You nod at ZTO, “How’s it doing?”

N’vier shrugs one shoulder, “better than most humans, worse then some. Once the shock wears off ZTO should be fine.”

“And you N’vier?”

“Permission to speak freely sir?”

“Always.”

“A month ago, real space-time, my squad was all but wiped out along with the rest of the detachment we were supporting. Cut off from both support and command, I was made part of Inquisitor Karth’s retinue along with another Astartes scout from a chapter I didn’t recognise. I learned his name was Virgil of the Blood Ravens. A week ago we boarded this hulk. In hindsight, Inquisitor Karth was utterly unprepared for this environment. Six days ago, the retinue was split up by a Genestealer ambush. Inquisitor Kath and his henchmen went one way, Virgil another, and I was tossed through a weak wall by a grenade detonation and fell far enough to be knocked out. Since then, and since meeting up with Interrogator MacWater and ZTO, it has been a running battle of attrition; on rest, resources, and endurance alike.”

“In short, a week in the cauldron of battle.”

“Yes sir, a week on the Anvil. And you know what sir? I’m ready for more.”

Under the safety of your helmet, you cannot help but grin at the scout. “I don’t know about the traditions of the Salamanders, but were you an Ultramarine scout in my squad, I’d put you up for promotion to the devastators after this mission. As it stands, we have a mission to complete first.”

“Yes sir.”

“Seeker, can you refine the direction of the Blighted heart? Do we still need to head ‘south east’?”

“Affirmative Hunter. We are close to the Blighted Heart. ‘North east’ from here, though more east then north.”

“‘North east’ it is.”

Two hour later you sit atop the workbench as ZTO works at a crude prosthetic peg leg. The plan is to tack-weld it to the shredded remains of your power armor’s right leg, freeing up you hand to hold something besides a crutch. It won’t improve your speed any, given the crude nature of the peg leg, but it is only a temporary attachment. When ZTO is done with the tack welds, it takes your armor cements and pastes over the stump of your leg, making your armor atmosphere-tight again.

N’vier is working some sort of miniaturised mechanised hammer, beating out some minute parts. Interrogator MacWater’s bolt pistols lie partially disassembled on a table next to him, the grips and trigger guards placed aside. You have only the slimist of ideas as to what he is actually doing, given your very limited knowledge of the Mysteries of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but if you had to guess N’vier is changing the trigger guards and grips to something that will fit into his hands.

Tayib has security, watching the only functioning hatch to the workshop. Occasionally he twitches, tracking something that you cannot perceive, but no threats emerge to challenge your squad. At one point his eyes lock onto an innocuous piece of bulkhead, as if he was staring right through it. Your vox-link clicks open on a Deathwatch-only chanel. “Green fungus-flesh in purple leather clad. Single of mind, in bone-cast shadows lurking.”

“Ork Kommandos. We’ll keep watch.”

“Their minds are not their own, thralls of something larger. Twice-born in corrupted flesh, twice-mutated apart form humanity, abomination against reality.”

“A Daemon?”

“A once-mortal. Marked, but not Ascended. Entombed in the Fly Lord’s putrid grasp.”

“Make sense! I do not see that things that you can see.”

“Be glad of that. Do you know why I left my Primarch behind? I do. There are things that cannot be written down. There are paths outside the materium and Immaterium alike. You would do well to remember that.”

“What in the Emperor’s Name Epistolary?”

“Did I say something?”

“We just had a whole conversation over this link, and you recall none of it?”

“I must have drifted whilst in a vision again. My apologies Scout-Sergeant.”

Willpower test to resist Corruption & Insanity: Failed! Needed <44, got 99. +7 Insanity, +6 corruption.

You go utterly still inside your armor. You feel no fear, but your twin hearts are thumping in an accelerated rhythm. Your muscles alternate between coiling tight for action and slumping to boless relaxation.

“Scout-Sergeant?”

Your vertebrae pop and crack one by one as you sit marginally more upright. Your augmetic left arm twitches spastically, unable to process the competing fight and flight impulses.

“Hunter?!”

“I’m… I’m alright Epistolary.”

