Fifteen years at sea had taught Jack Shelby that you ride with a storm, not against it - especially when you were the master of such a small, top-heavy fishing vessel as the Hitori. It was going against every acquired instinct when he ordered first mate Shun Li to hold his course through the twenty-foot waves, but the prospect of what Li had spotted on the horizon promised to be worth it.

Up until recently, the Hitori had been fishing the same waters as all the other crews out of Okushiri. The larger fish were attracted to the warmer waters around the coast and there was more than enough for all of the boats to land as big a catch as they wanted. But it had been getting colder recently, and as autumn blew in, the fish put out to sea. Of all the boats, only the Hitori followed them.

According to local folklore, Li said, fish were the most intelligent and evolved species on the planet. They had been around millions of years before man and had survived where countless species had fallen extinct in the meantime. Perhaps they were simply blessed by the gods. But Li didn't believe in the gods, he'd said, grinning a grin that revealed just how many teeth he was missing. After millions of years being prey, fish had developed a unique sense of self-preservation. They had no pride. They knew when it was better to cut their losses and move on.

Shelby had once asked why, if they knew they'd be caught, the fish kept returning to the waters around Okushiri every year. Li had been too drunk to answer at the time. Later Shelby also asked why, if the fish were so smart, they never went any further out to sea than the Hitori was prepared to follow them. Intelligent animals don't make the same mistakes as stupid animals, Li had told him: they make entirely new ones. Actually, he'd probably been drunk then as well.

This morning the Hitori had set out as normal, travelling until dawn to reach the waters still heavily populated with fish. By that time, the island of Okushiri had disappeared from the horizon. Shelby liked the isolation: the feeling that whatever was going on in the world, all the way out here, it didn't matter. Despite the Russian coast being only a day's travel away, they rarely saw any naval activity. So it was with some excitement that one of the crew reported spotting a cruiser whilst on lookout. And with some trepidation that he said it was American.

Shelby kept an eye on it all morning. It was twenty miles away, twenty miles closer to Soviet territorial waters. All the Japanese fishermen knew better than to get that close, and Shelby imagined the commander of an American naval vessel would know better too. Which suggested something was going on.

Around mid-morning, bulbous grey clouds swept across the sun and the sea grew choppy. The storm was coming in from the south west, which meant the Hitori could still outrun it by heading back to Okushiri. The nets were all cast by noon, and Shelby was about to give the order to turn the boat around when Li begged a word in his ear. Evidently Shelby hadn't been the only one watching the ship, but his first mate didn't seem to have been doing anything else. Indeed, he'd been watching it long enough, he claimed, to be sure that it was drifting.

Shelby knew better than to question the man's hunches. Shun Li was sixty years old. He had been a fisherman all his life; joined his first crew when he was just eleven. Li knew ships, knew the oceans. He could draw the patterns of the currents on a map of the seas. If he said a ship was adrift, then adrift it was.

The storm dissipated by mid-afternoon, by which time the Hitori was only a mile or two away. From that distance they could see, through binoculars, the American flag flying from the stern. It was flapping desperately, caught in the edge of the storm winds. But that was the only sign of movement on board.

A little closer and Shelby noticed the ship was listing. He thought it was just their angle of approach at first, but Li was thinking the same thing. It was several degrees down by the head. Soon they were within sight of the dedication. The cruiser was the USS Roosevelt. The name meant nothing to Shelby.

"Bring us alongside," he told Li.

Li nodded and shouted something in Japanese to the rest of the crew. They were all leaning over the port side in their crumpled all-weather kagouls. At his command, they began to ready one of the guide ropes.

Shelby tried the radio a few times, but all he got in response to his hails was static. Even when the Hitori was within shouting distance, nobody from the Roosevelt appeared to warn them off. Shelby considered that warning enough.

The USS Roosevelt was a ghost ship.

