[b]Five Miles Southwest of Hog Island, VA[/b]


"Fire!"

The starboard side of the sixteen gun frigate [i]Roanoke[/i] erupted into a cloud of smoke. One hundred yards away, a fleeing vessel's port side was bombarded with shot and sent splinters into the air. 

"Goddammit, that crippled them for sure," Jock Monroe said with a pump of his first.

Captain Hamish Sturgeon took a deep breath and bellowed orders to prepare for boarding procedures. To Sturegon's right stood Jock, ostensibly the one in charge. As First Sealord of the Republic, Monroe was commander-in-chief of the Republican Navy. [i]Roanoke[/i] was the navy's flagship and carried Monroe's official flag on its mast.

But Jock knew better than to get in Hamish Sturgeon's way. Sturgeon looked more schoolteacher than sailor, with steel-rimmed spectacles on his pudgy face and a hairline that had retreated away from his forehead over the years like the tide pulls away from the shore. But Jock and every member of the Republic over a certain age knew all too well what Sturgeon was capable of. The captain instructed the pilot to continue on a boarding course with the fleeing ship.

"Coming aboard with us?" Sturgeon asked Jock with a raised eyebrow.

"That I am," Jock replied. He pulled his sidearm from the holster on his hip and followed Sturgeon down the quarterdeck towards the starboard side of the ship. 

Marines and seamen were crouched and waiting with rifles and hooks as the Roanoke drew closer to the vessel. Jock locked eyes with one of the marines and nodded curtly. He had gotten his start all those years ago as a marine and raider. He had been a good sailor, but sailing had never appealed to him the way the fight had. Up close, there were no slick maneuvers that could save you. There was just you and the man in front of you and you couldn't cross his T to win.

"Ship!" The young man in the crow's nest announced. "Port side, ten o'clock!"

Jock scanned the horizon and saw the ship heading towards the two boats at what looked to be a fast rate. He knew right away it could not be Republican nor pirate. It was too nice to be either. He squinted and tried to make out the flag billowing on the top of its mast. His eyes, never the best, had dimmed in his fifth decade, so all he saw was a billowing mass.

"US," Sturgeon said. He let out a cold chuckle. "'Bout like them to show up now."

With one hand on his sidearm, another on a sword, Sturgeon bellowed out another order.

"Prepare to board!"

Jock clung tightly to his gun as the hooks were tossed across the water at the wounded ship. The hooks clattered as the hit the decks, the ropes tightened as the two vessels were clung together, and a wild volley of gunfire erupted from both sides as the second phase of the battle begun.

The First Sealord leaped from the [i]Roanoke[/i] on to the enemy vessel and found himself in the thick of the action. A bullet whizzed by from somewhere close. He saw a man in rags, waving an old rusted pistol and trying to be heard over the din. Jock leveled his weapon at the man at the same time as the pirate drew a bead on him. He would have shot Jock if not for the faulty gun's backfire. The pirate's left hand disappeared in a cloud of pulp and blood as his gun exploded in his hand.

Turning away, Jock took a potshot at one pirate fighting Captain Sturgeon. The man crumpled to the deck of the boat. He then turned and fired off two quick shots that hit a charging pirate square in the chest. He reached down and picked up the dying man's rusty machete. 

While the battle stormed on, the third ship came alongside them flying an eleven star version of the old American flag. It was not like the vessels tangled in hand-to-hand combat. This one was decked in smooth steel and shaped sleek, a remnant of a time when flags across the country flew fifty stars. Stacks protruded from its center belching a solid column of black smoke. It came up real close, almost silent, until it flanked the opposite side of the embattled pirate ship.

"You are in waters belonging to the United States of America" said a voice through a megaphone, "Put down your weapons and surrender". This offer did not seem to matter even to the offerers, because the blue-clad marines on the US ship were sniping pirates before their officer stopped speaking. 

Jock turned and saw the hail of gunfire coming down from the second ship. Men in uniforms finer than anything the Republic could muster were firing down upon the deck with weapons so fine they made Jock's near pristine five-shot revolver look like the old pirate's rusty pistol.

"Fall back," Sturgeon shouted over the noise. "Marines and seamen of [i]Roanoke[/i], retur--," the captain was cut short as a bullet pierced his upper arm. "Goddammit!"

"Come on," Jock said as he helped the shorter and dumpier Sturgeon back towards their ship.

The US navy had turned the deck of the pirate ship into a shooting gallery. The wood was slick with blood and bodies of pirates -- and a few Republican sailors -- were draped across the boards. Jock helped Sturgeon over the deck back onto their ship and left him in good hands with the ship's surgeon. The few pirates left alive were on their knees, waving  whatever scraps of cloth they could find in surrender. They were pointed towards the US warships and begging for mercy as the rifle volleys ended.

"Six men come with me," Jock said as he climbed back on to the pirate ship. "I want the pirates still alive captured. Remember, they are our prisoners and not the land lover's. We're going home with them."

