by Linda Nagata
“How are the cameras holding out?” Ava asked them.
The answer came back, “Surprisingly well. We’re prepared this time. It’s not going to be like Nolo. We’re going to get through this, and be okay.”
Ava wanted to believe that.
Satellite images mapped the progress of the hurricane. Ava dropped into the pit every twenty minutes or so to check the latest. Huko stuck to its projected path, its center on course to plow across O‘ahu. But it moved faster than expected, as if it wanted to escape any part in Sigrún’s conspiracy.
In late afternoon, everyone came up from downstairs to witness as the eye of the hurricane skirted the coast. The curtain of rain drew back first, and then the wind abruptly eased. Sunlight broke through. Blue sky appeared directly overhead, decorated in streamers of thin high-altitude clouds. But the ocean still raged, and all around there stood an ominous dark cloud wall.
Ava watched the sky, though she knew if the missile came it would be too small, too fast for her eyes to follow.
After half an hour, the wind returned, shifting direction, roaring again like a jet engine, and within a few minutes every tree along the promenade and every coconut palm around the now sand-filled lagoons snapped and broke. Branches hurtled through the air and broken stumps wobbled on the lawns . . . but somehow they were still alive. The city still lived. The missile had not come.
Not yet.
The light faded long before the sun went down. Ava continued to watch and wait, well into the night.
Akasha came up to stand beside her. “It’s almost over.”
Ava nodded agreement. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but surely it was too late for Sigrún to strike. They’d waited too long. They’d lost the cover of the storm. Or maybe, in the end, Kaden had changed his mind?
She hoped that was the reason.
Successive satellite images showed Huko steaming away to the north at a furious pace. The wind’s roar eased and the clouds broke apart. The moon and a handful of stars shone through, mirrored by a few surviving lights out beyond Harbor Station. Lightning still flickered, but far away.
Her gaze shifted to the shoreline below, visible now in the moonlight, and barely recognizable.
All up and down the length of Kahanamoku Coastal Park, the massive dunes had been worn down, reduced to low berms. Their sand, redistributed inland, had filled in the lagoons and frosted the promenade.
Beyond the eroded dunes the ocean still churned, white foam lacing the dark water. Tumbling waves washed up a wide beach strewn with debris, some of it identifiable, even at this distance. A tree trunk, a couple of tires, the broken-off prow of a small boat, a long section of two-by-four. Most of it, though, lay anonymous in moonlight.
Directly off the tower in which she stood, the white hull of a crushed fishing boat lay grounded in the shallows, each incoming wave crashing over it, throwing spray into the air. Off to the east, a fountain of white water marked another casualty.
Ava crossed the observation deck to get a better look. Diaphanous moonlit clouds scudded across the night sky above Diamond Head’s familiar profile. Halfway to that landmark, a massive dark shape lay in the wave-churned shallows, far bigger than the fishing boat.
Another fountain of spray caught the moonlight as a wave broke against it.
Ava’s tired mind strove to understand what she was seeing. Was it an exposed reef? The beached carcass of a great sperm whale? A freighter’s overturned hull?
Recognition swept over her.
“Oh God,” she whispered, flush with horror.
She rushed for the rapid-access ladder. Slid down it into the pit. “Get a tracker drone into the air,” she snapped at the dispatcher. “We’ve got a large vessel aground. Vicinity of the Imperial Garden. I want eyes on it now.”
“Hey, that’s Denali!” Akasha shouted from the observation deck. “It’s gotta be. Denali has run aground!” She appeared at the top of the ladder. “You did it, Ava. It worked.”
Ava rejected this with a wave of her hand. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know for sure that’s Denali. And if it is, we still don’t know what went on inside that hull.”
Ava meant to find out, though. She would do her best to find out, before the navy locked the truth away behind impenetrable walls of classification.
She headed for the elevator. “I’m going out there. Look for survivors.”
“Yeah, I’m going too.”
Ava turned back in time to see Akasha slide down the ladder—and wince as she hit the floor.