But the rest of the crew was getting increasingly excited. Shelby didn't need to understand Japanese to gather that much. Even Li had a sparkly look in his eyes as he cut the engines and turned the Hitori toward the ship.

They all held onto something as the Hitori planed against the Roosevelt, but the rubber tyres trussed to the Hitori's hull took most of the impact. As the fishing boat shuddered along, one of Shelby's crewmen cast the guide rope up and over, and tied it off when the other end fell back down. The Hitori kept going until the slack in the rope vanished, snapped taut, and then the boat jolted to a stop.

Two crewmen ran forward with a ladder straight away. The others looked to the wheel cabin, waiting for a signal from either Shelby or Li. But Shelby just hovered in the doorway, the binoculars still in his hands.

"They wait for you, Jack," Li told him.

Shelby turned back into the cabin, frowning.

"What wrong?" the old man asked.

"About this?" Shelby replied. "Everything."

Li chuckled. "It still our salvage, no?"

"I hope so," Shelby murmured.

"Then what we wait for?" Li cried.

Shelby sighed and threw up his hands.

Li grinned, his usual toothless grin. Then he beat out a quick slappity-pat rhythm on the wheel and went to join the others. A few words of Japanese from him and they started to clamber up the ladder to the Roosevelt.

Shelby remained in the cabin a moment longer, then he got his leather jacket off the back of the door. He was just putting the binoculars back in the chest where they were kept when he spotted the holstered pistol he'd stashed in the bottom. He hadn't had call to use it yet, but he kept it loaded at all times. He'd been warned about piracy before he'd even bought the boat. With a cursory glance to check the crew wasn't watching, he slipped the pistol into his pocket.

Shelby was the last one onto the Roosevelt. The crewmen hadn't even waited to hold the ladder steady for Li. By the time Shelby climbed over the railing, the others were already wandering off to explore, but Li remained.

"They all gone," he said quietly.

And he wasn't talking about their crew, Shelby knew.

The cruiser was deathly still and quiet. There weren't even any rumblings from the engines. Beneath Shelby's feet, the ship felt like solid ground. In that way, it couldn't have been any more different from the Hitori.

But the Hitori still felt safer right now.

Li was inspecting the aft anti-aircraft gun. Its massive barrel was dipped forward as if, like the ship itself, it was sleeping.

"Maybe they abandon ship," he said.

Shelby nodded absently as he walked slowly past, looking for a sign, any sign, of what might have happened here. There were none.

"Maybe before storm," Li muttered.

Shelby suddenly noticed something, something worth checking out. "Hmm, I wonder," he said distantly, and started off across the deck.

Li frowned and watched him potter all the way over to the starboard side of the ship, hands in pockets, and then come back again.

"What wrong now?" Li asked.

"It's a long way to the mainland if you're planning to swim there, Li," Shelby said cryptically. "A very long way indeed."

Li shook his head, confused.

"Look," said Shelby. Then he gestured all the way down the port side of the ship. It took Li a moment to spot what he was meant to see.

The lifeboats. As in: all of them.

"An abandoned ship that no one abandoned," Shelby hissed.

None of the lifeboats had been launched. None of them looked like they were even ready to be. "It's the same on the other side," he added.

Li gulped. "What this mean?"

Shelby sighed. "It means, Li, that the crew didn't go anywhere." All of a sudden, he began to feel the weight of that pistol in his pocket. "It means, Li, that they should all still be on board this ship."

Li didn't say anything. He just tucked his hands into his armpits and hunched his shoulders against the chilly autumnal breeze.

"I'm going to check below decks," said Shelby.

"I go too," said Li.

Shelby didn't argue when he came along.

"Even if there's nobody down there, this boat's still sinking," he told Li as they headed into the ship. "I want to know how long."

They entered the ship through the same open bulkhead as everyone else. There was a downward stairwell at the other end of a passage.

As they headed forward, notably downhill now, they passed various members of their crew rifling gleefully through different cabins. They hadn't even had to break in, and there was nobody around to stop them. Shelby's greatest cause for concern was, for these scavengers, a blessing not even in disguise.

