"If it is, you can tell the commodore you avenged me. Quiet now, I need to listen," a female voice said. "Hello back," the unknown woman added, a bit more loudly. "This ship is in the hands of the Commodore's Flotilla, of Jayport, Jamaica. I offer you a chance of surrender with fair treatment. Why were you calling for help?"
The owner of the voice stepped around the corner, and all that Valentine could make out in the smoke and darkness was that she was a tall woman. An equally tall man joined her, and at a motion from her hand he opened a kerosene lantern and held it up, revealing the two of them. They both wore loose cotton shirts, cut as pullovers with deep V-necks, dark culottes topped with a sash and gunbelts, and boat sandals. She had dark hair pulled back from her face and handsome, large-eyed features showing Latin blood in her golden complexion. The man behind her was ebony-hued, eyes narrowed suspiciously as he searched the men on the barricade, a revolver in his other hand.
Valentine thought it best to match her and hopped over the barricade, though he took care to land on his good leg. "Ahn-Kha, tell your pair in the laundry not to fire. It's over."
Ahn-Kha barked something out, answered by grunts from the darkness of the laundry room. Valentine moved forward to meet the two at the intersection. She looked at the bodies, and Valentine saw her reading the story in the carnage.
"Surrender might not be the right word, but we won't trouble you."
"You in a position to cause trouble?"
"Not if you play fair by us. My name is Valentine, out of Southern Command in the Ozarks. God knows how I could prove it to you, though. Our plan was to take the ship, but"-Valentine indicated the barricade behind him-"it went rather wrong. Help us, and you'll have my thanks, and my word that we will not harm you or the Thunderbolt further."
"You are a long way from Mountain Home, Valentine," she said, showing a better knowledge of his land than he would have guessed. "My name is Carrasca, First Leftenant of the Rigel."
"What's happened to the rest of my crew?" Valentine asked.
"A few were killed. Someone from the bridge fired a machine gun into us, and more were shot off the superstructure, but most surrendered. I see your men are better armed than the rest."
"We had the arms locker and engine room, about the only thing that went right tonight. You picked a good time to board."
"Lucky for both of us. Can you clear out that mess in the corridor? I need to send men down to watch the engine room."
"Nobody is going to sink her," Valentine said.
"It is my responsibility to make sure of that. I'm sure you can understand."
Valentine stepped aside as more of the Rigel's men entered, nodding to Ahn-Kha. The Grog gripped the door of the barricade and lifted it aside. Carrasca gave orders, briefly and to the point. Valentine admired the way her men were in control, even in the confusion of a fight. Whoever these pirates were, they had a discipline different from, and superior to, the fear-inspired one that dominated the Thunderbolt.
The defenders from the barricade huddled in a silent little group in the arms locker, like children unsure of a new teacher.
Valentine decided a gesture was in order, if nothing else to preempt the orders that would soon be issued from their captors. "Can we get the fans on, Chief? Our friends here put the fires out. Let's get some air down here. Turn the power back on, and start the engines, if you please."
The Chief pushed his stunned men into their positions. "Sir, tell these islanders not to keep pointing their guns around, will you? The fingers on all these triggers are making me nervous."
Carrasca leaned over the hatch. "Bierd, have your men watch their weapons." She turned back to Valentine. "I'm sorry, but for the safety of your men, you'll be put under guard. Could you bring your men up on deck?"
The diesels coughed into life, and Valentine felt the roll of the ship change as the propellers began to bite.
"C'mon, men, up on deck. I've had enough of this air. Let's get these bodies up, too."
The sailors, marines, and Grogs started the grisly work of clearing up the corpses. Valentine picked past the remains of a burning pile of tires and rags, following Carrasca to the stairs.
The intercom buzzed to life again. "Congratulations, men," a deep voice with a singsong musical intonation announced. 'Thees is Captain Utari. D' ship is ours. Fair shares all round."
As the pirates cheered, Valentine felt the rudder turn the Thunderbolt's vital tonnage toward Jamaica.
aribbean: An empty, brilliant blue sky is mirrored by an equally blue sea. The gunboat has left the rainy gloom of New Orleans behind her, pushing her hardened prow southeast into the Gulf under the power of her eleven-foot propeller at a steady ten knots. Diesel-electric engines provide the motive force for the propeller, giving her a throbbing, piston-driven heartbeat and sending sky-staining wisps of black carbon into the air from the central smokestack. Below the exhaust she leaves behind a trail of churned water over a mile long, flanked by the low waves of her wake.
The gray ship with her bleached white decks flies no flag, letting her armored bulk identify her, leaving the mouth of the Mississippi coasters and fishing ships scattered, parting like an antelope herd with a lion trotting through. The smaller boats fear an inspection shakedown or impressment of valuable crew. But once in the Gulf proper, only a two-mast schooner approached, and even that turned tail and put the wind to her quarter before binoculars and telescopes allowed positive identification.
The Kurian Masters of the Earth are not a sea-minded race. They avoid blue water and leave its security and commerce to their Quislings. There are few armed vessels anymore. The old navies of the world have been broken up for scrap and spare parts. The great tankers, merchant ships, and passenger vessels now lie in their last moorings, giant rolling stones come to barnacle-encrusted rest as the world fell apart. A few have been put to other uses: agricultural workers in what is left of Florida after the Great Wave that washed across it in 2022 go home from oyster beds, crab farms, and orange groves each night to cruise ships, living in cramped squalor under the last vestiges of the vessels' glitzy luxury of former days.
As the sea is out of reach of the Kurians and their Reapers, a loose Confederation of the Waves exists, nomadic oceangoing caravans of anything from a few sailing ships to hundreds, visiting land only in the most unoccupied areas for supplies. But the sea is a cruel provider. She takes her toll in lives, as well, probably more than the same number of people would suffer under the Kur. Some of these bands have turned pirate, raiding rather than trading for necessities the sea and isolated coastline cannot provide. When their depredations become too troublesome, an armed ship is sent to deal with the menace. While they have little use for it, the Kurians won't let a trifling thing like the sea stand between them and vengeance.
It was the third day out, and life on the plodding Thunderbolt had already turned into routine. The first light of dawn saw the Grogs hosing down and cleaning the decks. They devoured their morning fare with work-sharpened appetite. The cook, his mate, and the officers' steward then cleaned up the kitchen and prepared the meals for everyone else. The men tolerated the presence of the Grogs on the ship, especially since they took on so many of the petty labors, but drew the line at eating with them, or indeed sharing the same space. Grogs in tight quarters smell (even to noses not sharpened by the Lifeweavers) like a kennelful of mating ferrets, so they lived on deck in shelters rigged to the bulkheads of the forward well deck.
With their routine duties and weapons drill done, Ahn-Kha gave them leisure to fish. The rod-and-reel obsession began when a pair of flying fish broke the surface, leaving furrows in the calm ocean in their dash away from the ship.