“You’re injured, you idiot.”
“And you don’t have working comms,” the dispatcher reminded her. “You can’t go out, either.”
True enough, about the comms. Ava had come ashore with her smart glasses still in her pocket, but they’d failed to turn on. Her tablet and tactile mic had been lost in the water.
Akasha caught up with her, passed her. She slipped her smart glasses on, then slapped the button to open the elevator doors.
“You’re in no condition to go,” Ava insisted.
“I’m going.”
The glint in her eyes promised an argument Ava didn’t have time for. “Fine. You’re my comms.”
She turned back to the dispatcher. “If you need to talk to me, relay through Akasha or through the tracker drone. Record everything. And keep a local copy. Keep it somewhere HADAFA can’t reach.”
Open-mouthed shock from the dispatcher. “How am I supposed to—”
“I don’t know,” Ava interrupted. “But I know you can figure it out—and let Ivan know where we’re going.”
She joined Akasha aboard the elevator. They descended with ear-popping speed. In the ready room, she picked up her dive mask and her regulator. Akasha started to do the same.
“No.” This time, Ava insisted. “You are not going in the water.”
As she spoke, the elevator opened again, delivering Ivan to the ready room. “Neither of you are going in the water,” he said as he stepped out.
Ava grabbed a scuba pack from the wall rack anyway. “Got no choice, Ivan. We’ve got to check for survivors.”
“That’s your excuse?”
“Sworn duty.” With practiced hands, she secured the regulator’s first stage to the pack, adding, “No real hazard from Angel Dust, since I’m bringing my own air.”
He tried one more time. “You’re too tired for this.”
“We’re all tired.” She looked up. Met his gaze. “You coming with me or not?”
He gritted his teeth. His lip curled. “Hell, why not?” He got his own dive equipment out, grabbed another scuba pack. “I want to see how badly we were played. Let’s get there, before the navy shows up.”
◇
They took the motorcycles, weaving past fallen trees and broken lamp posts, headlights supplementing moon glow as they made their way down to the beach.
The ocean still churned and rumbled. Waves still broke hard against the sand, carrying debris up and down the shallow slope of the beach—but the waves no longer reached all the way to the eroded feet of the dunes.
Left behind by the ocean’s retreat was a strip of compact wet sand where Ava could ride, dodging mounds of fishing nets tangled with plastic trash and seaweed. Driftwood too, and green branches, palm fronds, even a plastic bumper cover from a car and a section of asphalt-tiled roof. Chunks of foam insulation cluttered the sand, along with dozens of coconuts, and dead fish everywhere. Each object appeared briefly in the beam of her headlight as she zig-zagged past.
Akasha called out from behind her: “Hope none of this shit is radioactive!”
Ava kept on, to where the submarine lay just offshore. Then she brought her bike to a skidding stop.
They weren’t the only ones to have noticed the grounded vessel. A small crowd of fifteen or so, a mix of hotel staff and guests, had ventured outside. They’d gathered just above the reach of the waves, talking excitedly among themselves, talking on phones, taking videos as another
breaker churned past the sub’s black hull. No one had entered the water yet, not that Ava could see, anyway.
“Akasha, secure this area. Keep everyone back.”
“Got it.”
Ivan said, “Amber and Van are a couple minutes behind us. They’ll help you set up a perimeter.”
Another breaker rolled in. Ava watched it sweep the length of the hull. It took some time. The vessel was huge. Maybe four hundred feet in length? The sail towered into the night sky, a cluster of sensor masts rising above it.
No visible name, of course. This was a stealth weapon, its curved hull a black box designed to hide its very existence within the lightless depths of the ocean. A deadly weapon, capable of taking the lives of millions. Now awkwardly exposed.
What had gone on inside? Who had caused the vessel to run aground? And why?
Ava’s mind raced with hypothetical scenarios. She envisioned a faction, struck by the enormity of what they were about to do, rising up, initiating an internal struggle for control of the boat. Or maybe it had been a single crew member, stirred to action by a troubled conscience as the moment drew near, committing an irrevocable act of sabotage.
