The Pouakai

  I got up and walked to the edge of the yard, looking over the fence and down to the ocean. The sunset more muted than usual, it colored the sky mostly gray instead of orange and red. Too many questions rolled around in my mind, and I honestly didn’t know what to do. The grass in my yard grew too long, and spots covered the papaya leaves. It was hard to connect the little things of everyday life with what was going on in the world. When I looked back to the house though, what I felt most of all was how empty it was without Jennifer. Colin and Anna were right–something had to change.

  “What are your plans?” I asked as I walked back to the lanai.

  “There’s a lot we hope to do,” Colin said, “and it’s a bit open-ended. We’re going down to Palmyra Atoll to place the trap. That’s about eleven hundred miles south of here. Then the university’s ship will head back here and we’ll move to the sub. Depending on what we find, we’ll either have the sub stay there with the trap to catch more Pouakai, or we’ll move further south, and investigate more islands in the heart of the Pouakai’s territory. After that, who knows? It will depend on what we find. The general idea is to check other locations around the South Pacific to see what has happened over the past few years, and document any interactions between humans and the Pouakai. Maybe there are other communities that have found the secret that the Nanumeans did to living with them. There hasn’t been a systematic survey done of that region in recent times. Since that is where the first sightings were, whatever source the Pouakai came from should be there somewhere.”

  I sat down in a chair and closed my eyes.

  “That’s a lot to think about,” I said.

  “I know you can’t make a decision right now, Boonie, but we are leaving a week from tomorrow, and to get you clearance to ride on the sub. I’ll need to know in the next few days.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not that I need time to decide, it’s just a lot to think about.”

  Colin looked at me quizzically.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said with a forced smile. “There isn’t anything here for me now. I should do this.”

  “I’m proud of you Boonie,” Anna said, jumping up to give me a big hug. “You took care of Colin last time. I want you to do the same this time too.”

  “I will, I promise,” I said. I hoped I could live up to what I’d just promised.

  13

  Navy headquarters at Pearl Harbor bristled with a new deployment of heavy anti-aircraft batteries. They surrounded the facility in several arcs, although what good they’d do against an angry swarm of Pouakai, I didn’t know.

  We had to stop at the gate for a moment, but Colin must have already added my name to the approved list. The guard let us through, and after parking the car, we entered the building. We took an elevator several floors underground, and then went through another security check. Finally we were led into a conference room with large monitors on all four walls. At least a dozen military officials were seated at the polished wood table, along with Alan Gee. All of the military officials were high-ranking; more brass at the table than in a marching band.

  Colin showed me where to sit, and plopped into the chair next to me.

  “Professor,” said an Air Force General across the table, nodding at Colin.

  “Morning, General,” Colin nodded back while pulling out his computer from its case.

  An Admiral stood up, and everyone quieted.

  “Gentlemen, we should begin,” he said. Older than me, but lean and muscular, he hadn’t been spending all of his time behind a desk.

  “Doctor Benoit, introductions?” the Admiral said.

  Colin stood up. “Gentlemen, this is Captain Mark Boone. You may remember him from the stories about our crash on Nanumea this spring. I’ve decided that since he isn’t working for the airline any more, and has a lot of experience with the Pouakai from our time on the island, he would be an asset to this mission.”

  Colin sat down, and most of the men around the table nodded, and then turned their attention back to the Admiral.

  “Welcome, Captain Boone. I am Admiral Bianchi, Commander, Pacific Fleet. We’ve all read your dossier, and as far as I know, there are no qualms about your joining this mission.”

  I looked around again, and recognized Riley Baker, Captain of the USS Ohio. He was scowling and pointedly not looking at me.

  “Captain Baker, status of the Ohio?”

  Baker glanced at the Admiral.

  “We’ll be ready by Wednesday, sir. We’re just waiting for the Georgia to pull into port so we can get the spare generator equipment they’re carrying. The electronics team has finished installing the communications link and display equipment to sync with the trap.”

  “Thanks, Captain. Doctor Benoit?”

  “The Kilo Moana is ready to go,” Colin said. “The trap is loaded onboard and the raft is attached. Just let us know when to go and we’ll be underway.”

  “Okay. Commander Abraham, what about the extra SEAL detachment?”

  “They’re fully equipped, ready to go.”

  I looked at Colin, and tilted my head. He leaned toward me.

  “They’re sending an extra team of SEALs along with us,” he whispered. “They didn’t want to be left out of a fight.”

  “Really?” I whispered back. “What good will they do against a swarm of Pouakai?”

  Colin shrugged. “I’ve learned never to question the military’s motives, especially the SEALs. If everything goes according to plan, we won’t have to fight the Pouakai. That’s the last thing I want to do.”

  The Admiral continued questioning the men around the table. Colin hadn’t told me what the meeting was all about, but obviously it was a final status briefing regarding our mission. I had thought we were just going in to meet the brass and get my final clearance to go on the mission. As the questions moved to people with a more peripheral duty to the trip, I looked at the status monitors on the wall. Some were symbolic representations of fleet locations around the world, and others showed real-time views of the Pacific from a satellite.

