House of the Sun (8 page)

While the new King Kam was consolidating his control at home, his new allies weren't idle. A delegation of megacorps—led by Yamatetsu, it seems—was already pressuring Washington to recognize Hawai'i as a sovereign state. The feds told the corps precisely what they could do with that idea, and ordered the Pacific fleet to flank speed.

I wish I'd been there for the next act of this saga—it must have been quite a show. Mere minutes after Washington's rejection of the megacorps' "polite suggestion," a barrage of "Thor shots" bracketed the
USS
Enterprise,
the flattop that was the flagship of the Pacific fleet.

("Hold the phone," I hear you say. "What the flying frag is a 'Thor shot
'
?" Thought you'd never ask.

(Project Thor dates back—way back, apparently, to the middle of the last century or thereabouts—but it's an idea whose time had come. Project Thor envisioned putting a whole drekload of "semismart" projectiles in low Earth orbit, equipped with little more than a retro-rocket, some steering vanes, and a dog-brain seeker head on the tip. No warhead, because one isn't needed. Basically, they're just "smart crowbars." When you need to send a blunt message to someone, just send the appropriate commands to a couple dozen Thor projectiles. They fire their retros to kick themselves out of orbit, then plummet free toward the ground at some horrendous speed. Their seeker heads now start looking for an appropriate target, depending on their programming—a Main battle tank, maybe, or the dome of the Capitol Building ... or something that looks like an aircraft carrier. Down they come, packing Great Ghu knows how much kinetic energy, and whatever they hit just kinda goes away . . . probably accompanied by much pyrotechnics. In essence, then, Thor shots are just guided meteorites. Elegant idea,
neh!

(That was the idea, but as far as anyone knew—up to 2017, at least—nobody had actually implemented Project Thor. To this day, nobody's
precisely
sure who fired the rounds that vaporized a couple of tons of seawater off the
Enterprise's
bows.

(But I can make a pretty good guess, based on some interesting coincidences. Coincidentally, 2017 was the year in which Ares Macrotechnology took over the old
Freedom
space station, the one they eventually modified and renamed Zurich-Orbital. Just as coincidentally, Ares was the only megacorp with orbital assets anywhere near the correct "window" for a Thor shot into the central Pacific. And—also coincidentally, of course—Ares was one of the megacorps with which our friend Danforth Ho had enjoyed the longest and most intense private discussions . . .
Quelle
chance
. . .

(End of digression.)

So that was it. Screened by Aegis cruisers or not, there was no way a carrier battle group could intercept Thor shots, or survive them if they landed. Once more, the task force reversed course, and slunk dispiritedly into San Diego harbor. The feds recognized Hawai'i's independence, and King Kam IV became the head of a constitutional monarchy that still exists today. And they all lived happily ever after ...

Null!
As I said before, megacorps don't give gifts; they make investments. Now they came to King Kam looking for some major return on their investments. Like special trade deals, extraterritoriality, and basically almost complete freedom to do biz as they saw fit in the islands.

The people of Hawai'i liked the idea of independence from the U.S., and they weren't convinced that immediately giving up that independence to the megacorps was such a swift idea. The leadership of
Na
Kama'aina
—yep, it was still hanging around—decided that this was a perfect lever to pry away King Kam's popular support (and, ideally, to put their own figurehead—a
real
figurehead this time—on the throne). Campaigning on the platform of cutting back—way back—on the megacorps' freedoms,
Na
Kama'aina
politicos won a significant number of seats in the legislature. King Kam suddenly found himself confronting a strong faction within his own government that was dedicated to tossing him out on his hoop. He managed to keep control of the majority, but it was a very close thing.

King Kam IV died in 2045—no, the
Na
Kama'aina
didn't off him ... I don't think—and the faction of the government that had backed him retained
just
enough influence to put the successor he'd designated on the throne: his son, Gordon Ho. At age twenty-five, our boy Gordon became King Kamehameha V, and still wears the funky yellow-feathered headdress of the
Ali'i
.