Jock saw a large rope ladder descending from the warship as marines and officers climbed down on to the pirate deck. [i]Easier said than done[/i], he thought to himself.

The well-uniformed marines fanned out across the boat to form a loose wall of riflemen. Behind them came their commanding officer. He was an young man for his post, perhaps in his early thirties, dressed in a black coat, gold buttons down the front, and an oversized black peaked cap on top an uncombed head of brown hair. He wore sunglasses, and a smile that, just a little too wide, seemed to be the resting state for his face, so for him a true smile was simply bearing his teeth. When he walked toward Jock he ignored the bodies strewn across the deck, stepping over them without so much as a glance downward.

"The clothe on your poll tells me you are Tarheels? What on earth would bring you north of Virginia Beach?"

"This ship and two others like it raided an Outer Banks town a fortnight ago. The blackguards burned down half the village, took all the supplies, and killed close to twenty men and women."

Jock glanced down at the prostrate pirates. They were nervously looking up at him. He expected some form of denials from the men on the deck. Their kind almost always denied their wrongdoings, even as the hangman slipped his noose around their necks.

"As First Sealord of the Outer Banks Republic, I called forth part of our naval militia in a mission. The [i]Roanoke[/i], and her sister ships [i]Hatteras[/i] and [i]Kitty Hawk[/i], have been engaged in these waters the past week, hunting the pirates down. The two other ships are back at Hog Island, destroying what was left of their stronghold there. Those not killed will be sent back to Roanoke to be hanged for their crimes."

He looked down at the younger man with a raised eyebrow.

"Before embarking upon this mission, the Second Sealord gave me assurances that he had informed the United States of our plans and the fact that we may stray into their territorial waters in our hunt."

"Oho." the US officer looked down at the subdued pirates. "You people have been playing wicked in the south." He looked back up at Jock. "Perhaps something did arrive on my desk, but I have been in New Jersey for the last two weeks and I forgot to bring my desk with me. So I'll be charitable. You can have the pirates, they are irrelevant. But this... I assume this is the pirate ship? It and it's contents now belong to the United States Navy."

Jock's smile tightened into something akin to a grimace.

"The ship we would like to have, Outer Banks custom is that any ship boarded by us is to be the Republic's property until it can be prepared and sold to a citizen for a fair price. We boarded first, so custom would dictate we have first claim on the ship. A claim I am willing to waive in the name of securing the ship's contents. Whatever is down there is undoubtedly the property of Outer Banks citizens and belongs to them first and foremost."

"What are you going to do?" the young officer said. "Hand them out in the town square? They are contraband now. What we are doing here is figuring out which government gets to swallow the profit. Seeing as how we are in US waters, this becomes a diplomatic situation. Which is good for me, because I am Vice President of the United States, so diplomatic matters are something I am entitled to deal with, and the way I see it this entire event was a breach of US sovereignty. A breach I have no problem overlooking, seeing as how these creatures are little better than thugs. You can have them, but the ship and its contents goes, as contraband naturally should, to the government of these waters. Sell the pirates inland into slavery, take the proceeds, pocket them, and call it a win."

Vice President? The young man in front of Jock made sense as a junior officer. That he could understand, but as the second in charge of a sovereign nation? Not just any nation, but the one that it was the rightful successor to the old country that once ruled this part of the world and straddled the entire planet like a colossus. Jock considered himself a student of history. He knew about the old nation better than some. To say that this mere child in front of him was part of that successor state did its predecessor a disgrace.

Jock could mention that. He could mention that and so much more, the fact that the US had been given prior warning a week before his three-ship fleet set sail from Roanoke, he could even mention that the practice of slavery -- as owner, dealer, or even transporter -- was outlawed in the Outer Banks years ago on the grounds of immorality. So much he wanted to say. But instead, he took a more diplomatic route.

"Consider the ship and its contents a gift," he said tightly. "Bestowed upon the United States by the Outer Banks Republic in the name of continued friendly relations."

"It is good to see friendliness!" the Vice President exclaimed, shaking Jock's hands. "We'll help lug these piratical creatures over to your ship if you wish. I have a few extra hands about."

"Most gracious," Jock said neutrally. 

--

[i]Roanoke [/i]disengaged from the pirate ship and began to drift away with the current. Jock stood on the quarterdeck with the pilot. Sturgeon was below deck with the rest of the wounded and dead. The shot had went through Sturgeon's arm and out the other side which meant there was a good chance he would keep the arm and not face amputation. 

The deck of the pirate ship was busy with activity as the seamen and marines began their search of the ship for anything of value. The blood that stained the deck of that ship was as much the Republic's as it was the pirates, and it was damn certain that no US seaman had come close to losing blood in the fight.

"Orders, sir?" 

Jock was about to speak, but then he caught the eye of the young man -- the vice president -- who stood on the deck. The kid gave a broad wave and exaggerated bow in Jock's direction before turning to other matters on the deck.

"Back to Hog Island," Jock replied. "We're linking up with the rest of the fleet. And then we're heading home."