As it was decided that Arn and Nils would separate, the spear was given to the defender group to prevail further attempts of attacks on the left side. Both of them then climbed the narrow stairs up to the viewdeck. While Nils turned to the bridge, which was situated at foremost front at a towerlike construction at an even higher level, Arn had to cross the viewdeck.

Glancing sideways over it, he saw around 15 people taking cover under chairs and tables, obviously too afraid to follow the captains commands. Sighning invartly about the cowardice of his fellow german country men and women, he made a mental note to not bother himself to much with them should an emergency occur. The gentleman’s rule said to let children and women to secure first, but he was sure,best case would be only a few dead people on the other side if Sebastians report was 100% correct. In the face of death, everybody was himself the next.

With this bad premotion, he readied himself to go down to occurring fighting noises and screams on the middle deck. Unfortunatly, the ships highest deck towered directly above the middle deck, to increase its width and to take in more guests. Looking around to get a hold of anything he could use, he found an long umbrella with a slightly sharp end, approximately 1,20 m long. Inspecting it, a blue box appeared :

ItemUmbrellaA long umbrella with a slightly pointed metal end. Used to prevent getting wet.Sturdier than plastic umbrellas because of it woodshaft and its inner metal rod Maybe useful to pick an eye out by an incautious dumb troll, but nothing more….

‘Yay, what fearsome weapon.’ thought Arn before he descended the stairs down into the chaos.

Looking around the corner from the stairways, he saw several crew members of the ship fighting with the sharkmen. The sharkmen already numbered around 20, equipped with spears, some sawtooth looking knives and of course their fearsome mouth. It seemed they had the luck to get a grip of at least 4 grappling irons and secured a perimeter of around 10 meters around their entry. On the other side, 13 humans of different stature fought them from both sides with lifebelts, rods, and other ship equipment. 10 of them had a uniform appearance, while the other 3 seemed like students. Lying on the deck were already several bodies of both species, making the deck even more slippery by the dripping blood and gore.

Seeing this life and death struggle on a width of the deck of around 2 meter, Arn thought that it was of utmost importance to rally more people. The sailors could hold their ground maybe for another 5 minutes, but then the steady supply of new arriving shark men would outdo them. Just as he wanted to leave upstairs, unseen to the sailors another grappling iron hit the handrail further behind, outside of the fighting area.

Arn moved to the mentioned grappling iron and looked over the handrail. Greeting him was the ferocious opened mouth of a sharkman, who just lifted himself to the level of the underdeck.

Above him flimmered a new blue box, showing:

Shark manlevel 3

‘When not now, when then?’ thought Arn, before he screamed

“This is Sparta”

and stabbed the umbrella into the wide left eye of the surprised sharkman.

Crying out of pain over the unconventional attack, the creature covered out of reflex his eye with its hands and fell back. This gave Arn the time to pull up the rope of the grappling iron. He took it around his arm to carry it. Running back to the viewdeck, Arn decided to report to the bridge to report the battlestate . The momentary predicted outcome would be disadvantageous for the humans. This had to be prevented.

Arn arrived at the bridge out of breath. He had stormed 2 decks upstairs to reach it and had to knock at a closed massive iron door.

“Identify yourself “ was the answer beyond the door.

“Arn Tschiller, human and student. Open the door please, I have urgent news.”

The door was opened with a screeching tone, revealing a two armed burly sailors. One was holding a handgun, while the other had a rod.

“He is my friend. I guarantee for him” heard Arn Nil’s voice and entered the bridge.

The room was fairly wide, equipped with several nautical instruments, radar and in the middle the steering wheel at the front. The only thing that disturbed the picture was a big crack in the windshield and the corpse lying in a pool of blood, skewered with a spear in the chest area.

Arn could see 7 people. Beside Nils were 5 uniform clothed people with white trousers and blue tops, while the 6th had a black one with stripes on the shoulders. He seemed to be the mentioned first officer. The deceased had epaulettes on his, obviously the captain.

“What do you want report”?” asked the officer.

“Sir, I think you already heard from my friend next to you that the left side is secured. But the right side is struggling. We need urgent manpower to beat the creatures down or we won’t live to see another sunrise. Send more men and make another broadcast to make the people on this ship aware of their situation.” (Arn)

“Do you even know about the whole picture ? Previously, we had 35 crewmember, service personal included. At least 5 have to be down in the engine room to keep this ship running. The captain was dead by a stray spear when these creatures tried to enter the bow. During this fight we lost 9 crewmember. The rest is what you have seen on the side and on this bridge. The only chance I see is to hold out behind the sturdy doors and wait until we arrive in the port. In the moment we are around 1 hour away from it. I also saw the people on the lower deck. There is no hope in their eyes.” (Officer)

“You want to sacrifice them in order to get to the Nordeney port?” (Arn)

“Frankly, Yes. What do you expect from wimpy, untrained people in front of such a disaster?”(Officer)

“Well, I don’t know. But I expect You at least to try to maintain a minimum level of security. We are here as your guests and under your care. At least give us something to defend. I see your man here has a gun. The more people survive the better our chance is. Didn’t you read the message ? Struggle to survive. Do you think these things will leave us alone in the port? 15 minutes ago I saw 2 of them bite the heads off of some students. We seem to be their prey, so they will at least try to take over the ship. And practically, how to you expect to reopen the door when you are in the port with them luring in front? You will be trapped like a rabbit in its hole.” Started Arn to explain.

The audience got paler and paler during his explinations.

A few seconds nobody said a word. Then the officer started to speak:

“Fine. Try it, your responsibility. We have 5 illegal handguns here and some signal pistols, but I think properly handled they can also burn a hole into a man. I assign 3 men to you. The rest will continue to steer and hold the bridge with me”

And to the sailors:” Müller, Maier, Schmidt, I order you to follow him. As stated, take the items and everything useful. This seems to be Total War.”

3 sailors came forward and drew out several different types of firearms. Wondering how they could posess something like this while gun possession was very restricted in Germany, Arn called out to Nils and the 5 men team left the bridge.