The Black Prince, Terror of the Kriegsmarine: From the Annals of the Shadow Committee, Part 3 of 3

The Black Prince’s chief engineer comes from a strange world of murderous thieves and mysterious deities. Once the captain of her own ship, sailing for a divine King as a warrior priestess, Narcisse Armistead has to lose everything she’s ever earned before she can take her place in the world.

And before Quijano Corbeau can embrace his future, he must explain his past.

The Black Prince, Terror of the Kriegsmarine is an upcoming swashbuckling adventure following a warring crew of gangsters, pirates, zealots, and maniacs united in the pursuit of smashing fascism at all costs. From the Annals of the Shadow Committee is an introduction to Prince’s voyages. Start with Part 1 and Part 2.

Content warnings: Mild swearing, tobacco use, drug use, violence, gun violence, death, religious abuse, human trafficking.

SATURDAY NIGHT, OCTOBER 18, 1941
EAST SIDE OF ARCHER KEY
THE MULE KEYS, FLORIDA

//Translated from Kreyòl.//

Narcisse Armistead wiped blood and hurricane rain from her face. Her hair was heavy, plastered to her scalp. The storm was so loud that she barely heard the Nazi machine gun, even a few hundred feet away. Their bullets raked across the beach and through Lepin-Oreille’s overturned hull, showering her in sand and splinters.

“My boat!” she yelled over the shooting, over the pounding wind and pelting rain. “You Nazi donkeys!”

The hurricane drowned out her voice as soon as it left her lips. Its roiling clouds smothered the moon and stars. Only gunshots and lightning lit the night.

The MG-42 howled again, muffled muzzle flashes and tracers coursing between the mangroves. The swarm of bullets forced her to the sodden sand. Storm surge dragged at her feet, offering to pull her out to sea, away from it all.

Armistead was old, but adrenaline leeched away the aches in her joints and she scrambled to cover like a crab. She clutched her revolver, half-emptied already.

The Nazis were advancing through the mangroves from the tiny island’s northwestern shore, where she and the storm had forced their U-boat up onto the beach. She had personally reinforced the Lepin-Oreille‘s keel into a battering ram. When it had struck the Nazis, their little submarine had split wide open. The furious surf had done the rest.

Lepin-Oreille had not been a warship before the Young King had granted it to her. It had been a pleasure yacht, suited for sunbathing and caviar. Armistead had turned it into something of purpose, using her own designs and with her own hands. She had made a little rich man’s toy into something that could break a U-boat.

Breaking the Nazis had broken it, and breaking it would break her.

The little ship was the only thing she had ever earned, the only recognition she had ever gotten. She had helped lift the King from nothing, she had been there when His Church was born. Even still, He had her toil in dark, sweating away in the guts of His flagship, Dealerance, keeping it running but keeping her out of sight, behind and beneath Him.

She knew what He was, yet she still thought of Him in the manner He instructed. His myth had grown over and through her, like kudzu.

“Mama!” Shrimp Sauce yelled from behind a mangrove knot, snapping her back to the battle. Thunder boomed and he shouted again: “Mama Narcisse! Geoffrey is hurt!”

Armistead scuttled below the bullets and slipped beneath a mass of tangled driftwood.

“Devil and His Wife!” Geoffrey screamed. His cry pierced the wind.

Armistead risked a peek. Shrimp Sauce had tied a cord around Geoffrey’s forearm, cutting off the blood oozing from the ragged stump where his right hand had been. The rain washed the red away and quick as it seeped out. It took both Shrimp Sauce and Poor Jame to hold Geoffrey down, but they couldn’t keep him quiet.

Geoffrey howled again, delirious as he invoked more of their Lords:

“Octopus Dragon! Duke of Sleeping Worms!”

“Shut him up!” Armistead hissed. She was under fire, her ship was gone, she didn’t have time to deal with the religion she’d forced on her crew.

“Samuel-in-the-Noose! Help me!” Geoffrey howled. Narcisse shook her head. She might have been a high priestess of the Church of the Waves and the Winds, but that pantheon was the last place she’d turn if she feared for her life.

