Ocean: War of Independence

by Brian Herbert

  ***

  Chapter 5

  As Alicia crossed the Pacific Ocean inside the high-speed pod, she had a few hours to think, and recalled something Gwyneth had once said, that she had become more a creature of the sea than of the land, and that she owed no allegiance to humans. Although Alicia had not metamorphosed so far in her own appearance as the British teenager had, she now thought she understood more than ever what Gwyneth had meant.

  It was something Alicia had been feeling herself for a long time, a deep and abiding love for the ocean, an emotion so deep that it ran beyond anything she could possibly put into words. She felt an essential, primordial connection with the water, and an increasing need to not only be in its presence, but to be completed immersed in it, enveloped by the nurturing presence of Moanna.

  A thought came to Alicia that the sentient ocean was the pulsing heart of the planet, circulating enormous amounts of oxygen between its waters, the atmosphere, and the land. Kimo was worried about an intermittent weakness and dimness he had noticed in Moanna whenever he went to visit her, and Alicia wondered if any debility in the deity explained why she was unable to deal with all the ongoing, increasing problems in the ocean.

  She wondered as well what cosmic force had intercepted her life, and the lives of the other Sea Warriors, a paranormal power that enabled them to be converted into super-swimming hybrids by Moanna—into amphibians, essentially—and giving a number of them special talents beyond that. Some of the special abilities seemed tailored to the lives that the various individuals had led before becoming involved with the group, such as Dirk Avondale’s career training dolphins for the U.S. Navy—and his affinity for dolphins now—and Foley Johnson, who had been a self-taught expert on turtles and tortoises, and now had a checkered green tortoise shell on his back and torso, so that he resembled the creatures that followed him so willingly in the water.

  It occurred to her as well that Professor Marcus Greco, while he had not morphed beyond the original transformation from Moanna, had spent a career as an oceanographer before joining Kimo and Alicia, which gave him a broad range of knowledge, and made him a valuable contributor of information for his fellow Sea Warriors—and it was to him that two purportedly extinct species of fish had appeared, ichthyosaur and roifosteus.

  Sometimes the connections between Sea Warrior hybrids and marine animals were not so obvious, yet might be there, nonetheless, with some digging. But Alicia was pleased that every member of the organization was now an active contributor to the cause, especially since the two very bad apples—Chi’ang and Talbot—had been removed.

  Her own ability with waves was a little hard to figure out, though she had been a casual surfer, and had been fascinated by the sea from an early age. Even with her work at the aquatic park, her interests in the sea had been more generalized than specialized, she thought, and maybe that was what gave her a special talent with generating ocean waves—because nothing in the sea was more general than waves; they were everywhere all the time, constantly in motion.

  She loved her unique skill, and fully intended to improve on it. Her last effort had been to generate a twelve-foot-high tidal wave, fifty feet across, and she focused her mind now, envisioning a future time when she was back in the water creating an even bigger one, perhaps thirty, or even fifty feet high. It would be a tremendous power to have, and it occurred to her now that perhaps her mind was not ready for that much responsibility. She didn’t want to be changed fundamentally by her power; she wanted to remain the same Alicia that she’d always been. She wanted to retain a link to her own human side, for better or for worse—and perhaps that was why she had not metamorphosed further.

  Maybe I can be balanced, she thought, balanced between the land and the sea, able to function equally well in both realms.

  And as she visualized a larger tidal wave, she felt a change in motion of the jetfish pod, as the water became turbulent and the craft lifted higher in the water while still remaining just beneath the surface. She took a deep breath, felt the sea grow calmer around her, and settle down.

