"Beep, beep, beep—"
The phone at his elbow sounded. A message had come in.
Ryder frowned, opened it, and knew at once that things had gone wrong.
The message read, plain as day: "International Police aboard. Call off the sale!"
The moment he saw it Ryder came fully awake.
It had come from Locke, the senior man on the S.S. Anne he had quietly got to know.
"No more lying about. We've been spotted. Get ready to pull out."
Ryder said it low and hard, and looked carefully around him: several people were watching them from cover, with the look of men ready to move at any moment.
"Ah, then what about our money?"
"You... look what time it is and it's still money, money, money. The International Police are here. We run first and talk about money after. As for the money, if they want to do business again they'll pay every last coin of it!"
...............
"Boss, why did you warn that man?"
Locke was walking through the liner with his trusted men.
"Heh. It puts him in my debt, and it makes the noise bigger, which draws their attention and hides us all the better."
"Besides, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Don't forget we're Team Rocket. What's the harm in a quiet hand under the table? Why should we be helping that lot from the International Police? As long as it looks right on the surface, that's enough."
Locke said it with every confidence.
"Kraboom, boom—"
The words had barely left him when a great crash went up outside, a terrible surge of energy breaking loose; the power of that patch of sky and sea was stirred with it, and brought a heavy pressure down over everything.
Great as the S.S. Anne was, the luxury liner rocked and would not settle. Plainly someone was fighting, and fighting aboard the ship, and to make that much noise the strength of those involved was no small thing.
"Move, move, somebody's started a fight!"
"Get your Pokémon out, the water's coming in!"
...............
Black smoke rolled across the deck. The men and women who had been so comfortably on holiday were running about in a panic, fighting their way clear.
Above their heads several Pokémon with terrifying presences were locked in a fierce fight. A streak of light tore through the air out of it, swept across the S.S. Anne and shaved a corner off the hull, and the backwash of the fighting came down on the liner in full, until this carefully built giant of a ship stood ready to fall apart under an Elite-Four-class battle.
With the hull breached, the sea came roaring straight in.
"How did they come to blows this fast? I thought they weren't all here yet."
Vance steadied himself in time and asked Nolan beside him.
"No idea."
Nolan looked blank as well. By Lt. Surge's information the League's people were not fully in position yet.
"Look out!"
Vance was going to say something more when he felt an enormously strong power come lancing toward them through layer after layer of the ship, everything in its path turning to flying ash.
It was not a power an ordinary Pokémon could put out. Only an Elite-Four-class had force like that.
"Chu—"
Vance had sensed it, and so had one of the Poké Balls on Nolan's belt; it opened at once and a Raichu sprang out and planted itself in front of the two of them, its eyes glowing as it drew wall after wall of light together before them.
The next moment the beam arrived.
"Boom—"
For that instant everything in front of Nolan was blinding light; the sound left his ears deaf and his head ringing, and through the numbness someone pulled him away from the centre of it.
The lavishly furnished private room was rubble in a heartbeat, and that whole section of the hull went with it.
At least the terrible beam had been stopped.
"Chu—"
A weak sound came out of the wreck of splintered boards, and then the Raichu crawled out of it covered in wounds; taking that blow had badly hurt it, for all that it stood at the peak of Gym-class strength.
"Rai... Raichu, are you all right?"
Nolan ran to it at once. If not for the Raichu, that one blow would have killed them both.
"Chu—"
"Ah, Raichu, I can't make out what you're saying. Why are my ears bleeding? Ugh."
As he said it Nolan coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Vance came and stood in front of him and said something, and still he could not hear; only after Vance had gestured a few times did he take the meaning, and he returned the Raichu at once and hurried away from the place, running for the open.
"Roar, roar—"
"Awooo—"
Outside was chaos as well: the Trainers aboard who had Pokémon were all fleeing on them, and those who had none were shouting for help. With the black smoke rolling and the backwash of the fighting over everything, it looked like the end of the world.
By now the ship's loudspeakers had stopped doing any good. People ran for their lives, each scrambling to get ahead of the next, until they were trampling one another, and the whole scene came apart.
When Vance and Nolan got out they quickly called out their flying Pokémon, and only once they had put some distance between themselves and the centre of the fighting did they breathe easier.
The middle of that fight was far too dangerous. One casual blow from that Elite-Four-class Pokémon had just badly hurt a Raichu at the peak of Gym-class.
Among those with no strong Pokémon to guard them, a good many died where they stood.
"That settles it. Nobody's going to spare a thought for the Deino now."
Vance thought it from the Aerodactyl's back, watching the tangle of people fighting aboard the S.S. Anne.
With everything in this much disorder, nobody would have time to look into where the Deino had gone. It had been hard enough for them before; how much harder with all this?
What he had to think about now was dealing with the Deino's problem.
And deal with it he could. He only had to wait for this storm to pass.