped her on the shoulder and said that he never looked at the records first. “I look at the man,” he added. “He is an individual, not simply a number.”

Felix couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes. Later that night, he awoke and laughed some more.

Three days later, the Psychotech returned to tell Felix (“It is Felix, isn’t it?”) that he had given his case a great deal of thought and had decided to have him transferred to a soft duty for the time being. Soft Banshee duty. “Like falling off a horse, you know. Got to get right back on.”

* * * * *

That night Felix was told to return to his squad bay. He was told that the change meant nothing other than a shortage of beds for non-restrained psyches. Felix accepted the lie for what it was.

The next morning, his screen beeped him awake from the foot of his bed to inform him that he had been transferred to auxiliary duty as part of a squad due to drop the next day with Admiralty Staff. He was further informed that failure to report would result in charges being preferred against him for dereliction of something or other.

Felix slept the rest of that day and most of the next night. He awoke only once. He lay in his bed, staring at the overhead and smoking for almost two hours. He spoke once, just before rolling over and going back to sleep.

“And do what?” he said to the shadows on all sides.

The psychotech was just outside the lockers to wish him Off. He brandished a coil before Felix’s face. Felix recognized his service ID number on the casing.

“I’m going back right now and go over every word of this. We’ll talk when you get back.” He leaned forward next, almost whispering. “Don’t worry, Felix. A lot of people doubt themselves in the beginning. It’s only natural.”

Felix tried not to hate him as he tried not to hate individual ants. But, as with the ants, he failed.

In the drop bay, surrounded by aides, staff, and, to his astonishment, members of the press corps, Felix met Nathan Kent. It was to be his first drop. Kent asked Felix if he had dropped before.

Felix said that he had.

It was morning on Banshee.

The sun sat low on the horizon, shimmering sickly green through the foul atmosphere making long shadows and heat for the ant coming up the dune to kill him.

Felix stood alone atop the dune, a bluntly jagged mass of coarse and crusting sand, and regarded the lumbering monster. It was clumsy, even for an ant. Clumsy and slow and ridiculous. It was, of course, the cold. He turned and glanced toward the hated sun. It would be ant weather in a very short while. Less than an hour, perhaps! He returned his attention to the ant, slogging determinedly. His examination was born of an oddly surreal detachment macabrely imbued with great attention to detail.

Such as…. How far away, at that instant, was the ant from being close enough to kill him? He figured thirty meters. Now twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.

How fast was it coming to kill him? Not very. The cold, still. Twenty-five.

How soon would it be there to kill him? Soon. A minute, maybe. Still twenty-five meters, he noted, as the ant stumbled against the slope.

How much difference was that morning sunshine making? An interesting question there, Felix decided. The staggering sluggish ghoul it was now could only kill him slowly. The skittering lunging ghoul it would become, on the other hand, could kill him… less slowly. He figured the ant would still be cold and slow by the time it arrived. There were only twenty or so meters left.

And how, while he was at it, would the ant go about killing him? Another interesting question. Fascinating. Would it, for example, simply stomp to the crest of the dune and hammer him to death by, say, bashing his faceplate into his forehead? Probably, Felix thought, at eighteen meters.

Or maybe it would just reach up and clamp onto his knees and drag him down where it could crush him to death by wedging the razor-sharp edges of its pincers into the seams of his suit. Might do that. Might do both. Hammer now and tongs later.

Ten meters. The ant had reached the last and steepest section and begun to heave ponderously up the pockmarked slope. It tripped. Both globular eyes rolled upward, the spinal shaft arched stiffly, the great skull-head tilted forward, and it fell. It fell straight back, in slow motion, like a huge tree. It slammed back-first with a dull thud, sending a great sheet of sand splashing into the air.

As it hit, the ant began twirling its claws for balance.

Felix shook his head. “Dumb jerk,” he muttered. “Now you’ve got twenty-five meters to go again.” He smiled, for some reason, caught himself at it, stopped it. He sighed deeply. He knew what was wrong.

He didn’t believe.

Still. After six months and twenty drops. After uncounted injuries and countless horrors. After all the killing—of the ants before him and the people around him. After all the pain, all the terror. Still, he could not fully believe it.

He looked away from the ant and scanned the horizon. Endless dunes. Some were smooth, but most were stiffly crusted, with jagged edges and harsh crumbling bluffs, victims and creations of the searing erosive winds that could pack and jam even the largest of them together in a single day before blasting them flat in the span of another. Felix never recognized any place on Banshee, however often he might be dropped in a given area. There were always new dunes, new ridges, new mesas to be found. Even the damned sand could change. The geotechs had catalogued something like two thousand different grain patterns. And with the different colors and textures and formations of each, nothing ever seemed truly familiar.

So he never knew what footing to expect. Once, fleeing wildly and alone, he had leapt from atop one firm ridge and sunk out of sight into the next. It had taken him a long time to dig his way out. They had almost had him that time. Another time—fleeing again, alone again—he had come upon a wall of sand as smooth and strong as plastiform. His powered armored fingers had only just barely managed to carve the toeholds he needed to scale it. They had almost had him that time, too.

A kilometer to the west was a sea glowing a rich innocent blue between two towering ridges. The beauty of it offended him. For it held no water as man knew it. It wouldn’t even freeze. Too much acid. Even the ants avoided it, the reason for dropping here.

Felix glanced down to see the ant managing, at last, to stand erect once more. It began, without hesitation, to clamber toward him once again. He watched it take a few lumbering steps. He couldn’t be sure—it might be only his imagination—but it seemed more agile than before. The sun had barely moved; it couldn’t be warm enough yet.

Still, it could happen very quickly and there was never any warning. More than once he had been surprised by sleepwalking ants which began needing thirty seconds to take as many steps but were suddenly, two seconds later, ten steps closer and on him and raking at his faceplate.

But this one, he decided after a moment, wasn’t ready for that yet. Not quite done. What he ought to do, he knew, was change dunes. Pick one with a shaded approach that would keep the ant cool while it climbed. The ant wouldn’t notice. Or care. It would simply come at him, directly at him, through sun or shadows or blazer fire. So Felix should move.

But he didn’t. He just stood there where he was and watched the ant.

It was this sight, this creature, that he found hardest to believe. So damn big—half again as tall as a suited man. And incredibly strong, incredibly resolute, incredibly hard to kill. And it must be killed. There was no other way to stop it. It didn’t care about fear. It didn’t care about pain. It didn’t care about death. It didn’t care about anything but killing people.

But you really care about that, don’t you? Felix thought. You love that.

Below him, the ant tripped again, this time on its own foot pad. It fell forward against the slope, driving its claws into the sand almost to the shoulder joints. It struggled a bit, trying to pull itself out but only shoved the mandibles deeper. For a moment it paused, staring at the holes it had made. It didn’t seem to know what to do. Then it began to rock violently back and forth.

Felix snorted disgustedly. It was about the worst thing it could have tried. “But it’ll work anyway. Won’t it, Ant?” he asked. “Because you’re so fucking strong.” Felix smiled bitterly, without pleasure. “Too dumb to get out of the shade, but oh-so-strong! And so eager to get me somehow.”

Anyhow. That was another thing about them. Ants didn’t care what it took to kill people. Bashing them to death, burning them with blasters, peeling them piece by frozen piece from their armor—they didn’t care how. Ants would kill other ants to kill people. They would kill themselves to do it.

And they didn’t care how long it took, either. This ant would climb this slope as long as Felix stood atop it. It would climb and slide down and climb and fall down and climb and on and on, trying, trying, through this day and the next and the next. Until it had climbed the dune, or had dragged it down around it grain by grain or starved to death trying. A robot.

Less than a robot. Much less. Mindless. A wind-up toy.

And yet….

Ants had tools. Elaborate, sophisticated tools. They made them, knew how to use them. And they had their hives and they had their blasters and…

“Hell!” Felix cried aloud, “you’ve got space travel! Star travel, in fact. You attacked earth.” He stared at it, shaking his head. “Damn you, anyway!” he groaned, impulsively kicking the sand at his feet. A small shower cascaded about the ant. A small patch struck one of the eyes and stuck there.

The ant had managed to work free one of its claws. It used the curved edge to scrape the sand from its eyeball. It made a harsh rasping sound. Felix shuddered and turned away.

Command Frequency sputtered. “Felix?” asked a voice he recognized as Colonel … what? Shoen?

“This is Felix,” he replied.

“Felix, this is Shoen. Have you still got that ant?”

“Killing him now,” he replied with relief, reaching for his rifle at last.

“No, no, no! Don’t kill it!” cried the colonel. “I told you not to!”

Felix sighed, keyed the safety back on. “So you did, colonel. But I thought that, since you’re….”

“Don’t think, Felix. I’ll tell you when.”

Felix counted to ten.

“Felix?”

“Yes, Colonel?”

“You didn’t kill it, did you?”

“No, Colonel.”

“Still got it, then?”

“Colonel, there’s no third way.”

“Uh, yes. Of course. All right, Felix. I have you on my holos now. We’ll be there shortly.” There was a pause. “Felix, I want that ant.”

“I want you to have it, Colonel,” he replied flatly, keying off the frequency with a vicious snap of his chin and turning to….

The ant struck him so hard it unhinged his senses. He was unaware of the blazer flying from his grasp, unaware of spinning through the air, unaware of falling. Only when he slammed to the hard floor of the gulley behind the dune, some fifteen meters below his perch, did he react—in agony. He put a gloved hand to the back of his neck. He had landed there, a concussion that would have killed an unsuited man instantly and which should have broken his neck, but hadn’t.

Why am I still alive? he had time to wonder before the shadow loomed over him and there was no time for anything but the struggle and maybe no time even for that for all was cloudy and indistinct, the ant hazy before him, but moving so quickly, hammering at him, smashing at his chest and faceplate but he couldn’t seem to move so quickly as he should, as if he were in a thick mist that held him but freed the ant to rake and pummel him from side to side. My God! My God!

And then, suddenly, his eyes snapped into focus upon the coarse fibers of the ant’s midsection swinging before him and the claws smacking down viselike onto his upper arms and the pincers… the pincers!

One of the pincers was already into the waist seam, it’s curved, scimitar-sharp edge slipping into the narrow slot and sawing machinelike back and forth within it. The image froze him. The image, this image, of death—of Death, dammit!—seconds, moments away. The seam wedged through and splitting and him, Felix, all of him, his thoughts and memories and bones and intestines spewing out the tiny hole, pulsing crushed stone-frozen blood jutting….

“No! NO!” he shouted in a disgusted furious refusal. “NO!”

And he erupted. He had no purchase, no leverage, no position—the ant had all of those, leaning over and down upon him, claws and pincers wedging and tearing. But he had fear. He had that. Felix erupted with that. He Shook and warped back and forth. He vibrated and wrenched. Up and down and back and forth, none of it enough by itself, but none of it alone. He dragged one leg loose, got a knee up, got an armored boot planted firmly. He lifted up off the sand, bringing the ant with him, and slammed back down against it.

The concussion tore one of the claws free of its grip. It tore the pincer clutching his waist seam off at the joint. Felix used his free arm to hammer at the ant’s skull again and again and again and again and….

And then he was free from it and backing away, chest heaving. The ant stood erect, too, coming at him again. But free now and ready, he stepped inside of the arc of the sideswiping claws and pounded upward into the thorax with three rocketing forearms in a row. The ant staggered straight back and fell full-length into the sand.

All right! Felix thought, stepping forward to drive his boot into the brain case with a single, hurtling….

“Felix!” shouted Shoen from the far end of the gulley. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He spun around toward her furiously, his chest still heaving. “What the hell does it look like?” he demanded.

There were two warriors with her as well as someone wearing one of those all-size p-suits. One of the warriors, he noticed, was holding his blaze-rifle.

“I told you not to kill that ant,” she said angrily.

He pointed a shaking finger at the creature struggling to rise. “You shoulda told him,” he snapped back.

“Felix, I told you I wanted it alive.”

“He’s all yours, Colonel,” he replied stepping aside as it rose to its pads and lumbered toward them.

“Huh? Oh. Ling! Kill it.”

One of the warriors raised an arm and blazed its head neatly off. It collapsed as if exhausted into a heap. Felix stared, unable to speak.

“All right, people, get to work,” added Shoen. The others hurried past Felix toward the body. One of the warriors handed him his blazer.

“Here you go, Scout,” he said pleasantly.

Felix nodded dumbly. He snapped the rifle into place on his back. He stared at the three busying themselves with the carcass. He stared at Shoen, walking easily toward him. He shook his head as if to clear it.

Shoen, looking at him, laughed suddenly, all trace of anger gone. She patted him on the shoulder heavily. “Easy there, Felix,” she began. “I know it must seem a little….”

He shoved her arm angrily away.

She laughed again, turned to the others. “Is it all right? What you need?”

The tech wearing the p-suit looked up from her work. “Fine.”

“No damage?” insisted Shoen.

The p-suit shrugged. “Nothing important. Missing a pincer.”

Shoen regarded Felix once more. She seemed to be holding back more laughter with great effort. “What happened to its pincer, Felix?”

Felix forced his voice to stay calm and flat. “My guess would be birth defect, Colonel.”

Shoen laughed again, a pleasant, breathy sound. “I see,” she replied, reaching forward and pulling the pincer loose from his waist. “And what do you suppose this is?”

Felix glanced down. “Lodge pin,” he said.

Shoen laughed again. She tossed the pincer away.

“Got it, Colonel!” cried the p-suit, holding something in the air for them to see. Felix stared. The tech held a length of ant spine between her gloved hands. It twisted and turned in her grip like a beheaded serpent.

“Great,” replied Shoen. “You three hurry up and get that back to the Bunker.”

“Have they dropped it yet?” asked one of the warriors, Ling, the one who had blazed the ant.

“They will have by the time you get back.” The Colonel looked at Felix again. “You oughta come, too, Felix. Should be quite a sight.”

Felix only stared at her. She laughed again.

“Colonel?” called the tech. “Aren’t you coming?”

“No. You three go ahead. I’ll stay here with our scout.” She waved them off. “Felix, you really don’t know what’s going on here, do you?”

“No.”

“You usually sleep during Briefings, do you?” Felix took a deep breath.

“What Briefings are those, Colonel?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been Briefed, Felix….”

“Very well.”

“Must’ve been ten Briefings on this drop. There were two on the bunker alone.”

“Imagine that.”

She looked at him. “Felix, they wouldn’t have dropped you without a Briefing.”

“Of course not.”

“That would be insane.”

“True.”

“They’d never do it.”

“Never.”

Now she stared at him. “Are you telling me…? But, why? Why would they do that?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

She wanted more. Under her repeated urging, Felix gave it to her. He told her, without detail, of how he had been both assigned and dropped within twenty-four hours. No briefing. No explanation. No option.

Shoen found it incredible.

Felix shrugged again. “Welcome to Banshee.”

Shoen stared at him. “But, Felix, I’ve never heard of such a… Hold it a second,” she said suddenly, cocking her head. For the next few moments she was silent, conversing, no doubt, on a frequency he didn’t receive with brass he didn’t know. She broke off at last. “C’mon, Felix. I’ve got to get back to the Bunker. They’ve got another snip for us.”

“Snip?”

“Spinal section. C’mon. Uh…” She hesitated.

Felix pointed across the dunes. “That way.”

“Of course,” she muttered.

They set off for the original Transit Area with Felix in the lead. It took longer than it should have for Shoen kept stopping and looking around her. Felix studied her carefully each time she did this, furiously hoping for some sign of purpose. For any sign of any kind that would tell him that she was not what she appeared to be: a tourist.

After several stops and much rubbernecking he gave up. She was Lt. Colonel Shoen, his boss, and a rookie. She had never been on Banshee before. The realization chilled him.

Halfway there she stopped abruptly, said “Dammit!”

He stopped beside her and waited, not at all sure he wanted to know.

She looked at him and shook her head. “Dammit,” she said again. “They’ve dropped it already.”

He took a chance. “Dropped what?”

“The bunker, of course.”

Felix sighed. “Of course.”

“You don’t know about that either?”

“No.”

She stared at him, gloved hands on armored hips. “Felix, what are you doing on this drop? Why are you here?”

“Therapy,” he said, remembering the psychotech.

“Come again?”

“I don’t know, Colonel. I really don’t. Tell me about the bunker.”

They started walking again, side by side, up the long sloping edge of a dune. When they reached the top, Shoen pointed a heavy armored arm and said: “That’s the bunker. Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

Less than a quarter of a kilometer away, on the broad flat beach beside the poison sea where he had first dropped, where before there had been nothing but flat sand and nervous warriors, was a building.

Felix stopped dead still when he saw it. It was indeed quite a sight. Felix shook his head. A building. A man-made building, on Banshee.

“It’s huge,” he breathed, half to himself.

Beside him, Shoen laughed. “Ten meters high, twenty meters deep, twenty meters wide. It’s got walls three meters deep and three stories. It could house our mere two hundred and fifty warriors and scouts…”

“House? What do you mean, house?”

She laughed again. “It’s got pressure integrity, Felix. You can go inside that thing and take off your suit and grab a meal and a shower. What do you think?”

Felix looked at her. He decided not to say what he thought. Instead, he asked: “Why?”

Something in the measure of his appalled disgust leaked through to her. She studied him for a moment uncertainly.

Then she told him what he should have been told before, what the drop was all about.

“Felix, we’re here to count ants.” When he said nothing to this, she added quickly: “Of course, there’s more to it than that.”

But there wasn’t, he saw after awhile. There wasn’t. She only thought there was. She and Fleet and… the rest of the fools running the war.

Surprisingly, he had already had a few clues. They had dropped him along with three other scouts and some thirty other warriors that morning at dawn with instructions to head due east and look for what had come to be called a Dorm. Felix had known about Dorms. He had known about them for a long time now, ever since they had thought of them as supply dumps for the ants. And when he had, with the others, stepped over that last dune and seen that low squat structure sitting innocently in the sand, the full measure of that nightmare, that first nightmare, had come back to him. Of dropping that very first time in those rows and rows of scurrying, jamming ants and firing blindly in terror at everything and anything until his blazer had overheated and his mind had over-amped.

When it had all been over, in seconds, he alone had survived.

I am A-team, he had said to himself. There had been no one else to say it to.

And that had been only the beginning. After that had come the Knuckle and Forest and Bolov and other things that Dorms, the mere sight or thought of them, always brought back to him. And he had reached for his blaze-bombs as always, not wanting to remember or consider or anything else, just wanting to destroy this one as he had destroyed all others he had seen since. To destroy it quickly and move on and… and nothing else. Just not remember.

But the Captain that morning had stopped him. “We don’t want it blown,” he had said to Felix and to everyone else there. “Is that clear? We want it intact.”

Felix had looked at the Captain as he had looked at Shoen and asked: “Why?”

And now he was finding out. Or at least he was getting an answer of sorts: to count ants.

Specifically, to count the ants in a Dorm. Fleet had learned that ants came in two packages, Hives and Dorms. Hives were the main outposts, the main threats, of course. It was from the Hives that the ants directed their assaults on the humans, both on Banshee herself and in space. The Hives were the main targets. But the Dorms were important, too. They did, in fact, serve as supply dumps of sorts. Supply dumps of ants. Thousands and thousands of ant eggs or larvae or whatever was used were stored in these Dorms throughout Banshee. They operated as support for Hives or, rarely, alone.