She’d been there when those gods were born. She knew what they were made of.

Armistead struggled to remember the scriptures she had helped write:

“Geoffrey!” she yelled. “Remember Samuel-Behind-the-Trees and the singing eel.”

That shut him up. The eel parable had been designed to elicit a strong, willful response in those conditioned for it. Geoffrey had been a congregant for years, one of the Church’s most fervent believers. The faith had been created to control men like him.

Narcisse Armistead wielded that faith like a hammer. It was a tool to her. Others who had been there had fallen prey to it but she did not allow its mythology to become anything more to her than what it had started as: a means to control, to cause fear, to generate awe.

“Paola! Itches! Get Coral and Hernan and circle around behind them! Introduce them to the Witch with Crabs in Her Hair!”

“They’re dead!” Coral shouted back. The Nazis sent another salvo, pruning the trees she was hiding behind. She cried out, only for a second, then Itches screamed.

“Who is dead?” Armistead shouted.

“All of them!” Itches yelled. “They shot her! They have all sailed into That Last Port!”

“Then shoot, you fool, or you’ll be tied to a dock next to them!” Armistead yelled. The surviving kriegsmarine were spreading out, trying to flank their position. The island was tiny, only a few hundred feet across. They would be overwhelmed in minutes.

She counted her crew. Itches was alive, with Shrimp Sauce and Poor Jame. Oli had died when they had rammed the U-boat, and Bolas had fallen overboard after. The Nazis had killed Pollo-pollo and Pepita as soon as they had boiled out of the their beached U-boat. Coral had managed to take some of them with her, but she was gone, too. Armistead did not know when they had lost Paola or Hernan.

“Hungry Dogs!” Geoffrey howled, invoking the Lord’s name responsible for wishing damnation on another. He clutched his ragged arm as he whimpered.

“Five of us,” Armistead whispered. Geoffrey cried out again for another sodden saint. She corrected herself: “Four-and-a-half.”

There were at least a dozen furious fascists swarming through the mangroves, eager to visit horror upon her crew. She might have disabled their U-boat, but its armory was extensive, and Nazis fought like tigers when cornered or embarrassed.

Four-and-one-half fighters remaining, Lepin-Oreille lifeless on the beach. They had nearly exhausted their munitions attempting to force the U-boat to surface. Ramming it had been the only option left.

Armistead had barely been able to guide her to the small island after the collision. She had used it as cover in the past, hiding behind it from U.S. Coast Guard patrols and U.S. Navy fly-overs.

It had been her refuge before; it would not become her grave.

Armistead considered the options left to her.

They had used one of their two torpedoes, most of the mortar shells, and had emptied the ammunition reserves for the cannon. Their machine guns were underwater or in the hands of the dead. Her revolver was nearly spent, but she had her knife rolled up in her jumpsuit’s cuff.

Her plan hit her like a wrench. She smiled. It sounded so simple.

“To the water!” she ordered. “Shrimp Sauce, drag Geoffrey if you have to.”

“Gray Angels!” Geoffrey howled. He knew his wound would attract sharks and sought protection against them by calling on His angels, the dolphins. Armistead did not want to consider what sharks or dolphins would risk such shallow water in a storm.

Geoffrey howled again when Shrimp Sauce and Poor Jame grabbed him under his armpits and hauled him from their hiding place, down the beach. The rain battered them like a thousand tiny fists.

They found Itches and Armistead with their feet already in the sea, Lepin-Oreille between them and the Nazis.

“In,” Armistead hissed.

“Yes, Mama Narcisse,” they said. Only the Young King wore the honor of ‘captain.’ She was Ship’s Mother Narcisse, a title she grated at. Every person in charge of one of His ships was the mother or father to its crew, and their priest in His Church. The position held the same responsibilities and fears as a captain, but it did not translate to anyone outside the Church. She had earned her position, but only His followers would acknowledge it.

She would make everyone see.