Or had her own desperate move succeeded? If success was the right word for what she’d done. Had there been panic among Kaden’s crew as spores of Angel Dust spread among them?
Red light washed over, accompanied by the hum of a tracker drone, the sound abruptly audible over the grumbling waves. She looked up at the device hovering six feet overhead. The dispatcher spoke through it: “HADAFA has confirmed the identity of the submarine as USN Denali. A navy helicopter is incoming. No one is to approach the stranded vessel ahead of the navy’s arrival.”
Ava scanned the horizon for navigation lights but didn’t see any. She didn’t hear the rhythmic beat of an approaching engine. “They’re not close,” she concluded. “And we need to check for survivors.”
“Agreed,” Ivan said. “Get a light on that hull.”
Out over the water, a light flicked on: the white search beam of a second tracker drone. As the froth of a passing wave drained away, the beam explored the black hull, beginning at the prow, sweeping toward the stern.
No one visible. Hatches still closed.
“No panicked egress,” Ava observed. “And the sensor masts are deployed. Someone would have to do that, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s an automated system. Or maybe they are okay in there. If so, they’ll wait for the surf to drop before they open up. They won’t want to flood the interior.”
Ava pulled on her mask, her voice going nasally as it sealed against her face. “We have to check it out. They’ve got a three-sixty view through one of those masts. They’ll see us coming. If they need help, if they’re desperate enough, they’ll open up.”
“Yeah, I want to know too.”
Fins in hand, Ava followed a retreating wave down the beach, the weight of the scuba pack dragging at her shoulders. Popping the regulator into her mouth, she strode for deep water, slipping on the fins between one wave and the next. The tide helped to pull her out.
A few minutes later, she surfaced alongside the submarine—and heard the beat of helicopter rotors over the sound of the surf. At least two incoming. Probably three. She looked around for Ivan, but didn’t see him. No time to wait.
Another swell was rolling in, not quite breaking. She let it lift her up along Denali’s smooth side. Just like riding a swell up and out of the ocean along a rocky shore. She’d done it a hundred times. This time, she hauled out at the midpoint of Denali’s long hull.
Never turn your back on the ocean.
She checked for the next swell. Saw it rising at the stern of the submarine, but not high enough to submerge the hull. She slipped off her fins and stood, feeling Denali subtly shift as the wave rolled past. One tracker hovered with its spotlight fixed on the hatch just behind the sail. The other dropped close to Ava. The dispatcher spoke through it. “Motion detected. Someone’s coming out.”
Ava bit down hard on her respirator and moved toward the hatch as it began to lift, pushed slowly by a trembling hand. A man emerged to his shoulders within the white glare of the spotlight, his face familiar despite the reddened eyes and a complexion mottled with capillaries freshly burst just beneath the skin. Fuzzy white flecks infested the dark line of a cut in his lower lip. Tyrone Ohta.
Did he know who she was? Could he recognize her, standing outside the spotlight’s narrow beam, with her mask still on and her lips sealed around the respirator that she held clenched between her teeth?
No.
A grunt of sound came from him as if he meant to speak, but then he ducked his head, coughing hard as the next crashing swell showered them both in spray.
Salt water ran down his cheeks when he looked up at her again. What did he see, but a silent dark silhouette? She must have appeared to him as a co-conspirator, come to hear his report before the official navy arrived. “Robicheaux refused,” he told her in a hoarse voice so charged with fury it rose easily over the low roar of the surf. He coughed again, then looked up in the direction of the approaching helicopters. “Tell them that. He betrayed us. He refused to let us enter the code.”
A hand grasped Ava’s upper arm. She jerked her arm away, ready to dive back into the dark sea. But it was only Ivan. Sparks of reflected light glinted in the glass face of his mask. No way to speak without removing their respirators, and neither dared to do that. Instead, Ivan motioned with his head: Come away.
