Hawkes's screen went blank, with only the words TRANSMISSION ENDED flashing in its center. With a smile, the ambassador thought, Well, that should keep him feeling smug for a while. Now, on to a way out of this mess.
Indexing the console in front of him, Hawkes called Martel back in the broadcast center, asking if their second call—the one they actually wanted—had connected. When he was told his party was waiting, he thanked the operator and then indexed open the new vid circuit.
"This better be important to take an old man away from his golf game."
"Val," said Hawkes, "had any fun lately?"
"Yeah," answered Hensen, "I was having a good time playing golf until I was told I had to get to a vid because the governor of Mars was holding for me."
"Rank has its privileges."
Hawkes's old commander settled into an easy chair. "I've been following what I can of what's going on up there. You know they sent two troopships out. Word is they've got orders to impose martial law. Hints are being dropped that you're the root problem—that if the world goes hungry it'll be your fault."
"Knew about the ships—guessed the rest—but thanks for the warning. Good to know I still have a few friends left."
Hensen rolled his eyes in an exaggerated gesture, then said, "I tried to get through to you a few days back when things tore open, but they've got all transmissions to Mars blocked."
"We know."
"So, how'd you get through?"
"One of the smart young kids here figured out that Washington would take a call from us, and that while I kept them busy, she could splice off a beam to you and then maintain it when the initial connection was broken."
"Smart young woman, eh?" Hensen smiled. "Anyone I know?"
"I don't know if you'd recognize her in a wheelchair, but yes. You know her."
"Wheelchair?" The old man started violently.
Before he could say anything else, though, Hawkes added, "Yes, but she'll be all right. It's been a little rough up here. Doctors didn't think she'd be up and around for weeks. But, well . . . you know Dina."
' 'I certainly do. I hated to cut her orders that took her away from here . . . but I had a feeling you might need someone to watch the back of that hot head of yours." Hawkes almost blushed.
"Yes, well . . . I wanted to say thanks for that. She's pulled her weight and half of mine a few times so far.''
"I'm still a step ahead of you, young Mr. Ambassador—always will be. But you didn't go to all this trouble to let me tell you that. What do you need?"
"Tell me, you think you could put together a consortium on short notice and buy a little stock for me?"
Hensen stared at the screen. He had been caught off guard for once and it showed clearly on his face.
"Oh, and just what do you have up your sleeve this time? Sure . . . okay, I'll bite. What stock?"
"Red Planet, Inc."
"R.P.I.?" Hensen's face dropped. As he tried to get his composure back, he asked, "Are you crazy? The stuff is worthless. Worse than worthless."
"Then it ought to be cheap enough that you could get a whole bunch of it—right?"
"I guess, I mean . . . why, Ben? Why in the . . . why?"
"Val . . . I've got an awfully risky proposition for you." Hawkes gave the words a moment to sink in, then started again. "But if it pans out . . . well, let me just ask, how'd you like to be the richest, most powerful man in the solar system?"
"Huh?" The ambassador's former commander pushed his lips into a thoughtful mold. Then, after a quiet moment, he looked up into his screen and said, "I always thought being the handsomest, smartest man in the solar system would be enough for me. But I don't know, a man gets older . . . his goals change."
A large smile crossing his face, Hensen asked, "Okay, wise guy, just what in hell are you up to this time?"
Hawkes smiled back, and then he told him.
34
A NUMBER OF HOURS LATER, NORMAN SCULLY LED HIS troops out across the coldly desolate Martian landscape. All of them were wearing the oversized work suits of space miners, ship hull workers, or deep tunnel diggers. The renegades had taken nearly all the lighter, more form-fitting style of pressure suits when they had bolted, leaving the bulky, slower-moving units behind. The old security man had taken the fact in stride, telling all his people to dress in as many extra layers of heat-reflecting clothing as they could stuff inside the suits.
"You ain't gonna have the power to waste on heat," he had lied, keeping his reasons to himself.
The sun had set long before. Just at twilight, Carl Jarolic had exited from the emergency air lock at the ruined dome in advance of Scully and his forces. Scully figured that Jarolic had the best chance of picking up the tracks he had spotted days earlier and locating the old emergency shelter.
Scully had a fair idea of where it should have been located. The problem was that it had not been sunk in a lava bubble like the rest of the colony. The main reason the spare bunker had been built was as a hedge against Murphy's Law. It was a "run-to" thrown up just in case the process of transforming the lava tunnels into living quarters turned out to have some unforeseen danger connected to it.
The shelter had been built in the style of the older Lunar City, dug out the old-fashioned way with the excavated soil dumped on top to serve as additional shielding from the various radiations from space. When the lava tunnels had proved perfectly safe, the cramped emergency shelter had eventually fallen into disrepair. Like the old bomb shelters considered so vital a hundred years earlier on the Earth, over time it had largely been forgotten.
There was Scully's problem: how to find one mound of dirt on the Martian surface that looked different from the rest of the terrain. Especially after decades of Martian winds playing over it. And after they found the mound, they would have to find the entrance, which Scully knew could be anywhere.
