The ship's main defence against pirates were the water cannons mounted along the sides of the ship, and the moment Joe Wardley received the order from the Captain, he flipped a switch in the Defence Command Centre to activate them. The cannons themselves were elaborate structures of pipes and beams, looking like pieces of modern art. The passengers had seen them as they wandered the deck, and some had wondered what they were, but for the most part they had ignored them, perhaps thinking they were there to put out fires.

The moment they received power, though, they began shooting streams of high pressure sea water down into the sea around the ship; a defensive curtain that would make it impossible for a small speedboat to get close enough for the crew to climb aboard. The water, sucked up by ducts in the hull, was swept back and forth as the nozzles turned, like the sprinklers of a gigantic lawn irrigation system. If a hostile ship actually appeared, they could be targeted, the pirates swept overboard and the enemy vessel filled with water to the point that it became hard to manoeuvre or even sank.
Passengers stared in wonder as they roared to life, and they backed away to avoid the fine spray that drifted downwind from them. "What's going on, George?" asked an elderly woman.

"Probably someone's birthday," her husband replied. They ambled away from the cannon so that their fine, expensive clothes wouldn't get wet.

Back in the Defence Command Centre, Joe Wardley then pressed the General Alert button. It sent a signal to the mobile phones carried by every member of the ship's twenty-strong security force, making then buzz loudly and putting a message on their screens. Attack imminent. Go to full alert. Prepare to repel boarders. Then he took his personal sidearm from the wall safe and buckled it around his waist.

Two of his men appeared from the adjacent security crew mess, looking surprised. "Pirates?" one of them said, still holding a half-eaten ham sandwich. "You sure?"

"That's what the Captain says," Wardley replied. "So get tooled up and get up on deck."

"But the last pirate attack in the South Atlantic..."

"I know," said Wardley impatiently, "but the Captain has no doubt received a warning from someone, which means we've got no excuse if we screw up. Okay?"

"Right," the man agreed. They went to the safe to buckle on their own guns. Then they hurried to the nearest stairs up to the Promenade, while Wardley went to another set of stairs that went higher, to the sky deck.

The sky deck was the ship's smallest and highest deck. It was a ringed walkway around the pylon to which most of the radars and antenna masts were located, and it was also where the Long Range Acoustic Devices were located. The LRADs were sound weapons, although they also had more mundane uses such as for communicating over long distances, like loudspeakers. Right now, though, Roy Ellis, his deputy, was aiming the port LRAD down towards the water surrounding the ship, ready to direct a blast of high intensity sound at any threatening ship he spotted. A blast of sound powerful enough to disorient and repel the crew. A handful of passengers, enjoying the cool breeze that blew this high above the water, watched him with interest while smearing themselves with sunscreen.

"What do you see?" asked Wardley as he joined him there.

"Nothing," Ellis replied. "Nothing but clear water. Perhaps they're coming from the other side."

"Maybe," said Wardley, staring out across the sea. A curtain of mist from the water cannons hid the waters closest to the ship, but if pirates were there, the water was already giving them more than they could handle. Pirates generally kept to a distance at first, threatening their target with rocket-propelled grenades until the crew gave in and turned off their defences, but the waters that far out were clear. All he could see was the dark shape of a whale, sending a spout of water up into the air as if in imitation of the cruise liner.

"Keep your eyes open," Wardley told Ellis. "They might still be coming."

"If they come from that way, I'll see 'em," his deputy promised. He scanned the waters with his eyes, turning the weapon on its mount to point in the same direction. His index finger rested lightly on the button that would activate it the moment he spotted something he didn't like.

Wardley left him and went through a door in the gleaming-white bulkhead behind him. He threaded his way through a maze of narrow passages, past doors that bore exotic labels that only had meaning to the ship's electricians, until he came to another door in the far side, through which he exited. He found another of his men manning the other LRAD, staring down at the empty waters on the starboard side of the ship. He looked up as Wardley approached, but said nothing.

Wardley stayed there just long enough to assure himself that there were no strange ships approaching them. Then he turned to leave. "Keep a sharp eye out," he told the security man. The man nodded without taking his eyes away from the sea.

Wardley took a few steps away, then took his phone from his pocket and called a number. "Hey, Chief," said a voice when it was answered.

"Hey, Pete," said Wardley. "Where are you?"

"On the Promenade," the security man answered. "Nothing happening here. Lots of passengers asking questions, wanting to know what's going on. We're telling them it's just a drill."

"Good," said Wardley. "Hopefully it's just the Captain got his knickers in a twist over something. Not like him to press the panic button, though. Something must have set him off."

"Well, I've been talking to everyone, and no-one's seeing any bad guys out in the water. If it was up to me, I'd give the all clear."
"Right," Wardley replied. "I'll talk to the skipper."