  Alicia thought she had discovered an important key to her own personality and her future. Now she was going to join Gwyneth, who claimed she was more of the sea than of the land, and looked that way, with few aspects of her former human appearance remaining. Alicia found it all fascinating, but frightening. Though Gwyneth had been cooperating with Kimo lately, she had earlier shown her rebellious and independent nature, her willingness to take drastic actions if she didn’t think things were going fast enough to suit her. While Alicia could sympathize with that view, she felt strongly that she needed to manage the British teenager with extreme care, getting her to cooperate instead of going off on her own. No matter how much Gwyneth thought she could see something that others did not, she needed to work inside Kimo’s system so as not to disrupt it, so as not to cast a bad light on his own efforts and on the entire organization, as she had done when she cordoned off the Hawaiian islands and then found herself unable to reverse the action.

  Yet, Gwyneth had an incredible mind, one that might contain as much information about the sea as there was to have. She almost seemed like a corporeal version of Moanna herself, a vast repository of data. And just as Gwyneth had flaws, so too did Moanna—such as her immense oversight in allowing Vinson Chi’ang and Emily Talbot to become Sea Warriors. Though Moanna claimed to have a discerning power, and had demonstrated it by rejecting some of the would-be members, she’d had a huge blind spot with it came to that pair. And she’d admitted her own flaws in ancient history, which made Moanna worry about even attempting to use some of her powers now—though she did seem to be in a weakened state.

  Alicia could tell from her own internal navigation system, in which she detected variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, that she was drawing near the California coast. Moments later, the jetfish pod slowed and then began to separate, so that water entered the passenger compartment. She swam out, and on the surface, she saw the shoreline, littered with the rusted, broken hulks of ships and boats, along with the oil derrick that Gwyneth had toppled.

  She became aware of movement beneath her, and peering into the water, she saw Gwyneth ascending toward her, a hulking, amorphous shape with large eyes, a flattened face, and remnants of her hair trailing backward on her head as she swam. J.D. Watts, flat-bodied and blue like a bubblefish, but retaining his human face, swam just behind her.

  “I see the two of you have been busy,” Alicia said, in a projected thought.

  Gwyneth smiled slightly with her small mouth. “We look forward to your input, comrade.”

  “And you shall have it!”

  Alicia surfaced, and saw a large dock on the shore by the city of Santa Barbara, with restaurants and other commercial establishments on the structure. Concentrating, she summoned the largest tidal wave she could, and it was taller and wider than anything she’d attempted before, rising higher than the surface of the dock—perhaps thirty feet. Like a living creature summoned from the deep, the water rushed toward the shore and slammed into the dock and its buildings, ripping the dock from its pilings and scattering pieces onto a grassy, palm-tree lined park beyond.

  When the water receded, only a few of the original pilings remained, looking like trees that had been bent and topped in a great windstorm. She heard emergency sirens, could only hope that people had heeded Kimo’s warning and evacuated before the wave hit. But his warning had encompassed hundreds of miles of California coast south of San Francisco, not just the Santa Barbara area. Looking around, she saw a U.S. Navy warship four or five miles to the south, turning around and heading directly toward her. She thought it might be a destroyer, but at this distance she could not be certain.

  With Gwyneth and J.D. trailing her, Alicia swam a short distance north, getting herself into a good position to strike a marina. Again she caused a wall of water to rush toward shore, as high as the first one. When it hit the marina, it ripped boats loose from their moorings, along with the piers
and floating docks, and shot them hundreds of yards up onto the shore, onto streets and into commercial buildings. This time when the water receded, Alicia saw boats stranded impossibly on the tops of buildings, along with automobiles and trucks. Though the two waves had been approximately the same size, the power of the second had been greater than the first. This frightened her, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to do it again.

  But Kimo had told her to make exactly three strikes, as specified in the warning he’d made to the American government. The Navy ship—a destroyer—had almost closed the distance between them, and was bearing down on her.

  Just north of Santa Barbara, she noticed a southbound freight train stopped on the tracks, apparently unable to proceed because of the damage ahead. Looking closely, she saw the crew abandoning two engine cars, and running away.

  She waited until she saw that they were clear, and then summoned the next wave. The destroyer fired at her, a projectile that splashed just beyond her.

