Ocean: War of Independence (5 page)

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Preston Ellsworth had not slept well the night before, lying awake most of the time, afraid he might slip back into a coma. Today his headache was not any better, and he had not felt like eating much of his lunch. He pushed the rolling tray-table away.

Later this afternoon, several people were scheduled to visit him, friends from Wanaao Town. He wasn’t sure if he felt up to seeing them, however, and didn’t want to ask about Jeff, because he knew the police were looking for him.

The old man had been surprised to see his grandson and Ealani Pohaku together when they visited him earlier, but they’d left before he could ask them any questions. After Dr. Chandrapur examined Preston and gave new instructions to the head nurse, she’d remained in the room. While entering notes in a handheld computer, she’d asked him, “Who was that young man?”

“Just a friend,” Preston had said, lying.

“Ealani has been coming to the hospital every day,” the nurse told him again, as she darkened the computer screen and slipped the device into a pocket of her smock. “Sometimes she comes by herself and sometimes with other healers to perform rituals on your behalf—summoning the spirits to make you well again. And it seems she is succeeding!”

He considered this for a moment. “Perhaps you are right, and her kindness will put an end to the bad history between our families….”

Alicia saw a nurse leave the room where Ealani had said her grandfather was. The nurse turned down another corridor, disappeared from view. Anxious to confirm that the elderly man was all right, Alicia hurried forward with her two companions behind her, and all of them entered the room. She saw him arranging his pillows, preparing to lie on his side, with his face turned away from the doorway.

The Hawaiian woman closed the door behind them, a sound that caused Preston to look. Surprise registered on his creased face. Alicia saw a clean bandage on one side of his head. His blue eyes were alert.

“I came the minute I heard you were hurt,” she said.

The old man scowled and stared hard at her, then at Jeff. “You shouldn’t have come. Neither of you.” He grimaced, held a newspaper up, and then slapped it down on his own lap. “There’s a front-page story here; the police are after both of you.”

Speaking up, Alicia said, “Jeff killed the man in self-defense, and the warrant for me is unjustified. It’s a political matter, a Sea Warriors matter.”

“The Sea Warriors have killed U.S. Navy personnel,” Preston said, “frogmen at Pearl Harbor, a helicopter crew, and more than six hundred sailors massacred on a guided-missile cruiser. Your organization is nothing but a gang of thugs, trying to keep people out of the water by terrorizing them.”

“The frogmen and helicopter crew died in battle, while we were trying to protect the lives of whales and other animals in the sea barricade. As for the massacre, it was committed by two rogue members who have since been turned over to the U.S. government to face justice.”

“And the authorities want the rest of you to face justice, too,” he said.

“I can see that you’ll never understand,” Alicia said. She went to the door, looked back at him with a gentle expression. “But I am glad you’re getting better, Grandfather.”

“So am I,” Jeff said. He joined her.

Looking at Ealani, the Ellsworth patriarch smiled and said, “Thank you for what you did for me. I’m … I’m deeply sorry our families have had the misunderstandings.”

“So am I,” she said.

With her face full of emotion, Ealani turned away and hurried out into the corridor. She directed Alicia and Jeff to a back door, and they slipped out into the intense tropical sunlight. Taking a different route than the earlier one, the Hawaiian woman led the way behind buildings, saying she was going to show them a different trail. “I assume you wish to return to the sea?” she said, looking over her shoulder at Alicia.

“Yes.” Alicia could not see the water from here, but knew which direction it was, beyond a thicket of jungle at the bottom of the gentle, grassy slope of the hospital grounds.

“This will take us along the outskirts of Wanaao Park,” the older woman said. “I will show you the way.”

Just then, Alicia saw a uniformed police officer on the trail. The three of them turned away, and walked quickly toward the parking lot, where Ealani said there was another way out.

When they were almost to the lot, Alicia heard the officer shout from behind them, “Halt! Police!”

A man was opening the door of a white pickup truck, and was about to step in when Jeff shoved him aside, saying, “I have a gun. Give me your keys!” He didn’t show any weapon, but the man handed over his keys nervously, then turned and ran.

“Get in,” Jeff said to Alicia, as he started the truck.

She hesitated, looked at Ealani. “You’d better go,” the Hawaiian woman said, looking back at the police officer, who was running toward them, shouting.

Alicia jumped in the passenger seat, and Jeff accelerated out of the parking lot. Tires skidding, he turned onto the road and sped away from town. Alicia couldn’t find a seat belt, so she held onto a ceiling strap as Jeff skidded around turns, throwing up clouds of dust behind the truck.

“I’m going to stop at the Okawa trailhead,” he said, pointing ahead. “Run down the trail and you’ll be in the ocean. I assume you know what to do from there.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine; I know a side road that will take me to safety in the jungle. I love you!” He skidded to a stop. “Now go, Alicia!
Go
!”

She kissed him on the cheek, then jumped out and ran down the rocky trail. Behind her, she heard the pickup accelerate, and saw it speed around a turn, with a police car chasing, its blue lights flashing and siren wailing.

But just before jumping in the water, she heard gunshots, and then to her horror she saw the pickup truck plunge off a cliff and explode on rocks at the edge of the sea. A fireball rose up the steep rock face, sickening her. No one could survive that.

Crying, she stripped down to her swimsuit, dove in the water and swam away. Alicia grieved for her brother, and would always remember that he died trying to save her life. Despite any crimes he may have committed (and she was uncertain of that), he was still her brother, and she loved him.

She worried about her grandfather, how he would take the terrible news. But she could not go to him now, not with her obligation to join Gwyneth on the West Coast. Alicia swam underwater, making her way toward the Wanaao Town dock, where the trans-ocean jetfish pod awaited her.

***

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!”