I was still chewing over all the facts I'd absorbed and trying to make overall sense of them when the suborbital touched down at Awalani—"Sky Harbor."

"Welcome to Hawai'i," the flight attendant announced.

5

Call it the Montgomery Principle of Inverse Relationships. The faster you can get somewhere, the longer the wait for customs at the other end. Honolulu's Awalani Airport added another nice, big data-point to my mental graph.

I timed it. After spending only forty-some minutes to travel six thousand klicks, it took more than
sixty
minutes
to traverse the fifteen meters from the end of the customs/immigration lineup to freedom in the lobby of the airport.

The only difference between the Hawai'ian customs officials and the functionaries who'd hassled me at Casper was the tans. Other than that, it was the same trolls in undersized uniforms watching from the sidelines while humorless drones asked me questions about whether I was importing meat products in my luggage. (I've always had the perverse impulse to ask a customs drone whether a dismembered body in my suitcase qualifies as "meat products . . .")

As I waited in the "Foreign Visitors" lineup, I watched with growling bitterness the speed with which the returning
kama'ainas
—the locals, Hawai'ian citizens—were processed through. No probing questions about meat products for them, and smiles and greetings of "Aloha" instead of a cold-voiced "Travel documentation, please."

At last I was through, though, into a pleasantly spacious and airy lobby, which suddenly struck me as packed with a disproportionate number of trolls and orks—at least in comparison to Cheyenne and even Seattle. Now that I thought about it, I remembered that the juvenile
Columbia HyperMedia
Encyclopedia
had
stated that the combined proportion of orks and trolls was something like
thirty-three
percent
. What was it in Seattle? Closer to twenty-one, I thought. Well, I'd always heard that the Hawai'ians bred them big.

* * *

Through the customs nonsense at last, I started thinking about my next problem. Namely,
where
the
frag
was
I
going,
and
to
do
what
? I'd be met—that's what the dwarf with the road-kill eyebrows had told me at Casper. By who, though, that was the question?

A question that was answered almost immediately. As I stood there looking vaguely lost, a figure separated itself from a passel of camera-laden Nihonese tourists, and approached. A
large
figure—an ork with a rather astounding set of shoulders and small tusks that looked impossibly white against his tanned skin—wearing a well-tailored business suit. In his big hands he held a little laser-printed sign that read "Tozer." This time I didn't have any trouble remembering that was supposed to be me, so I beckoned him over.

He gave me a broad smile that would have looked much more friendly without those fangs.
"
Mr. Brian Tozer?" he asked me in a voice like midnight and velvet.

I nodded. "That's me." I reached in my pocket and pulled out my credstick, the one with my digital password stored in memory, and offered it to him.

He chuckled—a sound like big rocks rolling in a fast-flowing stream—and waved it off. "I know you're you, Mr. Tozer," he said. "You look a lot healthier in person, y'know."

He'd probably seen my driver's license holo, or something like it, I figured. (If you ever actually
look
like your license holo, you're too sick to drive ...) I shrugged. "Have it your way ..." I hesitated, not knowing what to call him.

"Scott," he told me. "You can call me Scott, Mr. Tozer."

"Dirk," I responded automatically, then quickly corrected, "My name's Brian, but everyone's always called me Dirk." Frag, I had to be jet-lagged or something.

Scott's big brown eyes twinkled. "Dirk's chill with me,"
he said. "Let's get your luggage."

* * *

First-class passengers' luggage was routed to its own carousel, and most of my flight-mates had already collected theirs and cruised before the first bag even showed up in the cattle-class area. I pointed out my single bag, which Scott scooped up like it weighed nothing, then tossed it onto a little automated baggage cart that followed him around like a loyal spaniel. We led the spaniel-cart out of the terminal onto the road.

