Man O' War

by William Shatner

  "You might be a failed murderer, Carl, but I'm pretty sure you're an honest man. I believe you planted the bomb. I also remember some other things you've done for me, so let's say we're even. Also, there's a guy with long brown hair and a nasty disposition I've been itching to do a little dental work on. How about the Resolute assassin and the stooge tool join forces and go see what else that boy has to say?"

  "ALL RIGHT, FINE," SAID THE AMBASSADOR, SITTING across the large table from the man with the long, brown hair. His elbows on the table, he threaded his fingers, resting his thumbs against his chin. "You've told us fifty times. Excellent. Now, tell us for the fifty-first. Why has the Resolute planned these riots?"

  "To show you greenie flips we mean business. To tell you to pack up your thieving overlords and head on back to Earth." The assassin banged his chains against the ta-bletop. The clatter echoed through the plain room as he shouted, "Mars for Martians, law! Martians in red clay— Greensiders in hell!"

  "Oh, dear," said Hawkes with mock fright, "slogans. The rabble have slogans. Whatever shall we do?"

  "Sir . . . ?" asked one of the pair of marines in the room.

  "No, no," answered the ambassador. Holding up his palm as if to restrain the man and woman, he said, "We couldn't possibly use violence on him. That was outlawed decades ago."

  "Ah, sir. . .?"

  "No, no, no beatings. No torture. No mind-altering drugs. We couldn't break his bones, or fry his cortex, or burn his skin, or run electrical current through him." His voice darkening, the false notes fading quickly, Hawkes continued, adding, "No tugging on his nails with pliers, no inserting thin glass tubes into his urethra and then bombarding him with sexual images until he goes erect and castrates himself. No, no, nothing like that."

  Peste involuntarily moved back, pushing his spine deep into his chair's woven back. Seeing an uncomfortable dread growing in his eyes, the ambassador let his voice drop to an even more sinister level as he added, "No . . . marines, diplomats . . . we can't do things like that. Rub lye into someone's eyes, snip their toes off, break their teeth with hammers." Hawkes stood up then, moving his way around the table. "Sewing bugs under his eyes, slicing a forked path down the center of his tongue . . . or maybe," added the ambassador, his voice lilting with sudden surprise as he reached a finger out to touch the chained man's shoulder, "maybe just probing him with needles for a while."

  Peste flinched violently, the force of his fear moving his chair several inches. The ambassador ignored the reaction, walking back toward the two guards as he said, "No, the law is the law. We just can't do any of that. Which is why you two will be leaving now."

  "What?" shrieked the assassin. "You can't leave me here with him."

  "Oh, come on now," chided Hawkes as he held open the door for the already departing marines. "You're in security—you know I can't stay. Against regulations for an outsider to be present when a prisoner receives visitors."

  "Visitors?" sputtered Peste. "What"re you talking about? Who? What do you mean?"

  "Why," answered the ambassador as he held open the door for five silent figures who entered, each with a menacing satchel slung over his shoulder. "Your Resolute brothers."

  Terror filled Peste's eyes. He was not stupid enough to miss what was being done to him. He was also not foolish enough to think Hawkes was bluffing. The men moved up to the table and threw their bags onto it, each one clanging with the sound of tools banging one against the other. The chained man, feeling the last of his resolve crumple, shouted, "All right, you win. You win."

  "What?" asked Hawkes, stopping halfway out the door. "What do we win?"

  "Whatever you want. Names, places . . . answers. I'll talk. But"—Peste regained some of his courage, putting it all into a single demand—"you have to promise to keep me alive. Your word, Hawkes. Your word . . . that you'll keep me safe, and that you'll get me back to Earth."

  The ambassador pretended to consider the offer for a moment, then said, "Names, places, answers. In other words, just talk . . . your word against someone else's? No good. Not enough."

  Turning his back on Peste, Hawkes headed out to the hall. Before he could let the door shut behind him, however, a sudden inspiration came to the chained man, causing him to scream, "Proof! I can give you proof!"

  "What proof?" demanded the ambassador in a demanding snarl. "Spill it—now."

