“Brains don’t explode. Unless you want to define an intracranial aneurism as an explosion; arguably a rupture could be called—”
“Stop, stop,” Jack said, holding up his hand. He walked down a stairway belowdecks, talking to himself. “I wish someone would explode my brain.”
30
Two Dreams
The sun had just begun to creep above the horizon as the boats, one by one, headed out to sea. The sea was as calm as it had been the day Jack and Ostin had arrived in Fiji. Vishal spent most of the day in the cabin with Captain Nikhil, studying maps and communicating with other boats. By the end of the first day, the fleet was spread out more than ten miles. No Elgen were spotted, but there was one incident that slowed the fleet down. One of the older boats broke down and had to be abandoned, its passengers, cargo, and fuel distributed among the other ships.
The atmosphere on the MAS was tense, and most of her occupants kept to themselves. The beautiful weather felt like a lie, since everyone knew there were war clouds ahead. It seemed that with each mile the tension grew still greater. At one point, Jack took one of the guns they’d stored belowdecks and went to the back of the boat to shoot. The diversion didn’t last long because Nikhil sent one of his crew back to tell Jack to stop wasting ammunition.
Ostin was glad when the sun began its descent into the rippling-orange sea and he and Jack went belowdecks to the berths. Ostin lay on the middle of three bunks; Jack lay on the bottom. An hour after they’d gone to bed, Ostin rolled over in his bunk toward the outside edge. “Jack. You awake?”
There was a long pause, then Jack said, “If I said no, would that stop you from talking?”
“That would be illogical, because—”
“Stop,” Jack said. “What do you want?”
“I was just thinking they should almost be there by now.”
Jack didn’t respond.
“What do you think Hatch will do to them?”
Jack was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t want to think about it.”
“Me neither. Do you think we’re going to live through this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your gut feeling?”
“You don’t want to know,” Jack said.
“I really do.”
“I didn’t think we were going to live through the battle of Hades.”
“Me neither. If it wasn’t for Michael, we wouldn’t have.”
Jack sighed. “How many guards do you think Hatch will bring in?”
Ostin thought it over. “The short answer?”
“Sure.”
“However many he needs to feel safe.”
“What’s the long answer?”
“At last count there were seventy-two operating Starxource plants. I’ve never seen less than twenty guards at each plant we’ve been in, but they run 24/7, so if they keep eight-hour shifts, triple that number. That would make for four thousand three hundred and twenty guards at plants. If Hatch keeps a skeleton crew on each plant and pulls in two-thirds of them, that would be approximately two thousand eight hundred and eighty guards on their way to Tuvalu. Of course that’s all speculation.”
Jack groaned. “Almost three thousand highly trained, armed guards against one hundred seventy-four of us. I don’t like those odds.”
“Last time we fought them off with less.”
“Yeah, and we had the Electroclan.”
“. . . And Michael,” Ostin said.
“That’s why we’ve got to find Enele and his army,” Jack said.
“What if we don’t find them?”
“Then we go with plan B.”
“Plan B? What’s plan B?”
Jack said softly, “We are the army.”
Ostin rolled back over and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to ask any more questions.
* * *
Not surprisingly, neither Jack nor Ostin slept well that night. Ostin didn’t fall asleep until after three in the morning. He woke several hours after sunrise to see Jack sitting on the bunk opposite him eating something.
“What’s for breakfast?” Ostin.
“Coconut granola bars.” Jack threw him one. “How’d you sleep?”
Ostin began to unwrap the bar. “Bad.”
“Me too,” Jack said.
“I had the weirdest dream. The weirdest part was that it seemed so real. I could almost swear it was real.”
“That’s bizarre,” Jack said. “I did too. Tell me yours first.”
“I was lying in bed when I suddenly saw Michael. He was just standing there, his feet a few inches off the floor. And I could kind of see through him, except he was so bright. Like a fluorescent lightbulb.”
“Hold on,” Jack said. “You dreamed that Michael was, like, floating in the air, right here next to us?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the exact same dream I had. Except, in my dream, he gave me a message. He said we would find Enele on . . . He said two places, one started with an N, the other with an P. Sounded like a planet . . . Pluto.”
“Plutus,” Ostin said. “He said to find Enele we needed to go to the island Hatch calls Plutus, the one the Tuvaluans call Nukufetau. He said Enele was sent there by . . .”
“. . . Elder Malakite . . . ,” Jack said.
“Malakai,” Ostin corrected. “He went to talk to him before going to war.”
“Dude, we had the exact same dream. Except it was like you said, it didn’t seem like a dream.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a dream.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe that really was Michael.”
Suddenly Jack’s expression changed. “Stop,” he said. “Don’t even go there. Michael’s dead. Just like Wade and Tanner and Gervaso.”
“But what if he isn’t?”
“I said, stop it,” Jack said angrily. “It’s just wrong.”
“Then explain the dream.”
Jack took a deep breath. “I can’t.”
Ostin climbed out of his bunk. “Just a minute.” He walked out of the room, returning a moment later with a pen and piece of paper. He wrote something down on the paper, then folded it into a square.