“Swim,” she ordered. They trudged into the churning surf, wading east towards the reef until they had to swim. Poor Jame and Shrimp Sauce each held on to Geoffrey and hauled him between them.

The surge ripped at them, tried to the tear them apart. Armistead knew that every member of her crew had been raised on the sea: they swam like they had gills. She also knew they were praying to her manufactured pantheon, promising whatever they had for access to strength and skills they already owned.

They were so quick to give everything away.

Armistead never allowed His Lords to take what was hers. She kept what she earned. And she would burn it down if she wanted to.

“Mama Narcisse!” Itches gasped. The water lashed at all of them like whips. He struggled and coughed up brine.

“Don’t drown!” she ordered. She fought the sea. Her narrow, wiry body had as much buoyancy as a weather vane.

Armistead squinted and watched the Nazis advance through the sideways downpour. They continued to fire while they moved, storm be damned. Every volley tore into the wreckage of Lepin-Oreille. She would never be able to repair it.

“Bastards,” she grunted. Every bullet that hit its hull hurt, but what they did was nothing compared to what she would do.

She let them swarm her ship. They congregated around it, looking for more of her crew to kill. They kicked the corpses and whooped with joy.

Armistead lifted her pistol and settled its sights. Her last torpedo was pinned beneath the Lepin-Oreille, pressed between the rolled ship and the sand. Lightning flashed red against its warhead.

Her crew would have prayed to Ezekiel the Pelican for keen eyesight, the Stone Fisherman for a steady hand, or Kalfu, the saint of rum and gunpowder, but Armistead relied only on herself. She fought against the furious waves, kicking to stay above the surface. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

A spotlight lanced over her head, coming from the east. It was so bright that she covered her eyes. The raindrops in its beam swirled like moths. It settled on the Lepin-Oreille and the milling Nazis surrounding it. A voice shouted at them over the storm in English:

“This is the United States Navy! Lay down your weapons!”

The Nazis looked at one another, exhausted, bloodied, confused. None of them moved to disarm themselves.

The American voice carried across the water again:

“You are on sovereign United States territory! Lay down you weapons or we will open fire!”

A second spotlight activated, this time for the south. Lightning flashed behind the Navy ships. Armistead recognized the profile: PC-461’s, brand new American sub-hunters. They had been looking for Nazis, and she had stumbled on their prize.

But they did not see her yet. The Americans were looking for invading Germans, not five sailors bobbing in the water.

An American machine gun roared, tearing up the beach near the Nazis and Lepin-Oreille. The Germans jumped and half of them threw their guns down. On the western end of the island, another PC-461 unleashed its three-inch cannon to blow away the beached U-boat. The Nazis jumped at the shuddering explosion. The rest of their guns fell and the air was filled with raised hands, shivering against the sheeting rain.

“‘We do not capture Nazis,’” Armistead hissed, for once sincerely quoting the Young King. She kicked higher in the water, leveled her revolver, then let it speak.

The lead slug skimmed the waves. It impacted Lepin-Oreille’s remaining torpedo directly in the nose, activating the waiting warhead in half-an-instant.

The surrendered Nazis did not have time to do anything but die. The torpedo had been designed to shred metal. It whisked away pale meat and bones like grains of sand.

The fire and smoke rose before them. Itches and Shrimp Sauce whooped and cheered. Geoffrey was unconscious or dead, and Poor Jame was sputtering, doing his best to keep his injured crew mate above the water.

Lepin-Oreille was gone. A steaming crater remained. The only thing Armistead had ever earned. It was gone. She clenched her teeth.

“Swim,” Armistead shouted over the storm. She fought the waves and struggled east, away from the island. There was nothing there for her.

The American spotlights picked them out of the sea a few minutes later. Armistead made a big show of throwing her revolver to the waves and they showed off Geoffrey’s mangled arm.

They plucked her crew out of the sea one-by-one, leaving Armistead for last. She did not long for their brig and she considered swimming out into the storm to find That Last Port on her own.

She watched the Americans shove Shrimp Sauce and lock him in chains on deck. She already had one son imprisoned, she could not leave what remained of her crew to that fate without her. She grimaced, threw the tossed rope under her arms, and let them pull her aboard, into captivity.