What Fleet wanted to know now, was their capacity for support. Their exact capacity. How many ants could be built before the supply would run out? That was the reason for the Bunker.

“There are no other ant outposts in this area,” explained Shoen as they worked their way toward the activity. “Our job is to sit tight and wait for the ants to attack the bunker. Then we kill them and count them.”

“They’ll keep coming.”

“Of course they will. And we’ll get that bunch too. And the next and the next. But how long can they keep coming alone? There’s nothing around here to help them. Sooner or later they are bound to start feeling the pressure, either in numbers, or in quality.”

Felix nodded, seeing it. “That’s why you want samples of the spinal cord.”

“Exactly, Felix. Very good. We know the normal standards. When shoddy work starts showing up, we’ll have a good idea how much they can take. So it’s not just to count ants. It’s to find out how they build them so damn quickly.”

They had reached the last of the dunes. They started across the edge of the beach, circling toward the sea to avoid the construction. A huge machine surrounded by a dozen workers wearing bright orange p-suits was being set up along the perimeter.

“Watch this,” said Shoen with some satisfaction.

Felix obeyed, stopping beside her. Ready to accept anything by now.

The machine started up with a horrendous roar and a huge cloud of sand. Almost at once, the cloud began to settle. From atop the machine, which was now rolling slowly forward on huge treads, a nozzle had appeared. It was spraying some clear substance into the atmosphere that seemed to cause the dust to coalesce. Soon the cloud of sand was all but gone.

“Siliconite 18,” Shoen explained, “a sand clotter. It keeps the dust out of the air and makes certain the foundation of the bunker is firm enough to hold it.”

Felix nodded, barely listening, entranced by the incredible sight before him. From the back of the machine, a wall was appearing. It was like some bizarre magician’s trick, an optical illusion. The front of the machine sucked in the sand. The back of it emitted that same sand in the form of a five-meter-tall, perfectly smooth wall.

Shoen chuckled beside him. “Can’t have a fort without a wall, can you?”

Felix looked at her. She pointed an armored arm. “The wall will go all the way around the fort in a square, protecting all three sides not covered by the sea. We’ll have blazer cannon mounted on top with crossfire covering a killing area of a million square meters. Something, huh?”

But what he was thinking, what he had been thinking all along, through all of her explanations and enthusiasm, was that none of this had really answered his question. None of it really told him: Why?

He shook himself suddenly, angrily. Why should it, dammit? Why this time instead of any other time? What was the matter with him? The why of it made no more difference than the insanity. This was Banshee! He shook himself again. Banshee! Remember it!

“Felix? Is there something wrong?”

He looked at her. “No.”

She wasn’t satisfied. “Something on your mind?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there something about all of this you don’t like? If there is, tell me. I really want to hear your opinion.”

“Why?”

She turned away from him. She seemed embarrassed. “I saw what you did with that Ant.” She turned back to him quickly. “Oh, just the last part of it. You were free before we had a chance to do anything. Really!”

He shrugged. “I believe you.”

“Do you really?”

He stared at her. “Of course.”

“Good. I’m glad. Because, well….”

He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to hear any of it. He said something about her being expected inside.

“Oh,” she said, rebuffed. “Right.” And the two of them continued on to the bunker in silence.

Felix was grateful for the silence. It was not that he feared her confessing no combat experience, for he knew that already and knew what to say upon hearing it. And if she went further, if she told him she was nervous and uncertain, he would know what to say. Even if she went so far as to tell him, outright, how scared she was, he could handle it. He had heard it before, from many others. He knew the noncommittal mournings that were required from him in reply and he could give them to her as easily as he had given them to everyone else. But if she went further still, if she took that next step, he was lost. If she asked him to help her…

He hated it when they asked him that. He hated it because he always said he would—what else could he tell them? What else was there to do but say, Yes, I’ll help you? What else was there to do but lie?

For this was Banshee and the ants were coming for them as they always came and there would be too many as there always were and they would come so quickly—too quickly, it would all happen too damn fast for anyone to help anyone else or even think of anything but the horror of it and the desperate all-consuming need to escape it. And even if someone wanted to help her, wanted her safety so much that he would turn his back on the rampaging slaughter, would open himself to it for her sake… Even if someone cared that much, even if he cared that much, even if he did…

The Engine did not.

Shoen stopped just before they reached the crowd and stuck out her hand. “My name’s Canada, by the way. Since we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, we might as well introduce ourselves. Canada Shoen.”

He took her armored hand in his. “Felix.”

“Just Felix?” she asked. “No other name?”

Not anymore, he thought, but said only: “Just Felix.”

“Oh,” she said, still gripping his hand as though she wanted to say something else but didn’t know what. “Oh,” she said again, dropping his hand a moment later.

Felix said nothing either, though he knew what he wanted to say, knew damned well.

“I can’t help you,” he wanted to say. But he didn’t. He never did.

Everyone seemed to know Shoen, many by her first name. Dozens of voices called out to her when they arrived in front of the bunker. Several of the people wearing the bright orange p-suits—engineers, it turned out—dropped what they were doing and rushed over to her, blurting out progress reports and enthusiasm. It didn’t seem to Felix that they felt the need to inform her so much as they seemed to need someone to share their excitement.

Shoen was eager to do that, recognizing each and every one of them on sight, and, more importantly, understanding the significance of each breathless announcement. She tried, at first, to keep him up with it all. He was introduced to far too many strangers in the first several seconds. He had little hope of recalling even a third of their names, and no hope whatsoever of understanding their individual functions. After a few moments, he gave up, turning away from Shoen & Co. and simply staring at the bewildering chaos of construction. Shoen barely noticed his absence, becoming caught up in the momentum almost at once. Within seconds, Felix noted absently, no trace of her earlier uncertainty remained.

But he paid little attention to her group. The sheer spectacle of the rising fort enthralled him. There were at least three other wall-builders that he could see from where he stood, all in use. The corners of the walls had already been erected in place and atop them, more orange suits swarmed about installing what Felix recognized as blazer cannon. Another team of engineers were working on the walls themselves. Half of them worked their way along the top of the wall behind the machine, carving an indented walkway. The other half worked along the bottom of the walls, running power leads for the cannon and what appeared to be a huge command platform erected entirely of plastiform just behind the midpoint of the main wall. The platform had room for fifty people, bulky warrior suits and all, with three separate stairways to get them up there and a broad thick open-air roof to shelter them.

Another platform, this one only a meter tall, had been built in the center of the compound. It was circular, perhaps five meters in diameter, and bisected in the middle by a small wall of its own. Two separate Transit Cones shimmered faintly on either side of the wall, from which figures were being constantly dropped and retrieved, respectively. Also in the compound proper were several plastiform cubes, geometrically aligned, in which were placed a wide variety of equipment. Felix recognized a great deal of it, the Cangren Cells, the emergency allsize p-size, the extra blaze rifles, the spare parts for the cannon, some tools. But that left a vast array of paraphernalia Felix had never seen before. He couldn’t even guess their purposes.

Felix glanced at the dial of his drop timer glowing faintly beneath his holos. He was surprised to see he was less than two hours into the drop. Less than two hours since he and the other members of the forward group had touched down at dawn. During that time he had managed to find the Dorm, chart much of the maze of dunes protecting it, scout for, find, and fight an ant, and return, with Shoen at his side. A busy enough morning, to be sure.

But nothing, he thought, next to this. He watched as the engineers connected a cannon-bearing corner from each side with simultaneous arrivals of twin wall-makers. Amazing. Less than two hours ago there had been nothing here at all and now a walled fort was all but finished—would be finished, in fact, in moments, before his very eyes.

All told, there were at least a thousand figures present. And, except for the group of some two hundred warriors formed up to one side, all were busily working engineers. They were like parts of a single elaborate machine, he thought, gazing at the teeming orange multitudes. “Or ants,” he muttered, “building a hive.”

The excited babble of engineers surrounding Shoen had been replaced by an excited babble of brass, their warrior suits boldly displaying the marks and colorings of their exalted ranks. Felix counted two full colonels and a major in the pack before Shoen turned to him and spoke.

“How long,” she wanted to know, “before that Ant warmed up enough to fight, would you say?”

Felix considered a moment. “Three to four minutes after sighting.”

The row of brass nodded at this, in unison.

Shoen continued, “Any idea how long it had been above ground?”

Felix shook his head. “None.”

The row nodded at this as well. One of the colonels spoke up. “That’s about right, isn’t it? That checks?”

“Right,” said the others, more or less in synch.

Shoen turned back to them. “It looks good to me, Ali. I think you should talk to the Old Man. Tell him you want to try it.”

Ali, the colonel who had spoken before, nodded. “Won’t hurt to ask him I shouldn’t think. And I do think it’s a good opportunity.”

“Of course it is,” Shoen assured him.

“Absolutely,” assured someone else. Perhaps the other Colonel.

“It certainly should be suggested, in any event,” said a third voice Felix couldn’t place with a suit.

Colonel Ali hesitated one last moment, then nodded firmly. “Very well. I’ll see him now.”

“Good,” declared Shoen. “Let me know what he says. I’ve got to get inside with my team.”

With that, the group divided, the brass toward the command platform, Shoen and Felix toward the front of the bunker.

“That was Colonel Khuddar,” Shoen offered in explanation. “He’s senior staff officer and he’s come up with something I’d like you to…”

She was interrupted by another engineer, this one bearing the same rank as her own, Lt. Colonel.

“Mind sharing the lock, Canada?” he asked brightly, gesturing toward the entrance to the bunker.

“Blackfoot!” she replied happily. She waved an arm toward the constructive frenzy. “It’s beautiful, just like we planned it. You’re a genius.”

Blackfoot grumbled something almost inaudible in reply about everything going wrong that could and how she could only be so optimistic because she didn’t know what she was talking about.

“But you’re getting it done, aren’t you? And on time?”

“Oh, yes,” he replied distractedly, as though nothing could be less important.

The two of them continued to discuss the engineer’s problems while they waited for the seal to open for them. Felix understood almost nothing that was said. When the seal parted, the three of them stepped inside the lock, a square featureless chamber with room for a dozen warriors seated and standing. The seal closed behind them. Sensors on the wall of the lock and inside each of their suits told them it was cycling.

Felix felt oddly uneasy. Though he had known about pressure locks and seals since Basic, knew, in fact, how to repair them in case of emergency, he had never been in one before. On Banshee, he had never thought he would.

Beside him, Shoen laughed, drawing his attention back to their conversation.

“But that’s why you used Siliconite in the first place, isn’t it? You wanted the sand more cohesive.”

“Yeah,” the engineer agreed sourly. “But now I’m cut off underneath.”

Shoen shook her head. “What difference does it make, Blackfoot? You’ve already got your soundings. You got them up front.”

“Well, sure, but….”

“And they were positive, were they not?” she insisted.

“Well, yeah, but…”

“But nothing. Blackfoot, you’re a hopeless worrier like every other engineer. If soundings showed a firm foundation before the siliconite, what makes you think it’d be any different now? My God, the stuff can only make it firmer and you know it.” She laughed again. “Only you would sound now, anyway.”

He laughed. “Maybe you’re right. Still, I wish I hadn’t used the eighteen. Maybe fifteen. Then I’d still be able to get at least an echo reading of the formations. But this damn eighteen cuts off everything we…”

The opening of the inner seal interrupted the engineer. The three of them stepped through the gap into the bunker itself. Blackfoot left them at once on his own errands, with an over-the-shoulder wave meant for them both. Felix managed a small wave in return before hurrying to catch up with Shoen, already heading off in the opposite direction past a long line of people waiting to get out. Shoen turned around only once, to see that Felix was in step behind her.

“Stay close,” she cautioned. “You could get lost in here.”

Felix believed her. Though clearly marked, the sheer number of passages was disconcerting. He figured it would take most of a Banshee day to see every nook and cranny, even if someone wanted to stay in there that long, which Felix most certainly did not. He hated the place, had hated it from almost the first moment. He hated it because it was a lie.

He and Shoen moved to the side of the corridor to make room for a man coming down the other way. Felix knew it was a man because he wore nothing more than a jumpsuit. Just that.

No armor.

No p-suit.

Nothing.

And really, there was no need to. The bunker was pressurized. It had air. It had heat. It had walls three meters thick built into it, not to mention the one surrounding it on the outside, with its half dozen blazer cannon and two hundred warriors to man them. Inside such protection, why shouldn’t a man feel protected? Why shouldn’t he feel… safe?

Just because this is Banshee, he told himself angrily, is not enough. The bunker exists, after all. It’s here and strong and there is nothing careless about using it. There is no reason at all to feel that something will happen the instant the suit pops open. Popping it open is no signal. It will not bring ants. I will not die. Just because this is Banshee is not enough.

But, of course, it was. For him, for Felix, it was. Each new sight of an unsuited person chilled something deep within him. And he couldn’t avoid the sense of the lie, nearby and malevolent and poised. He searched his mind for a specific cause for the fear but found none. Yet the dread remained, a swirling caress of paranoia and suspicion. He felt… lured.

Shoen led them, at last, to their destination, a door without a handle marked simply, “Ant Lab” at the end of a short hallway. Past this was a small alcove bearing jumpsuits and armor brackets on opposite walls. Without hesitation, she picked a set of brackets between two p-suits and backed snugly into it. Felix paused long and hard before picking brackets of his own and stepping between them. As he lifted his arms from his sides and slipped into place he discovered that he was panting like a small panicked animal. For just a moment, he didn’t think he would be able to do it. He took a deep breath. He made one more irrational sweep of the tiny chamber for danger. He decided to go ahead and do it.

And suddenly, he had. He stood naked in front of the suit, wild-eyed and taut and expectant.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Except for Shoen, shrugging into a jumpsuit beside him and his suit hanging on the wall behind him, he was alone. No ants.

“Are you all right,” Shoen asked.

“Fine,” he replied shortly, grabbing a jumpsuit and putting it on. “Fine.”

The lab was huge, several times larger than necessary. Only one corner was lit, giving the impression of a vast cavern. There were three techs in the corner of light, two of them bent over the single table, the third examining a row of dials on the wall. They turned at the sound of approach.

“Welcome to our little store, Felix,” said Shoen. “Let me introduce you to everybody. First, there’s…”

“Is this him?” blurted the nearest one suddenly, a thin young man with bright red hair. He stepped up to Felix and offered his hand. “You’re Felix? Nice job! My name’s Gavin and I sure want you to know I think a lot of what you do.”

“Okay,” replied Felix uncertainly while the young tech pumped his hand.

“I’m sorry,” said another tech, a bald black woman as young as the first. She looked to Shoen nervously. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I told them what we saw, him fighting the ant like that.”

“It seems your exploits precede you, Felix,” commented Shoen with a grin.

Felix said nothing. He shook hands with the woman, who called herself something Geronis. The third tech, equally young, stepped forward last, shaking Felix’s hand with slow deliberation while gravely insisting that nothing he could ever accomplish in a lab would mean as much as what Felix did with every drop. Felix didn’t catch his name.

The introductions completed, the questions began at once.

“I bet you’ve seen a lot of combat, huh?” asked Geronis. “What’s it like?”

“Have you?” Gavin wanted to know. “Have you seen a lot of combat?”

Felix shrugged. “Some.”

“Tell us about it,” blurted at least two of them in ragged unison.

“Yeah. What’s it like?” “Is it scary?” “Are you scared?” “Is it hard to kill an ant?” “What does it feel like to kill one?” “What was it like the first time?”

Felix stared, unbelieving, at their faces, eager, excited, admiring. Those faces had nothing to do with Banshee and nothing to do with him and he could . . . not… imagine… why they didn’t know it immediately. Were they blind? Retarded?

Felix’s expression dawned, belatedly, on Shoen. She hurried to rescue him. “Enough,” she barked, clapping her hands for silence. “He’s here to see the lab, damnit. Shut up and show it to him. We’re on a tight schedule.”

Meekly, they obeyed. There wasn’t much to see. Four pressurized vats, tools and trays for dissection, some specimen jars. The explanation for each was lost completely, in the style of the questions, in the sound of three voices at once. Shoen was quicker to the rescue the second time. She gave him, in seconds, the only two pieces of information he actually needed to have.

“When you blaze the spine, make sure you get a section as long as your forearm,” she said. “And when you bring it back, put it in there,” she added, pointing to a slot on the largest vat.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” she assured him and led him outside to safety. The techs were still wishing them luck as they hit the door.

“They’ve given the team a pretty good place to rest,” she said as they once again entered the main passage. “I’ll show it to you and then I’ve got some people I’ve got to see.”

He nodded without answering. His mind was elsewhere—on his newly discovered delight at being out of the suit. It really did feel marvelous, however frightening it had seemed at first. He flexed his toes in his sandals happily.

Shoen stopped abruptly in front of him, turning to speak. He stopped and waited. She, in turn, waited for a small group of people in jumpsuits to pass before speaking.

“Look, Felix,” she began hesitantly, “I’m sorry about those kids in the lab. I know they seemed a little… Well, you must understand that for them this is all very….”

“Canada!” sounded from behind them enthusiastically.

As they turned toward the voice they were surrounded by half a dozen fresh-faced young officer-types wearing jumpsuits too immaculate to be anything other than custom tailored. They looked like they belonged on the vid, he thought. Like actors cast as the Fleet’s finest. Or, he added wryly, like students dressed up for a party with an Antwar motif. He shrugged uneasily, failed once more to catch most of the names Shoen threw at him. He was ignored for the most part. Canada and her exploits were the center of their attentions. And when they found out she’d seen “action”!

“Well, it was really my scout here, Felix,” she added somewhat patronizingly.

“Tell us about it,” urged a pretty captain with a thick Slavic accent.

Felix looked at her uncertainly. He had no idea what to say to her. He knew there must be a connection between doing it and talking about it later—it just seemed beyond his reach.

Others chimed in with their own urgings, interrupting one another in their excitement. The only response Felix was able to effectively offer was a nod to the oft-repeated question: “Seen much combat?”

Everyone of the group seemed to feel the need to ask that particular question. Everyone of them got the same nod. And, though few noticed, the same helplessly blank stare.

Mercifully, they tired of him. And Shoen had things to do. Soon they were alone. She didn’t try to apologize this time. She only smiled nervously.

He met the other members of Shoen’s team in the overly large quarters assigned to them for off-duty use—a huge rectangular squad bay holding seven bunks in a space meant for thirty. Ling he had met earlier—she had been the one who had actually killed the ant. The other warrior was a huge man named Morleone. “I gave you back your rifle, remember?” he asked as he shook Felix’s hand.

Felix remembered, nodded.

Shoen looked around. “Where’s Dominguez? Where’s the sergeant?”

Ling shrugged. “Said something about needing more gear. He left as soon as we got here.”

Shoen frowned at that. She ordered Felix shown the rest of the area—which meant nothing more than Morleone pointing to the door holding the head.

“Got everything you need in there,” Morleone offered. “Heads and showers.” He shrugged his shoulders and vast muscles rippled, “Not like any drop I ever heard of.”

Shoen spoke up sharply, almost defensively. “Well, okay. Wait here until Dominguez shows up. Then get back into your gear.” She glanced at a clock on the wall. “We’ll be seeing it all happen pretty quick. Sun’s been up over two hours now.”