Up ahead, one of the crew came out of a side door, proudly cradling his booty in his arms. As he passed, Shelby noticed he had a pair of two-way radios on a cord slung round his neck like they were a pair of bowling shoes.

"I'll take one of those," Shelby said, removing them from the boy's neck and untying one. Then to Li: "Tell him to turn the other to channel two."

Li relayed the command in Japanese.

By the time they reached the stairwell, Shelby and Li could hear the sound of running water several decks below.

"Dark down there," Li murmured.

"Got a torch?"

Swapping his radio for the flashlight Li kept tied to his belt, Shelby started down the steps. It wasn't long before he had to turn the torch on.

The next deck wasn't flooded, but the power was failing. The lights in the interior of the ship flickered on and off, and the subdued daylight coming through the portholes in the outer hull didn't spread very far beyond them.

Holding the torch as if to stab with it, Shelby quickly checked the corners and shone it down the nearest passages. Nothing and nobody.

"Okay, let's keep going down."

The next level was completely dark. The power had already failed and the portholes on this deck were below the water line. The steps were wet. Li and Shelby both felt a notable drop in temperature as they descended.

The water at the bottom of the stairwell was ankle deep. Wading out into the main passage that traversed the length of the ship and shining the flashlight in either direction, Shelby found the source of the running water.

There was a watertight pressure door halfway along the passage. It was much nearer the bow, and on the other side presumably more flooded than on this. Water was spraying through a gap that shouldn't have been there.

Shelby stomped through the water until it was up to his knees, but then went no further. Shining the torch on the door, he could see perfectly well why it wouldn't close properly. Something had warped the metal.

"Jack," called Li, still on the steps.

Shelby turned. His first mate was pointing up at a sign by a junction. Shelby waded back to him and shone the torch on it. Armoury.

"Trust you," Shelby grumbled.

But the armoury was back toward the stern, which was still above water. A chance for Shelby to let his feet dry. Li hopped down into the flooded corridor and then Shelby led the way aft along the main passage.

"So how long we have?" asked Li.

"Not sure," said Shelby. "I think we're okay. Apart from that one, the rest of the watertight doors seem to be stemming the flow."

The door to the armoury was already open. Shelby shone the light inside, but as he was passing the door, he noticed the marks on it and stopped.

"Like someone took an axe to it. Twice," Shelby muttered to himself as Li strolled past him into the room obliviously.

Shelby put his hand up and felt the gouged metal. There were two scratches, each a foot long, about two inches apart. It was only when he touched them did he realise how deep they went. Some axe that must have been.

"Jack, look this," Li called.

Shelby turned the torch on him. Li was crouched on the floor of the armoury, holding up a machine gun for Shelby to see.

"It look like someone in middle of loading it," he reported, tipping the gun up so that the ammunition cartridge fell into his other hand.

Shelby took the gun and loaded it properly.

"Why they stop?" Li asked.

Shelby just shook his head. He panned the beam of light around the room. The armoury was a long, narrow chamber lined with gun cabinets. Some of them were open, but there were a few more guns just lying on the floor.

"Ugh, what this?" Li suddenly cried.

Shelby quickly turned the torch back on his first mate. In the hard white light it looked like he had oil on his face. As he smeared it off with his hands, he looked up toward the high ceiling. Shelby followed with the flashlight.

"Holy shit," he breathed.

For a moment, his voice was gone.

It wasn't oil that had dripped onto Li's face. Hanging from the ceiling, bound at the feet and spinning gently, were bodies. Red, naked, human bodies, their arms hanging limp and dripping splatters of congealed blood.

Li scrambled clear with a shriek.

"What going on?" he cried.

Shelby shook his head slowly. "Get on that radio and tell someone to go to the bridge. I want to know what's in the log, right now."

Li held the radio in the torch beam until he worked out how to use it. After a short pause, a crackling voice responded.