The Americans did not know what to make of her, and she did not let them know she could speak English.

They shuffled her off to a makeshift brig and put her crew into a separate area. They were not beaten, or shot. The Americans wrapped Geoffrey in blankets and took him to their infirmary for treatment. They would all live.

Armistead’s mind churned as the sub-chaser steamed eastward, back to Key West. The storm raged around them.

Until Lepin-Oreille, she had never owned a thing she had built: not the Church, not the titanic Dealerance, not the Young King Himself. She wanted it again. She needed it.

The American chains around her wrists suddenly felt light and comfortable. They were not restraints, but the first step. Cold salt water dripped off her, puddling on the deck. The sea followed her where ever she went.

Narcisse Armistead was built to command those seas, to forge her own destiny. She had hardened and reinforced herself into a weapon of war of her own design.

Plans twisted around plans in her mind like a bucket of eels.

She smiled and chuckled. The sailor guarding her watched her close, unable to determine what she was doing. She laughed louder. She didn’t care what he thought.

Only She knew what future awaited Her.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 29, 1942
PREFAB DINING FACILITY B: “JOE AND EGGS”
ASSET RETENTION CENTER 0-4, CARSON, COLORADO

“Does your dad say anything about me?” Quijano Corbeau asked over his steaming tea cup.

“My mother says I’m not allowed to use those words,” Tadpole said, smiling. She was across from him in a booth, swinging her legs. Her feet didn’t quite reach the floor while she was seated. Her backpack was on the bench seat next to her. She took a sip from her own tea cup, leaving a brown milk mustache on her upper lip. Missus Dubrovčanin had winked and stirred some cocoa powder into Tadpole’s reconstituted milk when she’d brought it over.

Tadpole looked around conspiratorially, then leaned across the table and whispered:

“I can say some of ‘em if you want. Like ‘shithead.’”

“Whoah, okay, let’s hold off on that, don’t neither of us need to get in trouble,” Corbeau said with a chuckle, looking around to make sure the surly cook hadn’t overhead. Miss Dubrovčanin was putting on a fresh pot of java, blissfully oblivious. Truth was, he thought kids swearing was one of the funniest things on God’s green Earth, but he wasn’t trying to get Tadpole in a bind.

Especially not right then.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said once he was sure he’d stifled his laughter.

“Oh yeah?” she asked around her straw. She was smiling at him. Not so far back he’d been hip-deep in swamp mud alongside her, pulling mudbug cages while she sorted the little critters by size. She hadn’t gotten pinched, not even once.

Corbeau’s head was suddenly empty.

“You still like westerns?” he managed after a pained second.

“Oh yeah!” she said, bouncing in her seat.

“Who’s your favorite?”

“The Fightin’ Texan!” she cheered.

“I thought it was Spurs McKenzie?”

“Nope, the Texan is way more handsome!”

“Handsome? Tadpole, how old are you?”

She held up a couples handfuls of fingers then hid them under the table faster than Corbeau could count.

“Well, I’m asking ‘cause, well, you know how there’s bad guys, the banditos, the desperados?” he asked.

“Yeah, and the cattle barons,” she added.

“Them most of all,” Corbeau agreed. “Then there’s the good guys, the cowboys and the sheriff…”

“Unless the sheriff is on the take!” she blurted. He had to chuckle at that one.

“Yeah, exactly, but if everything’s working right, you got good guys and bad guys,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, the thing about it is, my hat is black.”

Tadpole’s feet stopped swinging. Corbeau watched the milk drain back down her straw.

“No,” she whispered, “It’s not.”

“Yeah, it is,” he sighed.

“Stop it, Key, you’re not a bad guy,” she objected.

“I used to be, when I was younger, before I met you,” Corbeau said.

“Yeah, but you’re old! You’ve got to be a hundred!”

