Tale of the Thunderbolt by E.E. Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

copies of Clausewitz’s On War and a Chinese Army translation of Sun Tzu, volumes he’d had to study at the military college in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as he’d been studying for his commission. His American Civil War histories were next: Sam Watkins’s Company Aytch and Frisch’s Lincoln: Leadership to Liberty. Then came his little collection of fiction. Water-ship Down, its yellowed pages stitched together and ironically rebound in rabbit skin — given to him as a welcome-home gift by the craftsman, a Wolf named Gonzalez who’d survived their ill-fated courier mission to Lake Michigan in 2065. Next to it, and in much better shape, was a recent hardcover of the complete set of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Then there was his latest acquisition, a copy of Gone with the Wind bought at a New Orleans bookstore. He’d seen his fellow infiltrator Duvalier reading it last year while he was undergoing Coastal Marine training in Biloxi, Mississippi. Shocked to find her so deep into such a brick of a book, he’d made some comment about the four-color cover. “Ever read it?” she asked. When he admitted that he hadn’t, she told him not to offer an opinion out of ignorance. Sensing a challenge when he heard one, he sat down with it his first free day, intending to mock it and her — but within twenty minutes was so captivated that he went out and treated himself to a bottle of cognac to enjoy with the epic.
    The rest of the shelf held mostly unread Kurian propaganda and service bulletins.
    There was a quiet knock at the door.
    â€œNaturally,” Valentine said to himself and two hundred pounds of alcoholic stupor a leg’s length away. He rose and opened the door.
    A twelve-year-old boy in a uniform two sizes too big for him stood in the corridor. The crew called him and his twin brother Peaone and Peatwo, being identical twins sent to sea in the care of their uncle, one of the petty officers. The captain, sick of not being able to tell them apart, flipped a coin and had all the hair shaved from Peaone’s young head. Under a messy shock of sun-white hair, Peatwo looked up at Valentine with piercing blue eyes.
    â€œSir, the captain’s passing the word for you, Mr. Rowan. He wants to see you in his cabin.”
    â€œTell the captain I’m coming.”
    â€œAye aye, sir,” Peatwo said, turning and moving six feet up the passageway toward the captain’s door. The captain was not the sort of man to just knock on the wall or come himself.
    Valentine retied his boots, wishing he had had just five minutes out of them. He walked the short distance to the captain’s cabin. He smoothed out his uniform unconsciously and knocked.
    â€œCome,” a sharp voice answered.
    Captain Saunders fancied himself a species of tough old seahawk, but to Valentine, he seemed more like a rather aged rooster. The heavy wattles hanging under his chin were hardly hawklike, and the full head of gray hair that was the captain’s pride and joy was brushed up into a bantam’s pompadour. Perhaps something hawkish flickered in the stare of his hard hazel eyes, between which a beak of a nose matching that of the mightiest of eagles, if not a toucan, arched out in its Roman majesty.
    â€œYou passed the word for me, sir?” Valentine asked. The captain was in one of his work-all-night fits, and Valentine tried his best to look alert.
    â€œAhh, Captain Rowan. Are the marines ready to go to sea?”
    â€œOf course, sir.”
    â€œGood. You’ll be glad to know we’ll be leaving in the morning — the fuel pump is repaired. I had to light a fire under the Chief, but if properly motivated, the man can work wonders.”
    Valentine blanked his expression. He looked around at the small day cabin. The captain sat behind a massive desk that must have been brought in sections, then reassembled. It dwarfed the other chairs in the room. A few pictures, all of Captain