Armor

It was called something else, something long and technical and dreamed up out of range. But scientific jargon had nothing to do with what men had felt when they saw it move, saw it coming. It didn't matter that it was too, too, damn big. From the beginning, men had called it an changeling.

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

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

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

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

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

Enough time for me, thought Snowflake sourly. But only a small part of him thought anything at all. The rest of Snowflake thought nothing. The rest of Snowflake was psyching, psyching. Becoming the Engine.

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

But from the ship.

Psyching... psyching...

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

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

Psyching... psyching....

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

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

Psyching... psyching....

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

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

Psyching... psyching...

Red bands began their pulsing march across the screen.

"Good luck, ladies and gentlecolts ," purred the even-toned voice of the Transit Control Officer.

"Go get'em!" urged someone else in the booth.

"Don't worry," assured a warrior, a fierce feminine voice.

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

Psyching... psyching...

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

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

... and CHANGELINGS! CHANGELINGS EVERYWHERE! -

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dozens of changelings rushed toward him, jamming the narrow passage with their writhing flailing legs and Globular eyes bore down on him...

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

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

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

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

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

They were all dead or all dying back there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He ran and ran and ran.

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

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

Not on the Emergency Recall.

Not on the Command Channel.

Not on the ship's beacon.

Nothing. There was nothing

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

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

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

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