Man O' War, стр. 70

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