“What are you doing?” Jack said.
Ostin handed the paper to Jack. “I’m telling you, I don’t think it was just a dream. At the end of the dream, just before Michael left, he said something very specific. Do you remember?”
Jack thought for a moment, then said, “Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He said something like, ‘You will be attacked. But hold on. I will be there when I can.’ Then he said, ‘Look for the . . .’ It was a really weird word, sounded like ‘hurry at you.’ ”
Ostin said, “Open the paper.”
Jack unfolded the piece of paper. Ostin had written:
You will be attacked. Hold on.
I will be there when I can. Look for the Uira te Atua.
Jack looked up. “How did you do that?”
“It wasn’t a trick,” Ostin said. “That’s what he said to me too.”
Jack was speechless.
“What if Michael isn’t dead, just changed?”
“What do you mean, changed?”
“Energy can’t be created nor destroyed; it just changes from one form to another. Just like chemical energy can’t be destroyed, but it can be converted into kinetic energy.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Jack said. “What’s kinetic energy?”
“It’s energy in motion. For instance, if you take nitroglycerin, a chemical compound, and detonate it, like in dynamite, you’ve changed chemical energy to kinetic energy.”
“What’s your point?”
“Hear me out,” Ostin said. “This is just a what if, but before Hades, Michael was becoming more and more electric—he was becoming more energy and less matter. What if, then, when the lightning struck him, it completed the process and he became pure energy?”
“And then he
couldn’t be destroyed,” Jack said.
“No. He was converted to kinetic energy, which changed to thermal energy, like a nuclear blast.”
“But then, after the explosion, he’s gone.”
“Not really,” Ostin said. “What if he is trapped in some kind of energy field and he’s trying to reestablish himself? Taylor said he appeared to her but didn’t say anything. We both saw him and he spoke to us. That means his consciousness is still attached to his energy. It also means he’s starting to figure himself out.”
“Then Michael is . . . energy?”
“We’re all energy,” Ostin said. “Michael’s just pure energy. Einstein believed that energy could be turned into matter, which, in 1997, was proven when a linear collider, using a high-powered electron beam and an electric field, was able to collide the photons in a way to produce matter.”
Jack shook his head. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“What I just said is that I believe that Michael is pure energy trying to convert himself back into matter.”
“You mean, you think Michael’s trying to come back?”
Ostin looked at him. “I think he already has.”
31
Changing Course
“The problem now,” Jack said, standing up from his bunk, “is how do we tell Vishal we need to change destinations?”
“We just tell him the truth,” Ostin said.
Jack frowned. “The truth? You want to tell Vishal that Michael appeared to us like a ghost? He’d have us thrown overboard.”
Ostin thought on that. “Yeah, he wouldn’t go for that.”
“We could tell him that we suddenly remembered that Enele told us he was going to Nukufetau.”
“We just suddenly remembered? He’s not going to buy that. That’s not something you’d forget.” Ostin thought a little more, then said, “I think we just tell him that we both had the same dream.”
“A dream. How’s that any different from a ghost story?”
Ostin shook his head. “These native guys put a lot of stock in dreams.”
After a moment Jack said, “Can’t hurt.” Then added, “Too much.”
Ostin pulled on his shirt. Then they both walked up to the boat’s cab. Nikhil was wearing aviator sunglasses and was seated in the captain’s chair, holding the wheel. Vishal was seated a few meters from him. Both men looked tired. Vishal turned back as they entered. He spoke above the sound of the ocean. “What’s up?”
“We need to talk to you,” Jack said.
“Yeah? Go ahead.”
“Can we go outside?”
Nikhil glanced at Vishal but said nothing.
“Sure,” Vishal said.
He followed them out the portside door. It was another clear day, and to the southwest there was the pale silhouette of one of their other boats. The sound of the boat’s engines and the hydroplaning of the boats on the waves was the only real noise.
“What’s on your minds, guys?”
“We think we need to change destinations,” Jack said.
Vishal looked back and forth between them. “We already went through this. What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. “It’s just . . . last night we both had the same dream.” He looked at Ostin. “You explain.”
“We dreamed that our friend Michael came to us in the night. He told us both the exact same thing.”
Vishal looked at them skeptically. “Which was . . . ?”
“That we will find Enele on Nukufetau.”
Vishal shook his head. “Why would he go to Nukufetau? There is no reason at all for them to go there.” He frowned. “We already spoke of this back in Fiji. It was either Vaitupu or Funafuti. We’re sticking with Funafuti.”
“But we had a dream,” Ostin said.
“A dream?” Vishal said, his voice sharp with annoyance. “Shall I lead these people to their deaths because of a dream you had? We’ve made our plans. We’ll follow them.”
“It was a dream we both had,” Jack said.
“Okay, shall I lead them to their deaths because of a dream you both had?”
Jack shook his head. “You’ve got to admit that’s weird.”
“In the world of dreams, everything is weird.”
