“I can no more abandon my duty then sacrifice my men without gain,” You unbuckle your cingulum of leadership, and with it Betrayer’s Bane and its scabbard. “N’vier; Your objective is survival. Take this, wield it well while you carry it, and bring it home. Get to the Khamsin and continue the fight. The Imperium will have need of your services in the years to come.”

N’vier’s hands go about the cingulum and scabbard, but he doesn’t take it, “and you sir?”

“I can not abandon my mission, but it is not yours. Nor can I run on one leg. You can. Go. ‘To you from falling hands I throw the torch; be yours to hold it high.’”

N’vier takes Betrayer’s Bane, “Courage and Honor, Hunter.”

“Into the Fire, N’vier.”

He turns and strides away, spine straight, head held high. You reflect that he would, no will, make a fine Astartes one day. You turn to face Tayib, “lead the way Epistolary.”

Traversing the rest of the chaos heavy cruiser is uneventful, though you feel unseen eyes tracing your every step. The horde that your squad methodically slaughtered earlier must have been the entirety of the available surviving crew. This assumption is quickly proven when the only threats that emerge to attack you are a scattered handful of murder-servitors, each easily dispatched by Tayib’s force sword without inflicting any damage.

More than once, you are distracted by flickers of flame at the edges of your perception, but when you turn to look at them, they are gone.

What awaits you beyond the corroded adamantium skin of the chaos heavy cruiser is a sight from the plague-pits and poison gardens of the warp itself. Slop and grime pool on the decks, bubbling with toxic microbial life. Pipes are metallic entrails, pulsing with moving fluids. Flies drone in the corners and dart in and out of vents that look more like the gills of an aquatic animal. Underneath the filth and corruption, you can barely recognize what must have been an imperial cargo ship of some sort, long lost to the warp and now constructed of as much warp-stuff as metal. Of the long-damned ship itself there is no trace of its original shape or structure. Instead it feels as if you are walking through a blighted artery. This feeling is reinforced as you begin to hear the distant thump-thump… thump-thump… of a beating heart.

“Could this entire shipwreck be the Blighted Heart?”

“No, only warp-spawned artifice from its influence.”

“Then the heart itself is?”

“Likely a being or component capable of generating such artifice. A psyker or some befouled machine.”

“And you hear the heartbeat too?”

“Indeed. Whatever ritual or activation sequence needed for the heart to come fully to life must be progressing.”

A figure steps into the corridor some fifty meters away. It is a bloated and diseased parody of an Astartes, rife with corruption and heedless of it hundreds of weeping cysts and lesions. It begins to lumber forwards towards you.

Your first bolt tears off most of its helmet and a good portion of its skull, but the plague marine just keeps shambling onwards. Your second bolt removes it head entirely, leaving only a ragged stump of a neck oozing bile and blood.

“That was one. There will be more.”

“All at once or one at a time, makes no difference to me.”

More plague marines round corners and emerge from hatchways in your path.

“You had to tempt fate in this place, didn’t you?”

“Better head-on now then ambushed later.”

“True…”

By the time the seventh, and last, plague marine lies lifeless on the deck, you are down to just the two hellfire bolts for your stalker, the half-charged flask for your plasma pistol, and your knife. Tayib is down to just his force sword and staff, plus the void-locked stais casket on his back.

Before you lies a large chamber, its walls and ceiling coated with the squiming entrail-pipes and dripping with vile liquids. In the center of the chamber sits a great spire of machinery, forty-nine meters tall and seven meters across at the base according to your autosenses. What was once adamantium and rad-ward is now cancerous skin and drooling maws. A matching spire plunges down from the roof of the chamber, the spiked tips of the spires a scant seven meters apart. A thin plague green lightning bolt stretches in the air, trapped between the spires. As the heartbeat thump-thumps… in the silence, the plague greed flashes in time.

“This, then, is the Blighted Heart.”

“Without doubt. Deploying the Destroyer Six device.”

“What is it?”

“I cannot say.” +Foes approach. Exalted champions of the Fly Lord. I need three minutes uninterrupted.+

One hundred and eighty seconds doesn’t sound that long, but in the middle of a firefight it is a small eternity. You start a countdown timer on your helmet display, counting down.

“But we can. Three-stage Exterminatus Immolatus design, combining EMP to slay machine-spirits, consecrated phosphex to burn even warp-blessed flesh, and psyker-death fuel’d soulfire to burn away blessed souls. Did your masters even tell you what it will cost you Alruwh Altayiba?”

Your stalker pattern bolter snaps to your shoulder, drawn to the rasping voice of dead Astartes walking; three corrupted figures standing in the shadow of the plague-lightning. “Who in the name of the Primarchs are you?”

“Our mortal names matter not, for we three are but fuel for the heart as it begins to beat. Ascended, our Grandfather will grant us a new name, that we might spread his blessings amongst the body of the Imperium of the corpse-throne.”

One hundred and sixty second remain. Your rage boils just below the surface, your finger tight about the trigger of your stalker pattern bolter. Only the fact that talking is using more time than fighting ever could stays your wrath. “And why should I not strike you down where you stand traitors?”

“Because you are buying time. Time we will not give you.”

The champions draw plasma pistols and advance down the side of the spire, armored boots splashing in pools of bile and excitement.

You don’t wait for them to pull their triggers; you pull yours first. One of your two precious hellfire bolts whips up the side of the spire, and shatters harmlessly against a perverted version of an Iron Halo set about the throats of the Champions. Three plasma bolts whip back down the spire at you. Two gouge harmless holes into the flesh of the deck, and you roll sideways out of the path of the last bolt. You pull the trigger again, firing your last hellfire bolt, and once again it sparks off of a forcefield. Three more plasma bolts whip down-spire at you, but none of them land near you.

One hundred and forty-two seconds remain. You swap from your stalker pattern bolter to your plasma pistol and knife. The Champions are getting close now, fourteen meters away, and you have no mercy in your hearts. Still set on maximal mode, you plasma pistol lives up to the nickname of its pattern of construction: ragefire. The first bolt hits the rightmost champion in the torso. It bypases its forcefield, burnis through its armor, and into its chest.Your second, and last, shot hits the same champion in the left leg and vaporizes flesh and armor alike down to the bones. The Champion’s stride doesn’t slow, so accustomed to pain that it doesn’t even acknowledge the fresh injuries.

The champions holster their plasma pistols and draw huge, two handed powerswords. The blades are rusted with hilts of tarnished copper, their edges notched and jagged. Malevolence drips from their edges, raw hatred and pestilence given physical form as corrosive bile.

“Time to die, dog. Your flesh will rot, your mind will burn, and the Grandfather will consume your soul to feed his creations.”

“Come and try.”

They charge you, blades working in tandem. You deflect the only two strikes that could threaten you, letting the third swing harmlessly past. You lash out at the injured Champion and rip a chunk of flesh from its torso. Two more swings screech harmlessly past you, and you knock a thrust aside. You retaliate, stabbing for the injured Champion, but your knife skips harmlessly off the protective force field.

All three blades come for you. Your knife parries the first one successfully, but shatters in the doing, torn to pieces by the daemon bound into the blade, leaving you defenseless as the other two blades strike home. Your left leg is cut to the bone thrice over, blood spilling freely into the putrid air, plagues that even your enhanced metabolism cannot fight unaided eating into your flesh. A blow crashes into your head, tearing most of your helmet and your left ear away.

You crumple to the deck, the fragment of your hud still displaying the countdown timer. One hundred and thirty seconds remain.