"Blackhand" Zikado, a broad-shouldered Cuban desperado, lounged in a stolen chair with two abducted indigenous girls draped over him. He drank sour rum and laughed loudly, boasting of his recent heroic exploit—the so-called successful raid on a British dockyard days earlier.
"Ha! Those Englishmen are nothing but red-coated softlings!" he roared. "My brothers charged them once and they scattered like frightened hens!"
"Long live the Chief!" his men cheered, each proudly gripping a brand-new American-supplied Springfield smoothbore.
The celebration was crude, loud, and short-lived.
A lookout burst in, pale and shaking.
"C-Chief! Bad news! Jack 'Iron Hook' is here! He's sailing straight into the bay—he's come to kill us!"
"What?" Zikado kicked the girls aside and stood. "That one-eyed cripple? Isn't he rotting in Nassau? What business has he here?"
"He's brought Bloody Mary… and One-Armed George! More than a dozen ships! They've sealed the bay!"
Before Zikado could respond—
BOOM!
A cannonball screamed in from the sea and obliterated half the council hall's wooden roof.
The room dissolved into splinters, smoke, and screaming.
Zikado and his men stumbled outside to see Jack's fleet at the mouth of the bay, old ship-mounted cannons firing in relentless, chaotic saturation.
"Damn them!" Zikado snarled. "They've grown bold!"
"To the ships! Fight them!"
Hundreds of men armed with American weapons rushed to their vessels, launching one of the most grotesque and absurd pirate-on-pirate naval battles the Caribbean had ever witnessed.
Gunfire erupted at close range.
Zikado's men formed neat firing lines, executing textbook American volley tactics—impressive to watch, disastrous in practice. Their muzzle-loaders were slow, inaccurate, and mercilessly outdated.
Jack Iron Hook's fleet fought differently.
His men had been drilled by Royal Navy instructors—trained with money, discipline, and fear.
They fought from cover, firing rapid-loading breech weapons in fluid bursts. While Zikado's men struggled to reload once, Jack's gunners fired three or four times.
The disparity was obscene.
Worse still, Jack's captains carried Colt revolvers—six shots of industrialized death. During boarding actions, they were living gun turrets.
Zikado's men charged with sabres and never even saw their killers.
"Retreat!" Zikado finally screamed, watching his crew collapse. "Fall back! Their weapons are cursed!"
Too late.
Behind them, three Audacious-class steam frigates—silent until now—turned slowly, black smoke billowing like funeral incense.
Their modern rifled guns aligned.
BOOM.
A single high-explosive shell struck Zikado's flagship magazine with surgical precision.
BOOOOM—
The ship detonated into a towering mushroom of fire and blood.
Jack Iron Hook and his fellow pirate-captains stared in mute horror as the British warships advanced like steel phantoms.
The banner of the Royal Navy Auxiliary Defense Force flew proudly.
And in their hearts, something alien took root.
Relief.
Safety.
The comfort of kneeling beneath a greater power.
From that day forward, Caribbean pirates developed a near-religious reverence for the Union Jack.
They even gave themselves a new title—grand, bureaucratic, absurd:
"Her Majesty's Maritime Urban Management Brigade."
Through this shameless application of barbarian rule by barbarian, the Caribbean was cleansed without British blood.
The fleet then sailed triumphantly toward Havana.
The reception was unprecedented.
Governor Don Juan de Zavala of Cuba—an aging Spanish aristocrat—stood rigid on the pier with his officials, like schoolboys awaiting inspection. Behind them, hundreds of coerced citizens waved Union flags.
When Mr. Hanson, envoy of Prince Arthur Lionheart, descended the gangway of the Victory Goddess, Zavala hurried forward with an obsequious grin, nearly attempting a humiliating bow before being stopped.
"Governor," Hanson said coolly, "there is no need for such theatrics. His Highness considers us civilized people."
"We are merely here," he continued, "to host a Sugarcane Festival—to celebrate friendship and commerce."
"Y-Yes! A festival!" Zavala nodded frantically. "The finest feast awaits you—roast suckling pig, fresh lobster, and the most beautiful mixed-blood women Havana can offer!"
Hanson smiled thinly.