  "I can take you," answered Peste in a shaking, frightened voice. "I can show you all you'll need."

  "Well," said Hawkes, his voice suddenly light and chipper, "I for one love a good show. Let's go see what you've got."

  30

  PESTE LED THE WAY FOR HIS TWO MARINE GUARDS, Hawkes, Jarolic, Sam Waters, and the five silent Resolute members. They were deep below the Above in an old explorer bore—one of the wildly arching deep digs the Originals had sunk over half a century earlier. All in the party were heavily armed, just in case the chained man was a better liar than he seemed.

  The group slowly moved along, lighting their way with hand torches. The tunnel was cold from the lack of both heat and any trace of human passage. As they moved through the almost frosty subterranean passage, Hawkes commented on how smooth the walls were. Jarolic told him, "That's because they were dug by directed lava flow."

  "What?"

  "The Originals. When they first landed, they dug down to a large lava sphere."

  "That's right," added Waters. "My daddy told me about it. The Above was built mainly in the remains of an old lava pit. Then, when they broke in, they set up the equipment they needed to tap into the planet's core—where it's still molten. Then they set off mini-eruptions in the magma—"

  "Actually they would have to drill and set the explosions off in front of the magma," corrected Jarolic. "Opening the rock up a bit to coax the molten rock to burn through in the direction they wanted it to go."

  "My dad was a magmateer," said one of the silent Resolute members. "My mother told me the stories about the tunnels. Tunnels like these—they're all over the place—go all over. Remote boring isn't an exact science. The slap-cappers would take their best guess and pray." The man went quiet for a moment, then added, "Dad didn't guess right one day—got swept up when a hot flood rebounded for some reason. Plugged up and poured back. Eighteen magmateers . . . burned up in seconds. Just gone. Even their hard suits just melted down. They never found nothin'."

  The entire party went silent again, mostly out of embarrassed respect. As they moved along, playing their lights across the walls and floor and ceiling, kicking up the reddish yellow dust that had covered the tunnel base over the decades, Hawkes asked, "Peste—where exactly are you taking us, and how much farther is it?"

  "I don't think it's far. You have to remember, no one knows these tunnels that well. What I want to show you happened a good while back. I'm not exactly . . ."

  And then, Peste stopped moving. Directing his light ahead, he saw that for some distance the floor was littered with pieces of broken glass and metal. Playing his light along the left wall, he noted a sudden pattern of wild breaks and chips in the otherwise smooth wall. Switching his light over to the right-hand side, he found the final off-branch he had been looking for. Pointing ahead with both hands due to his cuffs, he announced, "There. That's it."

  The small band crowded in through a long-abandoned pressure doorway. Motioning to one of the Resolute members, Waters ordered, "Jerry, let's set up that dish now . . . get some light in here."

  The man did as directed, taking only seconds to unfold the lightweight reflector lamp. When he clicked it on, the chamber was bathed in a high-intensity white. Except for two even smaller exits, and a heavy lever built into the back wall, there did not appear to be much to see. Turning to their prisoner, Hawkes said, "There doesn't seem to be much here."

  "There's enough," answered Peste. "I led a clean-out party down here a couple months back. We had word a group of Resolute were going to meet to make final their plans for forcing a union on Red Planet and the League. My bosses didn'
t want that. I was ordered to stop it, break it up . . . get rid of them."

  "Your bosses?" asked Waters, visibly distressed. "I'm one of your bosses. What the goddamned hell are you talking about?"

  "You're not my boss, Waters," sneered the man. "You haven't got a clue as to what's really going on here."

  The Resolute members started to whisper among themselves. Quietly the two marines slid in between them and the prisoner. While everyone waited, Hawkes asked, "But where's this proof you were talking about?"

  "Here," answered Peste, pointing to a broken spot in the wall. He moved about the room, pointing to each additional section of chipped floor or wall he came across, adding, "And here, here . . . here. Here, too. Here."

  The ambassador went up close to one of the spots. Inspecting the pattern of the breakage, he said, "Shotgun patterns." Turning back to Peste, he said, "You shot up a room. So what?"

  "Following our orders, we shot up a room full of people."