Together they slipped back into the cool dark anonymity of the night sea. Fins on, and then a sprint for the beach while she turned over in her mind Tyrone Ohta’s furious testimony: Robicheaux refused.
She would never know why. Maybe, with the moment imminent and real, Kaden’s conscience had finally overcome the toxic righteousness that had let him join Sigrún. Or maybe his own impending death, with Angel Dust blooming in his lungs, had opened his eyes to the gross horror of what he’d agreed to do.
Or maybe Kaden had changed his mind for her.
She peeled off her mask as she reached the shallows, salt water washing away her salty tears. A wave foamed toward her. She ducked under it, then waded ashore beneath the deafening racket of the navy helicopters. A glance back showed rescue swimmers already dropping into the water.
Ivan had come ashore. She rushed to join him beyond the reach of the waves. “Ivan! We need to warn the navy that sub is a biohazard zone.”
“Word’s gone out,” he assured her. “They know.”
chapter
26
Huko had been kinder to the island than anyone had expected—or maybe they really had been ready this time. The new and newly refurbished hotels, the dome houses, the solar farms, and the distributed electrical grid had all survived with minimal damage. The roads were a mess and the farm fields trashed, but they could be cleaned up and set right. More landslides had ravaged the valleys above Honolulu, but those were designated hazard zones anyway, and no one lived there anymore.
The navy began preparations to tow Denali, issuing a statement claiming an onboard emergency had forced the submarine to surface during the storm. Casualty figures were classified.
Ava made it back to her apartment near noon. She’d signed her lease agreement knowing the building was rated to only cat 2, so it wasn’t a surprise to find the windows shattered and the interior a wreck. Still, it was strange to think that Hurricane Huko had gone through her dresser drawers, pulling each one out, upending it on the floor, and making off with all her electronic gear.
She wondered if the storm had ravaged her off-site backups too, but with no functional gear remaining to her, she couldn’t check. Either way, there would have been nothing significant to find. Kaden had not shared his secrets with her.
Moving mechanically, almost overcome by the oppressive heat and the humidity, she gathered her sodden clothes and a few other surviving possessions. Then she crossed the street to Harbor Station, where she p
icked up a new phone from a still-operable vending machine.
The streetcars remained garaged, and taxis couldn’t negotiate the debris-filled roads, but Ivan had let her check out a motorcycle. She rode it back to Waikīkī, returned it to the ready room, then walked around to the Pacific Heritage Sea Tower’s public lobby. An exhausted-looking desk clerk, wearing an aloha shirt and a rumpled smile, booked her into a room, giving her an excellent rate now that most reservations had been canceled.
After calling her daughters and assuring them she was fine, Ava slept for fifteen hours, waking to the news that the president had reversed his position and refused to authorize the signing of the handover treaty—a peculiar change of heart. She had to believe that news of Sigrún’s operation had finally reached him. Perhaps someone on his staff had taken him aside, explaining just how close his administration had come to self-inflicted disaster.
Of course, not signing had its cost. Relations with China would be fraught and filled with saber-rattling for years to come.
Abandoning the treaty also did not guarantee domestic peace. Hawai‘i’s people had seen their land, their lives, and the lives of their families offered up in exchange for debt relief. Hard to get over a betrayal like that. Hōkū Ala’s activists would work to ensure that no one forgot—and demands for independence would surely accelerate. Ava sensed years of turmoil ahead. But maybe something better would follow?
She reported in early for work, needing the distraction. But Captain Isaiah Mahoi met her offer to help out with evening shift with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Eh, Ava. Things got a little rough, last time you took an early assignment. Maybe you should just work with dispatch for a couple of hours.”
“I promise to stay out of trouble,” she told him.
Eventually he sent her outside, where she worked with other officers, patrolling the strip’s public areas, writing up damage reports, and working to replace broken security cameras. On the beach, a fleet of small bulldozers operated under lights to clear debris and rebuild the dunes. It wouldn’t be long before the hotels started to fill again. They needed to be ready.