Tale of The Thunderbolt

by E. E. Knight

  From that dinner on, Valentine did not see Post take another drink. His lieutenant suffered unvoiced agonies in silence, driving himself to keep up an appearance of stability in front of others, only to flee to the head or the cabin when the shaking in his hands got to be too much for him. Valentine never asked him to quit drinking; in fact, with the mental strain he was more than a little tempted to try the contents of the squared-off bottles himself after retiring at night. Valentine found a growing new respect for Post that replaced his previous feelings of pity. He admired his lieutenant for keeping the pretense of normality despite the torrents of sweat pouring out of him and God-knew-what other torments to his body.

  The next evening Valentine arranged for a meeting in the arms locker with the Chief, Post, Ahn-Kha, and himself, purportedly to determine which weapons Ahn-Kha's Grogs would carry in their duties. The captain had suggested a brace of dusty shotguns, captured in some action long ago and forgotten. After viewing the weapons in question, Valentine asked that the Chief take a look at them and see if the ship's machine shop could bring them back to usability. Thus the conspirators were able to get a half-hour or so of privacy within the ship for a meeting of their group. Squeezing Ahn-Kha's bulk into the room proved to be only the first difficulty in a long line of challenges before them.

  "We should make landfall off Jamaica tomorrow afternoon or early evening," Valentine began. "The captain plans to head straight into the harbor they are thought to use the next morning. God knows what might happen in the fight, so I think we have to move before then."

  "How about we go into action and rig a shell to blow in the bridge during the fight?" the Chief suggested. "The crew will think the pirates just got a lucky shot, and Mr. Rowan assumes command. Looks legit."

  "Who knows what damage the explosion would do?" Post asked, sweat running from his hairline under the hot work-lamp. The marine was balling his hands into fists and rubbing them against his thighs under the weapon-strewn table.

  "Maybe we go aground. So much for the Thunderbolt. I doubt the pirates would fix her up and take her to Haiti to oblige us."

  "Yes, and we might not get both. The exec will probably be at the main armament. I think it's better if we do it before. Offer the men an alternative to the fight," Valentine said. "Freedom. That's a powerful persuader."

  "Cut off the head, and the body will be yours," Ahn-Kha said, quoting a Grog proverb from his place, squeezed between the rifle racks filling up one whole end of the room. "We have much of the head of the ship here. We remove the captain and Worthington. Then we let the petty officers know who is in charge. They will do as they are told."

  "Ahn-Kha is right as far as the captain and exec go," Valentine agreed. "But I want to give everyone else a real choice. We assemble the crew and give each man the option: join us, or be put off the ship in a boat with food, water, even weapons. They can take their chances on Jamaica or try to sail for the coast. All they have to do is go north—they'll hit Kurian territory soon enough."

  "Will you tell them why you need the ship?" the Chief asked.

  "Can't risk it until the captain and the exec disappear with the crew that want to follow them. I have no idea how long we would be on Haiti. The last thing we need is him trying to hunt us down."

  Post shook his head. "You'll lose half of them. Maybe more. We might not be left with enough to keep this bucket moving."

  "I think a lot of them signed on for sea service to get away from the Reapers. You can tell by their talk, their interests. They're free spirits, not conscripts."

  They hashed out the rest of the plan while working on the shotguns. They decided they would let a few subordinates they felt could be trusted know about the plan at the last minute. Post felt that he knew two marines well enough to say they would follow him, and the Chief insisted that his engine-room crew would sign on to a man. Ahn-Kha said the Grogs would do as he ordered; few of the humans on board could even make themselves understood to the creatures beyond simple instructions.

  They would take the ship in the dark after making landfall at Jamaica. The captain planned, as soon as he got his bearings, to move east along Jamaica's north coast and arrive at the pirate bay with the dawn. Around midnight, Ahn-Kha would go below and guard the arms locker with his Grogs, also controlling the nearby hatches to the engine room and generator room. The Chief would kill the power when this was accomplished. Post and the marines he hoped to recruit would go to the small store of "ready arms" on deck, and mount machine guns fore and aft covering the main decks from the gun platforms. It would be Valentine's job to take the bridge," doing whatever was necessary to keep Captain Saunders and Worthington from issuing any orders. With that accomplished, Valentine would assemble all hands on the deck and offer them their choice.

