Electric Love {Minsung}

Chapter 72: Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Funafuti Island, Tuvalu

The Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu consists of four reef islands and five atolls, a total of about ten square miles in area. The islands are isolated in the Pacific Ocean, a coral oasis more than five thousand miles northeast of Australia and forty-one hundred miles southwest of Hawaii. The nation's population is less than ten thousand, making it the third-smallest populated country in the world. It also attracts few tourists due to its remoteness and inaccessibility. The nation has one of the best Pacific island economies, with a peculiar source of income—their .tv Internet domain suffix, which generates millions of dollars a year.

The Elgen had built their Starxource plant on the largest and chief island, Funafuti, then dragged power cables north and south to five other islands. Even though the plant had already been operating for more than four months, the natives had delayed the ceremonial ribbon cutting to honor Admiral-General Park's wishes. Park had also insisted that for "security reasons," all non-natives leave the island before the Elgen's visit.

Of course, Park had delayed the ceremony to suit his own plans. The Starxource plant was the Elgen's fifth largest in the world, yet ranked near the bottom of their plants in actual energy output. But the plant wasn't built for power—at least not the electrical kind. Unbeknownst to the Tuvaluans, the plant was built to serve as the home base of the new Elgen operations—the Elgen Kremlin.

The vast majority of the plant was a bunkered fortress with advanced weaponry and surface-to-air missile capability that the Elgen had clandestinely been stockpiling for more than a year, enough explosive power to demolish the entire nation seventeen times over and repel an attack from Australia or New Zealand. The plant also had an extensive prison, with more than two hundred cells and an advanced reeducation center patterned after the center in Peru.

While the people of Tuvalu slept, the Elgen fleet sailed through the cover of darkness, securing the waters surrounding the islands. At three in the morning, the Faraday docked off the coast of Funafuti and began shuttling soldiers onto their base using the Tesla as a tender. The Edison, the Elgen's new battleship, had taken up a defensive position off the southwest coast of Funafuti. Elgen helicopters kept surveillance over the waters.

Tuvalu spent no money on military, and the small police force, dressed in British uniforms, typically didn't carry guns. In fact, the total number of firearms registered to civilians was twelve, and the entire police force owned just twenty-one guns, which meant a single Elgen patrol carried more weaponry than the whole nation. The peaceful Tuvaluan people were vulnerable to the extreme.

The Starxource plant's ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by the entire Tuvalu administration—the governor-general and staff, prime minister and staff, deputy prime minister, chairman of the Public Service Commission, assistant secretary-general, secretary of foreign affairs, chief immigration officer; the police commissioner; the ministers of education, finance and economic planning, health, natural resources, energy and environment, trade, tourism and commerce, and foreign affairs; and the ambassador to the United Nations.

The UN ambassador was the one Tuvaluan official who had already been brought into the Elgen ranks and had, for some time, been receiving payment for his service.

The ceremony began a little after noon at the nation's capital, with a Tuvaluan proclamation of friendship followed by a traditional ceremonial dance. Then the party moved, at Park's insistence, behind the walls of the Starxource plant.

While Park, his personal bodyguards, and nine of his twelve EGGs led the delegation on a tour of the facility, the plant's electricity was shut down across the rest of the islands and throughout most of Funafuti. A small commando squad of Elgen frogmen commandeered the sole Tuvaluan naval ship—a Pacific-class patrol boat—taking the captain and crew as prisoners.