Man O' War Read online

  MAN O'WAR

  William Shatner

  Copyright © 1996 by William Shatner

  ISBN: 0-441-00454-7

  e-book ver. 1.0

  Leslie, Lisabeth, and Melanie have been the joy of my life and have also become my friends. This book is dedicated to them and to our love for adventure.

  I want to acknowledge Chris Henderson, who is a man of discipline and imagination and whose Chinese food I have yet to eat . . . but will very soon.

  I want to note also that Carmen LaVia may be the greatest literary agent in the world.

  And Susan Allison, with whom I have been associated now for several years and several books, is without peer.

  "A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age."

  ROBERT FROST

  "If you are to stand up for your Government, you must be able to stand up to your Government."

  SIR HAROLD, LATER LORD, CACCIA

  "A man-of-war is the best ambassador."

  OLIVER CROMWELL

  PROLOGUE

  There were no directional markers in the dark hallway. It held no communications boxes, was not painted with any classification or designative stripes. It was one of the old passageways, dug out of the flesh of the ground by directed lava flow and human hand, so ancient its walls were made of nothing more than beams and soil. It was unlike the upper cavities, the sprawling network of factories and homes and all that went with them. Those had been laid out neatly, with a vigorously antiseptic sense of functionality, by the central planners, who had followed the first expedition of miners. The Above was solid and secure, with floors formed from strong ceramics, and walls and ceilings poured and sprayed and molded into place. Nothing from the outside world would intrude.

  This tunnel was not neat, however, nor did it follow any kind of plan. It was an old explorer bore—one of the snaking, wildly arching deep-digs the Originals had chewed out back when the worth of the entire venture still needed to be proved. In its time it was not exactly sturdy, now it was a treacherous leftover, sealed off and labeled AVOID in black and yellow at every entrance.

  Over the years the crumbling overhead had filled the corridor with a reddish yellow dust. It was a cold and desolate place, with neither heat nor lights. Air was still allowed to filter into it, only because sealing it off would have been prohibitively expensive. It was an old and profitless place, abandoned by the corporations because it had ceased to offer them any profit. Which is what had made it perfect for the Resolute.

  A man and woman, both members of the secret group, walked through the old passageway. They kept to the left side, unsure whether to move quickly to stay warm, or slowly, to keep from being heard. Each was wrapped in several layers of clothing. For both, it was most of the clothing they owned. They had but a single light with which to find their way, an old recycled thing powered by an open-water battery.

  Their breath came out in silver-gray gushes that evaporated behind them. They said nothing, their attention on the path both ahead and behind. They were certain they had not been followed. Why would they be? No one above the pit-and-bang level knew of the Resolute. It was off-shift time. There was no reason for anyone to look for them.

  And yet . . . and yet . . .

  People were reassigned, work groups were disbanded, shuffled—for no apparent reason. Some people disappeared. Security monitors were being installed in new places all the time, in spots where one would not think they would be needed—not unless someone was looking for something.

  Concern over that fact prompted the man to whisper to his companion, "Sometimes I still wonder if management suspects."

  "Gerald, you have to stop worrying so. There's no way for them to know of our existence," the woman assured him. "We've been too careful."

  "Maybe, Marta," he answered. Their pale light illuminated the fine dust on the floor, showing them brief glimpses of the rolling clouds their feet were kicking up. "Maybe. But ever since Renker and Samuels stumbled over what's actually going on Above, nothing's been the same."

  "Don't start," hissed the woman through clenched teeth. "This debate just never ends. We have been careful. As careful as we can be. We've left no trails, stolen nothing. All the proof we've gathered has been copied."

  Marta stopped moving. In spite of the cold, she wanted to see her husband as she talked to him. As he turned to her, she looked into the deep lines carved around his face, at the gray of his skin and the concern etched into his eyes, and her heart ached for him.

  He worked so hard. She did, too, but he was the one who never stopped—never stopped working, never stopped worrying, never stopped pushing himself and all around him.

  "Listen to me," she said, putting a finger to his lips, trying to find the energy to smile. "The Resolute is unknown. We are safe. We haven't even done anything wrong."

  ' 'Neither did any of the people who have disappeared since all this started."

  "They gave up, they went to the Earth," she reminded him, straining to keep from her voice the exasperation and fear she was feeling. "We saw the passage bookings."

  "Yes, we did," he admitted. "But that's all we saw. One minute we had friends, the next their quarters are empty and they are supposedly on their way to Earth."

  Gerald had to stop talking for a moment, had to set his fragile lamp down and back away from his wife so he could clap his freezing hands together. Marta, as chilled as her husband, crossed her arms and beat her shoulders, trying to drive away the cold.

  Then they started walking again. As always, they avoided the right-hand side of the tunnel, but abandoned caution when listening for anyone who might be following. Time was too precious.

  It meant the possibility of extra shifts and perhaps even rest. It meant moments with children. Free time even allowed the liberty of thought. They did not have the right to waste any more of it. Not theirs, and certainly not that of the rest of the group.

