Storm of Lightning (21 page)

Two roast pigs were served for dinner, along with grass-fed Australian beef and lamb, salad, and sweet potatoes. For dessert the Elgen served two Australian–New Zealand favorites: Pavlova, a large meringue filled with fruit and cream, and Lamingtons, a cubed sponge cake coated in chocolate and coconut.

Hatch made sure that the best regional wine was available and had purchased three cases of a Penfolds Grange at nearly eight hundred dollars a bottle. The Tuvaluan dignitaries were well fed and slightly inebriated when the dinner was over, and a dozen Tuvaluan women,
wearing ceremonial outfits with grass skirts and crowns woven from palm leaves, performed another traditional Tuvalu ceremonial dance.

As the dance concluded, one of the young women approached Hatch, dropped to her knees, touching her forehead on the ground between them, and then offered the admiral-general a flowered lei. Hatch accepted the lei but did not put it on.

Afterward the prime minister of Tuvalu, a slim, silver-haired man dressed in a white short-sleeved shirt, approached the lectern near the center of the room. He turned to face Hatch.

“Our esteemed benefactor and friend. In the Tuvaluan anthem we sing,

“Tuku atu tau pulega

Ki te pule mai luga,

Kilo tonu ki ou mua

Me ko ia e tautai.

‘Pule tasi mo ia'

Ki te se gata mai,

Ko tena mana

Ko tou malosi tena.

“Please, esteemed admiral-general, allow me to translate to your language.

“Let us trust our lives henceforward

To the king to whom we pray,

With our eyes fixed firmly on him

He is showing us the way,

‘May we reign with him in glory'

Be our song for evermore,

For his almighty power

Is our strength from shore to shore.

“You, esteemed Admiral-General Hatch, have come as a gift of the God above to bless our humble island nation. The gratitude of
our people will forever shower down to you from heaven. I hereby bestow upon you, esteemed admiral-general, our greatest honor, the Tuvaluan star, and declare you a citizen of Tuvalu.”

The crowd broke out in applause, then stood in an ovation. Hatch almost looked moved by the gesture. Then, at the prime minister's bidding, Hatch rose and walked to the lectern while the prime minister returned to his table.

Hatch looked out over the congregation, then slowly raised a glass of wine to toast the assembly of Tuvaluan dignitaries. “To a new day,” he said.

“To a new day,” the audience repeated, clinking their glasses.

Hatch set down his glass without drinking from it. “Prime Minister, dignitaries, friends, I am very much entertained by your ceremony and hospitality, as primitive as it may be. You have come here to celebrate the completion of a new Starxource plant, our thirty-sixth in the world. I say ‘you,' because we, the Elgen, are here to celebrate an entirely different matter.” He looked around the room, and his expression darkened. “Guards.”

At Hatch's word a force of more than a hundred Elgen guards ran into the room with drawn automatic weapons. At first the confused guests watched with curiosity, as if the display of force were just another part of the day's entertainment. But as the moment dragged on, their amusement turned to fear. A few of the dignitaries attempted to leave, but they were forcefully returned to their seats. The noise in the room grew as the Tuvaluans began talking with one another in their native tongue.

“Silence!” Hatch shouted. After all were quiet, he continued. “Today, you, the
former
leaders of Tuvalu, came to celebrate a new power in your country. In this you are correct. But it is not electrical power as you supposed, but political power. We are celebrating a new regime.

“While you have been here in our facility, our Elgen forces have been at work. Of course, our work started more than a year ago when we demolished your last diesel power plant and took complete control of your electricity.

“This afternoon, we seized your lone radio station, destroyed your
phone towers, and jammed all communications. You are now completely cut off from the outside world. There will be no broadcasts and no phone calls.

“Our takeover continued this afternoon when we overthrew your navy, if I might be so presumptuous as to call it that. No one will be allowed on or off the islands. All seacraft have been confiscated or sunk, and our fleet is patrolling the islands, destroying anything that enters or attempts to flee these waters. Now you understand the true reason we insisted that all non-Tuvaluan residents be sent off the island weeks ago. We did not want any foreigners meddling.

“Your police force has been imprisoned in their own jails, and my Elgen guard has taken control of this nation. I would say the nation of Tuvalu, except it is no longer to be known as such. From this time forth Tuvalu shall be known as the Hatch Islands. Speaking the word ‘Tuvalu' will be punished by public flogging.

“In this time of transition there will be many floggings. Those who do not attend the floggings, which will become my nation's prime amusement, will be dragged from their homes and flogged themselves. In other words, you will enjoy the entertainment or become it.

“From this time forth the nation of Hatch is a dictatorship, and I, as supreme commander and president, declare your constitution null and void. My Elgen forces have authority to make and enforce all civil and criminal laws as they see fit.

“To ensure that we have your utmost cooperation, we have established reeducation camps, where all of you, beginning right now, will be admitted.

“Prime Minister, you will now again come forward and bow down to me as your new sovereign and kiss my hand as a token of your allegiance.”

The man, visibly shaken, stood. He looked over his own bewildered and frightened subjects. Then he turned to Hatch. “I will not bow to you or any man. I bow only to God.”

“God,” Hatch said, smiling. “Where is your God in your time of need?” His eyes narrowed. “I will tell you where your God is. You are looking at him.

“As to you refusing my order, I was hoping you would. I made you the offer out of mercy, not desire. I had a much better plan for you.