“Howdy, Colonel,” said a cheerful voice. Standing in the doorway was another huge man. He seemed, on first glance, to be fat. But, Felix quickly decided, it was only because of his enormous barrel chest. “You must be Felix,” the man

said, dropping a packing case heavily onto one of the bunks. He stuck out a hand. “I’m Dominguez.”

Felix shook the hand while Shoen inspected the packing case.

“What have you got there, Sergeant?” she wanted to know.

Dominguez smiled broadly. “Cigarettes, mostly.” He reached inside and selected one of the tubes at random. He looked at Felix. “You smoke?”

Felix nodded eagerly, catching the tube thrown to him. “Me too,” echoed the two warriors simultaneously. Dominguez waved them toward the case.

Shoen looked unhappy. “Is that what you’ve been up to, Dominguez? I thought I told you to check out your quarters.”

Dominguez smiled easily, unrepentant. “Oh, I did, Colonel. I did.” He looked around at the room. “And they’re just beautiful!”

Ling and Morleone grinned. Shoen tried not to, failed. Even Felix smiled. There was something lovable about the sergeant that was undeniable. Felix found himself liking the other man immediately, and then surprising himself by realizing it.

Dominguez stepped over to Felix, lit his cigarette for him, said: “So you’re the bully?”

Felix stared quizzically, wondering what the man meant and, more importantly, why he was grinning again.

“What’s the idea of picking on the Colonel’s ant like that this morning?”

Felix laughed, shrugged, amazed by it all.

Dominguez continued. “I know your type, Felix. Always starting something.”

Felix tried explaining how he got taken by surprise…

“Oh really?” interrupted Dominguez with loud skepticism. “You trying to tell us that an ant eight foot tall weighing a thousand or so pounds just kinda sneaked up on you when you weren’t looking?”

Felix laughed again with the others.

“What’d it do, Scout, tiptoe?” demanded Dominguez, spreading his arms into the air and hunching over. His face screwed up, his eyes bugging out, he pranced several steps around the room in a hilarious imitation of a tiptoeing ant. Ling, Morleone—even Shoen—were soon roaring with laughter.

Incredibly, Felix found he was laughing right along with them. And for those brief moments, he simply luxuriated in the sensation. Gratefully, blindly… It made no sense. But it had been so long.

And then it was over and he and Shoen were heading back through the corridors to the lab and their armor. Once more they were assaulted by a gang of young fresh faces loudly greeting Shoen as the old friend she apparently was. And once more they turned to him, besieging him with questions about the ant, about all ants, about fighting them.

About killing them.

He endured it, nodding, nodding. The contrast, between these Up and Coming and Dominguez was inexplicably striking. He wasn’t sure exactly why, but their questions—and their eagerness to question—left him cold and… closed. He didn’t like being around them, didn’t like anything about them. But the reasons for his feelings were as much a mystery as his instant affection for Dominguez. Normally, Felix knew full well, he didn’t notice people at all, much less have emotional reactions to them.

There is something very odd here, he thought to himself, glancing at the passage overhead. Something wrong. The drop itself… this bunker, these people. Me. Especially me. I feel….

And that, of course, was it, he realized suddenly. He felt. He felt. . . .

“Ah, c’mon, what was it, Felix? Exactly how much combat have you really seen? How many drops?”

Felix looked at the man who had asked the question, disliking him at once. He was somehow too snide and too cynical and too…. My God? Envious?

“This is twenty,” Felix snapped without thinking, shouldering past the man and continuing his way down the passage.

It was very quiet behind him. He walked several steps, then considered stopping. He wasn’t at all certain about where everything was and Shoen….

Then she was there, by his side. “Here,” she said, pointing to a cutoff he recognized as the lab hallway.

He looked sideways at her as they entered the alcove holding their suits. She didn’t speak. But she didn’t seem at all displeased.

He glanced at his suit, a sudden revulsion surging at the thought of putting it back on and then… Just the thought of wearing it seemed enough. He leaned against the wall and lit the other cigarette he had brought from the squad bay.

“That was pretty good,” she said suddenly. He looked at her. She was nodding with satisfaction. “Garrel Brunt is an ass.”

He half-smiled, waiting patiently.

“I don’t blame you a bit for saying that to him,” she continued. “’Course, he’ll just go look you up now. He can do it, too—he’s got the pull to check most records. And you’ll hear from him again, loudly, no doubt, and in public, no doubt. He hates looking like a fool.”

Felix got it. “You mean that last guy?”

“Right. Brunt. I loved that look on his face when you told him twenty drops.” She laughed lightly to herself. “The rest, too. They didn’t believe it either—but what could they say? What if it was true? Ha!” She laughed again, smiling at him. “I don’t blame you a bit, really. Must get awfully tired of hearing that same question. Bet you’ve heard it a lot, huh?”

He shrugged. “Never so much as today.”

“Really?” she asked. She looked thoughtful. “Maybe it makes sense. These guys would be awfully curious about combat, since none of them ever should’ve seen any. Or mostly none.” She looked at him suddenly, grinning. “How many drops have you really had?”

“Twenty,” he replied absently. “But what are they doing here if they….”

He stopped when he saw her face.

Her voice was very deliberate. “Did you say… do you mean to say that you really have dropped twenty times? On Banshee?”

He nodded. “Counting this one.”

“That’s impossible.”

He sighed, dropped his cigarette on the floor. “Okay.”

“No. I mean it. That can’t be.”

“Why?”

“Because… Well, because it… it just can’t be! How long have you been here?”

“Six months.”

“Six months?”

“About that.”

She stared at him, then looked away, staring still. “Garrel Brunt’s going to drop dead when he reads that.” She looked back at him, a wan smile trying bravely to rise. “He’s going to wish he’d never even seen you, or even come here, for that matter.”

“Colonel….”

“Call me Canada,” she said quickly.

He glanced at her, couldn’t read what he saw. “Okay. Canada. Tell me. You said this guy Brunt, and most of the others, would never see combat? You mean if they hadn’t come here?”

“That’s right.”

“Then what are they doing here?”

She shrugged. “They’re here to see combat.”

“I don’t get it. If they don’t have to fight, why would they want to?”

“They don’t. Most of ’em don’t. They just want to… well, see it. From the bunker.”

“Oh.”

She peered carefully at him. “Do you understand?”

“I think so.” And maybe he did. Or was beginning to.

“Felix, I know you think this is…”

“Who are they?” he asked bluntly.

She blinked. “Oh. Well, that bunch you saw just now are liaison officers.”

“Liaison officers… Observers?”

“Right. For… I don’t know, different branches of the services. Subcommittees, that sort of thing.”

He nodded. He looked at her. “And who are you?”

She blinked again. “I’m from Militar. Fleet Central.”

He nodded again.

“But I’m no Observer,” she added quickly. “I’m here because the bunker was partly my idea.”

“Your idea?”

“Well, it came out of our office, anyway. Operations Analysis. It was my idea to have the ants checked after each stage of the battle.” She squared her shoulders. “Those of us from my office have jobs here. We…”

“Us? Who else?”

“You saw some of them outside. Ali—Colonel Khuddar, he works with….”

“That guy’s second-in-command. He’s senior on the command staff.”

“Right,” she replied happily, pleased he had remembered—and totally unaware of his reaction.

“He’s never seen combat? Like the rest of you?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, thinking. “He’s dropped before, though, I believe. No, I’m sure he has.”

“What are you people doing here?” he asked in a calm controlled voice.

She looked surprised. “I told you. We… Oh, I see what you mean. This is Banshee, after all…”

“It is.”

“Well…” She looked very young suddenly. Childlike. Guilty? “You have to admit, though, this is the best chance most of us are ever gonna get to see combat. I mean, it’s perfect here.”

“Perfect?”

She looked impatient. “You know,” she insisted matter-of-factly, “safe.”

Felix stood atop the bunker wall facing due east. Below him was the killing ground, its smooth, Siliconite-covered surface sparkling in the morning sunshine. The area looked to be every bit as large as Shoen had said it would be. It sloped gently down from the foot of the wall for several hundred meters before beginning a long gentle rise to the top of the ridge—everything else had been blasted flat by the engineers, rounded mogul-like humps just before the top of the distant ridge everything else had been blasted flat by the engineers.

To his right and south—and likewise to his left and north—it was the same story without the slope. The sand, flat and open, stretched directly away from the wall for half a kilometer. Some cover did exist, however. Starting from about one hundred yards directly off the southeast corner of the fort, and stretching all the way to the ridge, was a typical Banshee maze.

Made of three- to seven-meter high ridges meandering randomly in any and all directions—as well as the various wind-carved gulleys and arroyos separating them—the maze had been considered too great an obstacle to blast away. Besides, Shoen had assured him, it was so cramped and narrow as to be useless to the ants. They liked to attack en masse, in waves. The widest of the gulleys could handle no more than two or three ants abreast.

Scanning the area one last time, Felix had to admit that everything seemed to have been considered. The fort, with its back to the western sea, seemed ideally situated.

He turned his attention toward the inside of the walls. The last of the orange p-suited engineers were stepping onto the Transit platform. Both halves were being employed in the same direction to save time. They had been on Banshee almost three hours now. Soon the ants, even those still remaining inside the Dorm, would be warm enough for a full-scale rush.

Felix shook his head in awe. Only three hours. And they had a fort! Even with the bunker itself having been dropped pre-built, it was an astonishing feat. He would have thought the wall alone would have required at least a day or two.

A gust of wind rose quickly and fluttered past them. But no dust. Thanks to the Siliconite, their vision would never be obscured by rolling clouds of sand. Maybe they really had thought of everything.

Dominguez appeared beside him on the wall. “Do you know what the hell’s going on?” he asked bluntly.

“What do you mean?” Felix replied.

Dominguez hooked an armored thumb over his shoulder toward the warriors in the courtyard, all two hundred plus of them, forming up.

“We’re moving out, for chrissakes, Felix! Can you believe it?”

“Why?”

Dominguez shrugged, snorted angrily. “Ya got me, Man. They go to all this trouble to build this goddamned miracle out in the middle of nowhere, then leave it before it does anybody any good.”

“Have you talked to Can… Colonel Shoen?”

“Shit!” snapped the sergeant disgustedly. “She’s too busy hanging out with her chums up there to fool with anything as puny as life and death.”

Felix followed the other man’s gaze to “up there,” the Command Platform. He could barely spot her warrior suit amidst several others of equal or higher rank. He was about to offer to talk to her himself when a Lieutenant bounded up beside them on the wall and gestured to Dominguez.

“You’re Dominguez, right? You and your squad are moving with my group. Get formed up.”

“Yessir,” Dominguez didn’t quite snarl. He dropped down to the courtyard to where the other warriors were already lined up for the leap-by-pairs over the forward wall. There was no gate. Only the ants would have required one anyway.

The lieutenant eyed Felix a moment. “Who are you, Scout?”

“Felix.”

“Oh,” said the lieutenant. He watched Felix another few seconds, then bounded away without speaking.

Felix watched him go. Now what the hell…?

The command frequency chattered into life with the order to move out. The leaping began. Felix watched in silence as almost the entire complement of warriors exited the fort. In seconds, only he, the cannon crews, and the brass jamming the Command Platform were left. Felix glanced back toward the bunker itself. The liaison officer Observers—or tourists, as he had privately labeled them—were nowhere to be seen. He assumed they were waiting to see that it was, in fact, as safe around here as it was fun. Or perhaps they weren’t even grounded. Felix knew there was another Transit area inside the bunker itself. He had seen the sign for it.

He watched the two lines of the warriors working up the forward slope toward the ridge. The leading edge of the formation was already passing through the moguls and out of sight over the ridge. Within another few minutes, the entire troupe would have reached the Dorm itself, only a quarter of a kilometer or so past the ridge.

It was insane.

Shoen appeared on the wall beside him a few minutes later. “You ready?” she asked.

He nodded. What else?

They hopped over the wall and started up the long slope to the ridge. The bootprints of the warriors ahead of them left only faint impressions in the Siliconite-coated sand. Felix stared idly at them as he trotted along, listening intently to Shoen’s chattering tone to hear the reason for everyone leaving the safety of the fort. But Shoen was concerned only with providing him with blow-by-blow details of power plays among the young officers of the Staff.

Suddenly, Felix realized they were the same thing. He stopped.

“Let me get this straight: We’re going out to the Dorm because your friend Ali wants to prove something to the CO?”

She looked at him. “Well, Ali is in charge of all the warriors. And how’s he going to be able to show what he can do with them inside the walls?”

Felix stared at her a moment, then resumed trotting without a sound. They were almost to the top of the ridge before she spoke again. Her voice was plaintive, defensive.

“Felix, you just don’t understand how tough it is for one of us to….”

“Shoen!” sounded sharply on the command frequency. “Hold up there for an extra hand.”

They stopped and turned to face the now-distant walls. “I bet I can tell you who this is,” said Shoen, sounding pleased.

A second later it was unnecessary. With the first sight of the huge blue warrior suit—larger by far than any other Felix had ever seen, and infinitely more impressive—there was no doubt in his mind as to who it had to be: Nathan Kent. He began by bounding, with ease, over the forward wall as if shot out of a cannon. He was running as he struck the sand some thirty meters down the slope. A second later he had already begun climbing up the ridge toward them at an easy gentle lope—and a speed Felix knew he could never hope to achieve.

He was awesome.

And beautiful, Felix thought, watching the blue suit hurtling toward him. The combination of state-of-the-art armor and athletic magnificence was a sight overshadowing everything else; the war, the ants, the man alone—-nothing else had to do with the vision of excellence but the vision itself.

“Felix,” Forest had told him, “it wasn’t even close.”

Felix believed her.

Kent arrived. There was no indication that he was even short of breath. Shoen introduced them. They shook hands. Felix started to say something, decided against it. Not the time, he thought, turning and leading them the rest of the way.

Once over the ridge, the terrain became once more Bansheelike. A smaller maze covered the last few hundred meters to the Dorm. In silence, Felix led them through it, following the tracks of the preceding warriors. He never once turned to look at the two following behind. He knew about Shoen, he thought. And he could almost feel the presence of Kent.

He would have to tell him about Forest, about that last time with her—that was certain. But how to go about it? He had debated that with himself on and off from the first moment of meeting Kent in the drop bay. What to tell Kent about Forest… There was much to tell.

For one thing, Felix thought her to be the best armored fighter he had ever seen, himself included. And besides her skill, there was her bravery—no less considerable. Her value as a companion was no doubt well-known to Kent already. And though Felix doubted Kent would find the topic boring, however often it was discussed, there was much more to say. Much, much more.

She was very proud of you, friend Kent. On top of that she respected you—for what you really were inside. And something else, Friend Kent. Forest loved you.

Yes, she did. She loved you. The way it should be done and for always. Forever. To the very end. I know, for when she died saying so, it was in my arms.

My God! he thought suddenly, feeling the tears on his cheeks, I’m crying!

“How weird!” he blurted out loud, stopping short.

The other two wanted to know what he meant, what was going on. They weren’t at all satisfied with his “Nothing.”

And as they resumed the trip, he could sense their uneasiness. But he didn’t care about theirs. His was plenty for the moment.

What the hell was happening to him?

The maze parted at last, revealing the warriors deployed in the classic Fleet semicircle. Less than forty meters beyond their positions, the roof of the Dorm itself shone in the sun.

Awfully close, Felix thought. Awfully damned close.

Shoen raced past him to the knot of warriors around her friend Ali.

“Is that it?” asked a shy and gentle voice from over his shoulder.

He glanced at Kent briefly. “That’s it,” he replied.

Kent was watching the Dorm. “I don’t see any ants,” he offered.

“Good.”

“Felix!” Shoen called, waving him toward the group. Two of the other five scouts were already there. “You’re being drafted,” she explained. She indicated the other scouts. “Ali, Colonel Khuddar, wants you three to make a scan around the far side of the Dorm.”

Felix nodded to the other scouts. “Right now?”

“Right now,” she replied. “Report on Command Prime Frequency.”

“Okay.” He started off with the others.

“See you later, Felix,” Kent called cheerfully.

Felix paused, regarded the huge blue suit. “See ya,” he managed.

They found nothing new on the scan. The Dorm was situated in the middle of a large depression on a relatively flat plain between several sections of maze. It looked to Felix as though it had recently been unearthed from a covering windstorm. He couldn’t see much more than the roof without approaching to the lip of the crater. One of the scouts suggested they do that very thing. Felix stared him into silence. It was plainly evident that neither of the other two scouts had seen Banshee, or ants, before. In fact, he soon discovered, none of the six scouts on the drop, besides him, had ever seen Banshee. None had ever worn scout suits before either. They were all from Militar, all green, and all thankful to Canada for getting them this chance to see “the real action.”

Felix groaned. He sent them back to the colonel after the brief sighting and went to find his own squad. He found them arranged at the southern end of the semicircular deployment, crouched behind a short bluff of a dune that made up the farthest extent of the ant’s unearthing efforts. Shoen wasn’t there. Curiously enough, Kent was.

So was Dominguez, looking fretful even through his faceplate.

“Too goddamned close, Felix,” he said at once.

“Hello again,” offered Kent in the same pleasant tone as before. Felix nodded to Kent, agreed with Dominguez. He regarded the overall deployment.

“What’s the idea, exactly?” Dominguez demanded.

Felix shrugged. “They want to see if they can contain the first charge right here using our own crossfire.”

Dominguez stood up. “You’re joking!”

“No.”

“What’s wrong?” Kent wanted to know.

“What’s wrong???” Dominguez snapped angrily. Then, seeing it was Kent who had asked, he continued in a softer tone. “What’s wrong is that we’re too damned close to be just sitting here waiting for them.”

“We’ve got ’em in our crossfire,” offered Kent hopefully.

No one replied.

“Well,” insisted Kent, “don’t we?”

Felix nodded reluctantly. “We do.”

“But what’ve they got us in?” added Dominguez sourly. He regarded Felix. “This whole deal gives me the creeps.” He gestured behind them. “No other cover either, see?”

Felix looked behind them. It was open for some fifty meters to their rear. The closest obstacle was the edge of the maze, a smooth sheer wall five meters high. Not too high for powered legs to clear, of course. And there was a gap there, he noticed. It was wide enough for a couple of warriors to use at one time. Still, all that open space to get there made it….

“Maybe we ought to pull back a bit.”

“I’m for that,” said the Sergeant.

“But Canada told us to stay here,” protested Kent.

“And I meant it,” said Shoen, appearing from down the long line of warriors. “What’s this talk about pulling back?”

“We’re too damn close, Colonel,” said Dominguez firmly.

“Too close for what?” She waved toward the Dorm. “Dorm’s don’t have any artillery.”

“How do you know?” Felix asked.

She looked at him. “You ever heard of them having it?” She looked at Dominguez. “Have you?”

“No,” they conceded in unison.

“Then there’s no reason to expect any.” She paused, sat down in the sand. “Colonel Khuddar knows what he’s doing.”

Felix snorted. “False, Colonel. For one thing, he’s never done this before. And for another…” He looked at her. “Your Ali is just a bit too eager for me.”

She met his gaze. “Maybe he hasn’t had much actual on-the-spot experience. …”

“Any, you mean.”

She ignored him. “But he’s had the full benefit of all Fleet research on Dorms.”

Felix laughed bitterly. “Fleet research thought these things were supply dumps the first time they dropped me. We stepped from the ship straight into six marching rows.”

It was quiet for several seconds while they digested that.

Then, “When was that?” Shoen asked.

“The Knuckle,” Felix replied in a dead voice.

