central mountains, an unnamed band of killers, thought to be the remnants of some drug kingpinâs gang, leave piles of severed heads along the jungle trails to warn trespassers away. But for the most part, the Jamaicans are a gentle people, taking the bounty nature sewed in the rich volcanic soil of the island and the surrounding sea and sharing what little they have with the generosity of people who have known hunger and misfortune between periods of plenty.
One bay to the north, however, is an exception to the rule in a number of ways. The pre-2022 buildings are in as good a repair as local materials can make them â though one wave-gutted, multistory hotel stands untouched in its beach-front location â and hundreds of white bungalows of wood and thatch show the best example of what can be created out of clay, leaves, and coconut coir. Two thick palisades of wood run for miles from the high hills to the west to a great oval bulge along the flatter ground south and east, bordered by fields of rice and corn with the jungle cut back from the walls.
Sailing ships now dot a broad concrete pier that at one time berthed cruise ships. At the end of the pier is a gray-and-rust ship, a relic of the Old World dominating the center of the bay like a castleâs keep. She sits separated by thirty feet of water crossed by a floating bridge leading to a portal in her hull big enough to drive a truck into. She is a strange sort of ship, four decks of superstructure crowded over the bow, and perhaps a hundred yards of what used to be flight deck broken only by the housing for the shipâs offset stack. At the top of her aerial stack, a white flag with a red cross alternately ripples and droops in the shifting noon-time air.
Farther out in the shallow waters of the bay, on a calm day it is easy to see the outlines of sunken shipping, now encrusted with coral, forming an underwater, unbuoyed wall guarding the seaward approaches to the dock. At the south end of the great concrete pier, a gate stands beneath a guard tower, allowing passage of landward trade, as well.
This is Jayport, refuge of the Commodoreâs Flotilla. Its history, a story too long to be recounted here, goes back to the last days of 2022, when two ships of the Royal Navy and a liner full of refugees came here and established the floating hospital. But this flotsam and jetsam of the world-that-was eventually formed an alliance with a band of island mariners. Now their combined children roam the Caribbean from the Texas coast to Grenada, raiding off the Kurian Order just as their English forebears plagued the Spanish Main and French Colonies.
Â
Standing on the Thunderbolt âs bridge, David Valentine watched as they approached the Jayport harbor. The ship threaded her way through the reefs, unmarked save for two points where the surf splashed up against the coral obstructions projecting just past the surface. A fishing trawler led the way, like a pilotfish swimming before the gray bulk of a shark, and behind came the graceful pyramid of wood and canvas, the three-masted clipper Rigel. She had shortened sail to keep position behind the plodding gunboat.
Valentine squinted his eyes against the glare of the sun. The light refracted off the armored glass of the bridge, glittering with spiderwebs of cracks from the bullets of last nightâs fight. Carrasca, the officer in charge of the prize crew, watched the Thunderbolt âs progress from the wing projecting out of the bridge deck over the shipâs side, her black hair now untied and fluttering in the landward breeze like a pennant. She watched the course of the Thunderbolt as carefully as if she did not have a guide through the reefs protecting the port. The pirate at the wheel wore a sleeveless, cut-at-the-knees jumpsuit, his thick legs planted wide on the deck. The helmsman looked as if he spent time fighting tiller ropes, rather than the hydraulic rudder of the Thunderbolt.
âThis
One bay to the north, however, is an exception to the rule in a number of ways. The pre-2022 buildings are in as good a repair as local materials can make them â though one wave-gutted, multistory hotel stands untouched in its beach-front location â and hundreds of white bungalows of wood and thatch show the best example of what can be created out of clay, leaves, and coconut coir. Two thick palisades of wood run for miles from the high hills to the west to a great oval bulge along the flatter ground south and east, bordered by fields of rice and corn with the jungle cut back from the walls.
Sailing ships now dot a broad concrete pier that at one time berthed cruise ships. At the end of the pier is a gray-and-rust ship, a relic of the Old World dominating the center of the bay like a castleâs keep. She sits separated by thirty feet of water crossed by a floating bridge leading to a portal in her hull big enough to drive a truck into. She is a strange sort of ship, four decks of superstructure crowded over the bow, and perhaps a hundred yards of what used to be flight deck broken only by the housing for the shipâs offset stack. At the top of her aerial stack, a white flag with a red cross alternately ripples and droops in the shifting noon-time air.
Farther out in the shallow waters of the bay, on a calm day it is easy to see the outlines of sunken shipping, now encrusted with coral, forming an underwater, unbuoyed wall guarding the seaward approaches to the dock. At the south end of the great concrete pier, a gate stands beneath a guard tower, allowing passage of landward trade, as well.
This is Jayport, refuge of the Commodoreâs Flotilla. Its history, a story too long to be recounted here, goes back to the last days of 2022, when two ships of the Royal Navy and a liner full of refugees came here and established the floating hospital. But this flotsam and jetsam of the world-that-was eventually formed an alliance with a band of island mariners. Now their combined children roam the Caribbean from the Texas coast to Grenada, raiding off the Kurian Order just as their English forebears plagued the Spanish Main and French Colonies.
Â
Standing on the Thunderbolt âs bridge, David Valentine watched as they approached the Jayport harbor. The ship threaded her way through the reefs, unmarked save for two points where the surf splashed up against the coral obstructions projecting just past the surface. A fishing trawler led the way, like a pilotfish swimming before the gray bulk of a shark, and behind came the graceful pyramid of wood and canvas, the three-masted clipper Rigel. She had shortened sail to keep position behind the plodding gunboat.
Valentine squinted his eyes against the glare of the sun. The light refracted off the armored glass of the bridge, glittering with spiderwebs of cracks from the bullets of last nightâs fight. Carrasca, the officer in charge of the prize crew, watched the Thunderbolt âs progress from the wing projecting out of the bridge deck over the shipâs side, her black hair now untied and fluttering in the landward breeze like a pennant. She watched the course of the Thunderbolt as carefully as if she did not have a guide through the reefs protecting the port. The pirate at the wheel wore a sleeveless, cut-at-the-knees jumpsuit, his thick legs planted wide on the deck. The helmsman looked as if he spent time fighting tiller ropes, rather than the hydraulic rudder of the Thunderbolt.
âThis
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