John Birmingham - Without warning

‘No arguments from me, sweetheart,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll keep a safe distance.’

‘That’s not what I said,’ she insisted.

‘And how close is that, Pete?’ asked Jules with a much cooler demeanour. ‘That bloody thing starts below the horizon. God knows how high it is. If it wanted to reach out and grab us it probably could.’

Pete Holder swung under the boom of the main mast to get a better view. He frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s going to grab anyone, Jules. It’s not alive. It’s not even moving.’

‘Whatever,’ she said, with real exasperation. Whenever she was pissed off with him, her voice became even more clipped and correct than normal. ‘If we have to do this, let’s get it done, and then get the hell out of here, shall we?’

By ‘this’ she meant boarding the luxury cruiser they’d intercepted on their run towards the Mexican coast. The vessel, an enormous aluminium and composite super-yacht, was obviously unmanned. It wasn’t drifting, but the engines were pushing it along on a southerly heading at just a nudge over six knots. It had emerged from behind the screen of the energy wave two hours earlier, easily visible on the Diamantina’s radar. Pete had thought nothing of it until Mr Lee had come to drag him away from the news feed on the computer. Lee’s incomparable pirate’s eye had spotted something very special on the horizon.

The empty yacht-the crew had to be dead or ‘gone’-presented as a brilliant white blade on the deep blue of the Pacific. It almost hurt to look at the thing, so brightly did it gleam in the tropical sun. From the bridge it dropped down through four decks before kissing the waterline, where, he would have guessed, it was maybe two hundred and thirty or even two forty feet in length. A big twin-engine sport fisher, hanging from two cranes in a dedicated docking bay at the stern, easily outsized the Diamantina all on its own. Instead, the super-yacht looked like a toy, which in a way it was. A rich man’s plaything. Pete could see other, slightly smaller vessels stowed away in the rear dock.

‘It’s like a fucking amphibious assault ship for the go-go party crowd,’ he mused.

Not a soul moved anywhere on the open decks, while behind the yacht the impossible, iridescent wall of coherent energy raised itself high into the heavens.

‘You’re going to steal it, aren’t you?’ said Jules in a resigned voice.

‘No. I’m going to salvage her.’ Pete was grinning, his first real, sunny smile in hours. ‘Keep her safe from the sort of villainous rogues one meets around these parts. I’m sure if the owners ever make it back from the Twilight Zone, there’ll be a more than generous reward for her return.’

Jules rolled her eyes.

Fifi nodded uncertainly, her eyes never leaving the horizon. ‘I dunno, Pete. We’re coming up on that thing, and we’re much closer than you thought was safe a coupla hours back. It’s like it’s curving towards us or something.’

‘Mr Lee, would you bring us alongside her,’ said Pete, ignoring Fifi’s quite reasonable point. Selective deafness was a useful skill he’d picked up from his mother.

The old Chinese pirate grinned and began to swing their helm over on a converging course with the slow, aimless track of the yacht. As they drew closer Pete noted the name on the stern. The Aussie Rules.

He whistled, both at the unexpected connection with home, and the very strong feeling that he knew this boat from somewhere. It was maddening though, he couldn’t remember where. There was little time to ponder the mystery, as he busied himself with preparations for the boarding. Truth was, he was no happier than Fifi about their proximity to the vast standing wave that filled the northern sky, but if his instincts played out, this baby might be the answer to their prayers. It could be that the super-yacht was too hot to hold on to even with the world collapsing around his ears, but she’d be packed to the gunnels with all sorts of goodies they could trade for jewels or gold. He had a feeling that the world’s definition of wealth was going to get back to basics very quickly.

‘Steady as she goes, Mr Lee,’ he called out. ‘Steady now.’

Over the next five minutes Lee brought the Diamantina alongside the immense bulk of the yacht. Even with the sun high overhead, they sailed in the shade of the much larger boat. Lee matched his speed to that of their quarry, and then slowly dialled down the engines, slipping back towards the docking bay at the vessel’s stern. Pete could tell the yacht had been well cared for. Anyone who could afford to buy such a magnificent craft could obviously afford to lavish attention on her. Her hull was free of any build-up below the waterline. The portholes were all crystal clear, their glass freshly cleaned, possibly even this morning.

As they drew level with the docking bay, Lee edged their speed back up again, holding position perfectly, just a foot away. Pete gave him a nod and a wink before stepping off. The little Chinaman stood at the wheel, as though organically connected to the Diamantina through it. He didn’t move much, but when he did, it was in perfect synch with the swell, the light chop and the grosser, sluggish movement of the other vessel.

‘We cool?’ asked Pete.

Fifi and Jules, both of them back in their combat rigs, agreed in turn.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s fuck this cat.’

Julianne Balwyn was not, at first blush, the sort of fabulous creature one might expect to find gracing one of England’s older landed families. She had the bearing, the soft beauty, and the polished vowels of a woman whose family had enjoyed hundreds of years of privilege and favour. But in her case, as with her father, something had gone wrong. Lord Balwyn, a spectacular wastrel and confidence man, often used to tell her that Sir Francis Drake had added his seed to the Balwyn family line, accounting for the freebooters and blackguards who regularly popped up in their history, and whether it was true or not – Jules was smart enough to take everything her father said with a mountain of salt – it was undeniable that in the last Lord Balwyn’s eldest daughter, the family’s propensity for throwing up the occasional black sheep had reached a very particular zenith.

As she cross-decked from the Diamantina to the Aussie Rules, however, she found herself once again grateful to her father for instilling in her such a bleak, pragmatic, Nietzschean view of humanity. While Pete, their putative leader, was lost in an uncontrolled moment of fan-boy worship, Jules kept her head down and her poo in one sock. A favourite saying of Daddy’s.

‘Holy shit,’ cried Pete. ‘You know what? I do know this tub. I remember reading about it now. I think this is Greg Norman’s yacht.’

‘Who?’ asked Fifi.

‘You know,’ said Pete, who was now very excited. ‘The golfer – “the Great White Shark”? A terrible fuckin’ choker, actually, but a great businessman. I think he designed a lot of golf courses when he wasn’t losing PGA play-offs. Talk about money for nothing and your chicks for free. Although, you know, with your lady golfers, there’s a reason those chicks are free… Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is his yacht. Or was.’

‘You think so?’ Jules deadpanned, as they stood by a large swimming pool inlaid with a stylised shark motif. She was holding a solid gold putter in one hand and a white straw hat in the other, both items sporting the same cartoon outline of a great white.

‘Greg who?’ asked Fifi.

Pete shook his head despairingly. ‘If it ain’t Nascar it just ain’t real for you, is it, sweetheart?’

‘What’s up with Nascar?’