There was a sudden movement beside him. He turned to find Kent’s massive blue helmet looming over him.

“You… You were at the Knuckle, Felix?” he asked, his voice an almost inaudible whisper.

Damn, Felix thought. Damn! Not this way.

“Yes…” Not Kent. Nathan. “Yes, Nathan. I was there.”

He lifted a gloved hand to rest on the great shoulder….

And the first explosion went off. Several more erupted immediately afterwards, a staccato barrage of noise and flying sand. Dominguez’s order for all to hit the sand and stay flat was lost in the rolling thunder of the concussions and the bone-chilling screams of surrounding warriors.

In seconds, it was over, as abruptly as it had begun. Recall chimes sounded immediately afterward, filling the heavy silence.

“That’s it!” shouted Dominguez to one and all. “Let’s hit it home! C’mon!”

Felix, half-buried by the cascading sands, dragged himself out and up to his feet. Around him everyone was fleeing wildly toward the maze. Everyone who could. A dozen steps away, a warrior’s suit arched stiffly before suddenly bursting outward. He shuddered and turned away.

Kent was there, standing still as a statue and looking over the rise. Felix turned to follow his gaze and froze himself. A solid wall of ants was boiling up and over and down toward them.

“Let’s move it,” he shouted. He grasped Kent’s armored shoulder and tried to shake it. It was like trying to budge the bunker itself. “Come on,” he all but screamed, standing with his faceplate before the other man’s. Still, Kent wouldn’t move.

Felix glanced over his shoulder; the ants were almost there.

“Godammit!” he raged at the blue suit. “Move!!” And he slapped his hand against the side of Kent’s helmet. Apparently without thinking, Kent hit him back, a backhand to his chest. Felix somersaulted backward into the sand.

When he shook himself alert once more, Kent was gone. He looked up. The ants were not.

“Dammit!” he groaned and started running, just beyond the outstretched reach of the first of many, many claws. Ahead of him, he saw the blue suit reach the first wall of the maze and vault over it. Five meters over it. Awesome, he thought again.

But then all thoughts were lost to his flight. The ants had almost cut off his retreat. He bore down hard, slamming his boots into the soft footing and accelerating at ultimate intensity. He crossed the last few meters to the maze in seconds, mere steps ahead of the closing mass. He darted through the gap in the first ridge blindly, clipping an edge of the wall in his haste, sending him tumbling off-balance. Still careening, he slammed into the next wall. “Idiot!” he grumbled furiously to himself.

And then he was up and running again, no less blindly. For the ants were through the gap almost as quickly and piling up against one another in their attempts to follow him down the gulley. He kept on, not bothering after that one glance over his shoulder to check their progress. He followed that gulley until it came to a dead end and leaped over the obstruction. He followed another gulley awhile, leapt again, leapt some more. Ran….

At last he reached the killing area where he could achieve full speed. Ahead of him, the last of the others were already clearing the walls of the fort into safety. Behind and above him, the ants were boiling into sight over the top of the ridge and down the long smooth runway to the bunker.

Felix ran like hell to beat them to it.

Twenty last steps away, he noticed one of the gunners pointing a cannon just over his head at the ants he knew were just behind him. The gunner looked too damned itchy….

He pointed a shaking finger at the figure above him. “Hold your fucking fire!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.

The gunner’s hands jerked, as if stung, from the triggering keys.

Felix took two more steps and launched himself for the top of the wall. Too hard, he realized in the air. “Dammit!” he cursed as he glided ungracefully past his target and crashed onto the smooth hard surface of the inner courtyard.

Two large warrior’s hands hauled him roughly to his feet. Dominguez.

“You in a hurry?” asked the sergeant dryly.

Felix laughed shortly. “You still here?”

Dominguez shrugged. “It’s a living.”

“Fire!!” blared out on Command Frequency. “Fire all cannon!!”

They looked at one another, then bounced back up onto the wall. Most everyone else was already there. Felix had to wedge himself in between warriors to see. He almost wished, a few seconds later, that he hadn’t. He had seen slaughters before—primarily at the Knuckle, but often since. Nothing had prepared him for this sight.

The cannon were cutting the ants in half. From one end of the killing area to the next, ants were being literally cut in two by the huge beams of coherent light. It happened too quickly for them to hide—even if such would occur to them. It happened too quickly for them to regroup or dodge and dart or, ultimately, threaten the fort in any way. The three cannon on the forward wall arced back and forth against the front ranks of the teeming horde with breathtaking efficiency. Piles of dead and twitching ants began to grow, to jam up the ones racing up from the rear. Because of the blockage in front, the gunners began directing their fire farther back into the ranks. Secondary piles began to form.

Thousands of ants, enough to cover the entire killing area, the entire runway of it, had stormed over the ridge towards them. Two or three thousand at least, Felix estimated. Perhaps as many as five. In a very few moments, all were dead. All. They never had a chance.

Never cared about one, he thought, watching the last few on the fringes of the mass being obliterated. Even, the last stragglers had been intent on but one thing: attacking.

“Incredible,” said a young warrior beside him. He turned to Felix. “I had no idea it was like this,” he added.

Felix smiled coldly. It isn’t like this, he wanted to say. At least it’s never been before. And what… What if it really isn’t now?

“Hold your fire!” sounded at last.

The cannon stopped, the people crowded even more tightly along the wall to see. There was a pause, and then a long ragged cheer erupted from the ranks. Felix found himself standing next to Dominguez once more. The sergeant hooked a thumb toward the mass of dead.

“How about that?” he asked.

Felix shrugged. “You really think it’s all going to go like this?”

Dominguez nodded, understanding. “But there it is,” he offered.

“Yeah,” Felix replied. “There it is.”

Ten minutes later the second wave appeared over the ridge. The order to fire was delayed until, once more, the runway was covered with their rush.

Then the same thing happened. Once more, in moments, it was over.

A five-minute delay occurred before the third wave. It, too, went as before.

The ants waited a full fifteen minutes before the fourth wave appeared. It did them no good. Again, thousands died. Quickly, easily, distantly.

When it was all over, the warriors stood staring at the mass of corpses and pieces of corpses before them. They shook their heads in amazement. How stupid the ants were, they said, to be willing to let so many be wiped out.

Felix listened, but heard no one remark on what it meant that the ants were willing to let so many die. To them it was merely stupidity. To Felix, it was . . . something else. Something alien. While it made the others laugh, it made him … what?

He realized, after a moment, that it frightened him. Terrified him, in fact, in a way that nothing before had.

“They just don’t care,” he mumbled to himself. No one else heard. No one would have paid any attention, he knew, if he had.

So ended the third hour of the drop.

Shoen’s squad formed on the southeastern corner beneath the cannon platform. It had been forty-five minutes since the last wave. She was afraid to wait any longer. The number of ants still seen to be twitching in the piles was rapidly shrinking.

“We want the ones still alive if we can find them,” she admonished the team. “Or just recently dead.”

They nodded. With Felix in the lead, the five of them went over the wall.

They were lucky. The first pile they reached had ants still jerking spastically. Felix and Dominguez stood watch while Shoen directed Ling and Morleone where and what to cut.

“Damn!” gasped Dominguez, staring at the carnage before their eyes.

Felix agreed. “Damn.”

When they headed back, Felix saw that Shoen’s face looked pale behind her faceplate.

Good for you, he thought.

The fifth hour began with the rotation of several groups back into the bunker for rest. All the scouts were in the first group. They were going out again, Felix was told, as soon as they returned. Felix eagerly accepted the opportunity, finding to his surprise that he had been looking forward to a shower all along.

Later, he sat dripping in the head, smoking and watching himself in the mirror. You sure got used to this in a hurry, he thought.

He found the mess with little trouble. He sat on a bench and sipped a mug of hot tea given him by an enthusiastic galley tech. At the next table several young warriors discussed their first-ever sight of ants. Some were beginning to feel a delayed reaction of nausea at the experience. Two said they wouldn’t look the second time it happened. One said he felt sorry for all those poor ants. “I think I would have mutinied if I’d been one of ’em,” he offered. Felix left.

He wandered the passageways until he found the main hall. It was the largest room he had found by far. In it, several techs were aligning hundreds of seats and benches. On the far wall, a huge blank screen hung before the rows of empty seats. One of the techs explained that the Old Man was planning to address everyone later.

Felix picked a seat at random and sat down to smoke and think. He stared at the screen. He thought some more. He finished a cigarette and lit another. He thought. What was wrong with him?

His mind told him this was wrong. This was a lie. And his guts, his instincts, told him the same thing—there was a frailty here not yet seen.

But he couldn’t get excited about it. He couldn’t get… scared enough.

His thoughts drifted to Kent. He hadn’t seen him on the wall watching the slaughter. Embarrassed, he figured. A lot was expected from “everybody’s hero,” but that didn’t include a perfectly normal reaction to a perfectly abnormal dose of horror. He thought back to the easy tones he had heard from the man and of the handsome face he had met earlier in the drop bay. All of it fitted with what Forest had told him.

“No Engine in that guy,” he muttered to himself unconsciously. “Too gentle. Too nice.”

Again he thought of Forest and of how to best explain to Kent what had happened and what it had meant. What she had meant. If he could just show him how much she had….

“Dammit!” he gasped suddenly. He was crying again! What the devil was going on here? Come to think of it, what had been going on….

Because it had been happening for a while now. Ever since… when? Michalk, of course. Ever since Michalk.

He had screamed when he had seen what they did to Michalk. Twice, he had screamed. Twice. Not in fear or pain either. But in surprise and, face it, the anguish of loss. He had liked Michalk, even in the short time he knew him.

But how?

And what had that bit in the ship been about, anyway? Refusing to fight as if … as if he had a choice. As if he had somewhere else to go and something else to do. As if he were a real live person again.

Since being at the bunker, too, he had acted strangely. He had laughed with Dominguez. He had cried with the memory of Forest. How? How was he able?

He shook his head. He lit another cigarette. He had thought all such feelings long gone, long beyond his reach. But here he’d been, feeling like mad. Laughter and tears and…

And more. He had to admit it. There was more. The memory was returning. Of Her. Lately, he had caught himself… well, not exactly thinking about Her directly. Nothing so deliberate. Nothing so daring. But he had seen Her a couple of times. She had appeared, without conscious effort, full-blown and clear before his aching brain. All at once, She had been there. Maybe… Angel.

Then the pain hit him. It clutched at his middle, doubling him over in agony. He pitched forward in his seat, dropping the mug clattering onto the floor. The searing anxiety shot bolting up and down his spine. The pain, the Pain! As if no time had passed and nothing had happened.

Desperately, he forced his thoughts to blank. He must hold them there. Blank. Blank. Empty. Think of nothing. Don’t, don’t, don’t let It out….

In a few minutes of long controlled breaths, he was safe. He could move. He stood up, ignoring the cup at his feet and the stares of the techs arranging the chairs. He headed back to the squad bay. Back to another shower.

Afterward, his face was pale and shaken in the mirror. It had been very close. Too damn close. It made him angry.

“Fool!” he growled at himself. “Idiot!”

With a snort of disgust, he shook his head, shaking off the beads of water from the shower that were maybe tears as well. He stared angrily at his own reflection, stared hard. He must concentrate. Psyching…. Psyching….

After a while, he felt it start to happen. He felt himself dropping away. Dropping back to nothing, to the nothing he had been and to the nothing he still needed to be. But he couldn’t get all the way. He couldn’t quite get back to where he wanted.

He couldn’t quite get back to the Engine Felix. But he would, he told himself with bitter certainty. He would.

He’d better.

Felix slipped carefully through the center of the maze toward the ridge and the Dorm beyond. He had left the walls ten minutes before with the rest of the scouts.

“Find out what’s what,” a Major Aleke had told him. “We don’t want any surprises.”

Felix had nodded and, finding himself in loose command of the other five scouts, had simply lined them up at quarter kilometer intervals and sent them off. He had ended up, by virtue of this system, with the center of the maze. He cursed at the effort involved. The others were surely far ahead of him by now. Railsmith, for instance, had the smooth edge of the killing runway and….

“Help! Help! Oh shit!” sounded from somewhere. From someone… Was it Railsmith? That would make it to his left.

“Help! Help! Blasters! Look out!”

Felix controlled the command prime band. He keyed it and spoke, trying to sound controlled.

“Who is this? Railsmith? Is that you?”

“Felix? Felix! Yes, it’s me! Help!”

Felix cut him off. “Where are you, dammit?”

“At the Dorm! I’m here with… Oh, shit! We’re coming back!”

“Well, do it then,” he snapped angrily. Stupid jerk!

He paused a moment, considering. Railsmith was to the left. He’d probably come straight back down the edge of the runway, sidestepping the piles of dead ants. Felix headed for the killing area to cut him off.

Other voices sounded alarms all up and down the lines. He interrupted their exclamations long enough to shout “Scouts in!” Unnecessary, of course. From the sound of them, they had been retreating when it had happened.

Cursing eloquently, he clambered over the last three walls of the maze onto the edge of the runway just as Railsmith and another scout appeared over the ridge in panicked flight. The other scout… Jiller, maybe, damned near died at Felix’s abrupt appearance right in front of them. He dropped his rifle and skidded to a stop on his butt.

“Pick that up,” growled Felix. Then, to Railsmith, “What is it? Blasters?”

Felix’s calm appeared to offend Railsmith deeply. “Hell, yes, blasters. They’ve all got ’em. Everywhere! Never seen so many.”

Felix resisted pointing out that Railsmith had never seen any before. Instead he tried getting something in the way of coherent details.

But that’s when the heat ray struck them.

“Holy shit!” screamed Jiller, jumping three meters straight up.

“C’mon, dammit,” Felix snarled, dragging them sideways into the cover of a gulley. The two scouts started tearing down the length of it. “No, no!” Felix shouted. “Shoot them! Like this!”

Rifle in hand, he leaned around the edge of a dune and fired at the half dozen ants coming down the runway. All, he noted grimly, carried blasters.

“What’s with you?” demanded Railsmith angrily. “You’re so damned brave, are you?”

Good point, Felix thought. Then, “So let’s get the hell back to the fort.” He stepped back onto the runway. More ants had appeared over the ridge, firing blasters. “This way,” he waved.

Railsmith stared. “They can shoot us that way! There’s no cover! I’m going back through the maze.”

Felix grabbed and held him. “C’mon, you idiot. The blasters can’t stop us in time. They aren’t blazers, dammit! Besides,” he added, indicating the maze with a gesture, “they’ll catch up to us in this shit.”

Railsmith looked hesitant. Jiller looked frozen.

“C’mon,” Felix repeated, waving them forward again. “I’ll cover.”

He stepped out around the dune once more and fired at the hurtling ants. The first seven crashed instantly to the sand, piling up the others behind. He waved the other two scouts on. “Run, dammit, while they can’t shoot.”

The scouts obeyed at last, streaking past him onto the Siliconite-packed runway. Felix provided another couple of seconds of covering fire. The ants were too jammed up onto themselves to require much more.

So eager, he thought grimly. They want us too much to even look where they’re going.

Then he followed the other two. As fast as he could run.

Felix sat on a stool atop the Command Platform working the wand over the relief holo of the area between the bunker and the Dorm. Where he touched the tip of the wand to the surface of the screen, a star would appear, symbolizing every place the scouts had reported contact with blaster-carrying ants.

The brass standing over his shoulder as he worked moved quickly forward when he put down the wand. Somebody gasped when the full extent of the sightings was seen.

“Well, hell,” said somebody Felix hadn’t met, “they’ve got every approach covered.”

“I didn’t even know Dorms carried blasters,” said somebody else, a captain, looking accusingly at Felix.

“They didn’t tell me either,” he replied dryly.

Major Aleke spoke up. “That’s not the point. The point is: what are they trying to keep us from seeing. What are they hiding?” He looked around at the others. No one responded.

Colonel Khuddar was insistent. “Well? Anybody got an idea? Felix?”

Felix considered a moment. “Maybe nothing,” he said at last. “They may just want to keep things tight while they bake reinforcements.”

“I still think we’d better have a look,” said the Major. He looked then, as did everyone else, toward the CO, Brigadier Hammad-Renot.

The Old Man was silent, as he had been since Felix’s arrival. Felix found little hope in that.

“What do you say, Felix,” insisted the Major. “How about taking a look?”

Felix met his gaze. “They don’t like me,” he replied carefully.

“Ah, c’mon, Felix,” barked Khuddar heartily, slapping Felix’s shoulder with gusto. “Those blasters are puny things. You know how long they gotta focus on the same patch of armor before the plassteel goes?”

Felix’s voice was wooden. “How long?” he asked.

Khuddar hesitated briefly. “A long time,” he said at last. “Believe me, a long time.”

“Perhaps if the colonel would demonstrate the first run…” Felix suggested in the same wooden fashion.

He missed the colonel’s angry reply. He was watching the major instead, who had sidled up alongside the Old Man. The others turned to watch as well. After a few seconds of the armored version of whispering, the major got his response: a short, decisive nod.

“All right, Felix,” said the major. “Go.”

Felix stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

“Now just a second there, Scout…” began somebody.

The major cut him off with a gesture. “Go, Felix. Right now. That’s an order.”

Felix stood up. He sighed. “It would be,” he said.

Felix had decided to use the gap in the ridge they had used to flee the Dorm that first time. He couldn’t make the best sighting from there, he knew. But neither could he make the best target.

He clambered over a wall, pausing before dropping to the gulley on the other side. He looked back instead. The network of the maze sloped away from him. It looked like something rats should be running through, not people. Almost, he thought with a shudder, as if the ants had planned it that way. He dropped over the wall into the next gulley. He examined the next crusted wall of sand, as always, higher than the last one. He sighed. He figured he had no more than two or three more to climb before he reached the gap.

He leaped, without further hesitation. No sense waiting for them to sense his presence, assuming they hadn’t already.

Two walls later he got lucky. The last wall, complete with gap, was below him. Through it he could see the top of the Dorm itself. There was an ant there, too. He unclipped his blazer and killed it, then dropped into the gulley and looked through the gap.

An ant looked back at him.

Felix gasped and leaped back, firing from the hip. The ant, and two more behind it, were blazed down. The edges of the gap were immediately illuminated by bursts of blasterfire coming from the direction of the Dorm. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, take a chance on looking through it now. Perhaps if he leaped quickly to the top of the wall itself?

From opposite ends of the gulley, ants appeared firing blazers. He fired in both directions, slicing them apart. More blasterfire struck him, this time from the top of the wall he had just exited. How the hell did it get up there? he wondered wildly, firing. That’s where he had just been.

More blasters erupted from the ends of the gulleys. There didn’t seem to be any place else to go. Felix leaped back up onto the next wall alongside the ant’s body. The gulley beyond was filled with them, all carrying blasters, all firing upward.

He unclipped a blaze-bomb and dropped it amid them, then tore off running down the top of the wall as it blew. The wall ended suddenly. He leaped to the next. It collapsed beneath his weight, needlessly cushioning his fall and half-burying him in the process.

Blasterfire hit _him from all directions, the ends of the gulleys, the tops of the walls… Shit! They were following him along the tops of the walls!

He threw blaze-bombs in all directions. He fired at a lone ant blasting at him from what he hoped was the direction of the killing area and home. His blazing cut the ant in half. He hopped, running, over both halves and ran wildly past them.

