Rain battered his shoulders, sweeping in solid crystal sheets across the teak deck as the giant vessel slid into another deep trough. He felt the sickening drop in his stomach, the yawn of ocean waves swallowing the horizon. The Avenger shuddered through her massive bulkheads, steel and water colliding before she bounded skyward, riding on clouds of hard spray to the top of another large swell. Nathan slid off his feet with the hard pitch of the deck, forced to cling to the railing to keep from falling, the thick muscle in his arms and shoulders strained. He swore through his teeth, enduring the bite of the cable in his hands. The ship leveled as it neared the crest of the wave and he heaved himself up, heading for the fantail, the gun deck still tilting under the tread of his boots. Coming overhead any second, at upward of 150 knots… He broke into a run, sprinting under the aft starboard battery, its twin 127 millimeter guns staring out to sea, rain spilling in light waterfalls over their long barrels.
