Eighteen
I finally captured my helmet, tugged it on, sealed the neck ring watertight, and ducked below the gunwale.
When the cutter’s deck gun fired for effect, my armor would probably protect me from shell splinters and the secondary shrapnel which the boat would become. It was probable, but less so, that the Eternad would save me from concussion pulverization. I’d had tanks shot out from under me, even dinosaurs. But never a boat.
I knelt in bilge, listening to it slop and to my heart thump. I looked left and saw Pyt huddled, his body shielding Alia, who squirmed to peek over the gunwale.
If it hadn’t been for me, the two of them wouldn’t be facing this. I scuttled to them and spread my armored arms across the two of them. As if it could help.
Finally I realized that I should have been hearing the shriek of an incoming round or the blast of the round’s detonation. But all I heard was water swish and raspy breathing.
How long since the last round? A decent naval deck-gun crew, even while adjusting fire between shots, should put a round downrange every ten seconds.
It had easily been over a minute since the last shot.
I chinned up my helmet optics and focused on the cutter’s deck gun. The stripe-shirted crew stood lined up at attention, as they had when I looked last. They should have been spinning elevation and deflection handwheels, ramming a shell home, something.
I turned to Pyt, who still kept a hand on the tiller as we ran for the cliffs. “Why are they waiting?”
He turned back to me, eyes wide, and shrugged.
I turned and looked across the waves at the shadowed shelter of the rift in the cliffs.
I shook my head and said to nobody, “Too far.”