Man O' War, стр. 73

As if reading his mind, she asked, "Looking for this?"

And then she fired. The recoil knocked her over her bed and onto the floor on the other side. Her shot went wild, barely connecting with Peste. The volley of needles aimed at his chest went high and wide, tearing away the right side of his face. Blood, exploded outward from the side of his head, splattering across the far wall and drenching the floor.

The renegade howled in agonizing pain. Whirling around, half-blind, he tried to focus what was left of his vision. His only thoughts were of finding the woman, finding his weapon, and killing everyone in the room.

Only one thing stood in his way.

Back on his feet, Hawkes tackled Peste, forcing him into the door. The metal panel buckled as the two men fell heavily against it, and the lock snapped. The pair fell out into the hall, landing side by side.

Making it to his feet first, the ambassador locked his hands into one large fist, and then slammed it against the still-solid side of Peste's face.

"Die, you son of a bitch!"

Hawkes knocked the renegade's head first one way and then the other. His hands covered in blood, breath coming in labored gasps, he continued to strike and scream, scream and strike, until long after Peste had lost consciousness.

Until long after he had died.

37

HAWKES MOUNTED THE STAGE, HEADED FOR THE POLISHED wooden podium at its center. He had written and rewritten his speech twenty times on the way back from Mars. For a while he had been comfortable with it, able to leave it alone and worry about other things. Now that it was finally time to give it, though, he was suddenly not certain it covered all the ground it needed to.

You don't have that much to say, he reminded himself. Besides, it's a little too late to change it now.

Stepping behind the podium, he looked out over the audience as he arranged his papers. He had come to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, a session with a great number of powerful players. Nowhere before him did he see a friendly face.

Well, then, you didn't expect any, did you?

Just to prove his cynical side wrong, he turned to the left. There he saw Dina Martel, almost fully recovered, standing with Ed Keller. Martel had risked coming because, as she had put it, "I have things to do on Earth, I want to, and you're only my boss, Mr. Ambassador Benton Hawkes, not my keeper."

"It could be dangerous," he had warned her.

"Could be dangerous?" she repeated. Giving him a witheringly droll look, she asked, "And what in our lives isn't?"

Both of them had laughed. Their trip to Mars had indeed been dangerous. It had indeed been a number of other things as well, many of which the two had not even begun to figure out.

Hawkes turned back to his audience. He could see that quite a number of his enemies were present. Mick Carri had a prominent seat, as did Herbert Marrow of the Earth League, and a number of Clean Mountain Enterprise executives. Tapping his papers until they came together evenly, the ambassador took a final look out over the crowd, and then, with a gesture calling for silence, he began his speech.

"Ladies, gentlemen, I thank you all for coming. My intention is not to draw out these proceedings. I will try to make my points clearly and quickly. If there are any questions, I will endeavor to answer them to the best of my ability."

Hawkes glanced up, throwing his eye over the audience. He had several faces he wanted to be watching when he hit certain portions of his speech. Their reactions to what he had to say were going to be very important.

Memorize their seats now, he told himself. I doubt anyone's going to be getting up for popcorn once you get rolling.

"First off, I will address the matter of communications silence between Mars and Earth for the past month. This began at your end, with an executive order forced through by Senator Carri. This order called for a filter blanket to be placed between these two worlds to keep Martian messages from reaching the Earth. Since this is the way Earth felt, the Martian government decided that the sovereign mother planet must be right in all things, and complied, setting up a reciprocal blanket at our end."

Hawkes paused for a second, then conspicuously directed his attention to Carri as he asked, "I trust they did a good job? No messages got through, did they, Mick?"

A number of people in attendance chuckled. Not amused, the senator rose to ask, "You said that was the decision of the Martian government. What Martian government?"

"Sit down, Mick," answered the ambassador dismissively. "Q and A is later." As the senator sat down, red faced and steaming, Hawkes continued, saying, "As to the troops sent to Mars illegally . . ."

An uproar thundered through the great hall. Carri, bouncing back up out of his seat, bellowed over the other voices. "Illegally?! What are you talking about? What is all this?"

"And isn't that just what I'm doing here—trying to tell you just that?" Peering over his nose, Hawkes said, "It is illegal to send troops to invade an independent country without a formal declaration. It is illegal to make war on a peaceful people without just cause."

"You've gone mad, Hawkes," counted Carri. "You never traveled in space before, and now you've got loose oxygen in your brain. You're not well."

"And you are out of order, Senator. But in the interests of establishing friendly diplomatic relations, I will try to explain, if the interruptions can be kept to a minimum." Hawkes took a breath, then continued, ' Two days before your troops arrived and established orbit, the newly elected Martian government passed the following resolutions . . ."

Again, pandemonium broke out. Getting order restored once more, the ambassador told the