  There was some dispute over what to do with the captain and the executive officer.

  "You'll probably have to kill them, sir," Post predicted.

  "I'd rather not. I'll get a pair of handcuffs on them and toss them in the motor launch. Or the lifeboat, depending on how many of the crew decide to go with them."

  "It will come to killing," Ahn-Kha said. "They will turn the crew against you, if they can."

  "Handcuffs and gags, then. I don't want their blood on our hands unless it is a matter of us or them."

  Valentine spent the next day lost in his duties, so much so that he did not go up on deck as they caught their first sight of the blue Jamaican coast. In preparation for the next morning's activities, which he hoped would never be carried out, he and his NCOs attached reflective tape to the backs of their green-and-black camouflage battle-dress. Someone joked that Irish, a Coastal Marine corporal in their complement, should form his into the shape of a bull's-eye, sincehe'd managed to get himself shot four times in the course of his duties, and even Post laughed. At the midday meal, Ahn-Kha and the marines held an informal meeting in the crew's mess, where they went over the destruction the Thunderbolt was to visit on the pirates. Saunders hoped to reach the harbor before midnight.

  His imagination continued to get the better of him as the afternoon wore on. It seemed the entire ship crackled with electricity, so tense were the men and their officers in anticipation of the fight tomorrow.

  "I hope the Chief is doing better than I am," Post reported, joining Valentine at sunset at the ship's starboard rail. They watched the thickly forested slopes of Jamaica slide by like a rolling backdrop in a stage play. Post still trembled, and his shirt was soaked with sweat, but his face seemed more animated and his eyes brighter. "I tried sounding out a few of the men, but I chickened out at the last moment. I just couldn't bring myself to say what we're planning, the moment didn't seem right. I kept thinking about a Hood at my throat, got so as I could almost feel teeth. About all I was able to do was warn them to be ready for anything. Sorry, Dave."

  Valentine shrugged. 'Too late to worry. I talked to Ahn-Kha and the Chief—we're going to switch the time to twenty-two hundred. The men are supposed to be assembled an hour later, ready to climb into the boats for the landing. That way Ahn-Kha leading his Grogs to the arms locker won't seem so unusual—they're supposed to go ashore first anyway."

  They forced themselves to act normally at dinner with the men. Valentine sat with one group he called his "deadeyes," the four best marksmen in the culled company. Post ate with the noncommissioned officers at the other long table in the galley. Though he had no appetite, Valentine forced himself to eat mouthful after mouthful of the traditional preaction steak and eggs. The beef was stringy and tough, but even the Thunderbolt's indifferent cook's mate could not ruin the eggs. Valentine forced himself to have seconds on the latter, washing it down with glassfuls of faintly orange-tasting sweetened water that he guessed to be some concoction trying to pass as orange juice. He joked with the men, listening to service stories and telling a few of his own, like me time a supply officer fed an entire harem of young women in the loft of a marine warehouse, which grew into a thriving bordello over the years.
When caught by a visiting inspector, he argued that pimping a whorehouse fell under his duties, since one of his official responsibilities was listed on bis duty sheet as "recreation procurement officer."

  With dinner finished, the marines broke off to leave the galley to the sailors, and Valentine retired to his shared cabin.

  He looked around the close, bare room. A single locker held all his clothes, and a footlocker, the rest of his belongings. He spent an hour in a long shower and shave, and changed into his heavy cotton battle-dress. The combat fatigues, acquired from a tailor in Mobile when he first entered the Coastal Marines, were a tiger-stripe mix of black and dark green, spotted here and there with blotches of dark gray. Heavy pockets hung like saddlebags from the side of each thigh on the pants, but the short officers' tunic held only insignia and an expanding map pocket and a pencil-holder on one sleeve. He unlocked his chest and began to take out his equipment. He laced up his boots, traditional black service models, the leather softened and oiled by a year's wear and care. His final wardrobe item was a nylon equipment vest with heavy bullet-stopping pads slipped into the liner and compass, flares, first-aid kit, matches, and whistle distributed amongst the pockets. Post's .45 pistol went to his hip holster. He sank a machete into the sheath strapped across his back hanging over two canteens. Finally, he extracted the one item he brought out of the Ozarks, his old Soviet Russian PPD model submachine gun with the drum clip. It was a heavy-barreled, formidable-looking gun, restored by an old friend and given to him the summer he became a Cat three years ago.