Ostin said, “In the dream, our friend said that Elder Malakai sent Enele to Nukufetau.”
Vishal’s expression suddenly changed. “Who did you say?”
“Malakai. The elder.”
“How did you know that name?”
“It was in the dream,” Jack said.
Vishal suddenly looked worried. “ ‘Malakai’ is a name only known by a few. You could not have known that name.”
“In our dream, Michael told us that Enele had gone to see Malakai in Nui.”
Again Vishal looked surprised. “How did you know that the great elder was on Nui? That is information that had been kept very secret.”
“The dream,” Ostin said. “He said Enele went there to get Malakai’s blessings before going to war.”
“That is our way. We consult the elders before battle. Just as we did in Fiji.” Vishal looked back and forth between the two of them. “Did he say anything else?”
“He said something about the Uira te Atua.”
Vishal turned white. “How do you know that phrase? It is sacred, in an ancient language, known only to a few.”
“We told you,” Jack said. “That’s what he said in the dream.”
“We’re not making this up,” Ostin said.
“No,” Vishal said. “No one could have made that up.”
Jack looked at Vishal seriously. “What do you think?”
Vishal took a deep breath, then breathed out slowly. “I think we better change course to Nukufetau.”
PART THIRTEEN
32
The Rebels
EGG Amon walked anxiously into Hatch’s office, carrying news he didn’t want to share. “Admiral-General, sir, I’ve two messages to deliver.”
Hatch looked up from the financial report he was reviewing. “Give me the bad news first.”
Amon took a deep breath, subconsciously preparing for Hatch’s explosion. “We’ve just received notice that the Edison has been sunk.”
Hatch stared at the EGG in disbelief. “By whom?”’
“The rebels.”
“The rebels?” Hatch’s face began to turn red. “The rebels were on unarmed, slow-moving cattle ships. The Edison is a Kirov-class anti-ship, anti-submarine battle cruiser.” Hatch slammed down his fist. “You don’t sink a battle cruiser with a cattle boat!”
“It was a suicide attack, sir. One of the rebel boats was filled with explosives and managed to get behind the Edison.”
Hatch walked over to his bar and poured himself a Scotch, downing the drink in one gulp. Then he turned back to Amon and, speaking in a more composed voice, asked, “Where are the rebels now?”
“They’ve taken refuge inside the depository.”
Hatch poured himself another drink and drained it. “You’re telling me that they managed to take over one of the most secure buildings in the world?”
“Apparently, sir.”
“Of course they did,” Hatch said. “And how, exactly, did that happen?”
“We don’t know, sir. We believe human error.”
“You think?!” Hatch groaned loudly. “Human error!” He threw the glass against the wall mirror, shattering both it and the mirror. “The whole human race is an error. Which is exactly why the sooner we’ve eliminated the human being from this planet, the better. What is the status of the rebel boats?”
“The Edison managed to take out all the rebel boats except the Proton, the smallest of the agricultural boats. They also have a few lifeboats and rafts.”
Hatch looked at the map of the islands he’d mounted on the wall. “Plutus is within range of our Apache helicopters. I want you to order an attack on whatever they’re floating on. We don’t have the men or time to wage war on them right
now, but at least we can strand them on the island. We’ll make the island itself a prison, like Alcatraz in San Francisco. Once we’ve rebuilt the guard, we’ll take the rebels apart. On our timetable, not theirs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said you had two messages.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve also received notice that Captain Shool of the Philippine Navy has reached Nukulaelae.”
“Where?”
Amon realized his error and slightly bowed. “Excuse me, Admiral. I meant the island of Dionysus, the island formerly known as Nukulaelae.”
“It’s about time. Is the Joule with them?”
“No, sir. The Joule was delayed with refueling. She’ll be arriving four hours later.”
“And she’s safe?”
“Yes. She is being accompanied by one of the Filipino battle cruisers.”
“Very well.”
“They made good time, sir. Less than fifty hours.”
Hatch went back to his report without comment. Amon continued to stand at attention. After another minute Hatch asked, “What is it, EGG?”
“Will you be greeting Captain Shool, sir?”
“No,” Hatch said. “It’s still too dangerous for me to leave the plant.”
“Sir, someone must greet him. It’s protocol.”
Hatch looked up from his papers. “I had no intention of leaving him unattended, EGG. You and a contingency of guards will greet the captain and bring him back to the plant along with their prisoners.”
“Yes, sir. You mean Welch and the Glows.”
“That’s exactly who I mean.” Then a slow, angry smile spread over Hatch’s lips. “You have no idea how excited I am to see Welch again. And my Glows. My only problem is deciding what I am going to do with them. So many traitors, so many possibilities.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On second thought, EGG, maybe I will greet the captain. I want to see Welch’s face when he comes off the ship. Radio me when they are docking.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can go, EGG.”
“Yes, sir,” Amon said. Then he spun around and quickly walked away.
* * *
Two hours later, Hatch, flanked by Amon and a half dozen guards, greeted the Filipino captain as he walked down the gangplank onto the Elgen dock.