  "I don't want to sound the same old horn," Gerald whispered as they walked. "But you know none of them had the units to pay for passage. No one's ever earned enough to get back to the Skyhook, let alone all the way down to Earth. Not working in the mines. Not in the factories. Not anywhere on the whole stinking planet."

  "Please," asked Marta. "Let's leave it for now, all right?" She was just as wearied by the conversation as her husband. And just as frightened.

  Rounding the last corner of their route in silence, they came to an old pressure doorway. The door itself had been removed long before. Metal was too precious to waste. But the frame had been built into the walls. To dig it out might have caused a cave-in, and so it had been stripped to its barest and left behind. In the larger hollow on the other side, the pair reached their goal.

  "Finally," came one voice from the small crowd within. "We thought you'd decided to work another shift."

  A number of those gathered chuckled. Gerald entered nodding his head in agreement. He switched his poor lamp off. There was already one light burning in the room. And it was turned up too bright. Wasteful.

  "I had thought about it," Gerald answered, somehow finding the energy to generate a weak smile. "After all, who wants to sit around in an old, cold tunnel when he can keep warm in a nice, steamy bore tube, eh?"

  "Making lots of money," shouted Samuels. "Right?"

  More voices joined in the bitter laughter. Gerald moved his head, locking eyes with a number of people around the room as he said, "Right you are. There's money to be made anywhere here."

  "Why, it's practically growing on trees."

  "I'm sure if we had trees," added Renker in mock seriousness, "it would be."

  "Who needs money trees?" asked a woman standing against the back wall. "Not me. Not when there are so many units to be had wat
ching the pressure in the sponge/ mush vats, or running checks on a stapling unit, or stacking bar metal, or reeling conduit wiring, or . . ."

  One of the men in the rear raised his left arm. He kept his right at its regular station, resting on the heavy black lever built into the back wall. He was laughing as hard as anyone else, but he waved his arm frantically, crying out over the voices of the others, "Enough. We can't risk the time. We've got to get on with things and get out of here."

  "Fennel is right. What's the word? Do we have everything we need, or don't we?"

  "It's all right here," answered Gerald. Pulling an old message tube from beneath his innermost layer of clothing, he held it up for everyone to see—proof they were not risking their own and their children's lives for nothing.

  "Every encodement we have copied, every file we have accessed, every single scrap of information we have been able to gather to show what they are doing to us—what we know they will continue to do to us, and to our children and our grandchildren. . . ."

  Tears suddenly pooled in Gerald's eyes. He was surprised, not that he could grow so emotional, but that his body could spare the water. And then, before he could continue, someone in the crowd asked, "What was that?"

  Everyone went still. Their single light was clicked off. As they strained to listen, all present heard the same noise: a steady, heavy tread out in the hall. Panic filled the room. Some grabbed for their lights. Others stumbled toward any of the three exits, groping their way through the thick darkness. Several pulled out the feeble weapons they had brought: clubs or homemade knives.

  Gerald simply sat down amid the flailing commotion, waiting for the inevitability he had been dreading. Marta joined him, somehow knowing what he was doing. They held each other tight, not trying to talk over the screams and cries all around them.

  "It's security!" someone shouted through the darkness.

  Instantly Fennel depressed the heavy lever. Homemade shock mines embedded along the right side of the access tunnels blew outward. Tightly packed metal, glass, and rock scraps tore through the air with devastating force. Eight of the invading figures went down under the violent barrage, torn to shreds. Unfortunately, that was not enough.

  The gunfire began immediately after. It came in wide, inescapable patterns, guided by harsh white light, cutting down everything in its path. Expanding sprays of bearing shot slammed through bodies, throwing them against the dusty walls and into each other.

  Men and women ran forward with their clubs and blades, screaming their rage. Those closest to the exits took the full brunt of blasts and were cut in two. Blood arced wildly, spinning in the air as the bodies fell. Most of those behind were only wounded.

  "Cease."

  The single word rang electronically through the sealed helmets of the gunmen. Any other type of signal would have been impossible to hear over the firing. The echoes of their attack in the enclosed space had almost completely deafened those still alive.

  Walking into the room, the apparent leader of the attack surveyed those who remained, using the harsh rifle lights that still panned across the chamber. He was satisfied. His people had efficiently expended as few shells as possible. Most of the laborers who had chosen the name the Resolute were dead, their movement crushed before it even began.

  The only exceptions were the two sitting in the center of the room. Ironically, by accepting their fate, they had been spared—momentarily. The commander moved up to them, preparing to bring that moment to an end.

  "Gerald Cobber . . . and wife."

  The man's voice came out of his darkened helmet through an electronic filter. Obviously he knew the couple, but they did not recognize him. His helmet did enhance his voice just enough for them to hear over the ringing in their ears.

  "I suppose I'm not surprised. You've always had a very loud voice—but not enough bank to back it up."

  "My apologies."

  "If only that were enough," came the staticky voice. "But . . . anyway, stand up, you two. Let's get done."

  As the couple rose, Marta asked, "What will you do"—her hand swept the room—"to explain all this?"

