Without warning

She sucked the salt from her lip and thought it over. The Rules had a comfortable cruising speed of fifteen knots, which they could push out to seventeen and a bit for a while, especially now she had some engineers she could trust. But if they had any trouble in the hugely complicated engineering plant, or if they hit foul weather, their pursuers were highly likely to catch up. Plus, of course, she’d burn through their fuel a lot quicker at top speed. Jules rubbed her temples, which were beginning to throb. This was not what she had planned when she’d agreed to soak a bunch of rich tourists for as much as she could get. She wondered what Pete would have done.

‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t see this ending well. Fifi, let’s get everyone together, shall we. Anyone who can hold a weapon, down in the main lounge. Mr Lee, you just keep as much distance between us and them as you can. I’ll be back soon.’

She had one last look back towards the islands. A storm front was piling up to the south-east, smudging out the horizon. She was confident in the super-yacht’s ability to handle a big blow and could only hope that whoever was chasing them didn’t enjoy such a pimped-out ride. Perhaps they could lose them in bad weather.

* * * *

It really was an incongruous sight. She’d never been taken with the fabulously over-egged opulence of the main lounge area on the Aussie Rules - it was a bit too clubby and try-hard for her tastes. But she had to admit she liked the sight of the half-dozen little village urchins who’d come on board with Miguel bouncing and leaping from one deep blue lounge chair to the next. Or rather, she liked the look of utter dismay on the faces of some of her wealthier passengers.

Fifi followed her in, toting the PKM. It brought a quick level of decorum to proceedings, with even the children stopping and pointing. They were experienced enough to know what it meant.

‘All right. Listen up, everyone,’ Jules cried out.

With all of the passengers and some crew gathered in there, she guesstimated that nearly thirty people were in the room. It held them comfortably. Pieraro’s extended family, who’d proven themselves less trouble and much more help than her paying guests, were mostly clustered together quietly under the oil paintings of Greg Norman’s dogs, with just a few of the youngest children still roaming around unleashed. Julianne subtracted them from her plans; they would need to be hidden away somewhere with a minder. Perhaps Grandma Ana, who was the oldest of the Mexicans and spent most of her days shelling beans and peeling vegetables in the weak sun up on the pool deck. Jules had no doubt that she’d cut the throat of anyone who tried to harm the little ones, but she was virtually immobile. The rest of the clan, though, she’d come to appreciate. They worked hard. Ate little. Some of the men were good shots. They were reliable in a fight and would do whatever Miguel ordered, without demur. Plus, they’d proven themselves diabolically effective traders whenever the Rules had put into shore for resupply. Jules was still adamant they would have to leave the boat at some point, but for the moment, she couldn’t see her way clear to dropping them anywhere. The mainland, which they had now left behind anyway, was too dangerous, especially near any of the larger cities.

Her small crew, recruited in Acapulco and at a handful of trading stops at smaller, self-sufficient towns and villages on the way down to Crusoe, were all handy with weapons in one form or another, while Shah’s men, it went without saying, were utterly formidable. As she totted up the number of potential shooters in the lounge, Shah himself appeared at the main entrance and nodded silently to her. His men had the situation in hand for the moment.

The problem, as always, was the passengers – the rich, skiving dilettantes she had taken on board to fund the trip and provide her with a fig leaf of respectability when she arrived in Hawaii or Sydney, or wherever they were headed. While some of them had proved themselves not completely odious, and one or two, such as Marc Unwin, the oil broker, had even brought some of their arcane skills to bear for the benefit of all, as a group they were a bunch of fucking oxygen thieves. The trust-fund brats, Phoebe and Jason, had alienated all of the crew by treating them like staff. Indeed, Jason still sported a black eye from one of the engineers. Moorhouse, the merchant banker, had become a virtual recluse as he’d come to realise that the old world, and his fortune within it, was never coming back. As for the others, they simply made pains of themselves at every opportunity, for want of anything better to do. Well, she had a job of work for them to do now.

‘Okay,’ she said simply. ‘Pirates. Looks like we have two shiploads of them bearing down on us from the north.’