Except …
P: No, don’t jump. There is no room.
There is very little room between the ship’s outer hull and the lock’s walls. Also water is rushing into the cabin. My cut is intersecting the waterline.
Dejan slams the cabin door shut. That should make opening it from the corridor very hard, unless they just blow into up or smash it to pieces. That, unfortunately, was an option.
U: Now what? Do we wait until the cabin is mostly filled and then dive away?
P: I would like to avoid that. They must have noticed this commotion and they have guns.
D: Also there may be swimming monsters
P: Right. I am going to distract them.
U: What?
P: No time.
I am hyperventilating in preparation. Can I make myself heavy enough? Yes. I have two sledge hammers in my inventory. One goes into each hand and I go out and down. This gets me a minor cut and abraisions on the back, but otherwise I am fine. The water as far as I can see and sense is free of swimming monsters.
Fortune has smiled on me twice. Only a few meters further a ladder is recessed into the wall. Whoever designed this lock did not intend the basin as a chamber of death people would not get out of. I can climb up. Some of the odd soldiers turned traitor and inhuman are looking at the hole I’ve made. One of them is clumsily lowering a rope ladder. That is bad. And he is bad at it. You do not need to lower these things. You just drop them. I need a distraction. Hand grenades are proper distractions. Plus if I have overlooked any swimming monster, let them deal with hydrostatic shock.
I am almost to the top of the basin as a fountain of water thoroughly drenches me.
Our opponents for lack of a better word let’s call them pirates thoroughly misinterpret the situation.
Somebody cries something in an unidentifiable language, if indeed that is a language.
Our ship’s deck guns open fire on the other ships outside the locks.
--
A non descript man is making a decision. „Get on the radio and announce us. Say we are a group of allied fighters of the Cabal. It does not matter whether they understand that. As long as help is on the way they’ll be happy. Ask them what this racket is about and what they are firing at“
--
I get up above the basin. I have ascended into a war zone. There is an intermittent battle going on. The other armed ships in our convoy sporadically are firing towards targets I cannot identify on the shore lines. One of them has a fire burning on its superstructure but no men fighting it outside. As a missile from a well covered position streaks towards the ship and blows a hole above the water line I can see why.
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Larger versions of the medusoid thing I shot inside the ship are acting as beasts of burden, carrying bins of ammunition, weapons and corpses from our ship.
That is when the pirates act upon my distraction. Our ship’s guns open fire on the other gunship lower on the river, having been lowered before our ship. The ships it was escorting have seen the wisom of a retreat. The pirates must be considering themselves under artillery fire. I throw myself flat on the ground expecting return fire. I am not disappointed.
--
„They say that they are under fire by army traitors cooperating with monsters, who have trapped one of their ships in a lock. Their attempts to land rescue parties have been repulsed by well entrenched machine guns and missiles.“ - „Reply to them that we are about to storm the vessel in the lock and that they are to cease fire and retreat.“
--
The commodore is not happy. He gets off the radio. „Cease fire. Gunship A is to rejoin its part of the fleet and wait at a safe distance“ Then he proceeds to question the general sanity of the army and their hygenic habits. „Get on the satellite radio and tell the Air Force to put the strike into a holding pattern.“
--
The exchange of artillery fire stops. I sprint forward and conjure a rope ladder I fasten to a pair of bollards probably not intended for that particular use but I don’t care.
I cannot stay. If the pirates notice me I’ll be drawing fire on my friends. I am still a bit low on mana. But I don’t need to cause harm. I just need to draw attention. Out comes the wand.
--
Nobody human can trace me in this, so I can afford to depend on a teleport to get me away. I am sure pretty annoying but not very deadly.
I notice some kind of flashes in the distance. So do the pirates. A lot of the tentacle monsters do not return after a carriage run. They must have joined the battle against the reinforcements.
I return to the ladder. They are no longer there, but I can follow traces. The relief at seeing two traces is immense. This has taken much too long. I am sure they felt abandoned.
U: That was a fantastic distraction! We heard them scramble back on deck.
P: Ugh. You are welcome.
Perspectives differ.
D: We need to get further away. The navy is not going to just sit by as army units side with the monsters. This could end badly.
U: Oh shit. I knew it could not last. The news were too good.
P: They are no longer people something has taken them over.
D: You mean like those brain worms in Wrath of Khan?
P: Yes
D: Ugh…
U: Nerds
P: Well, let’s go to the closest part of the free river. I have a boat in storage.
U: A whole boat.
P: A surfboard. It has standing room for three.
--
„Get those navy men on the radio, tell them that a category 3 monster is approaching and that the ship in the lock is lost“. He accepted the rocket launcher one of his men held out for him and fired at a building that looked like a storage hall for spare parts. The bang was followed by a silver rank aura coming out of hiding as a huge millipede burst through a roof.
„That is the first slaver millipede I’ve ever seen. Fantastically complex life cycle. This one seems to be in the middle stage where it does organized actions with its minions, but not yet any long term planning.“