“Ha, no, not quite yet,” Corbeau replied. He felt it, though. He’d taken a few licks when Rear Admiral Desrochers’ men had come around, and a few more when he’d started his apology tour with the rest of the Muddy Water folks locked up in Carson. Then there’d been the late nights planning, drawing up blueprints and putting together crew lists until the sun bubbled over the mountains. Not to mention his nearly-healed bullet wound from Louisiana.

All in all, he felt worn down and his crazy scheme hadn’t even started.

“My mother says that people that get in trouble can be forgiven, too,” Tadpole offered. She leaned forward and grabbed his hand. He looked up and she was smiling at him. She whispered: “Even if they did it on purpose.”

“I did do it on purpose,” he said. “I stole things, I scared people real bad, other people got hurt because of me.”

“You can’t steal things, Key!” Tadpole gasped.

“I know, I don’t anymore,” he answered.

“And you hurt people?”

He was too ashamed to do anything but nod.

“Real bad?”

“Yeah, a couple times,” Corbeau replied. “I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to do it.”

“You feel bad about it?” Tadpole asked.

“Yeah.”

“You going to do it again?”

He’d only done it in the first place because no one would let him do anything else. Corbeau hesitated, then looked Tadpole straight in the eyes while he lied:

“No.”

“Then you aren’t a bad guy,” she concluded. She released his hand and flopped back into her seat with her chocolate milk.

“Those guys that came to your house and hurt your dad, the ones that made you move, they were my fault.”

“They hurt you too, Key!” she objected. “They were bad guys. You can’t make other people be good. ‘You’re only in charge of yourself.’”

Corbeau recognized a Marianne-ism when he heard one. Tadpole’s mother was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met, matched only by her husband.

“My mother forgives you, you know, even though it wasn’t your fault,” Tadpole said like she was reading his mind.

“But y’all had to leave your home,” Corbeau objected. He didn’t know if he wanted to be forgiven. It was easier to live down to someone’s expectations than up to them. Pressure built in his chest.

“Yeah, we miss it, but we’ll be okay,” Tadpole replied. She took one last sip from her cup, her straw slurping at the bottom. “Dad misses it most.”

“Yeah, I know.”

At one point, Cyrille Billiot had promised to kill Corbeau. In the week Corbeau’d worked the Pykrete plant, he’d been put on the opposite side of the lake from Cyrille.

“He misses you, too,” Tadpole added. Corbeau felt like hed been struck by lightning.

“He said that?”

“No, he said he wants to beat you up,” she replied. She slurped around the bottom of the cup for the last sips, then gave up. “My mother says it though. She said you were best friends.”

“Yeah,” Corbeau considered. They probably were. He’d worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Cyrille for years, had Sunday dinners with the family, helped out with everything on the Billiot property. Cyrille was the only man who’d ever earned Corbeau’s trust without acting as an accessory to something.

And Corbeau’s past had betrayed that. That stung deep.

“Can I have another glass?” Tadpole asked, before leaning forward and whispering: “With the cocoa?”

“No, I think you better get on home,” Corbeau said. “It don’t usually take you this long to get home from school. Your mama’s going to worry.”

“Okay, fine,” Tadpole sighed. She pushed her cup and saucer to the middle of the table and struggled into her backpack straps. Corbeau stood and helped her out.

“What do you got in there, bricks?” he grunted. The little girl was carrying around half her body weight in text books. “What they got you learning?”

“Math, science, ethics, Huck Finn, art, history,” she listed.

“Well, shoot,” Corbeau said. She was almost out the door when he stopped her. “Hey, Tadpole.”

“What?” she asked.

“I’m gonna have to go away for a while.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to switch out my hat colors,” he said. “I got a chance to be a good guy.”

“For how long?”

“Don’t know, ‘til there’s no more bad guys, I guess.”

“Don’t go, Key.” Her little lip was trembling.

“They teaching you geography with all them books?”

“Yeah,” she muttered.

“You know how to spot the Atlantic Ocean?” he asked.

She nodded.

“That’s where I’m going. So if you know how to find the Atlantic, you know how to find me.”

Like what you read? Buy me a beer or @ me about it.

Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.