  Slinging the gun and drawing comfort from its familiar weight, he made a slow circuit of the Thunderbolt's central superstructure. Ahn-Kha had the Grogs gathered on the well deck, talking to them. The Golden One looked up at Valentine and cocked his ears up and forward, giving his broad head the momentary aspect of a bull: his friend's equivalent of a thumbs-up. The gesture went to Valentine's nerves like a fast-acting sedative. He looked out at the nearly empty aft decks and turned the last corner on the rectangular walkway. Post stood at the foot of one of the stairways going up to the bridge deck, idling next to the arms locker holding the machine gun for the forward mount.

  Valentine squeezed past and gave him a nod. "Ready?" Valentine asked.

  "Getting there. Sure makes you feel alive, doesn't it. Like the whole world's been turned up. Sounds, smells, everything. I never noticed all the waves before. A million of them—"

  "Just take it easy, Will. Wait for me to go up the stairs— then get the gun. You checked it, right?"

  "Yes, it's fine."

  "Just a few minutes longer. Ahn-Kha's still talking to his team. They haven't gone below yet."

  Post gripped the rail, the tendons in his forearms rising up under his tan skin. "You know why my wife lit out, Rowan—er, Dave?"

  "I might be able to guess. The system?"

  "The system," Post said. "She and I had a difference of opinion about it. She left. I eventually came round to her side, but only after her stuff had two years' worth of dust on it."

  Post looked out at the ocean and the sinking moon. Valentine thought he saw the man's lower lip tremble.

  Valentine leaned over, knocked his shoulder against Post's. "One way or another, you'll be clear of it soon."

  "First, got to get rid of this shit," Post said, tearing off his tunic. Buttons flew, clattering to the deck and falling with barely audible plops into the ocean. Post stood in his stained undershirt for a moment, as if coming to a decision. He wadded up his uniform coat and fed it to the all-consuming sea.

  "If I'm going to buy it, I don't want to go in their colors."

  "I'll get you a different one when we get back to free soil, if you'd like," Valentine said. "Just try to live to claim it. I hope the exec doesn't come down those stairs and see you like that. He might have a few questions about your tunic."

  "I'll pick him up and send him to look for it. He's a bottom-feeder if there ever was one.

  "Could you do me a favor, Dave? If I don't make it, maybe you can look up Gail in the Free Territory. She would have headed that way—it's an easier trip than going across Texas. She's probably using her maiden name, Gail Stark. Tell her... just tell her about this."

  "Can do, Will."

  "Thanks, sir."

  "See you at lights out."

  "Good luck, Dave," Post said, offering his hand.

  Valentine shook it and went forward to look down at the well deck. It was empty. Ahn-Kha and his Grogs were already on their way to the arms locker and engine room. A nervous thrill sparked up his spine, bristling the hair at the back of his neck.

  He chambered the first round in his gun and lightly ascended the stairs to the open deck just behind the wheel-house. As his head broke the level of the upper deck, he listened with "hard ears" to voices from the bridge.

  "And when is this supposed to happen?" the captain said from somewhere on the bridge.

  "Early in the morning, sir. The ship's power will be cut off, and that's when they'll take the ship," Valentine heard a high-pitched voice say.

  "It makes no sense," Worthington's voice exclaimed.

  "They will be ashore by then, Grogs and marines, and Rowan will be with them."

  "Can't argue it, there's something afoot, that's for certain," Saunders said. "Damn, there always was something about Rowan I didn't like. Haven't I said so time and again, Lieutenant?"

  Worthington changed the subject. "I've already alerted the master-at-arms," he said. "I didn't know which marines to trust. Dortmund is bringing an armed guard up now, and he's—"

  Valentine's worries cleared, as they always did when planning gave way to doing. All his questions were gone: it had become a matter of killing everyone on the bridge, and somehow holding the wheelhouse and upper deck through the coming confusion. The moon had disappeared below the horizon, leaving the ship lit only by the stars and its few running lights.

