Armor (52 page)

And then coming at us as something hit it just right and a five-meter-wide section just folded back, just lifted up and folded back from the gash toward us. We were already down, blasted down and bouncing, me screaming for Holly to get back, goddammit, before. . .

Too late. That section of wall, folding and crumpling and collapsing, disintegrated from the force of another blast and then those pieces blew apart from the force of another and then one of those smaller pieces a tiny one no larger than me shot forward across the floor and over him.

“Holly!!”

And I leaped forward to help him, to get him back and get him away from the commandos I knew damn well would be coming up the hill from those ridges through the smoke. More grenades and blazebombs and then blazers and then hand-to-hand with that. . . Damn! With the ones wearing armor!

“Holly!” I screamed again and tried to get through the smoke and the blasts that wouldn’t stop coming, wouldn’t stop shaking me and throwing me about. The chunks of wall were rolling through now, from the gash and the inside of the wall and from the ceiling, falling and smacking horribly close by.

“Holly!” Then there he was beside me, the blood streaming and he lifted his head and gave me sort of a half smile that he was all right but he damn well wasn’t and I cussed at him or maybe at me and then they hit us face-to-face.

I shot one. Twofourfive. The cases of grenades were there and I grabbed and threw with such urgency and terror that I didn’t bother to key them to blast, just threw them and heard them scream and saw them drop back out of sight. Then I had a second and I used it to key the next batch of three or four. I tossed the rifle to the side and grabbed for Holly. He moaned as I lifted him off the floor but there wasn’t anything I could do about that right then. The people outside hadn’t thought we were still in there that close and they were sure to drop back and throw much, much more.

And then the blasts were there, right there, at the area almost directly in front of the gash. Soon they would be coming all the way through. I tightened my grip on Holly’s shoulder, ignoring his cries, and hauled him back, stumbling, toward the next inner door. We were almost there, almost through it all the way, when two or three or a thousand seemed to hit all at once and the blast threw us forward, punching us limply through the air and the doorway. I heard Holly scream again, knew what must be happening to him, felt the hurtling chunks rake across my back and shoulders. A small something tore across the back of my neck as I lifted up to key the door shut and sealed and safe. The blood, the screams and the pain, the pains. . . .

The door slammed shut, locked, and sealed itself automatically. For the moment, it was over.

Holly screamed as I dragged him the length of the second room to the Control room. The screams were strident and searing and they echoed off the floors and the ceiling and those beams. I ignored them and got him into the Control room and up onto the hospital table and slapped a medigrip on the worst of the spots, his broken, shattered leg where the bone was white and stark. Then I did something to put him out. He went. Then I collapsed.

VII

I was thinking of the funeral.

The funeral. The one with presidents and ministers and secretaries of this or that, representing these or those, all decked out and solemn in black and respect. It was the biggest funeral ever, somebody had said. Everyone who was anyone, everywhere that was anywhere, had somebody, a Somebody, in attendance. Nobody wanted to miss the funeral. It was Kent’s funeral.

Like most people I had watched it. It had been carried on the Fleet beam, no less, and perhaps had the largest audience for any event in history. Such a man! Such a hero! Everybody’s Hero! I had felt pretty much the same way. I hadn’t known any better.

What a man. . . .

Funny the things you think about when you’re tired and scared and only have a second or two to rest.

Which was all I had. Half stimules and half painers, I had managed to get Holly and me pretty much fixed up. Medigrips and medipacks everywhere over the cuts and contusions and abrasions. There was a disquieting, and possibly crucial, amount of blood over us. But I figured we would live until they killed us.

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

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

Shit.

Something in Lya’s tone had changed, I realized distantly.

I looked up to see the same tears and the same aching pain.

But something else had been added. Resignation. Acceptance.

Whatever we wanted to do. . . .

Huh?

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

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

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

She was still a fool. So were we all.

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

Karen. Dry-eyed and stone faced and goodbye. Jack.

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

“I lo. . . Goodbye, Jack,” she said and I saw the tears coming at last.

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

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

Borglyn began to laugh.

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

“A peeping tom now?” I asked him. Snarled at him. He continued to laugh. It was a deep, powerful laugh. Like the rest of him.

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

“She’ll do it, Borglyn.” I was really rolling now. “She’ll do it to keep Poppa alive but she’ll hate you. She’ll want to throw up when those fat pig hands and that fat pig body … “ He cut me off with his raging. I had hit something. “Don’t give this to me, Pig. Give it to her. But don’t expect it to keep her from vomiting into those blue eyes. You’re dead and gray and laid open and she’ll see it.”

He was very quiet.

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

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

But not now. No help from that now, goddammit! “And don’t start on that damned war, Borglyn! A lot of people came through that war.”

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

His voice trailed off.

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

His eyes went wide, confused. Vulnerable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Men are so cute.

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

I laughed. The Plan had raised its throbbing head at last. Holly refused unless he could play too. He looked at me with those bloodshot darting eyes and refused. He was pale and shaking and hurt. But still he wouldn’t.

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

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

He smiled weakly. “The door will spring,” he assured me.

“I’ll do it for you.”

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

“No.”

Damn! So cute.

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

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

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

“Now spring the door,” I urged him. I didn’t want to wait an instant for them to recover.

Holly nodded. He keyed the switch for “open.” That’s all it took. I snarled at him as I raced forward. He laughed and stumbled along behind.

The Plan was for me to rush out ahead to find cover. Then I would support Holly’s exit against any resistance that might be left from the first blast. Holly could thereafter support my charge down the hill over the ridge.

We never had a prayer.

The blast had done its job well enough. There was no sign of the front chamber except for the huge chunks of masonry scattered about. As I leaped forward to the first boulder sized one, however, I knew it was over.

They were waiting at the ridge, safe and secure and already firing, already filling the air with the arcing grenades. I spun around to yell at Holly to stop! “Stay where you are! Holly! I’m coming back in. ...”

But then it was too late. The first blasts hit and we both went down. I saw him slammed against a jagged cornice and lay stunned. I tried crawling toward him but then the air was full of blue beams and dust from the blasts. I felt a surge of heat along my thigh and jerked it out of the open. I couldn’t get across the open space to him. I was cut off. But he was exposed! He was open to their fire and the blasts, without any protection at all but a difficult angle up from the ridge.

The ridges. The other side opened up about then. And then from two sides the air was filled with beams and grenades and dust and slamming rocking noise. I tried crawling back to him, curled up around myself to ward off the dust and rock that rattled against the surrounding rubble. But it was no good. No way to get back without being struck by the flying shards. No way to stay. No way to do anything. So I crawled and stumbled forward and things crashed into me, cutting and tearing and crushing and I yelled to Holly that I was sorry, sorry, so sorry that I wasn’t going to make it to help him, I was dying and sorry and Holly? Can you hear me?

Suddenly moving quickly, sliding roughly across the broken stones. Holly? But Holly was there beside me, sliding along parallel and. . . What the hell? I strained to lift my head, to see who had us by our collars. But then he no longer did. We were inside the second room once more and he had dropped us flopping on the floor and turned to reseal the door.