The Valley of Shadows - eARC

by John Ringo

  Astroga had assisted him and rolled them rather ungently against the gunnel, eliciting a grunt of discomfort.

  “Oh, did that hurt?” she had asked solicitously. “My bad. Coordination is off since, you know, your asshole friend shot me.” She’d snugged the goons safely into place against the inner hull with a few judicious knee strikes.

  Smith glanced at his watch and solved the time and distance equation in his head, estimating the length of the water transit. He swayed slightly as the hull met the swells just offshore, lifting and falling in a rhythm that had ignored men for millennia. The shooting glasses he appropriated from Kaplan kept most of the windburn from his eyes, and the amber lenses brightened the path ahead for a time, but eventually yielded to the deepening nautical twilight.

  For the first time in what felt like a long time, there wasn’t anything that he had to attend to right now. No emergency, no phone calls…there was just the boat, the sea, the journey. A glance at the afterdeck revealed that the passengers were mostly sleeping. His glance lingered on the bundle of blankets that covered Risky before he resumed his scan.

  Tom felt alert, alive, and the helm was rock steady. In his wake, Durante cox’d the second RHIB. The offshore wind from the river brought the smell of things not meant to burn.

  Waves reflected sullen red as the boats quit the memory of man for the cover of night.

  * * *

  Behind the boats, the torch and crown of Liberty continued to burn until, in the darkness, they flickered, lit one last time, and were extinguished.