  With the wave still visualized in her mind, and accumulating on the surface, Alicia dove underwater. Looking up, she watched as the destroyer steamed over her position, apparently without seeing where she had gone. She surfaced again, and focused harder on the third wave. This wave was similar in structure to the two earlier ones, but it seemed to have a mind of its own, an eagerness to attack. Almost without her volition, it accelerated quickly and raced toward the shore, faster than the previous two. And as it rushed toward the land, it grew even larger, finally slamming with tremendous force into the stalled train, knocking the heavy engines and cars off the tracks and lifting them up on the wave as if they were toy boats, finally dropping them in tangled disarray on the ground, hundreds of feet from the tracks.

  The destroyer was coming around again, firing at her. She dove and swam fast underwater, heading out to sea, to the rendezvous point where Gwyneth and J.D. awaited her. Alicia prayed that no one had been injured or killed by the three waves—but no matter what, she realized that she’d only done what had to be done, for the sake of the ocean. No one in the Sea Warrior leadership—including herself—expected the war against human beings to proceed without bloodshed. There had already been deaths, and she expected more before it was over. She only hoped they could be kept to a minimum.

  She hoped, too, for victory. She could not bear to think of the consequences of failure.

  In Hawaii, Kimo received word that his team on the West Coast had been successful in the latest segment of their mission, Alicia’s three destructive waves, which followed Gwyneth’s successful blockade of San Francisco Bay and her demolition of the oil derrick. The new message did not come to him over the molecular communication system, though he knew Alicia and Gwyneth must have already transmitted to him, and their communication had not yet arrived. Instead, he had learned the news from his cousin, the newspaperman Jimmy Waimea. Three tidal waves had struck Santa Barbara, each one more powerful than the previous one, inflicting millions of dollars in damage and—unfortunately—killing two people at the marina, live-aboards on an old fishing boat.

  Kimo and Jimmy sat on an isolated Kauai beach late in the afternoon, where Kimo had arranged for the meeting. Jimmy had not hesitated to enter the jetfish pod that brought him there from Oahu.

  “I’m beginning to feel like an honorary Sea Warrior,” Jimmy said.

  “We appreciate everything you’ve done. You’re an essential lifeline for us, getting our message out in a coherent manner, keeping us from looking like crazed radicals, as our enemies try to portray us.”

  Jimmy smiled. He sat cross-legged with Kimo on the sand, used a sharp pocket knife to open a coconut. Letting the milk drain onto the sand, he cut a piece of white coconut meat and extended it to Kimo.

  Kimo nibbled on the sweet fruit, said, “I want you to inform the President that if he doesn’t capitulate, I’m going to escalate the threat.”

  “In what way?”

  “Tell him we’ll broaden the attacks against American coastal structures and ports. We’re also considering targeting other nations in this, not just the United States. We can send tidal waves against any of them that front the ocean, overturning oil rigs, beaching ships, stopping all ocean commerce. One way or another, we will prevail.”

  “I’m sure you will. But are you sure you want to increase the opposition? Wouldn’t it be wiser to solicit the support of other nations, instead of just attacking them?”

  Kimo shook his head. “This is not a time for negotiation with anyone. It is a time for us to show our power, to show that humans must change their behavior! If we negotiate, we lose. Lawyers will get involved, and there will be loopholes in any agreement—tricks that enable people to continue variations of their past bad behavior, or to delay correcting it. We need to end that behavior, and we need to end it fast!”

  “I can appreciate that, and I’m on your side. You know that. But Cousin, you must be cautious of world politics. You don’t want to go too far, or public opinion will turn against you. Right now, it’s slightly in your favor in the U.S. and trending upward again, and it’s even more in your favor worldwide. International news outlets have been running stories that are sympathetic to your cause, emphasizing the abuses being committed against sea life, including the marine species that are in danger of becoming extinct, the sewage that is being dumped in the seas, the continuing oil spills, and all the garbage of human civilization that seems to end up in the water.”

  “I appreciate your help and advice,” Kimo said, accepting another piece of coconut meat from Jimmy. “You’re giving wise counsel.”