“As you say Hunter. We are ready to proceed when you are.”

You close the vox chanel and unseal your helmet. “Alright squad, gather around.”

Scout N’vier racks the slides of his bolt pistols one by one, checking their function and finding them satisfactory. Your eyes pick out the names Interrogator’s Faith and Elena’s Fury on the barrel shrouds and the name MacWater at the top of each grip: a testament to the warrior who wielded them. Epistolary Tayib unseals his helmet, revealing his face to N’vier and ZTO for the first time. Mech-Wright ZTO’s hands methodically check its lascarbine over and over.

“Thanks to Epistolary Tayib, we have a few shreds of information on the upcoming challenges. The next ship “east” of us is almost certainly an eldar ship of some sort, damaged beyond recovery. Expect bad lighting, low gravity, and thin to null atmosphere. N’vier, ZTO, I know you lack void-capable breathing apparatus, so we’ll keep an eye out for some as we progress. Failing finding any, we will attempt to detour around atmosphere less sections. Expected opposition is not eldar, as they pulled out with their ships. Instead, we can expect Ork Kommandos and probably the minions of the Archenemy of Mankind. We are also getting closer to the Blighted Heart, so expect Chaos taint to begin to manifest. We’ve already encountered some in the mutations of the tyranid Hive Tyrant, but expect more of the same or similar nature: unnatural rot, decay, and disease.”

A chorus of affirmatives answers you, so you seal your helmet and organize the advance.

The eldar ship that lies in you path is nothing like you expected. You expected wraithbone, to be sure, and the low gravity and poor lighting. What you didn’t expect was the empty gem settings everywhere in the ship. They stare at you, like thousands of empty eye sockets, from every bulkhead and deckhead, from every fixture and decoration. As you delve deeper into the ship, you become more and more certain that the empty sockets are staring at you, like the ship itself isn’t quite dead.

Sound echoes in impossible ways. You first notice it over the vox-links, and dismiss it as some sort of interference. But the echoes are never consistent. Sometimes words will echo only very slightly, as if backed by a slightly off-key chorus of voices. Other times, they will reverberate as if you stand alone at the center of a great chamber, or at the mouth of a vast canyon. But it is ZTO’s clipped status reports that make you realize that it is not simple vox signal distortion. Walking single-file down a tight passageway, ZTO’s clipped mechanical monotone takes on the timber and resonance of a bass opera singer at a live performance.

Five hours after you left the workshop, your party approaches the far edge of the eldar ship. The eye sockets grow fewer and fewer, with cracked gems left behind staring sightlessly down at your progress. A few, here and there, seem to weep puss or bile when viewed at the edges of your vision. Looking directly at these gems shows no flowing fluids, but dark stains drip below the eyes, trails of vile tears eating into the bone of the ship itself.

You are in a wide corridor with a high ceiling, reminiscent of a wide tunnel under a mountain. Your vox unit blinks with an unknown signal from somewhere ahead of you. Curious, you click it open and listen.

“Count the Seven… Count the Seven… Count the Seven…”

The voice is hoarse and strained, an orator strained beyond his endurance. But a dark gurgling laugh fills the silence between the words, making the hairs on your arms and across the back of your neck rise. You close the unknown vox chanel and turn to ask Tayib if he hears it too, but ZTO interrupts you.

“Lords, do you hear the chant in the distance?”

Any response is cut short by the brutal cough-bang of detonating ork shells peppering the deck and bulkheads. The chuff of a grenade launcher heralds a rotting head splattering off of Tayib’s power armor. “Blight grenades!”

ZTO drops to the deck like a string-cut puppet and rolls to the base of the bulkhead. There isn’t much cover but it does at least manage to make itself a smaller target.

More ork shells splatter all over the place, but none of them find purchase in flesh.

N’vier drops prone on the deck, but shows no sign of injury.

You finally begin to react, bringing your stalker pattern bolter up to bear, but can’t find a target in the gloom. Cursing, you flip you helmet’s visor to infrared, revealing the cool blurs of orkish bodies, and the hotter signature of something much larger behind them.

