Man O' War, стр. 65
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 grab 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.
As they stood in silence, Hawkes thought about all the different riots he had witnessed in his time. Streets running red with blood; women and children screaming in the darkness; neighbors killing neighbors, stoning members of their own families, burning their own homes . . .
Just like here, the cynical side of his brain whispered to him. Just like now.
Breaking the silence in the elevator, Jarolic asked,
"You can see what they've done, can't you? You know what they're doing? This is all going to be used as an excuse."
"I know," agreed Hawkes. "I wouldn't be surprised if there are troopships already pushing off from the Moon."
"Troops?" sputtered Waters in disbelief. "You don't . . . heh, then again, sure you do. Sure you do." Looking at the level monitor, he said, "Next level. We'll have a good mile to go to get to the broadcast center."
"No telling what we'll find," said Jarolic, referring to the noise level coming from outside the car. Turning hisneck first one way, then the other, he worked on the kinks he could feel in his back as he said, "We may have a real fight on our hands."
"We're human beings," said Hawkes, flashing the younger man an optimistic grin. "Every day fate lets us wake up again we have another real fight on our hands."
"You will grant that some days can be worse than others," asked Waters, some of his tension passing. "Won't you?" The elevator clicked quietly to a halt.
And then they were back in the midst of things. The new level was even smokier than Recycle had been. Waters theorized that someone might have sabotaged the air filtration system. Other systems seemed to have gone bad as well. The floor was wet, some unidentifiable liquid washing across the tiled concrete in sheets. There were electrical hisses in the background, sounding dangerously like live wires exposed to the open atmosphere.
Stopping in his tracks, Jarolic said, "Someone's got to check on the life-support systems—make certain they're actually running. Maybe there're people working on it now and I can give them a hand. Maybe there's . . . no one. Talking's more your jobs. You two go for the broadcast—I'll do what I do best." And then, before either Hawkes or Waters could say anything, the younger man was gone, headed in the opposite direction toward the main control section.
Moving on toward their own objective, they had not gone fifty yards when a swarm of angry, screaming people rounded a corner, coming straight for them. The ambassador hesitated a moment, but Waters moved forward, heading straight into the crowd.
"Stop," he shouted, his voice entreating friends rather than commanding lackeys. "Please—for all our sakes. For the sake of Mars—please, stop!"
The crowd slowed its pace. This was something new. Since the riot had started, people had either run from them or attacked. No one had bothered to talk. Before they could act, Waters continued, "We've got to pull together. We've got to turn this around. If we don't, we're all going to die. All of us—our families, our children. We've got to stop, or we're