Without warning

by John Birmingham

  * * * *

  By the time the C-130 he’d transferred to on some no-name airstrip out in the boonies touched down at Sea-Tac, Kipper had almost forgotten the crash back in the Cascades. As the young Guardsman who’d strapped him into the Blackhawk back in the mountains had explained, there were almost certainly no people on that flight anyway – they’d been ‘disappeared’. The phrase gave him a twitchy feeling. It was redolent of the bad old days in Chile, where he’d done some contract work for Arthur Andersen on a power station project back in the ‘80s. People by their thousands got ‘disappeared’ there. As frightening as that had been, however, it was also comprehensible: a bunch of assholes, looking like they’d been tricked out as opera villains in military drag, had simply decided to murder anyone who looked sideways at them. What he’d seen today, as soon as the chopper lifted clear of the deep valley in which he’d been trekking, was entirely incomprehensible. The brooding mass of the Cascades still blocked from view a good deal of what the guardsmen were calling ‘the Wave’, but the goddamn thing was reared up so high he could still see it anyway, soaring off towards space, somewhere beyond the skyline of the ranges. That was bad enough, but what they’d told him about the effect of this ‘Wave’ had drilled a cold, dead finger bone into his heart. Hundreds of millions of people, gone. Whole cities – close enough to the whole country – empty. Ships ploughing into ports and exploding. Cars just veering off the road, uncontrolled, crashing into each other because nobody was behind the wheel. Planes falling out of the sky, like he’d seen with his very own eyes earlier that day. It had been happening all over. Still was, in fact. The Oregon Air National Guard had jets up right now, waiting for half-a-dozen flights whose tracks were due to take them over Seattle. They’d been authorised to shoot the planes down well short of the city.

  Kipper caught himself obsessively twisting and wrenching one of the straps on his backpack as he tried to imagine what had happened, what bizarre correlation of physical forces might have done such a thing. He couldn’t think of a single explanation. He was a civil engineer, a good one, just quietly, but he maintained a professional interest in related fields, and indeed in most of the hard sciences. As a young boy he’d wanted to be an astronaut (who doesn’t?), but he wasn’t one for uniforms and taking orders and sucking up a lot of chickenshit nonsense. So he’d refused to go down the path his old man had been pushing him towards – a career in the air force. He loved building things, not blowing them up. He’d never quite got the bug out of his system though, and a lot of his down time consisted of reading the sort of scientific journals to which he might have contributed had he pulled on a space suit for real, instead of just in his dreams.

  But nothing he’d ever read, learned or seen in his private or professional experience went one inch towards explaining what the hell had happened while he’d been off on his precious fucking nature walk.

  Kipper shook himself out of his thoughts. The plane had touched down on a patch of concrete apron north of the control tower, affording him a good view of both runways and the terminal complex. He could see right away that things weren’t normal. There was an unusually large number of planes on the ground, and none taking off. In one glance he could make out the liveries of half-a-dozen stranded carriers. Midwest. Jetblue. Frontier. China Airlines. They all had flights parked by terminals they wouldn’t normally have used. A bunch of 737s and MD80s from Alaskan Airlines had huddled together, a bit like an old wagon train, down near the fire station, while a collection of jumbos and long-haulers from overseas had laagered up at the southern end of the airport. As his transport rumbled along the tarmac, a United Airlines Airbus aborted a landing with a scream of turbines and a building roar while it heaved itself back into the sky again. Kipper craned out of the cabin to see if he could spot whatever had gone wrong, but the Guardsmen were already popping harnesses and hurrying him out of the aircraft.

  ‘This way, sir,’ a woman in a Nomex flight suit yelled at him, pressing a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘Follow me.’

  Kipper did as he was told, crouching slightly for no good reason. It just seemed appropriate. The airport was a thunderbowl of screaming engines, jet exhaust and speeding vehicles, all of it controlled in some vague chaotic way by hundreds of scurrying, shouting men and women in coveralls and headphones. There were a lot more military uniforms than he was used to seeing, as well. The engineer allowed himself to be led across to a waiting Ford pick-up with city markings, where Barney Tench, a huge shambolic figure in khaki drill pants and a faded blue shirt, was waiting for him, looking worried.

  Tench came forward, holding out his hand and shaking his head. ‘Man, am I glad to see you, buddy,’ he called out over the background roar. ‘Thought we might have lost you up there, Kip. We lost a lot of people. I think Locke’s gone, Owen too. Nobody can find the mayor either, but Nickells wasn’t scheduled to be out of town, so maybe he’ll turn up. It’s chaos, man. Fucking chaos.’

  His friend sounded unbalanced – which was one of the more disturbing developments of the morning. Barney Tench was usually as phlegmatic as a stone statue. Nothing upset him. It was why Kipper had insisted on hauling him in all the way from Pittsburgh when he’d taken the city engineer’s job. There’d been some grumbling about Kip hiring an old college beer buddy, but that had fallen away once Barn settled in to the job. You couldn’t ask for a better right-hand man. Except that, at this moment, his strong right hand was trembling and pale.

