The skiff rocks in black water, rain ticking on the metal hull. Behind Dallas Fontaine, Pier Nine shrinks into a smear of sodium light and gunfire haze.
Ahead, The Channel opens under a stained fog bank. A beacon blinks on a rusted breakwater, and the harbor stinks of diesel, wet rope, and old fish.
Jackson Temple grips the wheel. Calabash braces a hand on the rail. Murderbone stands hard against Dallas’s leg, ears up, watching the dark water for a tail.
Dallas Fontaine
The engine note is wrong. Too clean for a working boat.
A second set of lights blooms out of the rain, low and fast, cutting across the channel toward them.
Jackson Temple
Dallas, we’ve got company on the starboard side.
Calabash squares up, jaw tight, while Murderbone growls at the approaching wake. The chase has followed them onto the water.
“I fire on the starboard lights”
SUCCESS (Legendary Firearms, rolled +1)
Dallas fires once. The shot cracks over the water and punches into the nearest headlight cluster, and that light dies in a spray of glass and sparks.
The hostile boat lurches as its pilot yanks the wheel. Its beam skids hard across the fog, then drops low and useless into the chop.
Jackson Temple
Good hit. Keep them blind.
Calabash ducks to the rail, shoulders squared against the spray, watching the dark where the damaged boat was hunting them a breath ago.
Murderbone
A sharp bark tears off into the rain, then he surges forward, still fixed on the starboard side.
The skiff keeps its line while the enemy lights stumble apart behind them, one gone and one drifting wide in the fog.
Dallas Fontaine
One less light. Now see what else is out there.
Ahead, the channel opens into black water and the rest of the pursuit stays unresolved, somewhere off the starboard dark.
“I keep shooting out their lights”
SUCCESS (Legendary Firearms, rolled +0)
Dallas fires again, and the next lamp on the hostile boat bursts into sparks. Rain swallows the glare as the dark hull slews sideways in the wake.
He keeps the revolver steady and sends another round into the remaining beam. That light pops, then goes black, leaving only a weak smear of reflection on the water.
Jackson Temple
That’s it, they’re half blind.
Calabash leans farther over the rail, tracking the dead shape by its engine wash while the last hostile glow jitters at the edge of the fog.
A low growl rolls out of him, then he turns with Dallas, still braced for the next move.
Dallas keeps the pressure on, and the final visible light on the pursuer shatters. The boat behind them is now only a black shadow in the rain.
With the pursuit’s eyes gone dark, the skiff runs on into open channel water, the evidence still dry beneath Dallas’s coat.
“I keep the skiff moving into open water”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled -1)