  The meeting soon ended. I had to respect the Admiral even more for that; he didn’t let it drag on like so many others I had attended while in the military. Colin stood up, and so did I. Captain Baker of the Ohio had moved to a corner, looking through a thick folder of paperwork as I walked up to him.

  “Captain Baker,” I said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  He looked at me over his glasses. “Yeah,” he said gruffly, and then went back to his reading.

  “I’m sorry. Is there a problem?”

  He closed the folder. Despite his short stature, he had cultivated the image of leadership well. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said evenly.

  “Get what?”

  “That you’re not needed here. That this entire mission is a waste of our time and resources. That we have a lot more important things to do than chase theories of where these things came from and what they are.”

  “Wait a minute. You don’t want to be on this mission? Then why the hell are you here?”

  He looked over my shoulder, then back at me.

  “It’s the mission I’ve been assigned, and I’ll do it to the best of my ability.”

  “You don’t think we should be going?”

  He sighed.

  “There’s a world of hurt going on out there, Major,” he said, using my old rank from the Air Guard. “China is making noises we don’t like, because they’re running out of oil. They’re getting aggressive with Japan and Korea. Our own relationship with Canada is near the breaking point over energy. Several million Australians are slowly starving to death, and a billion Indians are about to pour over the borders into China and Pakistan because they’re starving too. And here I am, about to go on a butterfly hunt with you and your buddies. So no, Major, I don’t think we should be going.”

  “You think that starting a shooting war would really be the best thing for us right now?” I asked, a little too loudly.

 
Captain Baker glanced around, but nobody was looking toward us. He pointedly lowered his voice.

  “My job is to defend the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. If my superiors say that my best duty is to drag your asses around the South Pacific, then so be it. I may personally have different ideas, but I’ll do as I’m ordered.”

  “Wouldn’t the best thing for everyone be to get rid of the Pouakai?”

  Baker grimaced. “Sure. It’s been such an easy job so far, hasn’t it?”

  The back of my neck got hot, and I struggled to keep my voice down.

  “Let me tell you what I want,” I said. “These things killed my wife. They ripped her belly apart like she was a side of beef on a hook, spilled her guts on the floor, and left her to bleed to death in our living room. We don’t have any way to stop them right now, and if we don’t find what makes them tick, where they came from, and how to stop them, it won’t matter that China is mad at Japan, or that Canada can’t sell us the oil we want, or that India is starving. None of that will matter because none of us will be here. Every one of us is going to end up like my wife, ripped to shreds and left to die. But when the last of us is gone the Pouakai won’t be crying over our remains. Our number one priority must be to find a way to get rid of these things, because if we don’t, your little gun club here won’t be able to fire a spitwad at…”

  The Captain looked over my shoulder again, and then at me with a tiny shake of his head. I got his drift and held my tirade in check, even though I was still shaking. Colin came up behind me, smiling.

  “Hey guys. Together again, just like old times,” he said.

  Captain Baker smiled with practiced ease.

  “Just another cruise in the sunshine,” he said, and then he strode over to the Admiral, all pent-up power and determination.

  “Don’t let Roger Ramjet get to you,” Colin said quietly, once Baker had walked out of earshot. “I heard a bit of your discussion. I’ve had pretty much the same one with him myself.”

  I kept looking at Captain Baker. “You think he’ll be a problem for us?”

  “No. The Admiral pulled me aside last week, specifically to warn me about him. He said he’s a bulldog, but the one thing he wouldn’t do is go against orders. The Admiral said he’ll bluster and grumble, but he will do what we need him to do. Apparently he’s got a closet full of medals from his stint as a sub commander, so he knows what he’s doing. We’re supposed to steer clear of him as much as possible, but we don’t have to worry about him surprising us.”

  I took in a deep breath. The room smelled of electronics and leather chairs. I remembered the smell of the Ohio from earlier in the year; machines, oil, ozone, and disinfectant. I’d miss the outdoors, stuffed into that metal tube under the ocean. That made me think of being on the beach with Jennifer, and a familiar wave of sorrow and anger flooded over me again. I tried to channel that anger toward the mission, but I simply felt tired, and mad at the world. Finally, I let the breath out and turned to Colin.

  “Come on,” I said. “What else do we need to do here?”

  The rest of the day was a nightmare of paperwork. To allow me a spot on the sub, I’d been reactivated into the Air Guard without my knowledge. Being active military made it possible, but it still wasn’t easy. Five hours later, my hand cramped and mind numb, Colin drove me home. He left me with a list of what to bring, and what to leave behind, for the ship and the sub. I was an active Major in the Air Guard again, which I’d never thought would happen. I was planning on riding a ship into Pouakai territory, and hitching passage on a submarine after that. My life had spiraled out of control, but I had no idea where I could have stopped it from following this path.

  I called Kelly, and talked to her for two hours, and then spent another hour on the phone with Josh. They were both far more open with me than I’d expected. Neither wanted me to go, but they knew I had to do it for myself, as well as for the rest of the world. They’d lost one parent already, and didn’t want to lose the other. Somehow though, it felt like I was already gone. I promised them the Navy would allow me to contact them while I was out. Actually, I had no idea if it was possible or not, but I had to ease them down somehow. If nothing else, Colin had his satellite phone. We could use that when we weren’t inside the sub.