Twenty seconds later he had managed the smooth killing area. He ran down the runway, sidestepping the thousands of bodies, toward the fort. It took him another twenty seconds, but he was soon safely behind the walls.

No one liked his report. He Gould understand that.

The colonel eyed the pitifully meager data Felix had added to the screen. He tapped an armored finger on the surface. “It looks bad,” he commented thoughtfully.

Felix leaned forward and tapped his finger beside the colonel’s. “Better here than there,” he said pointedly.

They sent him away. Gruffly. Angrily. They said they would call him when they needed him.

Felix said he was afraid of that.

An hour later he was back in the maze, perched atop a wall some hundred meters or so into it. The sighting was only slightly more extensive from this point of view than from the walls of the fort—and considerably more dangerous—but the brass had insisted.

“We want all the extra warning we can get,” the Colonel had told him.

That I can get, he amended. But only to himself.

Fatheads, Felix thought from his perch. What was the point in building the goddamn bunker in the first place if they were going to send people out of it every chance they got? And for what? He was able to scan maybe thirty approaches more from where he was than the lookouts on the wall could see. But the nature of the maze screened at least that many. They could be close and coming from almost any direction without him seeing them.

Shit, he thought. Fatheads.

Still, he had to admit he enjoyed talking to them. Needling them. He was worried some about damage he might be doing to Shoen’s career. But not enough to stop it. Frankly, he thought with a grin, he was having too much fun.

He caught himself. Fun???

What’s got into me, anyway?

“Ants,” reported a voice he didn’t recognize—one of the other scouts similarly perched. “Southeast from the bunker. Anybody else see ’em?”

Felix did. He said so. They were halfway across the maze and coming fast. “Looks like some of ’em are sweeping for a southerly assault.”

He stood up unsteadily, tracking the bouncing skullheads in the distance.

Major Aleke cut into the frequency. He sounded breathless. “Felix?”

“Felix.”

“Ants?”

“Ants.”

“What else?”

Felix barely hesitated. “Just ants so far. Scouts in!”

With that he cut the circuit and scrambled back toward the bunker.

Felix knew better than to report to the Command Platform in person. After gathering all information from the other scouts, he sent Railsmith along with it. Then he looked for a seat among the scores of alerted warriors scrambling along the wall to watch.

Dominguez appeared in front of him. He grabbed hold of Felix with both armored hands and held him still. He placed his faceplate against Felix’s.

“ ‘Just ants so far?’” he echoed.

And they both began to laugh. To giggle, really. Helplessly, they collapsed together. They laughed and laughed.

What’s got into me? he thought, trying to catch his breath.

Six hours and forty-five minutes into the drop, the second attack began. It came from two directions at once, without pause between the waves. The main runway held the bulk of the attackers. The southern wall fought off the rest. Altogether, there were half again as many ants the second time. Wave after wave after wave.

It didn’t help. The ants were running into instant death, as before. It was brutal: It was ugly.

It was short.

Half an hour after the attack the order came to go out for another specimen. Some lieutenant brought the message. Like Kent, Shoen had been absent for quite a while. Felix and Dominguez went alone, leaving Morleone and Ling on the wall.

There were ample targets. They found several ants not only alive, but apparently uninjured. They were tangled in the bodies of their dead, strung like jungle undergrowth in their path. From this grotesque trap, they managed to collect six ideal samples and return to the walls in less than five minutes flat.

They sent Ling into the bunker with the spines. Felix informed the gunnery crew chief about the live ants. Thereafter, warriors took turns manning the cannon for signs of movement. Great fun was had watching the ants extricate themselves painfully, only to have their exoskeletal hides boiled away after two steps.

The eighth hour order for “ScoutsJOut” meant, essentially, Felix and Railsmith. Since no activity—other than that among the dead and dying—had been sighted, they were sent ahead of the other scouts on a “quick run” up the runway itself to the ridge for a sighting.

Felix was automatically dubious. But he followed the predetermined route, leading Railsmith up the slope between the piles of dead and the edge of the maze. He took a lot more time than the brass had wanted, however. Surprises meant a lot more outside the fort than just a report to the Command Platform.

He needn’t have bothered. They found nothing at all until they reached the Dorm itself, and little there. Only a handful of ants were in sight, wandering aimlessly about outside the entrance. Felix was sure they were spotted, but, though three of the ants carried blasters, no effort was made to attack them.

“Hard times in Antland,” commented Railsmith with happy relief while Felix reported the situation.

“Stay put and watch,” was the word that came back to them minutes later. They obeyed without comment, sitting down side-by-side against a dune less than a hundred meters from the perimeter of the Dorm.

Soon they were joined by five warriors bearing shovels, Siliconite cylinders, and a case of blaze-bombs. Felix and Railsmith got out of their way.

Ten minutes later, Forward Observation Post One was ready. It consisted of a curved, sheltered bowl from which sightings could be made in safe, seated, comfort. Then the five warriors left to build Ops Two and Three farther down the line.

“Looks like that’s it,” remarked Railsmith when they were alone once more.

“What do you mean?” Felix asked.

“The ants are finished,” He replied. Then, when Felix was silent, he added: “Don’t you think?”

Felix considered a moment, said: “No.”

“Ah, c’mon, Felix! After all this?”

Felix nodded. “And more.”

Railsmith was astonished. “You really think there’s something to worry about?”

“I don’t know,” Felix admitted after a moment.

Maybe I’m just tired, Felix thought and keyed a stimule. Railsmith was probably right. Almost certainly. But….

Was it just too easy? Was that it? And what was wrong with it, if it was? They were sure due!

Still, he felt uneasy. And oddly depressed.

“Well,” said Railsmith after a while, “we’re sure as hell killing ’em! Doesn’t that count for anything?”

Felix sighed. “It never has before,” he replied blandly.

He began a four-hour rest period at the ninth hour. By 9:05, he was inside the bunker, outside his suit, and under the shower.

Dominguez was just reaching the squad bay when Felix emerged, dripping and smoking.

“Did you see all those people coming down?” the sergeant asked him.

Felix shook his head. “Who are they?”

“Dunno. Not warriors. Just p-suits. Allsize p-suits at that.”

Felix nodded. “Volunteers.”

“For what?” asked Ling from the far bunk.

Felix shrugged, smiled. “Well, we’re out of ants….”

Shoen found him in the mess, stuffing his face.

“You’ll get fat,” she warned. Her face was glowing.

He smiled. “That’s a deal.”

“Look at this,” she said and slid a two-dimensional hard copy of a computer holo under his nose.

“Lovely,” he said.

She punched his arm. “Bastard. It’s an x-ray of a snip.”

“Okay.”

“It’s from that last batch you collected.” She leaned over and pointed with her index finger. “Note these striations along the core. Here, too.”

He nodded. “It looks cracked. Broken.”

“Uh, huh. As though badly healed. But it’s not. It’s badly grown!”

He got it. “It’s working?” he breathed.

“Yep.”

He looked at her smiling face. “It’s really working!” he exclaimed.

She laughed. “It really is! Let’s celebrate.”

He laughed as well. “Walk on the beach? The poison is lovely this time of drop.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go to the Old Man’s press tour. It’s in the main hall. I’ve just been there. Felix, you should see it. It’s jammed with reporters.”

He stared, remembering what Dominguez had said about the visitors. “You’re joking. Here? On Banshee?”

She gestured about them at the bunker walls. “Well, hardly on Banshee. Come on!”

He did.

There were over three hundred people in the main hall. There were the Liaison Officers he had heard so much about but never seen, warriors rotated back inside for rest like himself, all manner of techs—and reporters. Reporters everywhere. They ran up and down the aisles between the vast sea of well-scrubbed faces and freshly cleaned jump-suits shaking hands and gossiping. There were hearty greetings and heartier reunions.

Felix found that it bothered the hell out of him.

Shoen had found them seats up front, just behind the top brass and assorted VIPs. She plopped down beside him only after several cheerful exchanges with superiors she didn’t bother introducing to him. He thought it was just as well. He didn’t feel like meeting anyone. It all seemed a little too eerie to concentrate.

She waved an arm in a broad gesture which indicated the vast throng. “Fleet’s finest!” she proclaimed.

“I believe you,” he said seriously.

Too seriously. She glanced sideways at him. “What’s wrong?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure.”

She was irritated. “You’re not still sneering at us, are you? We did it, didn’t we? What else do we have to do to prove our competence?”

He met her bitter gaze. “It’s not that,” he tried.

She sniffed. “I should hope not. Let me tell you something, Felix. Some of the finest minds of man are in Fleet. Some are in this room now.”

Somewhere deep within him a bell rang. He sat forward in his chair. “That’s it!” he whispered excitedly.

“What’s it?” she asked suspiciously.

“That’s the point. What are they doing here? What are they doing in Fleet!”

She blinked. She was completely bewildered. “For such a good fighter… Felix? Are you antiwar? I mean… are you a pacifist?”

A pacifist?

Was he?

He thought back.

He shook his head a few moments later, said: “No.”

She still wasn’t happy. “It took you long enough…”

He looked at her. “It was a long trip for it.”

Then the lights went down and the screen grew bright with the warm and winning smile of Brigadier Hammad-Renot.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, Felix decided the Old Man should have become a vid star instead of a soldier. Though when he really thought about it—about the stone-silent and unhelpful figure on the Command Platform—there was little evidence that he was a soldier at all.

In any case, the man handled the tour brilliantly. He had a genuine gift for using the vid. Moving about through the bunker with the monitors in tow, explaining what this was or that did, sliding jokes in and out without a scratch, he projected the model image of the humble soldier forced by his own excellence up through the ranks. He was terribly handsome as well, his huge screen face somehow capable of intimacy despite the vastness. Paternal, brotherly, and grand at will, he was, at the same time, The Commander, favorite uncle, wiseman, king, drinking buddy, and Dad. Sexy, too, Felix assumed, glancing at Shoen’s upturned and attentive face.

When the tour was almost over, the star was “surprised” with a plaque of gold, silver, and plassteel for which all personnel had supposedly contributed. Felix had not, to his knowledge, contributed a thing. No one had asked him to. Perhaps, he thought ruefully, they solicit during briefing—another thing they hadn’t bothered him with.

He glanced again at Shoen. There was nothing wrong with her. It was just Banshee. On impulse, he reached over and patted her hand. She smiled, trapped it with one of hers, and smiled warmly, scaring him.

“Want to go to a party?” Shoen asked him when the show was over. She had left him briefly to huddle with her colleagues. She returned with an impish expression.

“Where?”

“A party, Felix. There’s a terribly festive, incredibly illegal party going on even as we speak. Shall we?”

He laughed. It was perfect. Of course these people would have a party afterward! He should have expected it.

Before he’d go, he insisted on returning to the main seal and to the monitor banks beside it. The techs on duty before the screens assured him no trace of ant activity had surfaced.

Further, there was no indication that any would appear. Felix nodded, allowed Shoen to lead him to the fete.

In truth, he hadn’t expected trouble. He would have been greatly surprised had there been any. But that wasn’t why he had gone to the monitors. He had gone to the monitors to warn himself.

Banshee. Ants. Death. Still.

Don’t forget it, he thought to himself. He sighed. Was he being foolish? Was he…. What the hell was he?

He tossed the thoughts aside with another sigh and hurried to keep up with Shoen, anxious to rejoin her friends and the glowing novelty of this, their very first, really and truly, official, Antwar Campout.

The party was indeed festive and most illegal and therefore a great success. It was held in a sealed-off section of the second floor, an area housing most of the Liaison Observers and other Fleet Names. Technically, it was for the press only. In reality, it was for Kent. It was a ceremony, a rite, held in his name for all. The high point of the. evening, Felix soon learned, was to be the awarding to Kent of his first battle ribbons.

Felix loved the very idea of that. He noticed his own wide grin only when he caught himself laughing out loud at the sight of the forest of brass spread about the room awaiting the ribbon ceremony. His mysterious recklessness had returned, he noted dimly. But it didn’t seem to matter. Not here.

“Everyone who is anyone is here,” he said straight-faced to Shoen, only to find that she had left him to join a gaggle of the like-minded.

He shrugged and walked over to the bar and had a drink—his first since… Since when? Since that last night before. That first night Before. As he tasted the first sip of beer, the knowledge that he must return to duty in a mere four hours—and the horror of the chance he was taking—seemed not only distant and irrelevant. It was macabrely funny.

He forgot those thoughts, too. Half an hour later he was mildly drunk. He didn’t care. He was having too much fun enjoying the crowd.

The food, too. Beside the bar was a long table covered with decorative knickknacks and, more importantly, many goodies. He had, on very first sight, officially designated the table as his all-time favorite Fleet Thing. He had remained within arm’s length of it since that moment sipping and munching and patting his happy tummy.

Not that the chow aboard the Terra was bad, because it really wasn’t. It was famous, in fact, for being the very best to be had—aboard warships. Felix accepted this oft-repeated accolade without examination, though the image of gourmets making a culinary pilgrimage between warships did not come easily to him. On the other hand, he conceded, it was no sillier a use for faster-than-light than rending exoskeleton.

Even Hammad-Renot made appearances. Every half hour he would stop by just long enough to receive his due before assuming the truly perfect expression of the great leader who, though at heart a fun-loving fellow, was nevertheless far too dedicated to allow his personal needs to come before his noble suffering ’neath the awesome burdens of command.

“Wish I could play hooky and stay,” he would remark with a twinkle before leaving to return to unspecified duties.

But then, almost exactly half an hour later, he would return and do and say it all again. Felix wondered what the man did in the meantime. Watch the clock, probably. It made him a bit queasy at first. Later, he enjoyed even this.

But more than anything else, he loved watching Kent. He hadn’t seen him since the trouble at the Dorm. He had assumed this was because of Kent’s embarrassment at freezing up under fire. If so, he seemed to Felix to have gotten over it. Warm and friendly to all, tall and handsome, exuding twin auras of good will and unintentional physical intimidation, he really was everything Forest had said he was. The shyness was there, too, broadcasted by his pained efforts to conceal it. It was a genuine attempt, Felix knew, to be what everyone seemed to need him to be: the lion he resembled.

Felix smiled and sipped. He knew a thing or two about lions. And Kent wasn’t in it. Nowhere near arrogant enough. It was Felix’s firm conviction, furthermore, that it was no loss. None at all.

“Gentle is better,” he whispered, tilting his glass at the handsome features across the sea of admiring officers and press.

Then Kent saw him looking and everything changed.

At first Felix thought it had been his imagination. Kent’s sudden paled expression couldn’t be due to recognition, he thought. How would he know me outside my armor? It soon became apparent, however, that Kent did know him, knew, in fact every move he made through the crowd. Every few seconds or so, Felix would catch Kent watching him. He would always look away when their eyes met. But he would be looking again a few seconds later. Looking and drinking. He drank a hell of a lot, even—or especially—for a well-tuned athlete. Felix was becoming alarmed and he wasn’t the only one. The first time Kent staggered, the entire horde seemed to bow with the shock of the sight.

Felix hated it. He wasn’t equipped for it. He wasn’t adequate. Not now. Not anymore. He left quietly, sliding unobtrusively out the door as the ribbon ceremony began.

Shoen caught him outside in the passageway.

“Where you goin’?” she wanted to know.

He said something about being on duty in two more hours and too much to drink and such.

She took a step closer and rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Have you forgotten how to have a good time?” she asked.

He ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He smiled badly. He said he hadn’t forgotten.

Shoen eyed him suspiciously. “Are you sure that’s true?” she demanded.

He paused. “Sure it’s true,” he exclaimed. He smiled again. He patted her on the shoulder. He walked away.

And it was true, he said to himself as he entered the lift. He did remember. He did. He just wasn’t sure that was enough.

He smoked and dripped, watching himself in the mirror on the far wall. He watched without passion. Numb. Tired. Suspended between. Somewhere out there were so many, many things. The horror of the ants. The legions of their dead strewn about on the sand. The memory of how it was done and of how it had been done in the past. The past. That was out there, too, hovering between the laughter of the child-warriors and their party and visions of killing ants one by black-bleeding one.

Kent came in. They stared at one another in the mirror. Finally, Felix indicated a spot on the bench before him and Kent sat there. He was holding a bottle. He offered it. Felix drank. Then he spoke. He told Kent about Forest. He told it straight through, without pause, without emotion. His voice echoed hollowly in the empty chamber. Kent began to cry. After a while, Felix did, too. But he didn’t stop. He finished it. He emptied it out of himself with his voice.

Then Kent hit him.

No! No! he thought as he crashed backwards over the benches to the floor. It couldn’t have happened! It wasn’t possible! He peered uncomprehendingly upward at Kent, his mind racing desperately for an alternative.

There was none.

“I know what you think of me,” groaned Kent, his voice rasping mercilessly. “You think I killed her because I… I didn’t kill her. Who cares I loved her too maybe… Not like maybe I… I didn’t… You bastard!” he screamed, and slammed his foot into Felix’s side. “It doesn’t mean I’m small!!!”

Felix cried out in pain, sharp, strident. Helpless again.

He fainted.

Dominguez found him and questioned. Felix told him too much to drink, he was fine though. Dominguez watched his face a long time before answering.

“Sure, man,” said Dominguez and helped him to his feet.

Felix was once more at Observation Post One when, at twenty-seven minutes into the thirteenth hour, the third attack began. It was pitiful.

The ants were, quite literally, pale imitations of their former selves. Their hides appeared unformed, almost translucent. Their awkward gait was barely sufficient to carry them up out of the darkness toward the waiting warriors. Fewer than two hundred ants appeared.

Felix glanced at the dozen warriors inhabiting the vastly enlarged OP with him. He decided their make-work project of expanding the OP might come in handy.

He tongued the Command Frequency and told them about the attack. Then he told them he and the dozen warriors could handle it on the spot.

The reply was lost to him the first time. It was the Siliconite, he had been told, that was responsible for the gradual deterioration of communication. He waited a couple of seconds and tried again.

This time the voice from the Command Platform came through. Distorted, but coherent enough! “Go ahead,” a bored voice advised him.

Suddenly, another voice grated onto the circuit. Felix recognized Major Aleke’s businesslike tones.

“Don’t attack! Repeat: Don’t attack! Let them through. You hear me, Felix?”

“I hear you, Major. You want us to let them through?”

“Right?”

“Why?”

But there was no answer. Static, possibly. He told the others.

As they gathered up the gear and prepared to pull out, one of the warriors turned to Felix. “How come, Scout? What’s the point of not killing ’em now?”

Felix said he didn’t know. But he should have seen it.

It was the press. They had already taken vids of the battlefield, carpeted with blasted ants. They had gotten the warriors, too. And the bunker and the walls and, recently, Kent’s ribbon ceremony. Now they were going to get a real-life ant slaughter.

Felix and Dominguez stood side-by-side on the wall among the jumble of reporters and tourists and watched the cannon crews toy with the last of the enemy.

“Holy shit!” Dominguez exclaimed suddenly. He slapped an armored hand against Felix’s back. “We beat, ’em, Felix!” he said, amazement in his voice. “We beat ’em.”

“By God,” said Felix as it also dawned, “you’re right. We did. We really did.”

The two of them thought about that in silence awhile until Shoen appeared beside them.

“I want a sample or two as soon as possible,” she said.

