Man O' War, стр. 63

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 withboth 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, "Shotgunpatterns." 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