Chapter 53 - The Scuttle Decision
The engine screamed as the propeller shaft warped against the mangled rudder. Smoke, bitter and white with burning oil, poured through the floorboards. Clara scrambled to the twins, securing each girl into an inflatable survival harness.
"Julian, the rudder's locked!" she yelled, coughing against the thickening smoke. "We're spinning into their broadside!"
Through the cabin's narrow viewport, I saw the frigate's towering silhouette shifting. Its secondary turrets were slewing downward, calculating the firing solution to end us. They had realized that the keycard was on board and that their boarding party was failing to secure the prize cleanly. To them, recovering a sunken titanium card from the shallow seabed was easier than chasing us across the coastline.
"We go now," I said.
I grabbed the industrial emergency wrench from the bulkhead and smashed the glass encasing the trawler's sea cocks—the twin intake valves designed to flood the lower ballast tanks in dry dock. With three brutal, adrenaline-fueled swings, I sheared the brass valve heads off their stems. Instantly, an icy, green torrent of seawater exploded into the engine bay with the force of a firehose.
"Hold on to each other!" I shouted, sweeping my daughter Mia into my arms while Clara scooped up Lily.
I kicked open the emergency escape hatch on the leeward side of the hull. Outside, the world was a nightmare of roaring water, white foam, and whistling tracer rounds. The frigate opened fire with its heavy autocannon—not a prolonged burst, but three devastating shells designed to break our spine.
The first shell punched straight through the empty wheelhouse, tearing it away into the night in an explosion of timber and glass. The shockwave threw us off balance. The second shell struck the water twenty feet to our left, sending a towering wall of freezing brine crashing down upon our heads.
"Jump!" Clara screamed.
We leaped into the void just as the third shell struck our fuel reserves.
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The trawler detonated behind us in an incandescent fury of orange fire and shattered steel. The pressure wave hit us mid-air, hurling us forward into the roaring surf of the offshore reef. The cold took my breath away instantly—a shock so profound it felt like plunging into liquid ice.
I kicked with all my strength, my arm clamped around Mia's chest like an iron vise. Beside me, Clara broke the surface, gasping, her grip unbreakable on Lily. Behind us, the burning wreckage of the *Eskimo 4* formed a massive, smoke-choked curtain of flame between us and the frigate's blinding searchlights.