Dominguez laughed. “Hell, Colonel, it’s possible right now,” he said and hopped over the wall. The battle, such as it was, was still going on and for one heartstopping instant, Felix thought the man would get a cannon in his back. But the crews spotted him in time and held their fire. Then Dominguez proceeded to take three samples of ant spines before the eyes of mankind. There was much cheering when he hopped back over the wall carrying the snips. Reporters converged on him as if magnetized. Felix and Shoen laughed, applauding awkwardly with plassteel palms.

Felix spent the early part of his fifteenth hour of the drop on a solo scan of the area surrounding the Dorm. He found no ants, no signs of them. He was alone. On his way back he found an ant blaster. On impulse; he retrieved the heat weapon.

Inside the fort, the reporters went crazy over the alien instrument of terror. The brass, seeing the possibilities, decided to debrief their scout while surrounded by vids. Felix went along, telling before the crowd what he had just finished saying to the brass alone: no ants. He was amazed at how many different ways Major Aleke used to draw the session out. But he played along. “No ants” was reported many ways.

Later, they wanted an interview inside the bunker. Felix knew better than to expose his face. He declined, answering questions in his suit instead. The first interrogator sought patriotism.

“I bet you’ll be glad when Banshee is ours, won’t you.”

Felix said that would be good.

“Aren’t you excited by the prospect?”

“I guess.” Felix replied. “But I wouldn’t want to live here. Would you?”

“Living here afterward is hardly the point of the fighting, soldier.”

“I hope you’re right,” replied Felix with apparent earnest.

Another reporter wanted to come along on the next scouting mission. Felix asked her if she wanted to die.

“What do you mean?” she scoffed. “There aren’t any more ants, are there ?”

“I didn’t see any,” he corrected. “But you’re wearing a p-suit. You don’t need ants to get killed in that.”

“Huh?”

“You could cough a hole in that.”

She looked alarmed. She fingered the material with concern. “You really think so?”

Felix really thought so. “It’s a towel,” he assured her.

She walked away looking fretful.

Given an hour off, he went indoors and took another shower. Shoen was there when he stepped out. They talked while he dried. It was only when he started to go that he saw it.

She blocked the door. “You knew what I was up to at the party, didn’t you? That’s why you ran off.”

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t….

“I had thought it might be a little war injury or some such,” she said with a cackle, blatantly eyeing his nakedness.

He looked at her, becoming conscious for the first time of her appearance. Blonde hair, blue eyes, beauty. Canada. He touched her face.

“Before that,” he said gently.

Then he shuffled quickly past her, unwilling to summon more.

“Again?” he asked.

“Again,” Colonel Khuddar assured him. “We’ve already got the OPs manned. But we want another run at the Dorm itself. You’ve got the experience. You’ve got the job.”

“Yessir,” he replied. Why not? There was nothing else to do. And they wouldn’t be leaving, the Old Man had announced, until the eighteenth hour.

“Our job here,” he had announced with classic drama, “is done.”

Evidently, Felix’s was not. He hopped over the wall and trotted the length of the runway to the ridge. When he reached OP One, he was given the unsurprising news that nothing had happened. Khuddar had told him to check in when he reached the OP. He did.

“Very good, Felix,” said the Colonel with great deliberation. Even through the grinding static, Felix gathered they had an audience. The press, he figured. “Now make another turn around the Dorm perimeter, if you please.”

Felix was pleased to do that. Why not?

He reported again when he’d finished. Still nothing to see.

“Very good, Felix,” sounded, crackling, once more from Khuddar. “Now if you would, I’d like an eyeball of the immediate area in front. Inside the crater.”

Okay, he could do that. Why not? And he did. The area in front of the dark and gaping triangular entrance was absolutely smooth, absolutely flat.

Felix reported the neatness of the ants.

“Very good, Felix,” intoned the Colonel one more time. Then, “How about taking a look inside?”

Felix shrugged. How about it? Just a quick little….

He froze. He had actually taken a step to do it. He peered into the darkness looming over him. The bunker had been a good idea after all. The drop had been one of the easiest he could remember. The party had been fun. But no more. Not one step more.

Unconsciously, he backed to the edge of the perimeter, his eyes still riveted on the blackness, on the depth of it. Every instinct told him that first step through would be that one step too many.

Suddenly, the. idea of doing it, of almost having done it, clutched him. His mouth went dry. He trembled.

He refused.

“What if I made that an order!” snapped the colonel, his voice fading slightly.

“Make it a threat if you like,” Felix snapped back. “I ain’t going.”

There were several clicks and pops having nothing to do with the static. He assumed the press people were no longer eavesdropping. “Felix,” said Khuddar, “go down that hole.”

“Colonel,” said Felix, “no.”

There was a pause. A different voice sang out. “Return to the OP and stand by.”

Okay, he thought. Why not?

It was the Old Man’s voice, he realized at once. The Brigadier. Hammad-Renot himself. And he was making it a threat after all.

“If I have to get someone else,” barked the CO, “it’ll cost you. I can promise you that. Now, I want you to apologize, publicly, to Ali… Colonel Khuddar, and carry out your mission. Is that understood?”

Felix sighed. “I know what you want, if that’s what you mean. No.”

A pause. “Mr. Felix, is that you’re final word?”

“No, it isn’t,” he snapped. He was suddenly furious, livid with rage. “Old Man, you shoot some other hero down that hole and you kill him. I know. I know ants and I know Banshee and I know you do not. So listen.”

“Now, you just shut your…”

“How many drops you had, Old Man?”

A pause. Felix went on. “I’ve had twenty. You send somebody else and you kill him. I know it. You should know it. And when he doesn’t come back—and you can be sure he will not—everybody else is going to know it.”

Another pause, longer. The circuit severed.

A few minutes later, the five warriors manning OP One were recalled. Felix was told to stay put in the same breath. No explanation.

Half an hour later, Colonel Khuddar called. Even through the interference, Felix could tell he was making great effort to control his anger.

“Since you’re not obeying any more orders, Mr. Felix, allow me to ‘suggest’ you stay where, you are until called. Which won’t be, I’m reasonably certain, until our guests have departed. Can we expect your… cooperation?”

“Of course,” replied Felix pleasantly. “When do they leave?”

“Hour eighteen.”

“Fine.”

“One last thing, Felix. A personal item.”

Felix groaned. “Is it necessary?”

“I believe so,” retorted the Colonel, his voice an icy whip. “This may be my last chance to tell you what I think of you….”

“Aw, well, Ali,” Felix drawled. “I was hoping it’d be about those warriors you lost at the Dorm this morning.” Another click. Decisive. He was alone again. He sat.

When he saw Kent coming, he checked the time. Amazingly, over an hour and a half had passed. He blinked, considered. But he could not recall a single thought he had had during that period. He stood for Kent.

The apology was stumbling, but sincere. Felix’s acceptance was equally sincere. But Kent kept apologizing.

“Every time I think about what I did, I throw up,” he said.

Felix laughed.

“Don’t you believe me?” asked Kent stiffly.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Felix. “It’s you.” He sat, motioned for Kent to do the same. “Forest would say it’s the best of you.”

“It’s not the me I want,” said Kent unhappily.

“ ‘You’ want?” echoed Felix.

“Yes. Me. I want to be… more… Tougher, I guess.”

Felix laughed again. “You were pretty tough a couple of hours ago.”

Felix could almost feel the other man’s face crimson. “You know that’s not what I mean,” said Kent.

“Yeah.”

Kent shifted. “I want to be more like she was, I guess. Like you are.”

Felix stared at a patch of sand between his boots. “Like her, maybe. Not me.”

“You’re a helluva fighter, Felix,” insisted Kent. “You’d have to be… And, anyway, Canada saw you.”

Felix laughed shortly. “Canada Shoen—combat vet?”

Kent laughed, embarrassed. “Well, she knows what she saw….”

“No, she doesn’t!” Felix heard himself suddenly snap. “None of you…” He stopped, paused. Kent had tensed like a spring, he saw. “Aw, well,” he began again. “So you want to be a combat soldier and you feel bad that you haven’t been.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Felix eyed him. He shrugged. “I dunno.” He glanced away, toward the Dorm. He looked back a second later. “But did it ever occur to you that you’re the only one of us to ever put this hardware to decent use?”

There was another pause after that. A long one. Felix spent it wondering how he could have lost an hour and a half.

“I want to be a real fighter,” Kent said suddenly.

“Huh? What’s that?”

“You know, against ants and…”

“Oh, ho,” growled Felix, his voice sounding bitter even to him. “You want to be a killer.” He stood up. He looked at the other man. “That’s what I really am, Nathan. I’m a killer. I don’t fight ’em. I kill ’em. That’s how I’ve managed it.”

Kent stared upward at him. “What’s the difference?” he asked gently.

Felix found he could not look at him. He turned away. “I don’t know,” he replied, not at all certain it was true.

They were quiet after that. Felix’s mind was blank. Flexed blank.

Shoen called at the eighteenth hour.

“I’m supposed to tell you two to stand at parade rest.”

Felix cocked his head. “I beg your pardon?”

“Has the service started?” asked Kent.

“About to,” she told him.

Kent turned to Felix. “They’re holding a memorial service for the nine we lost at the Dorm this morning.”

“Oh.”

They stood, clasping gloves behind their backs. After a few seconds, Felix sat down again.

“What’s the matter?” Kent asked.

“What do you mean?” Shoen wanted to know.

“It’s Felix. He sat down.”

“I’m tired,” Felix said quietly.

They heard Shoen laughing. “Don’t blame you, Felix. Lots of folks up here would like to lie down after all the partying they’ve been working at.”

“Still?” asked Kent.

“Sure. Up to about half an hour ago.” She giggled. “The whole place is drunk, if you ask me.”

Kent sat down. Next to Felix.

“Uh, Nathan? Felix? The service is on Command Three if you want to tune in.”

Felix shook his head. “I’ll pass.”

“Me too,” said Kent.

She sighed loudly. “I don’t blame you. Pretty dreary. Felix? Whatcha been doing all this time?”

“Policing the area,” he replied dryly.

She laughed. Then, abruptly, she groaned. “My God!” she exclaimed. “What was that? Did you two feel that?”

“Feel what?” asked Kent.

“I don’t know. I guess it was an earthquake… or Bansheequake. Oops! There it goes again.”

Felix was already to his feet and moving. The fear rushed like burning tendrils down the back of his neck and across his shoulder blades.

“Don’t you feel it, you two?” she persisted. “You should. You’re only about. …”

“Canada!” Felix all but shouted. “Get to the….”

“Well, dammit!” she continued without hearing. “I can’t believe you didn’t feel that one….”

“Canada!” Felix barked. “Get inside. Get in the bunker!” He began to run toward the fort. Kent seemed to get it at the same moment. He barely hesitated before following.

“Canada!” Felix called again.

“Yes, Felix. I’m here. You don’t have to blast my ears….”

“Are you doing it? Are you going to the bunker?”

“Well, no. Why should….”

“Damn you, Shoen,” Felix snapped. “You want to die?”

“It’s just a tremor, Felix. Get hold of your…”

“Shoen!! That’s no quake! Remember where you are! Remember what lives here! What lives underground! Get everybody inside!”

There was no reply. “Canada?” Kent called. “Canada! Answer!”

Her scream began as a low whimper, plaintive and childlike, before swelling suddenly, horribly, across the spectrum until it burst forth as the bloodcurdling cry of a grown woman gripped by ultimate terror.

“Oh, God-Oh-God-Oh-God!!! Felix-Felix!!! Ants, ants, ANTS—ANTS!!!”

There was no one in sight as they streaked to the foot of the forward wall. Felix glanced briefly at Kent, rolling alongside. He had told the other man… . Nothing to tell him. Don’t panic at what you see. Nothing else could mean anything. Kent had soaked it up like a sponge.

“Jump onto the wall, not over it,” Felix cautioned him one final time as they leapt side-by-side into the air.

This is the only way home, He reminded himself.

He was unprepared for the sight. It stunned him. It staggered him. He could not, would not, believe it for the first precious idle instant.

Writhing slaughter swirled beneath them. It was jammed tight from wall to wall. It was a nightmare. Thousands of ants….

“Oh, my God!” Kent gasped, as though wounded already. For the first few seconds it was hard to distinguish any detail. Then a warrior was spotted, then another. Over there a mob of fifteen or so wedged back-to-back and going down. Another smaller pack there… a group of fifty scattering… a lone suit, frozen in Traction Mode… another obscenely imploding… Blazers sweeping wildly, panicky, over their heads… The Main Seal was buried from sight behind the trembling horde fighting to enter it.

Wake up! he screamed to himself. React. Erupt!

But he only stared.

“There’s thousands of ’em! How? How?” Kent wailed.

Felix shook himself. He scanned, pointed. There were three roughly circular holes in the northeast corner of the compound. Ants poured from each. Faded ants, he saw then. The tired ones they had fought that last time. Weak and… But so many! So many!

“C’mon,” he said to Kent and rushed along the top of the wall to the corner. He unclipped three blaze-bombs as he moved. He dropped the first two in the first two holes. The third was partially blocked by a bright orange engineer’s p-suit, being dragged-carried struggling down into oblivion.

Felix hesitated but a moment on a man he could do nothing for, then dropped the third bomb into the darkness where the orange had just been. Kent looked sideways at him, then back down as the bombs blew. Sand, dust, ants, and quite a bit of orange material vaulted up from the shadows before raining back upon the collapsing sides of the holes.

“Not much,” Felix muttered, almost to himself. “Something.”

Above him, the barrel of a blazer cannon pointed into the sky. Hey! He hopped up into the cockpit, stomping down hard on the swivel bar. It rotated smoothly to the right and stopped, pointing down the length of the outer wall. He tried the other direction. The barrel stopped again, just as before. A safety measure, of course. He kicked the turret as hard as he could. Then he hopped off. He tried adjusting the gearing directly. He tried altering the mechanism underneath. He even tried lifting the entire assembly from its anchor. But it wouldn’t budge.

“Here,” said Kent, shouldering him aside and grabbing hold of each end. With a single heave, he ripped the turret, the chair and the cannon right up out of the wall. “Grab that,” added Kent, indicating the ruptured foundation rod with a massive nod of his great blue helmet.

Felix grabbed it, planted his feet firmly, and tried to keep from being thrown into the killing by the violent torque of Kent ripping the cannon free from the rest with a single twist of his armored wrists. Felix knew he’d have to take the time to be impressed by that some day.

“Where do I shoot? There’re people in them and….”

Felix pointed to an area just in front of the main seal. A defensive formation of sorts had formed. But there were so many ants and so many who didn’t know what to do and so many more without weapons, only p-suits that seemed to be tearing whenever he saw them, ripping and flapping and….

“Just there,” Felix said shortly. “Protect the bunker door.

“But… but there’s people! I’ll kill them, too!”

“Yes.”

Kent stared at him. Felix stared back, then pointed again.

He heard Kent sigh. But he pointed the cannon and pressed the key.

Nothing happened.

“Dammit!” Felix snapped. “We ripped the feeder loose, too.”

“I can fix that,” said Kent. “This suit of mine…” His voice trailed off as he concentrated his attention on something in a pouch under an armpit: A feeder line. He ripped the shattered ends of the other feeder free, then snapped his into its place. He touched the trigger key; a blue blazer beam shot forth. It was thick and bright and damn near as strong as the original.

From his suit alone! Felix thought in awe. Then he slapped the other man’s shoulder and said, gruffly, “Shoot!”

Kent shot.

He hated it, Felix knew. And he groaned whenever the beam swept over a human form, which was often, but he shot. Slowly, the pressure on the mob before the Main Seal began to lessen.

But on the wall itself, it began to get tight. They were the only ones on the wall, the only ones providing any outside help. The only ones giving hope. The ants rushed over one another to kill them. Felix got very busy trying to keep Kent alive long enough to do any good.

They clambered upward at them, piling atop one another, straining, arching up to the walkway. As they reached it, Felix began killing them. He shot them in two, between their globular eyes or sections, toppling their top halves over backwards, the blood spewing and staining. He killed with efficiency and with dispatch. He killed with the touch of experience.

But he was killing alone. And slowly, slowly, he was becoming aware of it.

He shot to his left and to his right and between his feet and when the rifle began to heat up he punched the toe of his right boot at a head and… it… lopped… off. Weaker ants! Weaker! Cheaper just to do it that way and he did. He kicked them and punched them or swung his rifle stock, shattering and bashing them.

They died in bunches.

But they came in greater bunches and it was starting to get very very tight and scary. All of them swarmed at him now, the real threat, and not at Kent, whose destruction was distant and uninvolved. Gradually his rifle cooled and he could use it again and he did, wondering how much power was left within it. But there was no time to stop and check. They came at him from both sides and in front—all along the wall now and surging at him. And still he killed them. But he was doing it alone.

The Engine had not come.

It hadn’t come all along, not since that first one at the beginning of the drop, that first one that had surprised him. The Engine hadn’t been there either. Where was it? Where are you? Help me! Lift me! Erupt, dammit! Erupt!

But it wasn’t there. He was alone with just his body and his fear and he hated this, hated it as he always knew he would. He turned his head toward Kent for… what? Assurance? Shit! He snapped his head back to the job. He was alone! Okay! Okay! And he killed some more until the rifle stopped working and then he used the heavy end of it to cleave and bash and…

Then he saw that Kent was no longer shooting, had dropped the cannon. He clouted his shin alongside a clacking mandible mouth, leaped over several outstretched claws, and trotted along the top of the wall to Kent.

“It was draining me!” Kent explained guiltily.

“Don’t worry about it, dammit!” he growled, slapping the other’s shoulder as he passed. “C’mon!”

He led them again to the northeast corner and around it. Below, the swarming ants swayed with the change of direction like waving grain before a gust of wind. They want us so bad! he thought. We gotta get inside while there still is one.

It looked like they might have a chance to do it. Kent’s brief attack had been devastating for a while. The ants had thinned noticeably. Clear territories were beginning to develop in the shifting crush below. But the number of blazers still working—always heartbreakingly small—had likewise diminished. They were still being overcome by the ants, still being killed, still being pulled apart.

They were still losing and they were still going to lose. But if they could get inside and use the protected Transit Cone….

He pulled them up short when they were even on the wall with the Main Seal. He turned to Kent.

“We’ve got to go down there in front of that seal and bust up that mob. Nobody can get in now. You see?”

Kent followed his gaze to the wedged bodies shifting below. Ants were swarming at them, dragging individuals away from the outer limits of the pack. The others seemed too panic-stricken to fight back They simply pressed closer to the seal itself, making it impossible for anyone to use it.

The only actual fighting being done was by the poor lost souls who were cut off in the surge of ants. They fought, mostly alone, and died, without hope of reaching the bunker itself. Yet the sheer numbers of ants these few drew to themselves could make it possible for the sheep at the seal.

“Okay,” Kent said sharply, without conviction.

Felix paused the briefest moment and looked at him, peering through the clear faceplate to the pale face behind it. Kent was willing. But he…

This isn’t for you, Felix thought.

Then he leaped off the wall into the compound. Kent followed.

At that instant, the fourth tunnel opened. Ants streamed up into the center of the compound five abreast.

The jamming horde before the Main Seal, now close enough for proximity band, seemed to fill their ears with a single mindless scream of horror.

“Felix! Felix, look!” Kent cried. “We can’t…”

Felix knew what he meant; they were cut off. They’d never hope to reach the seal through this new surge. He pointed to a relatively clear space in the corner between the bunker’s northern face and the northern wall. Not because he had hope or because he had a plan… it was simply a clear space and the ants were coming—so many! God! So many!