Jarolic's faint traces of footprints seemed Scully's best chance. As he and his people assembled on the surface, the security chief opened a com channel to Jarolic, mentally crossing his fingers. "Carl," he whispered into his helmet mike, "you out there?"
"I'm here," sounded the terse, static-muffled response in Scully's helmet's receiver. "Look north, northwest."
The security man turned his head in the direction given. He spotted a figure off toward the horizon after a few moments, both its arms waving animatedly. Calling back, he confirmed, "Got ya."
"Then follow me home."
Working mostly with hand signals, Scully got his people moving off toward the distant outline of Jarolic's pressure suit. Radio chatter was too easily detected and the old security man knew they needed every advantage they could get. He started his troops out, marching them out in single file, aiming them toward the retreating figure in the distance. As he joined the rank midway, he thought, This is gonna be a tough one, no matter what happens. Don't want to be expectin' the worst, but still, best to be strung out if they catch on to us.
Scully reached behind him, drumming his fingers against the heavy pack he had insisted on carrying. His excuse had been that Mars' s lesser gravity made it easier to manage. The truth was that he did not want to entrust the responsibility of its contents to anyone else. His hand returning to his side, he thought, This mess may not go the way we want it to, but no matter what happens . . . we'll have at least a couple of surprises for the bastards.
Curling one side of his mouth into a sour grin, the old man kept moving across the broken Martian plain. The supplemental hydraulics in his pressure suit kept the heavy life-support unit going. He looked down to see his feet, but could not. The string of troopers in front of him were raising a sea of dust that had risen halfway to Scully's calf.
Watching the swirling dust billow further with each step, the old man thought to himself, Yeah, a couple of surprises. A couple.
Off along the horizon, quite some distance past the pressure-suited form the troopers were following, a lone figure sat patiently atop a dark bluff. He had been waiting for some
sign of Jarolic's suit for several hours. When finally he caught a glimpse of it, a sigh of relief passed his lips.
Standing up, he stretched from side to side. Peste's second-in-command stared down at the slow-moving form of Jarolic's pressure suit—knowing it did not contain Carl Jarolic. The environmentalist had been captured much earlier. In the emergency shelter, the renegades had beaten him, drugged him, done everything they could to force him to surrender the details of Scully's plan.
He never talked. He screamed, he begged, in the depths of the madness brought on by his pain he even tried reason. But in the end, he told them nothing. He merely died, cursing their greed . . . the first true hero of the revolution.
And sadly, it was all in vain. The head of the renegade forces already had decided that Jarolic had to be a scout for some following war party. He simply sent one of his people out in the environmentalist's suit, counting on limited communications and the static sound of the older equipment to keep the switch from being detected.
And, thought the renegade, mightily pleased with himself, looks like it worked.
The Earth League plant thought of the years he had spent on Mars, playing the role of security man, riding herd on the Resolute. Like Peste, he had worked for half a decade to foment the troubles now ripping Red Planet apart. He knew that when the troopships arrived, harsh martial law would be imposed on the colony. He knew that he would no doubt be well rewarded for his part.
A smile spreading across his face as he watched the first of Scully's men marching into his death trap, he thought sometimes things really do work out for the best.
Then he took a step forward and gave a silent hand signal to his snipers positioned throughout the valley. Up and down the high-ridged cul-de-sac, men and women began checking their weapons. The long, strung-out line of troopers approaching their position was only a few minutes away.
The man forced himself not to laugh, not daring to risk being detected by Scully and his people.
No sense in blowing it now, he thought. Not now that it's all over . . . except for the slaughter, of course.
Silently, the renegade raised his weapon. Soon he would fire the first shot. And then it would be all over.
"WELL, YOU'RE HOME."
"Thank you, kind sir."
Hawkes opened the door to Martel's room, then pushed her wheelchair inside. Closing the door again, he moved her over to her bed, and then helped her climb onto it and slide under the sheet and blanket.
The young woman was exhausted. She was grateful to the doctors for not preventing her from returning to her duties. She knew she was not strong enough to do much, but the ambassador had praised what she had been able to do, and that was enough for her. Like Martel, the doctors knew what kind of tight squeeze the colony was in. If the governor was willing to take the responsibility for allowing her out of bed early, they were more than willing to sign off on her case. With the riots only a few days behind them, they still had enough patients to worry about.
Hawkes moved the wheelchair close enough to the bed for his aide to grab hold of it if she needed it for any reason after he was gone. Then, moving forward, he rested his hands on the edge of the bed and asked, "Comfortable?"
"As comfortable as I'm going to get, I suppose."
"Good." Hawkes flashed her a smile, then said, "I wanted to thank you again for coming up with a way to get that message through to Val. You may have helped our situation more than you can imagine."
"But you're still not going to tell me how, are you?"
"No," he admitted. "I've got to play this one close to the vest. The government's gone bad. What they've done here, the way they've used these people . . . anyone who stands against them is going to be in deep if things go wrong."
Martel moved her left hand toward his right, letting her fingers cover his. Squeezing them gently, she whispered, "You take very good care of me, you know that?" Almost blushing, Hawkes smiled gently, holding himself back. Scores of answers flashed through his head, but he brushed them aside for later, choosing simply to squeeze her hand back.
