Predictably, the U.S. government back on the mainland didn't take too kindly to a bunch of jumped-up pineapple-pickers-led by a management consultant, for frag's sake!- taking over their major military staging area in the Pacific basin. It seems that most of the Pacific fleet wasn't in Pearl Harbor in late August of 2017. In fact, it was in transit to the west coast of the U.S., presumably to provide support, if necessary, to the abortive Genocide Campaign. (And you can bet that Danforth Ho, aka King Kam IV, knew that, and planned on it. Otherwise things might have gone very differently in the streets of Honolulu.) When word reached D.C. about Hawai'i's declaration of independence, encrypted messages downlinked from military satellites to the flagship of the Pacific fleet-no doubt the military equivalent of "get your sorry asses back there, and clean this mess up."
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 mega¬corps 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 Thego 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 immethately 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 thed 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 Ka-mehameha 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 more sixty minutes to traverse the fifteen meters from the end of me 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 immethately. 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.