Kent followed him. There were perhaps three ants in their path. Felix carved through them with his speed and his forearms and his fear. He heard Kent grunting behind him with efforts of his own. And then they were there in the corner. But he didn’t know what to do, where to lead them next. Up onto the walls once more? But here was the hope. Here was the only way home and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t! And the Engine….

The Engine would not come.

Dimly, he realized Kent was calling to him, pulling at him frantically.

“This way, Felix! This way, Felix!” he was yelling and Felix looked where he pointed and saw the squat little cube nestled against the outer wall of the bunker. A door? A hatch? Did it go inside?

And then the surge of ants hit them and he struck out at them, splintering their faded bodies and their poorly honed exoskeletons and their pale dead globular eyes—different somehow, shinier and slippery or…

“Felix! The hatch! Help me!” Kent shouted from very close.

He rocketed a fist through an eye into the brain case of the ant directly before him, killing it instantly, and jamming it up in the clattering hooves of the one behind it. He half-leapt into the air, scissoring his legs, and slammed first one then two boots up through the shattering hide of a gaping mandible. Then he spun about, his arms unfolding, and beheaded the one behind against his right wrist. Black blood gushed and sprayed high into the air.

But he was gone when it fell, jamming past the bodies of the dead and the reaching claws of the deadly… to Kent, who stood, miraculously, beside the open hatch, the handle of the hinged door in his hand. His other arm was out before him, blazing apart the rush with a pitifully translucent beam.

“Inside!” Kent yelled.

Felix nodded, already in the air. They dropped together into the darkness. The hatch slammed shut over their heads as they struck bottom, five meters below.

It was dead still. Absolute quiet. Absolute emptiness.

“Where the hell?” Felix asked.

“Don’t you know?” asked Kent, bewildered.

“Just tell me, Kent! ’Cause nobody else has! Right?”

Kent hesitated, taken aback briefly. Then he hurriedly explained: “This is the concussion cellar. In case of artillery. The air in here is supposed to compress instead of the walls of the bunker.”

“Oh. Does it work?”

Kent shrugged. “It’s new.”

“Can we get inside the bunker from in here?”

“Huh? Yes! Yes, we can! I forgot! Here! Down the passage.”

The chamber they were in was ten meters square. At the far end of it stood a heavy plassteel door. Kent reached to grasp its oversized handle.

“There’s a passage behind here that leads to a… Shit!”

“What’s the matter?”

Kent jerked at the door. “It’s stuck.”

“Perfect!” Felix snarled.

“Wait a minute,” gasped Kent. He took his glove from the handle and placed it flat against the door itself. Holding it so, he worked keys on the inside of his forearm with his other hand. Suddenly, he jerked back from it, banging into Felix.

“What’s the matter?”

Kent looked at him. “Ants.” He pointed a finger. “Behind the door. Lots of ’em.”

Felix stepped up, placing a hand on the plassteel. “Trying to get through, you think?”

Kent shrugged. “I guess. Something’s jammed it.”

Felix dropped his hand. “Is there another way?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

From somewhere overhead, a thunderous blast rang out. The floor of the chamber rocked violently under their boots. Sand rained from the high ceiling.

“About goddamned time!” Felix snapped happily.

“Reinforcements!” gasped Kent with equal pleasure. “Those are concussion grenades. We use them in the…”

A second blast rocked them, followed by a third and fourth in quick succession. The floor trembled crazily. The walls bowed inward, shimmering. The falling sand became a continuous cloud.

Kent laughed uneasily. “If they’re not careful, they’re gonna…”

A searing, bursting Shockwave slammed them to the floor.

The walls across the chamber buckled and split, spewing a huge chunk of plastiform into the ceiling. The ceiling, already bowing, split in turn. Great plastiform beams tore loose from their moorings and crashed to the floor all around them. Several holes burst open in the ceiling itself. Sand poured through in huge quantities, piling into cones that spilled toward them.

“Look out,” Felix warned Kent as a chunk fell heavily to the floor just behind him.

“Oh God!” Kent screamed, pointing back the other way.

Felix turned to look just as the great plassteel door exploded from its hinges. Ants boiled out of the choked passage toward them.

And then it was happening again and he lashed out at them, bashing them with his forearms or boots or the butt of the rifle. But without the Engine and its strength. Alone still and knowing it. Only his experience and his fear and the knowledge of nowhere else to go…

Kent, no killer, was awesome still. He obliterated them with the thunderous sweeps of his fists. He lifted chunks of plastiform and threw them. He threw beams, too. And sand. And much, much fear.

They were holding their own for several seconds and more. But it was a useless struggle with only one outcome, only one end, with the swarming upon them, pulling and tearing and raking at faceplates and seams, exhausted last-ditch struggles using energy as well applied to the screams equally certain to come…

“The hatch!” Felix shouted. “We’ve got to get back… !”

Kent nodded. He heaved a long length of plastiform beam—so big Felix could not have lifted it—at the nearest swelling gang, flattening the first four outright. The two of them took advantage of the momentary pause to back up quickly to where the hatch had been.

When they got there it was gone.

“Oh, no!” Kent wailed.

In place of the hatch was a warped square of plassteel crammed awkwardly into a sunlit manhole. The grenades had blown their exit apart.

“Try anyway,” urged Felix, shoving Kent forward. “Try jumping up through it.” When Kent hesitated, he shoved him again. “Try, dammit! Come on! You can see the sky there.”

Kent nodded, flexed his knees to leap… And another explosion staggered them. More plastiform, more sand, cascaded from the walls and ceiling. Felix righted himself with difficulty. The sand was almost thigh-deep now and it hampered his movements.

It hampered the ants as well, but not nearly so much. One vaulted forward at him out of the raining-pouring sand, its claws hammering at his helmet, its pincers snapping audibly for his middle. Felix threw himself back, threw a boot up. The boot struck at the ant’s pelvis joint, snapping it cleanly. But the upper ant grasped him still, raking and reaching. He brought his palms up lightning-quick from his sides and slammed them into the eyes. They exploded. The ant slid off as he turned once more to Kent.

“I’m gonna try it,” Kent yelled. “It’s better, see?”

Felix looked up. The plassteel hatch was gone. An uneven square of daylight remained. He nodded. “Go!”

Kent went. It was a sloppy, uneven jump. The sand packed about his legs threw him off-balance. But he made k, his arms darting up and grasping the edges of the hole and raising him up.

Another ant slammed into Felix through the sand. He tore its head off in his hands and threw it at the one coming behind. His boot touched something hard. He reached into the soft powdery sand between his boots and pulled out a helmet-sized chunk of plastiform. The second ant, hardly delayed by the skull, died instantly, beheaded, as Felix drove the chunk against and through its thorax.

“Felix! Come on!” Kent shouted.

“Right!” he called back. He stepped under the hole, aimed his leap. Another ant piled into him from the rear. He struck out blindly with his armored elbow, slamming it pistonlike against the great skull repeatedly. He felt the grip of the claws slip once, twice, then fall away. He should have jumped then, right then. But he turned around instead, wary and fearful of more to come.

They were coming. Four abreast staggered-stumbled forward, claws stretched out and working.

He should have jumped then, too. Right then. He should have tried for the only way out. He should have known better. The Engine would have. But the Engine was gone. And Felix, left behind, could think of nothing but running. And he did, away from the ants, away from the hole.

When it was too late, when he was too far away to go back, he stopped and tried. He and the ants hurtled toward each other.

The chamber, by now nothing more than a half-filled cavern, pitched suddenly sideways, throwing him off-balance to one side. He heard a deep tremulous grinding and looked up to see an entire section of the ceiling collapsing upon him. He jerked spastically away, rolling on his side in the cloying sand. The section crashed into the sand less than a hand’s width away from his hip.

Get up! Get up! he screamed inwardly. Move!

And he did, rising quickly but unsteadily. Too much! Too much at once and the ants… God! I’m so sick of…

“Felix! Felix! Where the hell are you!”

“I’m here!”

“I can’t see you!”

Nor could he make out the hatch. It was almost completely blocked by the debris. And the ants…? Crushed, he saw a second later. Some of them. How close they had been!

Then he saw the sunlight. The hatch! he thought and lurched forward.

But it wasn’t the hatch. It was a thin fissure opened by the shifting cavern. But it was far too small. He could never…

He spun about as more ants clambered toward him around the remnants of the ceiling.

“Felix!”

“I can’t get there!” he heard himself screech. Damn! “Get me a blazer,” he yelled in a more controlled tone. “Or something.”

“You can’t get back up?” Kent persisted.

“Ants!” he gasped, wanting simply to sink to his knees. The shouting exhausted him. “They’re between us.”

“Felix, I’m coming to help.”

The blatant sham of the tone touched him. He drew himself up sharply, feeling a hard and bitter grin tighten about his mouth.

No, you’re not! But you’ve got to say it, don’t you, Hero?

“Felix?” Kent called, from the sound not one bit closer.

“Yes, Nathan,” he hissed.

There was a short pause. Felix used it to throw a chunk of masonry at an oncoming ant. The trouble was, he couldn’t see at all. And the sensors were sharply localized by the Siliconite hanging in the air.

“Felix, do you want me to come?”

That too! He must let him off the hook as well! Great… Never mind. It’s over. Do it.

“No, Nathan. They’d only get you, too. Save yourself.”

“Well… If you’re sure…?”

Felix threw his head back, cackling wickedly. Fuck you, Hero, he thought. Then he decided to say it.

“Fu…”

And again, the cavern pitched. The entire center support system collapsed during the rocking. A single beam, jutting up at a slant from the floor, was struck just right by a falling block. The beam see-sawed wildly, a fulcrum, vaulting up out of the soft sand. It flattened two ants against the remainder of the ceiling.

Felix shook himself. He realized he’d been just staring. There was something he should be doing instead of just…

“You fool!” he groaned disgustedly…

He’d been waiting for Kent to come anyway. “Fool! he said again. “Come on, damn you!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come on! Don’t just watch them….

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

“Damn you, Felix.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What an insane idea!

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

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

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

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

“Of course, it would unstick me.”

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

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

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

Was he dead? It sure hurt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alive. Even now. Even this. No pity.

“Felix!”

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

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

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

Perfect.

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

With a vengeance, the Engine had returned.

He slept.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Felix smiled.

“No, no, NO! It was me!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sorry, Chief,” the doctor told her.

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

Felix smiled again.

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

Leclere was pretty. Not blonde, though.

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

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

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

“The psych?” asked the doctor.

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

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

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

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

Good. He slept.

It was perfect.

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

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

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

No option.

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

It was the only way.

Felix heard it all. He pronounced it perfect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He visited his suit often. It was fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Felix smiled at him. Then he made himself get up and go over and pat him on his freckled shoulder and thank him for it. Only then would he let himself leave. He did, hurriedly, but feeling good about what he could do through the sheer power of his will.

It was worse than a minor drop. It was a token drop. The Masao, they claimed, wanted to see Banshee for himself.

Felix stood at the end of the line of thirty regulars listening to the briefing while awaiting the imperial presence. The mission was officially a probe placement. Felix had heard all he was told before. He knew the purpose of the probe: to measure the shifting magnetic patterns of Banshee. He knew why it was important: once man could learn how the ants were able to change the patterns artificially, they could program their missiles to adopt to it. He even knew the essential truth about the probes themselves: they didn’t work.

The sergeant doing the briefing ended it the same way as always. “Just stay the hell away from the damn things and let the techs do their work. Right? Right.”

All heads turned at the appearance of the man at the entrance of the Drop Bay. He was an Imperial Guard and an incredible sight. He wore bright red armor with the Masao’s crest emblazoned across the chest in white. He wore a white silk scarf around his helmet where his forehead should be. He wore two swords, one short, one long. He was beautiful.

He spoke in highly dramatic, thickly accented, standard.

“Be all aware: His Royal Highness, Alejandro Jorges Umemoto, Supreme Lord and Great One of…”

“Enough, Suki,” said a strong and gentle voice. “Just let me in.”

Suki sounded upset. He waved a hand abruptly at the entrance. “The Masao,” he said shortly.

There were a few giggles in the ranks at Suki’s expense. They stopped when he walked in. The Masao was wearing gold armor. Not that it wasn’t plassteel, too. Not that it wasn’t strong and utilitarian. It was. But it was also gold. The collective sigh was almost unanimous.

Behind the Masao, in two sharply stepping files, entered the remainder of the imperial guard. There were eighteen altogether. All wore the red, the scarves, the swords. One carried an extra two: the Great One’s.

The captain in charge of the mission immediately fell all over himself trying to show not only the proper respect, but also that he wasn’t really that undone by it all. What he succeeded in displaying was his almost paralyzing sense of intimidation. The Great One rescued him. Charming, and friendly, making a great effort not to appear mighty—while making it clear to all that the effort was a genuine courtesy on his part—he did manage to calm them down a bit. He even insisted the captain merely call him “Sir,” a gesture which visibly shook his guards, even through their armor.

Next he started down the line, shaking the hand of each and every warrior. Almost no one present was aware of the true purpose of the guard that accompanied him down the line: to kill anyone insufficiently safe, courteous, or impressed. He wasn’t needed. All were awed.

He didn’t make it to Felix, at the end of the line. The sudden appearance of the ship’s Captain himself stopped the greetings. A brief ceremony followed, with the skipper loudly and dramatically bestowing his prayers, faith etc. on the Great One’s journey. The Masao handled it as if he had been accepting even greater honors all his life—which he had.

Then it was time to go. The scouts were called to point. Felix was with them. He stepped out of the ranks and took his place in front. The noncombatants fled the chamber. Felix found that he was trembling. But that ended when the familiar pattern of Transit Lights began. He tensed forward eagerly. He was ready for this. He was ready for nothing else.

Then the lights went to green and he stepped forward. It would be his twenty-first drop.

And his last.

Fleet seemed to be getting the hang of it. They had said no ants and there were none about. Felix approved of the glimmer of professionalism though personally, of course, he was disappointed.

He scanned the area. No wind now, but evidence of a recent storm was everywhere. There were no mazes. And what few dunes did exist were smooth sloping things rising and falling with gradual grace. The landscape rose gently eastward in broad, widely spaced humpbacks. In all other directions, vision was unobstructed for several kilometers.

It was a good team. The warriors spread out without having to be told, forming the defensive perimeter. The Imperial Guard was even better. Their circle around the Masao was completed many seconds sooner.

Felix found himself in the center of both rings along with the CO, the techs, and the Masao. He couldn’t stand it. He offered to scout upslope while the first probe was being planted.

“Of course,” replied the CO, as if he’d ordered instead of approved.

He went almost two kilometers. Nothing. No enemy, no ants.

“Shit,” he mumbled and trotted back downslope.

He was perhaps half a kilometer away from the rest of the team—they had just come into view below him—when he stopped short.

He didn’t want to go back.

He turned around and looked back up the hill. That was where the ants were. Sooner or later. He looked back downslope. There was… what? Probes. A safe route, a quick route, then home. No ants. Just worthless readings and… and the Masao.

He didn’t want to go back.

And he wasn’t. He was actually turning away, toward Banshee and ants and oblivion, when the sudden bright glare off the gold caught his eye. He squinted. Then, seeing it, he gasped. His mouth went dry.

The Masao was coming up the slope.

There was another with him in a red suit. Suki, no doubt. Felix began to shake. The urge to flee was immensely strong. Anything. Anything! But not this. …

Yet he stood still where he was. Even when, at fifty meters, Suki stopped to let the Masao approach alone. Even then, knowing what it must mean—even then, he could not move.

The Masao halted a mere two steps away. And during the brief silence before he spoke Felix could feel the Engine shudder. Then: “Hello, Felix.”

He sighed. “Hello, Allie.”

Allie stepped forward to join in the embrace. Felix stopped him short by thrusting his hand forward. Allie paused, looked at the black armored hand offered him, then slowly took it in his own.

Felix shook briefly, then dropped his hand. He had to moisten his lips before he could speak.

“Didn’t waste much time, did you?”

“That’s if you don’t count the two years it took to find you,” Allie replied with a laugh. He gestured about him. “Besides, I don’t much like this place.”

“Who else knows?”

“About you? No one but me.”

“And you won’t tell ’em,” Felix sniffed sarcastically.

Allie’s reply was soft with gentle hurt. “I wouldn’t do that Felix. You should know that.”

“All right. What are you doing here?”

“I came to get you.”

“And take me back to… to…”

“To Golden?”

“Yes. Golden.”

There was a pause. Felix stared at the sand.

“Felix, what are you doing in this place?”

“Killing ants.”

“I see,” Allie replied slowly. He took a frustrated step to one side, then back. “Yes, I had heard that. You’re good at it?”

“I am.”

Allie strode forward and peered at him. “So tell me, old friend. Does it help?”

“Don’t, Allie,” Felix warned and took a step back.

“I don’t think it does.”

“Allie…”

“You couldn’t even say Golden just now….”

“Stop it.”

“So I don’t believe you dare think of the rest of it…”

“Stop!”

“…or of her…”

And Felix hit him. It was not a deadly blow. It was not even hard—this was Allie, after all.

But Suki came running anyway, drawing his long sword. The blade glowed with the rich dullness of plassteel. Felix shoved Allie back and eagerly faced the charging guard.

“Who’s the clown?” he called as belligerently as he could.

Allie threw up a golden arm. “Suki! Hold!”

The guard skidded to a halt. “But my Lord!”

“I am unhurt,” assured his master calmly. “Leave us.”

“You tell ’im, Allie,” snarled Felix, spoiling.

Suki whirled to face him again. “You dare to speak that way?”

Felix pointed a blunt black finger. “You won’t believe how quickly I’ll kill you,” he said flatly.

Suki raised the sword.

“Hold, Suki!” commanded Allie. “Put that away.”

Suki stared helplessly at him. He obeyed reluctantly. “Lord, how can you let him behave so?”

Allie patted his armored shoulder. “Suki, a Guardian Archon behaves as he will.”

“Don’t call me that!” Felix snapped angrily.

“It is what you are,” replied Allie firmly.

Suki had dropped to his knees before Felix. “My Lord Archon, please forgive me. I didn’t know!”

Felix stared at him. “Aw, shit! Just… just go away!” Suki did not move. “I said ‘Go!’”

“You know he can’t do that now, Felix.”

Felix groaned. Allie was right. He did know that. “You can do it, though. You tell him, Allie.”

“And shame him further?”

“Damn you, Allie!” he snapped. He hesitated, then stood over the kneeling samurai. He looked at Allie. “I don’t remember what to say.”

“Oh, come now, Felix” Allie snorted disgustedly.

“I don’t,” insisted Felix.

Allie peered at him. “Truly?”

Felix shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“ ‘Rise, loyal one, forgiven,’” Allie intoned.

Felix repeated it. Suki stood, bowed, and backed away without a sound. Felix watched him go. He turned back to his friend.

“Allie, you set that up. You set me up.”

“Yes. I needed to know.”

“Well, you found out.”

“Yes. You buried it deep.”

“Let it stay there, Allie.”

“No.”

The ominous tone touched Felix. He felt something tearing far inside. The Engine warped violently in and out of the shadows.

“Allie, please….”

“Look at you! Look at what you’ve become. Wrapped up in that… that husk of yours. You look like a weapon.”

“That’s what I am, Allie!”

“Yes. But whose?”

“My own.”