"He on way now," Li translated.

It was a very long minute before the radio crackled again.

"He say something fall in ocean," Li relayed with a frown. "Ship change direction to look." Then something in Japanese.

"What was it?" Shelby asked.

Li smiled apologetically. "He don't know. He read English worse than speak it, Jack." A pause. More Japanese. "Wait. No. There more."

Shelby shone the light in his face.

"Something in ship," Li reported, shaking his head. "He don't know. He can't read word. Something about number three."

"Number three?" said Shelby. "What is that? A room number?"

Li sighed. "He don't know."

"A holding bay?"

Li looked up. "Could be."

Shelby nodded sharply. "There's access to the hold on this deck," he told Li, slipping the machine gun strap over his shoulder. "I saw a sign."

"What you think there?" Li asked.

"I don't know," Shelby said through gritted teeth.

They retraced their steps back to the stairs. The sign pointing to the holding bays told them to go left at the junction. They followed it, took another right, and soon they were on a corridor parallel to the main passageway.

Shelby played the light across the access door as they approached it. Before they were even halfway there he could see how badly damaged it was. More so than any of the other doors they'd come across. This one looked like it had buckled, burst outward under the strain of repeated blows from the other side.

"What did this?" Li said under his breath.

"I don't know," Shelby found himself saying once more.

They were up to their shins in water by now, but the door was so badly bent in places they could see around it, and the hold wasn't any more flooded.

"Help me get this thing open," Shelby said.

It took both of them to open a wide enough gap to squeeze through, and Shelby had to clip the torch to his belt to free up his hands. So they entered the bay in darkness, almost total but for a narrow strip of light from above.

Several decks up, the cargo bay doors bisected the ship. Daylight was breaking through the gap between them. It wasn't much light, but it was enough for Shelby to see the outline of the thing a moment before he turned his torch back on.

For a moment after, neither of them said anything.

Then Shelby said, "Jesus Christ."

In the bay was some sort of craft. It was about twenty feet long and half as wide. As Shelby swept the flashlight back and forth, he thought the craft looked like a beetle, a giant, mechanical beetle, made of metal.

"Have you ever..." he began.

He and Li waded out into the bay toward it, but didn't get too close. Water was lapping about its hull - if that's what you'd call it. Shelby couldn't tell whether it was aircraft, submarine, or what. He'd never seen anything like it.

They started around the other side, but they didn't get very far before they both stopped dead in the water again. The craft was open.

Li was already shaking his head.

"I'm gonna take a look," Shelby mumbled.

The door - as Shelby thought of the opening - was several feet higher than any human would have made it. Perhaps that was an indicator of what kind of species made this craft. For Shelby was now imagining it to be alien.

As he climbed inside, he became certain.

It was unnaturally warm in the craft and there was a low hum from all the strange electronic equipment that blanketed every surface. Lights blinked and strange symbols flashed in mid-air. Shelby waved his hand through them, and for a brief moment they imprinted on his palm. It was amazing.

A sudden loud crackle made him jump.

Then Li called: "Jack, radio."

Shelby climbed out of the craft gingerly, feeling like an intruder. As he got out, Li was listening to someone on the radio, his face grey.

"What is it?" asked Shelby.

"He say he on bridge," Li said nervously. "He say sonar suddenly start making noise. There something beneath us, Jack. Something big!"

NOTES:
The various odd things they find are supposed to be evidence of a Predator assault. In the films, the Predators only kill those who are armed and can fight back, so Li and Shelby only find skinned bodies hanging upside down in the armoury (a la "Predator 2"). The reference to twin axe marks on the doors is supposed to imply use of the Predator's extending wristblades, whilst the numerous pulverised doors Shelby comes across suggest something big and strong trying to get out. The word hitori, incidentally, is Japanese for "alone" - deliberately chosen to highlight Shelby's self-exile amongst Japanese peasant fishermen (he's an American ex-pat).