That's when the heat first hit me. Hell, it was only a little past oh-six-hundred, but I guessed the temperature was already around twenty-seven degrees, and the humidity was something horrendous. In seconds I felt my shirt start to stick to my back. Scott must have sensed my discomfort, because he chuckled again, and announced, "Going to be a nice toasty one, today. We're looking for thirty-one, thirty-two by midaftemoon." He touched the cloth of my black shirt. "Hope you brought something a little more practical to wear, brah." I glanced pointedly at his suit, and he smiled again. "Yeah, but I'm
paid
to be uncomfortable."

The sky was still dark—that's right, it was the tropics, wasn't it? Dawn would be later and more sudden than I was used to in Cheyenne—but the sodium lights were almost as bright as day. Under their yellow glare, I saw where Scott was leading me: a metallic charcoal gray limo, a Rolls-Royce Phaeton, or some close cousin. A huge, low-slung thing that looked like it was doing Mach 2 while still parked at the curb. I let out a long, low whistle to show I was impressed.

Scott shrugged those massive shoulders. "Yeah," he acknowledged. "I still feel like that sometimes." From his pocket he pulled a little remote and pushed a button. With a silky whine like a high-speed turbine, the engine lit, and a moment later one of the oversized doors into the passenger compartment swung silently open. As the ork-chauffeur retrieved my bag from the spaniel-cart and tossed it into a trunk big enough for a game of Urban Brawl, I climbed into the back of the Phaeton.

Mental note: I
must
acquire myself one of these things at some point. Not to drive. To
live
in.

The passenger compartment looked bigger than some lower-class dosses I've rented; a huge, overstuffed couch where you'd expect there to be a rear seat. No, I corrected instantly, it wasn't a couch ... unless you consider four-point harnesses to be standard equipment for your living room furniture. I settled down and felt the opulent upholstery wrap itself lovingly around my fundament. (Did the limo come with some device—a crane, perhaps—to pry passengers
out
of the deep seat again as an optional extra?) Impulsively, I pulled off my shoes and made fists with my toes in the deep-pile carpeting. (One of my favorite flat-film movies from the last century recommends it as a cure for jet-lag, and who am I to disagree?)

From the outside the big wraparound windows had been opaque, charcoal mirror-finish to match the coachwork. From inside they seemed to totally disappear ... except for the fact that some subtle polarization removed the glare from the brilliant sodium streetlights. Between me and the driver's compartment was an array that looked like a waist-height entertainment wall unit: trid set, various formats of optical players, a stereo system that would give my technophile buddy Quincy wet dreams for the rest of his life, and something that looked like a scrambled satellite uplink commo unit. And, oh yes ... a small liquor cabinet/wet-bar arrangement. Above the entertainment suite was a transparent kevlarplex screen. Through it I saw Scott slide into the front seat, push back a hank of hair, and slip a vehicle control line into his datajack. He turned around and grinned at me through a centimeter of reinforced kevlarplex. "Ready to go, Mr. Dirk?" His voice came from a hidden speaker somewhere behind my left ear.

"Only when you get rid of
this
thing," I told him, leaning forward to rap on the bulletproof screen. "I feel like I'm in an aquarium."

His chuckle sounded clearly from the hidden speakers as the screen whined down into the top of the entertainment suite. "Better?"

"Much." Another couple of centimeters of my anatomy was engulfed by the upholstery as Scott put the Phaeton into gear and pulled out smoothly. "Scott," I said after a moment, "your call. Do I need the four-point?"

"Hey, I know some tourists
pay
to be strapped down." I saw his large head shake. "You can get by with the lap-belt if you like, but you want
something
to keep you from rattling around if I have to do any heavy evasion."

As I fastened the lap-strap, I asked the next logical question. "Is that particularly likely? Evasion, I mean?"

My chauffeur shrugged. "Likely? No. Possible? Yeah." He snorted. "We've had a couple of wild moves against corp higher-ups this year, and the shooters might not bother to find out who's in the limo before they start busting caps, y'know what I mean?"

"Who's behind the wild moves?"

"ALOHA, who else?"

I blinked. "ALOHA? They're still around?"