A trio of ork shells crater the deck around N’vier, but none of them come closer than half a meter from his body.

Tayib drops to one knee, bringing his bolter to bear and searching for a target.

More ork shells splatter the deck and bulkheads, missing everyone.

“Count the Seven… Count the Seven…” The chant is louder now, audible even without opening the unknown vox chanel. Boots pound the deck to the tempo if the chant, advancing slowly and steadily down the passageway towards you. Something heavier follows in their wake, its tread shaking the bulkheads. Another blight grenade splatters harmlessly a few centimeters from your foot.

ZTO’s lascarbine comes up and spits red death down the passageway. The bolts don’t hit anything, but they do illuminate the scene for a flashing moment, letting you get a hard count of your foes: seven Kommandos, and one Archenemy dreadnought.

The Kommandos march forward steadily, chanting, instead of the typical reckless ork charge. The dreadnought looms in their wake, its two arms ending in mighty drilling claws, the smoke launcher atop its head clearly refitted to launch something besides simple smoke grenades.

N’vier fires one of his bolt pistols, but he misses his target in the gloom.

The Kommandos are somewhat of a threat with their numbers, but you decide that the Archenemy Dreadnought has to die before it can bring its drilling claws to bear. You take aim at one of the fleshy parts of its corrupted body, hoping that such an area might be less well armored. Your shot strikes home with a small spurt of an unknown bodily fluid and does precisely nothing to the dreadnought, it’s armored hide impervious to your fire.

Tayib lowers his bolter, snatches his force staff from his back and points its skull-tipped head at the oncoming Kommandos. “Retun onto Ash!” A massive gout of blue-white flame erupts from the eyes of the skull and fills the passageway. The Kommandos don’t even attempt to dodge and ignite like so many devotional candles. In mere heartbeats they are reduced to dust on the fitful breeze of the dead ship.The echoes of Tayib’s proclamation reverberate in utterly unnatural ways, ricocheting off of your skull and causing blood to weep from your eyes.

Willpoweer test to avoid corruption at -30%. Failed: needed <14, got 97. +10 Corruption.

The chaos dreadnought lumbers forwards, its drills grinding to fitfull life. The grenade launcher on its head chuffs out one last rotting skull, which splatters across ZTO.

ZTO winces under the impact, then howls in agony as rotting fluids eat into its chest. In moments, it is heaving up bloody chunks of rotting organs. You recognise chunks of lungs, stomach, and heart before the Mechwright crumples to the ground and begins to dissolve into a pool of rotted flesh and putrid bile.

N’Vier steadies his aim and fires one of his bolt pistols. The three round burst sparks off of armor and putrid flesh, causing some minor bleeding. The Dreadnought doesn’t even stop its chant.

Seeing as how bolt rounds have proved ineffective, you sling your stalker bolter and draw both Betrayer’s Bane and your plasma pistol. Without hesitation you thumb the fire selector switch to maxmal overcharge mode. If there is any foe worth the risk of overheating your weapon and possibly injuring yourself, this is it. You pull the trigger twice, heedless of the blistering heat radiating from the barrel and the ferocious drain on you limited supply of ammunition. The first shot kneecaps the dreadnought’s right leg. The super-charged plasma bolt detonating in a two-meter sphere of annihilation, leaving the leg severed at mid thigh. The dreadnought promptly collapses on it faceplate with an almighty crash, its chant broken along with its external speakers. Your second bolt hits the crown of the thing's skull and penetrates deep into the casket holding the putrefied remains of the chaos marine pilot before detonating. The entire dreadnought slumps in the middle, its ‘chest’ bored out into a ragged hole unable to support the weight of its armor and power plant.

The crash of battle takes long moments to fade in the echoing silence. The barrel of your plasma pistol glows a dull orange from the heat of your shots, steam from vaporized liquids wafting from the barrel and the emergency vents. Tayib gets slowly to his feat, his hands shaking slightly at the effort that he put into wielding his powers. Scout N’vier calmly reloads his bolt pistol, but you can see the repressed strain on his face, the pain of losing another squadmate in a horrific manner. You can only press on with the mission, but this moment calls out for something to be said.