  Kipper threw his gear into the back of the pick-up, yelled his thanks to the aircrew, and climbed up into the driver‘s-side seat, motioning for Barney to follow suit.

  ‘Okay, Barn, gimme the keys. I’ll drive, you chill the fuck out and we’ll deal with this like we would any problem. Step by step. First, has anyone spoken to Barbara since you got my number off her? She’ll be freaking out, wanting to know I’m okay.’

  Tench had the good grace to look guilty. ‘I’m sorry, Kip. We tried. It’s just been a hell of a morning. And I… well…’

  ‘Okay. Give me your cell. I’ll call her now.’

  ‘No point, man,’ Barney said, shaking his head. ‘The nets are jammed. Your sat phone might work, though.’

  He took a small, calming breath. ‘Okay. Two minutes.’

  Kipper hopped out again and hurried around to retrieve his phone from the backpack. The signal strength was good, and he was relieved to get a clear dial tone. The call to Barb’s phone stalled before it began, however. A recorded message told him that due to higher than normal demand, his call could not be connected. Kip grunted and tried their home phone number, an old-fashioned land line. It went though to voicemail on the fifth ring.

  ‘Hi honey, It’s me. They got me. I’m back safe. I have to go into the city. When you get home and get this message, stay there. Don’t go out again, okay? Things are gonna be crazy for a while. Love you. Love to Suzie, too.’

  He hung up, hoping that would avoid a scene later on. If Barb wasn’t at home, it probably meant they were caught up in a traffic jam somewhere – hopefully not for too long. Some of the roads had looked like parking lots on the flight in. It was going to take him and Barney a while to drive into town.

  ‘Okay, let’s get going,’ he said, climbing back into the cabin.

  They pulled away, with Kipper driving south, towards the main terminal building. As they approached, he could tell it was crowded, with thousands of people lining the big glass windows that looked out over the tarmac.

  ‘You got any idea what’s going on, Barn, beyond the headlines?’ he asked his friend.

  ‘Wish I did, Kip. This is like a horror movie. First I heard this morning was Ross Reynolds on KUOW saying he thought we’d been nuked or something. Communications went down. Civil Defense alarms went off. Chaos and fucking madness.’

  ‘But it wasn’t an attack?’ As he spoke, Kipper threaded past a knot of distressed-looking travellers, who were making their way towards a transit bus from a Horizon Air Dash 8. That done, he accelerated
towards a vehicle exit up ahead.

  ‘You’ve seen that thing, haven’t you?’ said Tench, answering Kip’s question with one of his own. ‘Not unless we got attacked by the Death Star or the Go’auld or something. Right now the whole fucking world is just as weirded out as us.’

  Kipper waved off a security guard who seemed intent on holding them up, and accelerated past, paying no respect at all to his frantically waved clipboard.

  The council F-100 bounced up and down as they hit the outer road surface and Kip wrenched it around before gunning it towards the next exit. There appeared to be a couple of dozen soldiers on duty around this part of the airport, although what role they were playing he couldn’t tell. Mostly they seemed to be doing traffic control, barring any civilians from leaving the facility. That’s gonna end in tears, he thought. Seattle wasn’t the sort of town where folks took well to being dicked around by crew-cuts and camouflage. It was a righteous certainty that if he stuck his head outside right now, he’d hear some would-be grunge god caterwauling about fascists and nazis.

  ‘I’m sorry, Barney,’ said Kipper, breaking the silence. ‘I didn’t think – you got family back east.’

  Tench breathed deeply and nodded. ‘Everyone has somebody. So do you.’

  Kipper said nothing. His immediate family was here, thank Christ. But his dad was in Kansas City and he had a sister in New York. Their mother had died three years back. New York and KC, of course, were both behind the Wave.

  He knew now why Barney had sounded so bad on the phone. There were some good folks on the city council, as well as a fair leavening of pinheads. But if Seattle was in the front line of a fight against something that had the power to zap a whole continent, they were all in deep, deep shit.

  * * * *

  9

  MV DIAMANTINA, PACIFIC OCEAN, WEST OF ACAPOLCO

  ‘Man, I vote we stay the hell away from that,’ said Fifi.

  It looked like Hollywood’s idea of a mid-ocean tsunami, a mind-fucking wall of water that stretched across the horizon and reached miles into the sky – which was utter bullshit, of course. The Diamantina had struck two tsunamis in the time that Pete had been her skipper, both of them over a thousand nautical miles away from any coast and neither one even noticeable as it had passed under the hull. The thing to the north was nothing like a tsunami. And, some five hundred and seventy nautical miles offshore from Acapulco, they were sailing closer to it with every minute.

  ‘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 gon
e 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.’