  "And did what with them?" asked Hawkes. "There're no bodies, no blood, nothing. Holes in a wall don't prove much."

  "We hosed the place." When the look on the ambassador's face remained puzzled, the prisoner added, "Recycle."

  And then everything fell into place for Jarolic.

  "The Cobbers!" He growled. Moving forward across the room, he continued to shout out names, his voice growing with each new one. "Samuels and Renker . . . Fennel, Smitty, Lara, Rabbit and Skuker! You bloody fucking bastard!"

  Hawkes made a motion to one of the marines. The man quickly put himself in between Jarolic and the prisoner. Jarolic struggled with the marine, screaming, "I'll kill you myself, you shit-fucker! You bastard!"

  While the guard contained the environmentalist, Hawkes raised a hand to caution the other Resolute members to stay back. Addressing them all, he barked, "That'll be enough. We're here to keep the solar system in one piece. Not indulge our own feelings."

  Standing back safely behind the ambassador, Peste taunted Jarolic and the rest of the Resolute, shouting, "That's right. We killed them, hosed them, distilled them, and sent their juice on to fertilize the smush."

  Turning to the ambassador, he said, "It was justified action. They killed eight of my squad. That's the tracings you saw out in the hall. They blew the tunnel on us. What was left of us came in shooting. We recycled them just like any other corpses on Mars."

  Jarolic burst past Hawkes and the two marines and screamed out, "Then why the buzz lies about a suicide pact? Why the cover-up?"

  "Ambassador," said Peste, ignoring the environmentalist, speaking only to Hawkes, "we had a dangerous situation on our hands. If those people had been prosecuted as unionists, even posthumously, their children would have lost everything. We chose to spin the story we did to try and keep the lid on"—the prisoner cocked his head in Jarolic's direction, then sneered—"these fanatics."

  "You make a nice case, Mr. Peste," said Hawkes. "Of course, you've tried to kill me twice, and I don't think you can explain that away in the line of duty."

  "No," agreed the prisoner. "Not any duty you'd agree with. But I was following orders, and I can prove it. Recycle is no more an exact science than remote boring. You get a security crew in here, let them stain the floor and walls, they'll lift blood trace—they'll find skin flakes, maybe even hair. Those wall hits . . . they'll tell you a lot." Crossing the room, Peste ran his hand over one of the broken sections of the wall, saying, "They'll find skin and blood trace underneath shot flecks. They'll be able to tell people were killed here. And they'll be able to determine something else: They'll see that the shot being used wasn't bearing shot. The pattern of cuts in the wall will show we were using flechette rounds."

  Despite his years of experience, Hawkes showed a trace of reaction. Staring into Peste's eyes, he said, "Flechettes were banned on Earth forty years ago."

  "That's right. Ambassador. Too horrible a weapon— cutting bodies apart. Banned on Earth, and never to be used on Mars. But when you've got the right patrons making sure you get what you need . . ."

  Hawkes took a single step, stopping at exactly the right distance from Peste. Reaching out, he backhanded the prisoner once—twice. His knuckles smarting, he said,

  "Now you listen to me, you smug son of a bitch. You're awfully cocky for someone who's in it as deep as you are. Helping us find the answers we need is all that's keeping you alive—and it may not do that much longer."

  "Oh, certainly, Mr. Ambassador. Whatever you say. I'll just move to the back corner and strike a humble pose. You let me know when you're ready to dazzle us again with your legendary talents."

  Hawkes turned his back on the prisoner, walking back to Waters and the Resolute members. He pulled them off to one side to discuss what they had found while the marines watched Peste. All the while, however, the ambassador was distracted by a nagging voice in the back of his mind—one suggesting that the prisoner knew something they did not . . . but that he should have been able to figure out.

  When they finally left the Deep Below and returned to the Above, he discovered the one thing he had forgotten.

  31

  THEY COULD HEAR THE SOUNDS OF DISASTER LONG BEFORE they could actually see what was happening. Not in the old tunnels, of course, but in the elevator coming up from the Deep Below. When they were still a third of the way down the shaft, the noise of the bloody turmoil above them began to reach their ears.