“You will be stripped of your clothing, bound, and your tongue will be cut off; then, for the rest of your life, you will be kept in the central square in a cage with monkeys. You will sleep with the monkeys, you will be fed with the monkeys. And the good people of Hatch will be brought to see your humiliation and mock you.” Hatch turned to the audience. “From this time forth, this man will be known not as the prime minister of Hatch, but as the Prime Monkey of Hatch.” Hatch turned back to the prime minister. “For the rest of your life, you will live with the monkeys, and, someday, you will die with the monkeys. If you try to take your life, your sons and daughters will take your place. Do you understand me?”

The prime minister's face flushed bright red with anger and fear.

“Do you understand me?” Hatch repeated.

“Yes,” he said bitterly.

“Mr. Prime Monkey, you are an educated man, so you have, no doubt, studied history. You will recognize that I have much in common with another great man who changed the world, the great Spanish explorer Hernando Cortés.

“We both came from the sea to a primitive culture who welcomed us as their savior. Like them, you, and your people, did not know that I came to rule you and claim your land as mine.

“But I am more merciful than Cortés. I will spare you and your subjects their lives. This revolution has taken place without a single shot. And even as it was with Montezuma, the great Aztec king, it will be with you. In the end, your own people will turn on you. They will mock you in your new cage and stone you with their insults. They will sell T-shirts with pictures of you in your cage.”

“The joke is on you, Hatch,” the prime minister said. “Our nation is sinking into the ocean. There will be no Tuvalu in thirty years.”

“In thirty years,” Hatch said, leaning forward, “we won't need Tuvalu. The entire world will be my footstool. Washington, London, Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow—these will be my capitals.”

“The world will never allow this,” the prime minister shouted.

“Of course they will,” Hatch said dully. “And they have. We do have our enemies. And they warned the UN that we were going to attack Tuvalu, and no one listened. No one. Including you. You were warned, and you didn't listen, did you?”

The prime minister hung his head.

“The ‘world' doesn't even know that you exist. And they wouldn't care if they did. The world has their own problems, not the least of which are their economies and the financial and environmental cost of energy, a problem to which only I hold the key.” Hatch looked around. “Speaking of economies, will the minister of finance please come forward.”

A small, thin young man timidly walked up to Hatch, his knees shaking and his eyes averted, afraid to look into Hatch's face.

“On your knees,” Hatch said.

The man immediately dropped to the ground. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Promising,” Hatch said, nodding approvingly. “You, sir, should have been the prime minister. You're obviously much wiser.” Hatch looked back over his terrified audience. “So, in addition to the changing of my country's name, the official currency has also changed. Your money, the Australian dollar and the Tuvaluan dollar, is now useless. We have printed a new currency that we will, starting this week, exchange with the citizens of Hatch. Only the Elgen Mark will be recognized as currency. It is illegal to accept or to use any other currency. To attempt to do so is punishable by flogging, prison, or death.”

Hatch looked over the delegation. “It is now time for each of you to make a decision, one that will have lasting repercussions, so consider your choice carefully. You must decide whether or not you will accept my supreme command.

“You have two options. Though, in truth, they have the same destination, just a different path. Option one, you may accept fully, by choice, an Elgen oath of allegiance with a covenant to follow and obey your Elgen masters. For those who make this wise choice, you will be treated with respect and kept in comfortable lodgings for the next six weeks as you are educated in the Elgen ways and groomed for Elgen leadership and success.

“Option two is for those who do not accept the oath of allegiance. They will be imprisoned for the next year in the Elgen reeducation facility, the portion of this facility that you did not tour. They will be subjected to an extreme physical and psychological barrage designed, and proven, to break both mind and will. In the end these former dissenters will, on their knees, beg to take the oath of loyalty.

“This is not exaggeration. We have reeducated thousands of minds already, of many who believed they could not be changed. These newly enlightened converts are among our strongest enthusiasts.

“But even after their conversion, they will forever be regarded as a lower caste, an untouchable. We will brand on their foreheads the letter
F
, signifying to all that they are a fool and a failure. They will be a pariah.

“So, to be clear, the only choice you really have is not whether or not to swear an oath of fidelity to your new monarch, as you will all eventually do this. Rather, the choice you have is what path you will take to that destination. I leave that decision to you.

“In just a moment we will take all of you, one at a time, into these side rooms to hear your decision.
All
except for you, Mr. Prime Monkey. Your vocation has been chosen for you. You will serve as an example to your people for the rest of your tortured days. You are clearly a man of the people. I'm certain you would have it no other way.”

B
y midnight, all but two of the forty-six Tuvaluan officials had taken Hatch's oath of allegiance. The prime minister, after a brief struggle, was stripped of his clothing, bound, and led away to a cell to await the surgical removal of his tongue. Hatch wanted the procedure performed immediately, as he wanted the man to have recovered enough to be in the cage the following day.

Outside the Starxource plant, the Elgen had overthrown the island nation. Hatch's plan of attack, which he called “the trident” for its three prongs, consisted of knocking out all communications, quarantining the island, and overthrowing the police force.

The Tuvaluan Navy had been the first Tuvaluan force to be overthrown, while, nearly simultaneously, Squad Captain Steele and his men, along with Quentin and Bryan, had stormed the radio station. Other than the station's simple security already in place—an
electric door lock, which Bryan quickly cut through—there was no attempt to stop them. When they broke into the studio, they found two employees huddled with fear in the corner of the room, while a third, the station's technician, was behind the control panel trying to figure out why their machinery had stopped working.