Tale of the Thunderbolt by E.E. Knight Page A

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.
    â€œC’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.

Chapter Four
    Jayport, Jamaica. February: Like Malta in the Mediterranean or Singapore on the Krai Peninsula, Jamaica is the key to the waterways around her. Dwarfed by larger neighbors — Cuba to the north and Haiti to the west — the mountainous little island of blinding white sand and lush green hills sits like a tollboth in the center of a network of water routes around her. North is the passage between Cuba and Haiti leading to the coast of Florida and the Bahamas, west is the Yucatán channel off the coast of Mexico, and to the south is the Latin America coast. Far to the east lay tiny island chains and cays that mark the boundary like a lattice curtain between the Caribbean and the Atlantic proper.
    In the days of the great buccaneers Morgan, Blackbeard, and Captain Kidd, the legendary pirates of the Caribbean pillaged French and Spanish possessions in the New World, spending their loot in the sinful dens that the seventeenth-century Babylon, Port Royal, boasted. The latter-day free-booters of Jamaica are after no such glittering wealth. Their desired booty is limited to food, medical supplies, technology, and shipbuilding materials.
    The latest ruler of Jamaica rests near the old center of Kingston around the great southern bay. But the Kurian’s realm extends only to the foothills of the Blue Mountains. These peaks, named for their color as seen from the sea, give the island its serrated spine that resembles a sea serpent resting in the Caribbean. Outside the Kurian’s land, isolated coastal communities live in the primitive conditions of the Arawaka Indians Columbus discovered, building huts of thick grasses and banana leaves, or of mud and thatch. A few are lucky or powerful enough to control one of the pre- 2022 buildings still standing after the titanic wave that washed across the Caribbean, followed by foundation-shattering quakes and roof-ripping hurricanes.
    In Montego Bay, a bloody-handed sea lord rules with a brutality that would curl Morgan’s mustache, and among the