  It did not take them long to understand what it was they were hearing.

  "You knew." Hawkes turned on their prisoner. Slamming him up against the wall, the ambassador hissed, "You weren't warning us that riots were a possibility . . . you knew they were coming. You knew when!"

  Peste stared down at Hawkes's hands on his coveralls and smiled thinly. "You can only kill me once, Ambassador. And then you lose whatever it is I have in my head."

  "Another omission like this one," snarled Hawkes, pulling the prisoner away from the elevator wall, "and I may not care."

  The ambassador stared into Peste's unblinking eyes for a moment, then flung him backward again, bouncing the man off the elevator wall. The car slid to a stop, and its thick double doors slid apart. As the outer door pulled back, the noise from beyond was suddenly amplified. Waters, the closest to the front, quickly moved out of the car, only to stop after several paces.

  "Oh, my God . . ."

  The Red Planet manager could not believe his eyes. There was smoke pouring through the air and fire in a half dozen different doorways. The elevator had opened at Recycle, the lowest, least populated level in the Above, normally a quiet, fairly empty place. Normally. What they found on the bottom concourse was a raging battle, but a battle without sides.

  There was no telling who was fighting who—or why. When the riot had first started, it might have been labor against management, workers against security—but that had most likely passed quickly. There was no telling who believed in which cause—no uniforms, boundaries, or marks to tell true friends from enemies.

  So it had turned into a melee, a nightmare of random violence where men and women simply battered each other, ran from each other, and killed each other for no better reason than that someone had declared it time to do so.

  How? wondered Waters. What could have done such a thing? Turned his workers, his friends and neighbors— his world—into such a madhouse? Surely, he thought, hoped, and prayed, the people of Mars were not so easily turned into maniacs.

  Stumbling another few steps forward, wondering what Peste and those who controlled him could possibly have done to bring such madness down upon all he knew, the manager suddenly balled his hands into fists and screamed, "Stop it!" Suddenly snapping out of his shock, he moved toward the maddened crowd before him. Grabbing two thrashing, bleeding people, he tried to pull them away from each other, demanding, "Stop it! For God's sake—what's wrong with you all? Can't you see that this is what they want?''

  Hawkes sent one of the marines forward across the bloodstained, heavily littered pavement to gra
b Waters and pull him back before he got himself hurt. While he did, Jarolic grabbed Peste. Dragging the man's face up close to him, he snarled, "Your people started this, didn't they?"

  "Good guess."

  "And they're long gone, aren't they?" While Peste just smiled, the environmentalist continued, saying, "Stir it up and then run." Jarolic pulled back and then sent his fist several inches into the prisoner's abdomen. Leaving him against the wall, he turned away and shouted to Hawkes, "Mr. Ambassador, we've got to contain this somehow, before it's too late."

  A plastic brick shattered near their crowd—a signal that they had been noticed. The female marine dragged Peste to his feet while her partner pulled Waters back toward the rest of the group. As Hawkes neared Jarolic, the environmentalist said, "None of this is the doing of the Resolute. All our leaders are right here. This is Peste's work.''

  "And good work it is," said Hawkes with a low voice. Reaching out to grab Waters by the shoulder, he asked the manager, "Sam, is there a public-address system that reaches all of the Above?"

  When Waters assured him there was, the ambassador turned to the others and snapped off a round of orders. To the marines, he assigned the task of getting their prisoner back to his cell and keeping him alive. He instructed the Resolute members to get to their people and to spread the word to stop fighting and to get inside and stay there.

  After that, he grabbed Jarolic and Waters, telling them, "All right . . . let's get to that voice box."

  While the others moved off in other directions, Waters directed the ambassador and Jarolic back into the elevator. As they waited for the doors to reopen, gunfire broke out somewhere in the distance. One of the bullets struck the wall just yards from the trio.

  When the doors suddenly began to open, Jarolic pushed Hawkes in first, pulled Waters in behind him. Something bounced off the doors as they closed, but none of the three had any idea what it was. Waters indexed the level they wanted. Then all three slumped back against different walls as they waited for the car to make the long climb ahead.