  “It’s not just my opinion. As you know, I’ve been in close contact with the first lady of our state, Fuji Namoto, and she has the ear of her husband, the Governor. Being a retired military man, Governor Churchill has not been overly happy with the aggressive actions you’ve taken, but his wife has been bringing him around gradually, getting him to listen. And she has said the same thing to me that I’m saying to you now. You don’t want to go too far, Kimo. You don’t want to become the bad guy here—at least not to most people. You need to be the sympathetic, altruistic character, representing helpless sea creatures who are unable to speak for themselves.”

  Kimo nodded. Fuji was still an associate Sea Warrior, and he appreciated everything she did for the organization when she ran their office in Honolulu, until the authorities used a lame excuse to shut it down. He was glad that she had not been placed under arrest, nor had any of the other associates. So far the government was only after the physically transformed hybrids, whom they considered to be radical, but they had not been successful in their pursuit. And Kimo planned to keep it that way if he could.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll continue to focus on the United States, because, as you point out, we are gaining in public opinion polls, and we don’t want to lose that important part of the war.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Tell the President that if he doesn’t capitulate immediately, we’re going to escalate our attacks against coastal facilities, including the blockading of more ports.”

  “You don’t want to give him forty-eight hours like the last time?”

  “Talk to Fuji about it. I’ll let the two of you decide on that, but no more than forty-eight hours. Just in case we can’t reach you before then, I at least want to have a time in which I’m going to take the next step. That will be forty-eight hours from noon tomorrow. Remind them that I don’t make idle threats.”

  “I will.”

  “Just don’t reveal too much about how we get around, the jetfish pods or our other methods.”

  “They already know some of it, such as the waves Alicia can generate, but most of it is still a mystery to them.”

  To the north, Dirk Avondale led more than a thousand dolphins as they pushed a sea of floating garbage—most of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—toward the mainland of the United States. It was nighttime on a calm sea, and they were making better time than he had anticipated. As soon as
the dolphins had the floating garbage corralled and in motion, getting it out of the region in the North Pacific where it had been circling in currents and accumulating more debris from around the ocean, the animals seemed to get a boost of energy. The accumulated trash was moving along at a good clip now, boosted by favorable winds and ocean currents. It was as if the gods and goddesses of the sea could not wait to get rid of this junk.

  A plane and a noisy U.S. Coast Guard helicopter appeared overhead, as they did regularly, to observe the progress and report on it to military authorities. When powerful spotlights played over the water, Dirk dove under, to keep anyone from seeing him. Unlike some of the other Sea Warriors, he still remained human in his appearance, albeit with enhanced swimming and sea-survival capabilities in his body.

  He presumed that the scouts would see him eventually in daylight hours no matter his efforts, with long-range camera lenses, and perhaps with satellites orbiting the Earth. To his knowledge, Kimo had not publicized this particular mission; had issued no threats. It was just happening.

  The American government could certainly make an educated guess about where the garbage was headed and who was responsible for it, because the Sea Warriors were at war with them. But Dirk doubted if they knew what to do about it. There were no instruction manuals for this scenario, nor, for that matter, for any of the other situations the government faced now that advocates for the ocean were not only speaking up—they were taking strong and aggressive actions.

  ***

  Chapter 6

  Jimmy Waimea would never reveal anything he knew about the whereabouts of Kimo Pohaku or the rest of the Sea Warriors, or anything about their weapons or tactics. The U.S. had pieces of information about a lot of things, based upon what had been used against them and upon reports prepared by investigators. Ever since the blockade of Pearl Harbor and the main islands in the archipelago—Kimo’s Battle of the Hawaiian Sea—government agents had been snooping around the high school campus, digging up whatever they could. One of them, a determined man with a shaved head, had been to Jimmy’s news shack several times, and had spoken with students who worked with him on the Honolulu Mercury News, the school newspaper that looked more professional than some of the big-city dailies.