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They will be looking for you.”
    “I’m sure I can improve on the height and power,” she said, over the molecular transmission. “It’s only a matter of time, and practice. Make sure they take your warning seriously, though, and evacuate everyone. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
    “I’ll make sure. They already know I do not issue idle threats. I’ll arrange for a jetfish pod to take you to the coast, so you won’t be observed crossing the Pacific. After you slam Santa Barbara three times, I want you to await my further instructions.”
    “Anything else?” She smiled.
    “Nothing you need to do. I’ve also sent some of my Sea Warriors with pods of blue whales—three of the newer members who have shown abilities with large marine animals. They have instructions to interfere with container ships traveling between the United States and the Far East, and force them to turn back. To start with, we’re sending out three pods. It’s a beginning.”
    “You’re becoming quite the military commander,” she said, with a gentle smile.
    “I’m the most experienced Sea Warrior, so I’ve taken on the responsibility of leadership. I promise you, though, if I falter or if anyone shows better leadership skills, I’m ready to step aside. This is about the welfare of the ocean, not about me.”
    “We all understand that,” she said. “We are not about being selfish; that’s one of the biggest things wrong with human beings.”
    “None of us are fully human any longer,” he said.
    “I hear something coming in,” Alicia said.
    He heard it, too, a molecular communication coming in from Mattie Bickel, a Sea Warrior he’d assigned to go ashore in Honolulu to obtain current news. Now, having re-immersed herself in the ocean near Diamond Head, she was reporting that the government of the United States was intensifying its efforts to find and arrest all hybrid Sea Warriors. To accomplish that, the right-wing president had declared a state of national emergency and the imposition of martial law, until all of the “dangerous fugitives” were caught or killed.
    In Honolulu, people were being forced to go through military checkpoints, where they were examined for evidence of hybrid bodies, such as the gills that all transformed, front-line Sea Warriors were known to have. Mattie had narrowly escaped the checkpoint, and had made it back into the water. She also said that some of the president’s opponents wanted to criticize these severe methods for their own political advantage, but were nervous about what he might do to them in response.
    When she finished, Kimo shook his head in dismay. The right-wing American president had found an excuse to broaden police powers. Kimo had heard that fascists did that historically, taking advantage of an emergency or perceived injustice to advance their own interests.
    During the current presidency, Kimo had also come to an opinion that was commonly held in progressive politics, that the President of the United States, Fillmore Vanness, was a right-wing corporate lackey, promoting business and allied military interests while putting on the false appearance of being a common man, feigning concern about the economy, the middle class, the environment, and anything else that would garner the most votes for himself and his cronies.
    Kimo supposed that Vanness was like almost every other president in supporting big business over the average citizen, because of corporate influence on the political structure. Big companies did it in myriad ways, through lobbying and campaign-finance donations and personal friendships, getting the ear of the leader of the free world in ways that the average person could not even begin to imagine.
    And it was because of a corporate-tainted political structure, Kimo had come to believe, that most environmental-protection measures were only window dressing, and really did not delve deeply enough into the various issues to make any real and lasting difference. He