  "Halt!" Valentine heard a voice boom from the bottom of the staircase. "Unsling your weapon, sir, and don't touch anything but the sling."

  He turned to see Dortmund, three sailors lined up behind him, pistols pointed up at him. While he had been concentrating on the bridge, Dortmund had reached the bottom of the stairs without Valentine noticing. Valentine thanked God that Dortmund hadn't shot first and questioned later. He obeyed the instructions, going so far as to crouch to put the gun on the stair below his feet, and readied himself for a leap—

  —when the loud, deadly rattle of a machine gun roared from behind the sailors, filling the night with noise. Dortmund's men fell forward, jerking spasmodically as if swept off their feet by an electrified broom. The hard plinking sound of bullets ricocheting off metal stairs and walls punctuated the sound of the slugs tearing through flesh, a noise that reminded some part of Valentine's mind of eggs thrown against a wall. The four-petal blossom of the machine-gun's muzzle flare lit Post's snarling features as he fired the support weapon from his hip, using a thick leather strap to help him wield it.

  One sailor went overboard with a cry; the others fell at the bottom of the stairs.

  Valentine retrieved his own gun before they hit the deck. Blood had been shed, and his hopes of a simple seizure of the ship were cut down as brutally as Dortmund and his henchmen. He peeked over the edge of the deck above, only to be met by a burst of bullets that zipped out to sea past his ear. Worthington was no fool; he had armed himself before going to the captain. Valentine had to get down to Ahn-Kha and his Grogs, so he would at least have a nucleus of armed men to command.

  The lights died, and Valentine felt a change in the ship's motion. The Chief had level-headedly proceeded with the plan upon hearing the firing above.

  Valentine backed down the stairs and joined Post, where his lieutenant covered the starboard side walkway from the base of the stairs.

  "What the hell happened?" Post said. "Where did Dortmund come from?"

  "One of the ship's boys overheard something and went to the exec. We've got to get to the Grog
s."

  The ship's public-address system squealed into static-filled life. "All hands, all hands, this is the captain speaking . . . ."

  Valentine grabbed Post by the arm and pulled him into the stairwell leading into the bowels of the ship, almost jerking him out of his shoes with the force of his movement. Two shots rang out from the top of the stairway, cutting the air where they stood seconds ago, as Saunders's voice continued.

  "... Captain Rowan of the Marines, Lieutenant Post, the Grogs, and an unknown number of others are attempting to mutiny. They are to be shot on sight. All hands to the aft deck, all hands to the aft deck."

  "Make a hole, damn it! Make a hole!" Valentine barked, exiting the stairway with Post in tow, waving his submachine gun to accentuate the threat as they pushed back sailors popping like magical rabbits into the narrow passageway. Somewhere around the T-junction corner ahead he heard Ahn-Kha's bellow, barking out orders in the Grog patois. The captain's voice continued to issue orders over the PA, including one to the dead Dortmund to report to the Oerlikon. An emergency light bathed the corridor in harsh shadows. Valentine turned a corner and caught sight of a knot of Grogs standing behind a small, bright spotlight pointed down the corridor. He shielded his eyes.

  "Ahn-Kha, it's me and Post! Cut that light for a second."

  The two men hustled toward the improvised barricade.

  A pistol fired from the darkness behind them, and Post grunted. He sagged against Valentine, who turned and fired up the passageway. Ahn-Kha leapt forward with apish agility, blocked the floodlight with his bulk, and put his mammoth arm around Post's chest. The machine-gun clattered to the steel floor, but Post gripped the strap as Ahn-Kha dragged him backwards. Valentine backed down the corridor, but whoever fired stayed safely around the corner of the intersection at the end of the hall.

  He reached the Grogs outside the arms locker. Ahn-Kha had improvised a barricade of mattresses and a wooden door, which the muscular Grogs still worked to construct as they shifted a beam to let them pass. Ahn-Kha carried Post into the arms locker and gently stretched him out onto the floor. Valentine knelt beside his lieutenant, who had blood staining the undershirt across his chest.