  Darkness filled the house when I finished the calls. I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wasn’t hungry. Tired, sore, and drained, but not hungry. The black of the moonless evening enveloped me, and I left the lanai lights off as I sat there, looking toward the ocean. I felt Jennifer’s presence there, reminding me of all I’d lost. Despite the aching loss I still felt, I tried to focus on the Pouakai. They’d taken my career, my life, and my love. For all of Colin’s talk and the attention they got in the media, we still didn’t know much about them. That was why I wanted to go. To clear up the fear and uncertainty, we had to learn the truth of the Pouakai and what drove them. It might even help us survive them.

  You are out there somewhere, and I’m coming to get you.

  Part 3

  Polynesia

  1

  Half a day into the voyage south, I realized why I’d never owned a boat. The Pacific Ocean is calm in name only. Big swells, pushed up by a thousand miles of tradewinds, heaved the Kilo Moana up and down. Even though the ship’s submerged twin hulls supposedly made it a stable platform for research, the ocean took no notice. I downed a pill supplied the by ship’s medic, and stood at the bow, eyes on the horizon, willing my stomach to calm down. How could I roll and loop a fighter jet around the sky without a hint of queasiness, but fall victim to a bad case of seasickness on a slow moving ship? I’ll never know.

  Colin and Alan had set up shop in one of the research labs, and invited me to look at everything they’d gathered on the Pouakai so far. However, I wasn’t going anyplace where I couldn’t see the horizon until I felt better. Out on the deck, the fresh air and salt spray kept me from losing my breakfast until the pill took effect.

  Off to our left, I spotted the periscope and radar mast of the Ohio cutting through the waves. Just a mile away, they were already difficult to see. I had a hard time imagining the giant black cylinder of the sub moving below the waves. Deep blue water surrounded us, the swells topped with an occasional whitecap. The lighter blue sky held a few small cumulus clouds and an occasional sea bird. The steady breeze from our twelve-knot passage south and the occasional splash and hiss from a passing wave sounded a rhythm that helped soothe my rebellious stomach.

  Lunch-time rolled around, and I started feeling more human. I went downstairs to find Colin, Alan, and their assistants. The mostly empty ship had an abandoned feel to it. A skeleton crew, earning triple-time hazardous duty pay, was taking us to Palmyra Atoll. They would drop us off, along with the trap, and then get the hell out of the Pouakai’s territory. The only others aboard were one of the three SEAL squads assigned to the mission. The other two squads were onboard the Ohio. Eight well-equipped laboratories covered the main deck of the Kilo Moana, but only one was in use. I found Colin, Alan and the others in the Hydrographic lab, a series of nautical charts, laptops, and thick binders scattered across the table. Colin looked up with an evil grin as I wobbled through the hatch.

  “He’s alive!”

  “Remind me to kick your ass once I feel better,” I replied.

  “If you’re going to puke, the sink is over there.”

  “I think I’d rather puke on you.”

  “Not a chance. I’ve got my sea legs, and you don’t. I can outrun you.”

  “Don’t worry Boonie,” Alan chimed in. “Everyone gets it on their first open-ocean trip. You’ll feel better by tomorrow.”

  “I hope so. Or the doc had better have a big supply of these pills.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Colin said. “Come over here, and let me show you what we’ve got.”

  He turned one of the laptops toward me, displaying an aerial photograph of a shoreline, showing a beach and fringing reef. The colors were off
though, as if it had been taken through a filter. A few green dots shone brightly in the waters of the reef.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a satellite photo of a beach on Nanumea, taken yesterday afternoon,” Colin said as he stared at the photo, a frown on his face.

  “And…?” I prodded.

  “The problem we’ve had in the past is that none of the reconnaissance satellites could see the Pouakai. The creatures are plenty big enough, and they should have shown up, but we’d never seen them, even in places where we had evidence they were present. Once we got our first Pouakai in the trap however, we ran a full spectral analysis on it. That skin of theirs absorbs almost all wavelengths of light, which makes it a very efficient solar panel. It has made it nearly impossible to get a good image of them, or identify where they are by satellite. What we found though is that there is a narrow band of light reflected by their skin in the near infrared spectrum. The National Reconnaissance Office retuned one of their KH-11 satellites, and this is the result.”

  He pointed to the image on the laptop.

  “The green dots are the Pouakai,” he said. “We got the first set of images two days ago, and this is one of them.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Now we can see where the Pouakai are, and avoid those areas.”

  Colin shook his head.

  “We think it’s not accurate yet. We seem to be missing a lot of them with this method.”

  “How?”

  “Alan and I took careful surveys of the Pouakai population on Nanumea when we were there. The totals were consistent from day to day, and the locals confirmed that the numbers didn’t change much. These images however, don’t show the same density of creatures that we saw on the island.”

  “So the satellites can’t see all the Pouakai?”

  “Apparently not.”