“That’s not the way it works, Felix!” He raised his gold-covered hands and clenched them into fists before Felix’s faceplate. “Goddamn you, Felix!” he roared. “You are not dead! Stop acting like it!”

Felix lurched back as if struck. He knew it was coming. He saw it in his friend’s angry eyes. And he knew there was no way to stop it. There was no protection, no armor—not for this.

“Angel is dead,” said the Masao.

Felix sank to his knees like a rag doll. “No, Allie…”

“She’s dead. Angel died.”

“No, please…” He was gasping, his arms folded tightly across his stomach. He couldn’t breathe.

“She’s dead. Your wife is dead. She died in a freighter accident…”

He vomited, tried to crawl away.

The Masao followed. “It was a freak accident. It shouldn’t have happened but it did.”

“Please, no…” Felix gasped.

“Yes! Yes! You know it. You found the freighter yourself…”

“Allie…”

“NO! You found the ship and you found her body! Or what was left of it after zero pressure had blown…”

“Noooooooo!” He rose back to his knees. His arms shot out from his sides, begging, beseeching. “Nooo-Noooo! Angel! Annngellllll…!”

And he screamed the scream again, that same scream from that same horrible ice-bloody sight. He screamed with his mind and he screamed with his soul and he could not stop, not to breathe, not to forget, not to live.

He fainted, the only way.

When he awoke, he was lost. He tried to rise but something held him fast. Something strong and gold—Allie! And it all rushed back in waves of pulsing agony and he wept as only once before he had. The golden arms curled around him, holding him, as his body jerked and heaved with each racking sob. He clung to Allie, trying to make it. And it helped. Even through the armor, it helped.

But he couldn’t do it. He reached for the forearm panel to pop the suits. Allie’s powerful arms, possessing all the leverage, clamped his arms too tightly. He struggled, but could not get them free.

“Oh, Allie, I want to die!”

“Is that all?” asked his friend gently. “Just die?”

“That’s all.”

“And so you came here?”

“I… guess so.”

“But you forgot you can’t ‘just die.’”

“Why can’t I?”

Allie held him tighter, cradling. “Because, despite it all, you are Felix and must be killed.”

Again, he slept.

When next he awoke the sobs were much less devastating. His body could no longer support them perhaps. Soon they stopped. He lifted his helmet from Allie’s golden lap and sat up. Several meters away, the warriors and guard were gathered into small groups, sitting and talking. And, obviously, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” said Felix. “How long was I out?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Allie said gently. “You feel better?”

“Yes. I can’t believe I could sleep. I just got up.” He indicated the others. “Haven’t they said anything?”

“Forget them.”

“But the drop…?”

“Forget that, too.”

“But….” He stopped, seeing it. He faced his friend. “It was all a fake. The drop… all for me.”

Allie nodded slowly. “Mostly,” he admitted. “This is Banshee, however. And we are carrying probes. Of course they don’t work.”

“They never have.”

“So I understand. Lovely war, this.”

“How’d you do it? You said no one else knew.”

“And they don’t. No one here, except Suki, knows.”

“Then how, Allie?”

Allie shrugged. “The master of the Terra was most cooperative. He gave me a drop of my own.”

“He went along, without even knowing why?”

“I am the Masao.”

Felix smiled. For some reason, he had always found his friend’s astonishing arrogance endearing. He gestured toward the others. “And the CO?”

“Oh, much easier. Command Voice and all that.”

Felix winced. “He’s not a pet, Allie.”

“Oh really? Then what’s he doing here?”

He laughed, started to say something else. But it came again, without warning, doubling him over, grinding up and out. He wept and wept.

He had been sitting and staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. He was numb, exhausted, wrenched flat. And, he realized with amazement, relieved. He didn’t know exactly what it meant. He didn’t want to know. Or at least he didn’t feel like examining it. Beside him, sitting patiently and waiting, with his back to all, sat the Masao. Felix smiled—he had his legs g-crossed Bhudda-fashion.

All his life he had known this man. He was closer to him than any other human. Despite the fact that they were from two different planets and two different cultures, they had managed to stay in touch since infancy. Most of the major events in their lives had been joint ventures. Allie had been Best Man.

But what really, he thought, did they have in common? Only that their recent ancestors had been rich enough and tough enough and egocentric enough to establish favorite monarchies on the two richest planets in known space. Even in that respect the two were different. Felix had been but one of twelve candidates for Guardian. The Masao had been the Masao from conception. He had always known it and always loved it that way. Whereas, Felix….

Still, he loved him. In his short life, there had been only the two who had touched him. Now one.

He glanced at the time. Damn! Two hours here!

“Allie, we’ve got to get out of here. Call the ship.”

“Suddenly you’re in a hurry.”

“I’m not. The ants are. They must’ve sensed us by now. They’ll be coming.”

“Fleet reports say no ants here. It’s why I picked it.”

Felix stared at him. “Fleet reports? I thought you’d been keeping track of this war.”

“Hmm. I see what you mean. Fleet isn’t here.”

Felix laid a glove on his shoulder. “Let me tell you something, old friend. Fleet is never here. Call the ship.”

“I can’t. Well, I could, of course. But we need to go somewhere else to get picked up.”

“Why is that?”

“Dammit, Felix. This is supposedly a probe placement. They pick us up at the end of the line when we’ve finished planting them.”

“Where?”

“About ten kilometers, I believe.”

“When?”

The Masao eyed him with distaste. “I think I liked you better in my lap.”

“When, Allie?”

“About five hours. Plenty of time.”

Felix stood up. “Let’s get started.”

“You trying to. scare the Masao?”

“Allie, don’t you understand? This is Banshee!”

“Oh! You mean this is Banshee….”

Felix tried to get angry. He failed. “Come on,” he urged.

“Relax, my friend. We’ll have you in the Hall of Gold in less than….”

“No.”

Allie paused. He stood up. “You mean you won’t go back?”

“Let’s talk about it later. We’ve got to get these people moving.”

“Very well,” Allie agreed reluctantly. “For now. Suki!”

They were up and moving in seconds, a steady procession of two concentric circles. A good team. Felix only had one suggestion. He thought the probes ought to be left behind now that their purpose had. been served. The CO treated the advise like an order. “Yessir,” he replied respectfully and ordered the probes abandoned on the spot.

Felix stared at him. Now that he noticed it, all the others were treating him with equal deference. He caught them glancing his way occasionally, always taking care not to get caught gawking.

He accused the Masao.

Allie laughed. “I swear to you. I told no one. And Suki wouldn’t dare.”

“Well, I guess seeing that we knew each other…”

Allie laughed again. “Could be that. Could be your Command Voice.”

“Buzz off, Allie.”

“You can’t still blame them,” Allie insisted. “Besides, it wasn’t their fault the freighter buckled.”

Felix sighed. “It was their fault she was on the freighter in the first place.”

They had been walking for over an hour. Allie had been on him the whole way. He turned his gaze to the others, marching steadily around them. No one had approached, no one had spoken. Their privacy was respected. Pure Masao, he thought wryly.

He realized Allie had been talking. “What?” he asked.

His friend sounded exasperated. “I said you can’t go on blaming a whole people for a mistake made by a few.”

“Allie, those few didn’t just err, they defaulted. You know how long it took me to run away? Three months. I planned for three months and my bodyguards still almost caught up with me. Angel lost hers, without planning, in three minutes. That’s a breakdown in commitment. The guards simply didn’t care enough about her to do their duty.”

“All right,” Allie conceded. “Perhaps you’re right….”

“No ‘perhaps’ about it.”

“Okay, okay. You made your point. But you’re still blaming the planet for it?”

“Allie, the guards were just indicative. They never accepted Angel—no one ever did. They never gave her a chance.”

Allie shrugged. “She was an Earthwoman. Your people resented it.”

“Goddammit! My mother was from Earth! So was yours. They never had any trouble.”

“That was a long time ago, Partner. They were there from the start. They were very old and revered. Mine still is.”

He grinned, looked sideways at his friend. “Still beautiful, too?”

Allie laughed. “By Imperial decree.”

“I always loved your mother.”

“She loved you. She’s missed you.”

“Yes.”

They were quiet for several steps. “Angel left me a note before she left. Did I tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“She said she was afraid she was holding me back.”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t know. Even then, she still didn’t know how much I… I” His voice cracked. He fought the churning.

“Do you want to stop?” Allie asked him.

“No.”

“We can. We’ve got plenty of time.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I’ll be all right.” He looked at Allie through his tears.

Maybe I will, he thought.

An hour later they had covered over half the distance. The landscape had gradually changed. They were on a long broken plain apparently unaffected by the storm. Crusted dunes were everywhere around them. In the distance, foot-hill-size drifts could be made out.

Allie tried patriotism.

“The people need you,” he said.

Felix sighed. “They have a Guardian now. They have Tasp.”

“You know about that? Well, you have bothered to keep up then.”

“No. But who else could it have been?”

“You.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“You would be better.”

“What’s wrong with Tasp? Don’t the people like him?”

“Of course they do. He’s a good Guardian.”

“Well, then.”

“But he isn’t you.” Allie stopped suddenly, looked at him carefully. “They wanted you.”

Felix matched his gaze. “I wanted Angel.”

* * * * *

Another hour. The team sat or lay sprawled around them in the sand. They were making very good time. Allie voiced concern about arriving early.

“If we have to wait two hours there, won’t it be just as bad?”

“Aha,” laughed Felix. “I have scared the Masao.”

“Don’t be impertinent.”

Felix laughed again. “Yes, Great One.” And he went on to explain that it was location, not timing, that counted. He was explaining about the three-hour safety margin surrounding Retrieval when it hit him. He stopped and stared at his friend, seeing him, really seeing him for the first time. And, more importantly, really believing he was here.

He sat forward and threw his arms around his chest and held him close. They were silent for several seconds. Then they broke away. Allie peered closely into his faceplate.

“You’re back,” he said.

Felix smiled. “Yes.”

“This is really you again.”

Felix laughed. “It always was.”

“Some of you,” Allie corrected.

He nodded. “ ‘Some of me’ still, Allie. It’s been… very bad.”

“Whatever. I think it’s incredible. In four hours—after two years of being… whoever it was you were.”

Felix shrugged. “I was already on my way. He was dying.”

“He?”

“The Engine.”

“And that is… what?”

“Exactly. A what. As opposed to a who.”

Allie shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“Good. It’s just something that… well, it kept me alive.”

“If that’s what you call living. The life you had is…”

“Allie, once and for all—I’m not going back. Never.”

The Masao sighed loudly. He lay back in the sand. “All right.” He tapped the toe of a boot against Felix’s armor. “I hope your next suit is more fun.”

Felix shook his head violently. “No. No more armor for me. I don’t…”He stared at something in the distance, not seeing it, and wondered how he had possibly done it at all. He shook the thoughts away. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had to fight again. No more armor for me.”

Allie shrugged. “I wasn’t talking about fighting especially. But it’s still armor, whether you admit it or not. It’s still something you hide in.” He sat up. “Felix, you came here to hide in there. But everything you were hiding from was in there with you. That’s the trouble with armor. It won’t protect you from what you are.”

“And what is that?”

“What you’ll do.”

“When?”

“When it counts.”

Suki approached and bowed.

“Speak,” said the Masao, standing up.

“Lord, the officer in charge reports the scout…” He looked at Felix, embarrassed. “That is, one of the warriors. He was sent ahead, over the next hill. He reported Retrieval Proximity.”

“Hot damn!” said Allie happily, slapping his golden palms. “We’re there.”

“Damn near,” Felix agreed.

“Lord? Then I can tell them we can begin at once?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, Suki, by all means. At once. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Yes, Lord!” Suki agreed happily, bowing and backing away.

Felix stood up too. Soon the procession was again on the move. They marched in silence over the hill. Soon each had the Retrieval Beacon flickering below his holos. Only a few hundred yards to go.

Allie matched steps with him, throwing an arm over his shoulders. “So tell me: what are you gonna do? How are you going to live?”

Felix grinned. “The Masao will be pleased to provide the necessary luxuries.”

Allie’s arm jerked away as if stung. “And what if he does not?” he demanded in mock outrage.

Felix’s grin broadened. “Then I’ll break his legs.”

“Hmph,” sniffed the Masao. “Said Felix the Scout.”

Felix laughed. “Of course, there is always blackmail.”

“Blackmail? You dare to suggest the record of the Great One is impure?”

“Personally, I would not,” replied Felix humbly. “But Labella might.”

“Labella!”

“Now there’s someone your mother would really love.”

“How could you do this to your oldest and dearest friend? You bastard! I was only sixteen.”

“That’s the best part. Seeing as how she was sixty-something.”

“She was not. She was… thirty-ish.”

Felix threw back his head and cackled. “Are you kidding? Her wrinkles had wrinkles. You could draw a line between her nipples and get her navel.”

“That’s unfair.”

“Unlikely, is what it was.”

“You’re very cruel. Labella loved me.”

Felix shrugged. “You were a big tipper.”

“Now that is unfair.”

“I always thought so. Considering the quality of her act.”

“Felix, don’t you start on her dancing again. You just never understood. She was a very artistic…”

“Grandmother?”

Allie started to speak, but the laughter burst through at last. They howled awhile. Then Allie became quiet.

“You know, I think about Labella now and again.”

“I should think so. You were going to give up your title for her.”

Allie sighed elaborately. “I did love her. I had such passion for her eyes.”

“That’s horniness. For her thi…”

“You have no romance in you, you know that?”

Felix laughed. “My karma.”

“Your karma’s jammed,” said Allie sourly.

Felix laughed again. “Now, to the money?”

“Oh, very well. Even though it’s against my principles. But only in installments. I don’t want you running off on me again.”

Felix touched an armored hand gently to the other’s arm. “I won’t. Never again.”

Allie looked at him. His eyes shone. “I know,” he said shortly. Then: “I brought you a ship. It’s small, but…”

“You knew?” cried Felix, amazed. And delighted.

The Masao nodded. “Let’s say I feared.”

Felix stopped, put an arm out to stop Allie. Then he placed his faceplate against his. “Thank you, Allie. For…” The tears ran warmly down his smile. “For coming to get me.”

Allie blinked, embarrassed. He shrugged elaborately. “I had some free time …”

Felix laughed…

And it began. So quickly, it began.

The wind first. It swept over them without warning, pounding against them with rhythmic, pulsing, gusts. The sand sizzled against their armor…

The Transit Cone symbol appeared on his, and everyone else’s, holos…

The CO’s voice barked on Command Frequency: “Everyone in from the perimeter! Prepare for Retrieval…”

The Imperial Guard materialized out of a gust, collapsing around their master …

“Damn this wind,” shouted Allie. “Come on!” he shouted and started to run. Felix and the Guard followed…

The CO again. “Transit Cone sighted. Everyone in on me. On the double…”

Felix and Allie arrived at the back of a pack of warriors. Seeing them, the warriors parted to let them by. The Transit Cone, ten meters away, shimmered clearly before them…

The CO again, in front of them as a gust receded: “Sir? If you’d care to go first?”

“I would indeed,” replied Allie, stepping forward and motioning Felix to do the same.

“What’s that?” asked a voice. Felix was not paying attention.

“Looks like a mountain,” said another voice. Felix was just following Allie.

“Where?” asked a third voice. Felix automatically looked around.

“There!” said the first voice. And Felix looked where the man was pointing and froze…

The warrior was pointing to a hive.

It was the biggest Felix had ever seen. Kilometers away, it must have been thousands of meters high. But he did not think of that then.

He thought of Hive! Knuckle! Transit Beam! The Hammer! The Hammer!

“Allllieee!”

The first blast was awesome. It threw him off his feet. He crashed into the sand on his side. He could see nothing for the sand. Screams piercing, whimpering, unbelieving, filled his ears. He couldn’t find Allie and he yelled for him but there were too many people yelling already and too many forms on his holos. He stood up and rushed forward and the second Hammer struck, flattening him face-down into the sand. And there were more screams and with them horrible sounds coming from all over of wrenching plassteel and bone and pressure escaping. “ALLLIIEE!” he screamed but he could hardly hear his own voice, much less any reply.

Another blast erupted. And another and another. All around him. Homing in, he knew. Homing in on the Transit Beacon and the people and Allie and… More screams and something flew past him, crumpling as it went and he knew what it must be but he didn’t care—he didn’t!—it wasn’t gold.

And there he was, suddenly, on the ground before him, the Cone flickering dully off the gold. He rushed forward and grabbed and tried to lift as another blast struck and more screams….

“No!” Allie was screaming. “Let go!”

And he saw it then, saw the hole, saw the sand being blown out from between Allie’s golden clenched fingers as they tried to hold it shut.

Seconds—only seconds—left!

“Allie! I’ll carry you! Don’t worry!” He reached down and tried to get a hold to lift the huge suit but it was an j awkward position and he was so afraid of dislodging Allie’s grip on the hole! The hole! My God, a hole!

Seconds! Seconds!

“I’ve got you,” he said and the next blast struck—damned close—and in that instant before he careened away he saw—through the glare of the blast, through the blinding sand, through the reflection of it all on Allie’s faceplate—the fear. Allie was afraid.

And then he was crashing and tumbling through the air and the sand and bodies jounced obscenely past him and against him and the world was Filled with the sounds of their terrors and their deaths.

Seconds—seconds—seconds….

Somehow he was back and leaning over him again. There was nothing else, nothing but this to do and this one to live, to make it. To live! Allie!

But the glove on the rip was weakened and opening, the head lolling inside the helmet.

“No!” he screamed! “NO!”

And he reached down and clamped his glove over his friend’s and gripped with all his might. With his other hand he reached around and down and lifted him, weightless, up against him as a mother does her child, pressed against her chest and protecting. Allie’s faceplate full on his own, Allie’s eyes darted slowly and rested on his and he opened his mouth and ice formed immediately on his gums but he still managed to say “Felix…” before he died.

Three steps into the Cone. Unhurt by the carnage. Untouched by it.

Transit. The patterned lights. The Drop Bay and people everywhere rushing with waving arms and strident voices. Someone tried to take the golden suit from his arms and for a moment the urge to kill was strong and clear and pure.

But no. He relented, slid the shining gold to the floor and walked away. It may as well have been an empty suit. Allie was gone.

People pushed against him, shoving him back from the growing center of alarm and accusations. He moved when they pushed, stood still where they left him. He seemed to be there a long time, facing without seeing the cascade of movement and emotion. Then someone took him by the arm and led him firmly away. Someone big. In big blue armor.

Fine. He could walk. He could do that.

Through the corridors they went. They passed the door to the armor locker. They took a lift. They transferred to another. They began to walk faster, urged by the big blue glove on his arm. They were in a part of the ship he had never seen. He recognized it from the briefings and the rest but he couldn’t seem to place it exactly.

And he was tired of walking, tired of the suit, tired of the urgency he could not match in their strides.

They stopped. The blue arm let go. He stood in semi-darkness watching as a black and white jumpsuit, Security, rushed forward yelling about unauthorized and wearing armor where they should not and the blue arm whipped out tendon-taut and the black and white was on the floor.

What the hell?

He blinked and looked and… and Kent? Kent?

Kent was coming toward him again, the determined iron look on his face. He had seen that look before, once before and… “No!” he blurted and tried to push out to protect himself.

But then the great blue fist rocketed up at his eyes, slamming against the faceplate and as he fell, he relaxed and let go.

At last, at least, it was over.