As a screen of smoke obscured his vision, Cecil took a moment to pause, pressing the reload button on his VAD.  It was then that something Onweer had said as the chaos started finally struck him.  

[i]“I told you I should be riding on top. Divers are often outlaws but rarely murderers; they would have hesitated to fire at a living target."[/i]

It was true, as far as he could see.  The divers, who he had been warned against and trained to fight, were focusing on [i]disabling[/i] the vehicle, but so far had made no effort to harm any of the survey team.  

He was torn from his reverie as a thud shook the vehicle, causing him to flinch further into the cover of the vehicle's interior.  The apparent danger of the situation made it difficult to consider whether or not the Diver's would hurt him.  The answer seemed obvious, whatever the girl had said.  

He got up and, belatedly, followed behind Yvette out onto the rock field.  He was running, firing wildly anywhere that Divers looked like they might be.  His eyes were wide the whole time, and he seemed on the verge of screaming.