He hung up and called the Captain, while still staring out across the empty ocean. No ships. No boats. Nothing. Just that whale, still cruising lazily a few hundred metres away from the Vinland Majesty. While waiting for the Captain to reply, he idly tried to identify it. He'd seen many whales during his time aboard the Majesty, but he couldn't remember ever seeing one quite like that one. It was big, or at least it was long. It seemed quite skinny. More like a sea snake than an aquatic mammal, but no snake he'd ever heard of had ever grown as big as that.

As if to confirm its non-serpentine nature, it chose that moment to rise to the surface again and blow a spout of water from the blowhole in the top of its head. Then it opened its jaws, and Wardley was surprised to see rows of long, dagger-like teeth. An orca? he thought. A killer whale? But the head, although the right size to be that of a killer whale, looked too pointed. It looked more like the head of a sea lion. Whatever it was, though, it was big, as far as he could judge. Easily twice the length of any killer whale he'd ever heard of.

Then the Captain answered the phone. "What's the situation?" he demanded.

"No sign of any hostile vessels " Wardley told him. "There's nothing out there."

"Keep watch," the Captain told him. "The ship's already been attacked..."

"Attacked?" Wardley asked, suddenly alarmed.

"A cyber attack, cutting off our communications with the rest of the world. It has to be the prelude to something, so stay alert."

"Will do," Wardley promised him. "Can we at least turn off the water cannons? They're reducing visibility."

"All right," Tennyson replied. "But keep them ready, just in case."
The Captain then hung up. Wardley opened the security app on his phone, and used it to turn off the water cannons. Silence fell, and the air gradually cleared as the clouds of mist drifted away. He peered down at the water close to the ship, hidden until now by the spray, but there was still nothing there. No cunning little pirate boat huddled close against the liner's hull and using the spray as cover to climb aboard. There was no way any small boat could have done any such thing, of course, but he still breathed a sigh of relief to find his instincts confirmed.

"Dammit, Captain," he muttered to himself as he made his way back to the stairs leading down. "What's got you so rattled?" If pirates were planning to attack, he thought to himself, the time to do so would have been at the same time communications were cut, to give the cruise liner no warning. Why the delay? Why give the Vinland Majesty time to organise its defences?

The only way to cripple the ship's communications, he thought, would be to have a man on the inside. Someone on the Engineering staff. An electrician. He plugs in a thumb drive, uploads a virus at a prearranged time, but then the pirates were delayed. Maybe something stupid like the engine refusing to start. If that was what had happened, would they still be coming? Or would they call off the attack now that the ship was alert and on its guard?

They'd be fools to still come, he knew, but they had to assume the worst. He and his men would stay alert, and if any little speedboats came looking for trouble, he and his men would give them hell. The thought made him smile, and before going back inside he took one last look at the horizon, trying to spot the tiny, black specks of oncoming vessels.

The cry of a bird, something big and loud, startled him. He spared a look up, and saw it sitting on one of the horizontal spurs jutting out from the navigation pylon. He didn't recognise it. It looked like no bird he'd ever seen before, but that was no surprise. He was no birdwatcher. He dismissed it from his attention, therefore, and ducked into the door.

But then he paused. The bird had been sitting next to the white dome containing the Immarsat GPS antenna, which was about thirty centimetres across. The bird was four or five times longer than that, from beak to tail. Four or five feet long. What the hell kind of seabird grew that big?

He stared up at it, and saw the bird turning its head this way and that, scanning the ocean around it, much as Joe had done. Then it spread its wings, and Joe Wardley gasped in shock. The bird had a wingspan of at least fifteen feet. Maybe more. No, he told himself angrily. No bird grew that big. He'd made a mistake. It was some other antenna it was sitting beside. A smaller one. Except it wasn't. It was definitely the Immarsat dome, and the Immarsat dome was definitely thirty centimetres across. It had to be some kind of optical illusion. A trick of perspective. There was no other explanation.

The bird leaned forward, staring down at the empty air below it. Then it pushed itself from its perch and dropped. It kept its wings partially folded against its body, trading height for speed until it was going fast enough to spread its wings again and level out. It passed within a few feet of the astonished Joe Wardley, and as it did so he clearly saw that the bird's size was no mistake. It was gigantic! With its head stretched out of the end of its neck, it was as long as a man was tall, and its wings, although long and thin, had the span of a hang glider.

The handful of passengers he was sharing the Sky Deck with stared in astonishment. "What was that, Ethel?" a man asked his wife.
"An albatross, obviously," she replied. "Haven't you ever seen an albatross before?"

"I've seen loads of 'em," he told her. "That was no albatross. And it had teeth."

"Birds don't have teeth, silly."

Wardley didn't hear the rest of the exchange, as he was running along the deck to the spot where he'd have the best view down in the direction the bird had gone. He saw it levelling out close to the surface of the sea, and then it then coasted a few feet above the waves, gaining back the height it had lost with slow, lazy flaps of its wings.

Stop wasting time admiring the wildlife, he scolded himself. The ship might be about to come under attack. Focus on your duty. He put the bird out of his mind, therefore, and made his way back to the internal stairway, wanting to join his men on the Promenade as quickly as possible.