"Go to sleep," he said.
The ambassador looked at her for another moment, and had just turned to leave when a knock came at the door. He put his hand to the access panel and indexed the proper section, only to have the door come crashing in on him.
The force of the blow sent him staggering back toward the connecting wall. As he caught his balance, a figure rushed into the room, slammed the door closed, and then turned toward the ambassador. Pointing a large, heavy needier at Hawkes, Peste sneered as he said,
"My dear Mr. Ambassador . . . did you really think we all went outside?"
35
A SINGLE FLARE FLASHED UP FROM ATOP THE BUTTE AT the end of the cul-de-sac. It lit the entire valley floor, instantly blinding the troopers below—and it was the signal for Peste's forces to open fire. Instantly the rest of the renegades started blasting away at the troopers in the valley below them.
Seven pressure suits exploded in the first barrage. Five men and two women were dead before they had a chance to fire a shot, before they knew the war had even started. Desperately the troopers scattered for the sparse cover the valley floor had to offer. Shedding their packs, grabbing their weapons, they returned fire as best they could.
Their first return barrage was a waste of ammunition. All the shots they managed to fire went wild—too high, too low, everywhere but at their target. Their foes were so well placed, so certain of their trap, that the pitiful salvo coming up at them could not make most of them even flinch.
Completely undeterred, the renegades continued their attack. Five more of the troopers went down in the next volley. Mortal wounds were not required; any break in the suit seal would be enough to let external pressure do the rest.
Cries of agony could be heard through the interlinked helmet corns. Each new set of screams was brief, followed by a thin hiss and then a wet explosion. It had been less than a minute since the renegade flare had lit the valley. Forty-eight seconds, and eighteen of Scully's people were dead.
Listening to the slaughter all around him, the old security man growled, "Enough of this shit."
Digging into the heavy pack he had insisted on carrying, he pulled out the vac-unit he had struggled to bring with him. Three more of his people died as he got it placed in the thick dust of the valley. Another as he indexed its power source. Another as he indexed it into operation.
The draw unit hummed into life, sucking pounds of dust in through its intake. With no hose or container at the other end of its feed, it simply threw the dust into the air. In seconds it filled the base of the valley with a masking cloud of dust twenty feet deep.
Looking down into the growing billow, Peste's second-in-command chuckled to himself. Shaking his head sadly, almost with pity, he cued his mike, then ordered, "Somebody down there thinks this is the nineteenth century, people. Time to teach them a little different." Clicking a small switch on his helmet's visor, the commander finished his death sentence. "Switch to heat scan, everyone. Sight targets and fire at will. Let's get this over with."
"AND JUST IN CASE I HAVE TO SAY IT . . . NOBODY scream."
Peste took a step forward toward Hawkes. He held his wicked-looking needier steady, keeping it pointed at the ambassador's face. Hawkes stared into the man's eyes, plumbing the depths of the hatred showing within them, trying to find anything he could reason with.
"Come, come, Ambassador, no speeches in mind? Nothing noble or uplifting or clever just hanging off the end of your brilliant tongue? Something high sounding that will force me to renounce my evil ways?"
"I must admit," answered Hawkes, his voice steady, almost disinterested,, "nothing's coming to mind."
Keep it casual, his mind whispered. This guy wants to see us sweat. The longer we blow him off, the longer we live. The longer Dina lives.
"I'm almost disappointed," said Peste. "I stayed behind just for the simple pleasure of being the one that killed you. Not so m
uch because I wanted to be the one that pulled the trigger . . . although I admit that is part of it, but more because I've always wondered how people like you die."
When Hawkes made no reply, Peste said, "Oh, it's all right. Go ahead, flatter yourself a little. You know what I meant. A hero. How often do people get to see heroes die? We read about it, we watch ridiculously silly vid presentations—put together by people without the slightest notion of what heroism is all about—but real heroes, actual people with convictions . . ."
The renegade stopped talking then. Taking two steps backward, away from Hawkes, he pulled his weapon up, pointing it toward the ceiling, but still to the ready. Martel dragged herself to the edge of her bed. Peste noted her movements from the corner of his eye—studied the desperation, the deep, fearful concern etched into her face— then dismissed her. Turning his full attention back to the ambassador, he said, "By rights, I suppose I just should have shot you both down in the hallway. But I waited for you to enter, and then made my grand little entrance. Do you know why?"
"To see how a hero dies?" asked Hawkes with a glib tone. Then, before Peste could respond, he shifted gears, adding, "Or maybe just to see if you had the nerve to kill one. Face-to-face, that is."
The renegade cocked his head to the side. Smiling as the ambassador warmed to the game, he remained silent, giving Hawkes the floor.
"You want to know why you didn't just shoot us in the back? That's easy. You wanted to show what a big man you were by at least looking your unarmed victim in the eye before you murdered him. Then, of course, I'm the only one you want dead." Turning to point at Martel, he said, "Kill her, and there's no one to tell anyone who killed me. No one to get your name into the history books."
Man O' War Page 22
