The Worlds of the Sheaf

The Attack - Part 3

     The bridge crew instinctively held onto the arms of their chairs, bracing themselves, and it was as well they did because the ship gave a sudden lurch as if it were a ball being kicked by a space giant. Saturn, who'd just made it back to his seat, was thrown out of it again to fly across the room and hit the scrying mirror, which miraculously didn't break but which gave the wizard a heavy blow that bruised his whole left side.

     The others managed to remain seated and suffered no injuries, but across the rest of the ship, where the attack had come completely without warning, people were thrown against walls and furniture and objects were dashed from shelves and tables, smashing and strewing the ship with sharp, jagged wreckage. Thomas and Tassley, who were still in the wizards' laboratory, were thrown together, the man landing on top of the woman in a way she'd never expected. Thomas's soft landing saved him from injury, but Tassley's head hit a chair, tearing her scalp open with a jet of blood and knocking her out like a light.

     Thomas, momentarily dazed, took a moment to realise what had happened to her, then tied a rag around her head in an attempt to stem the bleeding before running from the room, screaming for a cleric. As he did do, his feet crunched on papers and broken bottles containing powders and potions that were now mixing in ways they'd never been meant to and smoking ominously.

     The ship's priests and clerics had troubles of their own, though. Daleen Verdantia had been eating in the galley when the impact occurred and gave a shriek as she was thrown out of her chair and against the next table, where three soldiers had been laughing over glasses of beer. They'd had the bad judgement to sit right next to the cutlery cabinet and they were thrown right into it, slashing themselves badly on broken glass and splintered wood.

     Drenn Pietar, the priest of Samnos, fared even worse. He'd been sharpening his sword in the privacy of his own quarters, honing it to the razor sharpness he demanded from all his weapons, but his fastidiousness cost him dearly now as he was thrown against the wall he'd been facing, the sword under him. By some stroke of bad luck, the point found a weak point in his chain mail armour where, unnoticed to him, the blow of a troll's mace a couple of months before had broken a couple of the links. The sword slipped deep into his stomach and his head struck the wall hard enough to stun him. What was more, the door of his cabin was closed. There was no-one to see as his life's blood spread out in a growing pool around his body.

     In the crew mess Matthew and the off duty soldiers were spilled rudely out of their beds but suffered no injuries other than a few minor bruises, while up in the shayen garden the water sploshed out of the pond, soaking Flinda Luell, Lirenna's room mate, who'd been lying on her stomach watching the antics of the fish and water boatmen. She jumped to her feet with a gasp of shock, looking about angrily to see who'd played the trick on her.

     The worst injuries were suffered by the moon trogs, though. Their fragile skeletons were smashed like delicate glass sculptures as they were thrown against the walls and equipment, and three of them were killed outright. The rest of them were so badly injured that they could only float in the zero gravity, those still conscious moaning in pain and almost delirious with terror as they waited for help to come.

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     Daleen Verdantia picked herself carefully up from the ground. She heard muffled curses and gasps of pain as the soldiers climbed carefully out of the wreckage of wood and glass that was all that remained of the cutlery cabinet and examined themselves for injuries. One of them, Tayl Makral, had a knife protruding from his arm. He pulled it out with the casual disregard of a veteran who'd received many such injuries, and the cleric took his arm in her hands and prayed over it, straining to channel enough of the Goddess's power into this universe to heal it.