Free Ocean: War of Independence by Brian Herbert, Jan Herbert

be in the position of intermediary.”
    “Or the representative of a dangerous terrorist organization. I’ll have an aide take you to the Map Room, where you will await my response.”

    Before the ocean crisis, President Vanness had been the most powerful man in the world, in charge of the largest economy and the strongest military force the Earth had ever seen. Now he felt like a lot less than that, and that he’d been put in a no-win situation, with limited options. Pro-ocean demonstrators were marching in all of the major cities in the United States, and the actress, Monique Gatsby, seemed to be on every cable news channel with Professor Marcus Greco, asserting that the Sea Warriors were selfless and heroic, while the President was the reincarnation of Satan because he allegedly represented the greedy corporations who had fouled the seas in so many ways.
    As he paced the Oval Office, it irked him that Kimo Pohaku had issued another threat, while omitting details on the next target, and that he’d done it through a lowly news mouthpiece, the Honolulu Mercury News. A high school newspaper!
    The President didn’t want to blink in this confrontation, but didn’t see how he had any alternative. Multiple cordons of large-bodied sea creatures remained in place, blocking commercial shipping and military activity in the Hawaiian Islands and at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. An oil drilling rig had been destroyed off the California coast and driven up on the land, along with boat wrecks and other junk from the water. Three tidal waves had slammed into the Santa Barbara area, while in the North Pacific, a sea of floating garbage was being directed toward the west coast of the United States. And reports were coming in from the Pacific Ocean that pods of huge whales were forcing container ships to turn around, preventing them from delivering their cargoes.
    So far, the fanatical Kimo Pohaku had carried through on every one of his threats. What did he have in mind next? Vanness didn’t want to think about it, but he had to. He was on the hottest seat in the world, facing an enemy who used highly unconventional weapons—weapons that American military leaders didn’t know how to counter. To make matters even worse, the Sea Warriors kept producing new weapons and tactics—needlefish that impaled Navy frogmen, stingrays that shot poisonous barbs, squids that could rip humans apart, whales that beached a submarine, shorebirds that brought down a helicopter, and tidal waves. What else did they have in their extraordinary, dangerous arsenal? He sensed that they had a great deal more than he’d already seen. The ocean was full of mysteries, and so were the Sea Warriors who roamed it.
    Hybrid human beings, sea monsters, and a goddess holding dominion over the oceans of the world. The whole thing sounded like fantasy, not reality, something magical rather than anything explainable by science. He’d been reading the reports from government oceanographers and other experts, but the pages had been filled with questions, and there were hardly any answers. Was this ocean revolt the work of a sorcerer? Was it President Vanness’s misfortune to be brought down by witchcraft and incantations? He could hardly believe that might be true, and yet, the strangest events in history were actually occurring, and he had to deal with the crisis.
    This was beyond politics, way beyond it. This was about the fate of the United States of America, with a domino effect far beyond that.
    On one level, President Vanness could sympathize with the viewpoint of the radicals, their righteous anger about the abuses people had inflicted on the world‘s ocean. But the Sea Warriors were only targeting the United States, as if no other nation in the world was at fault. Yet the floating garbage that was being pushed toward the west coast was mostly plastics and other trash that other nations had dumped, not the United States. The Sea Warriors were completely