  "What? Why—we will tell everyone what happened." The man lifted a hand so he could count off his explanation on his fingers. "How, in your hopeless despair, you all banded together in a suicide pact . . . assigned all your assets in a standard pooling packet to your surviving children, registered your remains to be nutri-vatted so that the early-retirement benefit could pass into the pool as well."

  The black helmet swung back and forth sadly.

  "Such a waste. If only you had had a stronger sense of vision, instead of filling your heads with nothing but resentment and defiance."

  Turning his head away from his wife for a moment, Gerald stared at the unknown commander. Pulling forth all the juice he had within, cursing his weakness for having wasted any on tears, he said, "You want an act of defiance? I'll give you one."

  He spat forth his last free drops. As they splattered against the black helmet, he shouted, "There. Recycle that."

  Then he turned to his wife and kissed her. Their arms tightened around each other, their eyes closed, and they drew on each other's strength one last time before two shotguns erupted, knocking them back and down.

  In his last seconds, Gerald heard the commander chastising his people for having wasted shells when he and his wife could just as easily have been clubbed to death. He wanted to laugh, but too much of his body had been destroyed. Although his brain had given the order, it was no longer connected to anything.

  His eyes blinking, he saw a recycler moving a canister hose forward to suck the thin sliver of spittle from the commander's helmet. Then, as other recyclers moved into the room, Gerald finally died, at least spared from having to watch that final indignity.

  1

  LIGHTNING SPLIT THE SKY IMMEDIATELY BELOW THE MILITARY jet. Almost unaware of the growing storm, Benton Hawkes scanned the diplomatic corps' reports in his hands once more, hoping something would catch his eye that he might use in his own defense. Nothing in particular rose up to volunteer.

  "Let's face it, Benton," he said, throwing the wad of printouts and notes onto the small user table the flight steward had installed next to his chair, "you've cooked yourself royally this time."

  "Don't say that yet, Chief."

  The voice came from a tired-looking younger man sitting at another of the small tables across the way. Rubbing at his eyes, he put down his own stack of papers.

  "You'll see," he continued. "There's a way out of this. We just haven't dug down deep enough."

  "No, no, I. . ."

  "I'm serious. We just get the right spin . . ."

  "No," said Hawkes. He spoke the word quietly, but his aide understood the finality intended. "It's over. I did what I did and that's all there is to it."

  Hawkes picked up his drink and took a sip. It was a mixture of Amareno, Kahlua, Jack Daniel's, and milk, a concoction he and some camping buddies had created more years in the past than he cared to remember. They had named their creation "Happy Times," and the taste of one always reminded him of such. At the age of fifty-six, it was one of the few true pleasures he still enjoyed. He set the glass back on the table and folded his hands in his lap.

  His aide said nothing, hoping that all the ambassador needed was a moment's rest. The younger man was visibly nervous. They would have to get back to work soon if they were going to piece together a political defense for his final actions during the Pacific Rim Unity Conference.

  "Go get some sleep, Danny."

  "I'm no more tired than you are, sir," answered the aide, choking back a yawn.

  "Well, I'm damn tired, so go get some sleep so I can get some—all right?"

  "But, sir—with all respect—if we don't come up with an ample American interest to justify what you did . . . I mean, sir, your career . . ."

  "Has lasted ten years too long already." Hawkes pushed against the base of his spine, kneading his fingers into the ball of
pain that had gathered there. "Now go on. There's only a couple of hours left before we land in Washington. Get some rest. You'll need it to look for a new job."

  Daniel Stine, twenty-eight, top aide to his nation's foremost career diplomat, gathered up his papers again and made a step toward the door. Deep down he knew Hawkes was right. There was no political defense for what his boss had done. The ambassador had thrown his career away over a moral issue. Still shaking his head over the insanity of it, he put his hand to the door release, indexing the green panel.

  "We'll find something, sir. We'll survive."

  As the door sealed shut behind him, Hawkes shook his head, muttering, "Survive? I'll be happy if I can just get this crick out of my back."

  Too much sitting, he thought as he continued to work the aching spot. Too much time spent looking through books and poring over regulations and working out arguments to keep this or that greedy bastard from legally stealing his enemies and his neighbors and his own citizens blind.

  Suddenly his fingers moved just the right way and the pressure point in his back relaxed. Hawkes stretched his arms out to his sides and sighed in relief.

  "Well, that's one pain in the butt taken care of."

  The ambassador debated whether he should do any more work. He stared at the two different stacks on his table. One was made up of the corps reports he had filed during the Rim conference. If he really wanted to save his career, combing through those was the key. The other stack made him wonder if he really wanted to. The second consisted of information on the bid by Clean Mountain Enterprises to annex a large section of the Absaroka Range in Wyoming. In many ways, helping block that takeover meant more to Hawkes than preserving his career.

  At that moment, however, he could not look at either. Turning his back on both, he walked across the cabin, drawing back the sliding shutter from one of the windows on the left-hand side. Darkness filled his view. The vast cloud cover just below the plane was still too dense to allow even a glimpse of the ground. Not that he would have been likely to know where they were at this altitude, even if the sky was clear.