He had done his job in the service, in the corps . . .
Always. All it had earned him was a collection of enemies. He had done the right thing in Australia and effectively ended his career. He had done the right thing and gone to Washington to take his medicine, and now they sought to punish him by sending him to Mars.
Mars, he thought. You could send a dozen other people there, Mick—people who really know and care about the issues—who could do the job ten times better than I could. The only reason you want to send me is because you know how much I'd hate being there.
Benton Hawkes loved his world, his father's ranch and all the forests and fields and streams it contained. He had never even been to the Skyhook site, let alone the Moon or beyond. He had no desire to see any of it. Cruising in spaceships, charting asteroids, surveying unknown worlds—for him, none of it could compare to the simple pleasure of saddling up and riding out for a day in the woods.
And Mick Carri knows it.
But he also knew that Cook was right. Whoever had tried to kill him would try again. He stood slowly, pushing himself up out of his chair as if it were a grave. He looked around him as he did so. His keen eye took in the charred buildings, noted the smoke hanging in the air, the broken ground and trees and windows showing the lines of fire both sides had hurled at each other. The dusty outlines that marked where his people had fallen after they had been shot down.
And it'll happen again, he thought. The anger he had been denying, keeping capped off, finally broke through. As he walked toward Cook, a voice hissed in his head. Someone wants us to do or not do something. This all is just their way of saying "please."
As he reached the short woman holding open the kitchen door, Hawkes walked past her, saying, "Well, you want to get this hand looked at . . . stop standing around."
"What. . .?"
"You gone deaf on me, old woman? Get in here and fix me up. Get Ed in here, too. And whoever's in charge of the official investigation."
"Now?"
"Yes, now. And get that stove going. I want a steak. Pan fried. Medium rare—in burnt grease gravy with mushrooms and onions."
"I know how to cook for you," answered the woman with a trace of indignation.
Hawkes continued on into the kitchen as if he had not heard her. Cook followed along, her pocket communicator already in hand. Keller and the local sheriff were in the kitchen before she had finished breaking out the first-aid kit. While she used the tweezers on the ambassador's hand, he told his foreman, "We're going to need some meat for tonight. I want you to get the boys over to the pen, pick out a good-sized hog, and get the spit ready."
"Don't need to, boss. We got three freezers full ri—" Keller stopped in mid-word. The look in Hawkes's eye reminded him that the ambassador knew what he wanted—at all times. Chastened, he said, "Um, ah, I mean . . . what, what time did you want it ready? To eat, I mean."
"Sundown."
"That's cuttin' it close, boss."
"Then get started."
Keller flashed Cook a look, wondering if the fire he sensed raging through Hawkes signified what he thought— hoped—it did. She continued to dig at the wood embedded in the ambassador's hand, pulling out one broken sliver after another. However, she took the split second necessary to fill her eyes with the message that Hawkes was indeed sending, and that Keller had better get about doing what their boss wanted done.
The foreman's face broke out in a nervous smile. As he headed out the back door, shouting orders, Cook smiled as well.
"So, Sheriff," Hawkes asked, trying to ignore the pain tearing through his hand, "what do you know so far?"
Sheriff Bob Morgan was a middle-aged man with thinning, salt-and-pepper hair. Pulling at his neatly trimmed beard, he answered, "Mr. Ambassador, we got some facts, and we got some hunches, and we got some stuff we've turned upside down and brought back right side up that we can't make heads or tails of." Uncrossing his arms from off his chest, he hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets and then asked, "What order you want it in?"
"However it comes to mind." Hawkes winced as the last splinter was pulled free from his hand. Cook poured more antiseptic into the wound. Stinging white foam bubbled to the surface. As she began to wrap it, the ambassador asked, "Sheriff, have you eaten?"
"I could share a plate, thank you."
"Cook, make that two steaks. And clear this table and get us a couple of work screens. And bring the ranch layout file."
"Yes, sir," she answered. She pulled the last loop of bandage extra tight. A little pressure to keep his hand throbbing, to give him a bit of pain to chew on.
Gathering up the first-aid kit, she removed it from the table and headed off to start filling the ambassador's other requests. As she left the kitchen, her smile grew thin and mean. Hawkes was eating and giving orders again. Someone was going to get their ass kicked.
"And, Cook, put on some more coffee when you get back."
"I only got two hands," she snarled over her shoulder. Her eyes twinkled as she headed back for the kitchen with the electronic work screens. She looked at Hawkes and Morgan, bent over the sheriff's hand recorder, studying his notes. She could see the heat coming off the ambassador—the tension in his shoulders, the hate growing in his eyes.
Oh yeah, she thought, satisfied. Somebody goin' get their ass kicked, all right. Real good.
Turning to her stove, she pulled out her biggest black-bottom skillet. Turning the heat up high, she threw a large margarine cube into
