Chương 105: Chapter 61: Encounters on Excursions

POV: Lord Arken Drakios Drakios walked forward with a confident stride. It had been some time since he was allowed to go on an excursion such as this.

"I'm glad your team decided to join us, Doll. If the Galleon is as old as it appears, I think we may be in for a treat. I've always wanted to tour one of these," he admitted with a wry smile. Major Milo Mutler of the Drakios house guard was clad in his suit of power armour and coordinating his guards with the Skitarii and Astartes.

The intimidating form of Captain Bolaar in his Saturnine Terminator suit was accompanied by two of his veterans, Tech Marine Cogfist, and Apothecary Helveptus Sistus, also in Saturnine suits. The Mechanicus team would handle taking scans while his retinue would poke around and explore the ancient wreck. The wreck of the Conquest Class Star Galleon loomed ahead of them.

The path was easy enough to follow, the chaos cults had been utilizing the hangar bays from the galleon to carry a large portion of the planetary invasion craft and atmospheric aeronautica units. Most of which lay scattered about the hangars in a chaotic mess, abandoned by their former caretakers.

"Our fortunes will depend on how thoroughly they managed to scour the wreck while it was in their clutches." Doll said as he scuttled forward. An optical dendrite swung around, taking readings and scans as he moved.

"Given the initial scans and how the Hulk was operating, I am led to believe they only had the Hulk in their care for a few years at most."

"Archmagos, something in the wreck is interfering with our Auspex readings. We aren't getting clear scans," one of the Tech Priests spoke up for the benefit of Lord Drakios and the Astartes.

"Indeed, there is some manner of shielding or a jammer in place." Magos Xor-XXVII stated as he tried using his handheld auspex.

"Curious."

"Suspicious," Doll said after squinting at the vessel they were about to enter.

"I am detecting radiation-deflecting paint on the hull, and the armour has layers of scan-resistant materials. There is a secondary passive jamming signal emanating somewhere deeper within."

"Someone with something to hide?" Drakios muttered, his ornate sword hung at his waist in its sheath, and a masterly crafted pair of pistols hung off his armour.

"I do love a good secret," he had even worn one of his favorite cloaks for the occasion. A pair of servo skulls floated forward and led the way as they projected beams of light into the dark interior of the hangar. They had nearly reached the back of the hangar when suddenly Captain Bolaar spoke up.

"Hold, I hear something," he cocked his head and after a long moment pointed at a nearby wall, "That way, something is banging, and moving around. No, multiple somethings. A few walls are in the way."

"Let's check it out. We need to purge any of these heretics that remain. Especially if they're in the way of the treasures," Drakios said jovially as he hefted his long-barreled archeotech hellpistol. The entire group readied their weapons as Doll forced open the bulkhead door in the back of the hangar bay. As they entered the corridor, the faint banging became noticeable to everyone in power armour. It grew louder as they pressed deeper into the ship.

"Auspex is still jammed," A nearby elderly hunchbacked Tech Priest muttered in annoyance after they entered the ship.

"According to the plaque on the wall, behind this door, there should be a cargo hold," Major Milo pointed out. Whatever or whoever was making the banging noises was on the other side of the door. Bolaar and the other Astartes arrayed themselves around the doorway as Archmagos Doll inserted a dendrite into the wall console and worked to open the large double doors. The two servo skulls providing light hovered above, beams trained on the door.

The doors slid open with a grinding shriek of ancient metal fighting against the rust and neglect that had saturated the mechanism. It opened, but halted just before fully opening as the door's internal electromagnetic mechanisms sputtered and died. With a groan, the door fell off its hinges, landing on the track with a metallic thunk. The sight that greeted them was abhorrent. The room was packed to the brim with corpses that were standing eerily still in the stale air.

The ruined, rotten flesh that was sloughing off some of them gave the room a stench of nauseating, old death. The moment the door fell off its hinges, the corpses all turned, and the closet one shrieked. A horrid, inhuman sound that spread amongst the horde, more and more joined in until it was a cacophonous wall of nauseating sound. The animated bodies moved as one, like a tide of necrotic flesh, and surged towards the reclamation team. The Astartes didn't hesitate and opened fire immediately.

Bolt shells punched through the closest cursed corpses, and the following detonations eviscerated the first few rows as Bolar's backpack-mounted assault cannon boomed, knocking a layer of dust off the nearby piles. The Skitarii and House guard were less than a second behind the Astartes; las fire, more bolter shells, scorching balls of plasma, blue-white bolts of arc weapons, and the superheated beams of melta. Hundreds had been destroyed in seconds, but the horde was barely diminished.

"Fall back! Fighting retreat!" Bolaar ordered when it became clear that the wave of undead was only growing closer despite the wall of unrelenting fire.

"Grenades!" Major Milo yelled out as they slowly backed away. The explosions rip through the packed enemies, the sound of the detonations muffled by the sheer number of bodies.

"How many of them are there?" Drakios asked almost rhetorically as he blew the heads off a pair of zombies with a single well-placed shot from his pistol.

"Thousands, possibly tens of thousands. I could not see the far wall of the cargo hold, I can only assume it was full," Bolaar grunted.

"Reinforcements will arrive in three minutes." Hundreds of the vile abominations were gunned down every few seconds, but at no point did the tide seem to relent.

"We need a moment to reload. It will be ideal if we can hold this position for a minute and then fall back," Bolaar announced.

"I may be able to buy twenty seconds or so," Doll said as several of his dendrites fired several smaller lasers and a volkite blaster into the horde. A larger cybernetic arm emerged from over his shoulder.

"If you would be so kind, Archmagos," Bolaar nodded in gratitude, the exact moment his team needed a few seconds to reload. Drakios spared a glance and recognized his friend's gravitic weapon. Doll fired it into the writhing throng, and instantly everything in the hallway was crushed and ripped to shreds by the gravitic powers of his weapon. The weapon hummed and steamed faintly as Doll maintained the gravitic zone for twenty seconds.

Each withered zombie that entered the area of effect was pulled into the gravitational anomaly and added to the growing mass of flesh. The Graviton Imploder let out a series of high-pitched beeps, and soon after, a loud shriek as its capacitor emptied.

"It will take a few minutes for that to recharge," Doll admitted as he swapped to his more mundane weaponry and started firing into the crowd once more. Doll's attack had bought everyone the time they needed to reload and recoup. The moment the field was down, firing resumed. The Astartes, the veteran House Guard, and the Skitarii, were ruthless and efficient as they gunned down the enemy. The horde crept ever closer, each step costing them dozens of their number, but the horde had the numbers to spare.

As the writhing throng crossed an invisible threshold, Bolaar signaled for his Astartes to throw their grenades. The larger grenades exploded in a series of violent detonations that threw viscera and sent separated limbs everywhere.

"Fall back to the next doorway." Drakios moved at the front, scanning the corridor as the horde surged behind them. His eyes caught a length of reinforced piping running along the wall, pale blue, marked with oxygen symbols and caution glyphs. Without hesitation, he raised his pistol and fired. The first shot punched through the pipe, and with a sharp hiss, high-pressure gas blasted into the corridor. A second shot struck the escaping stream, and the world behind them ignited.

Flame rushed down the hallway in a blinding torrent, engulfing the front ranks of the pursuing horde. The screech of burning flesh and metal echoed over the roar of the fire. The entire passage lit up, searing hot and choked with smoke. By the time the pressure dropped and the flames died back, the hallway was a blackened ruin. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Excellent shot, Arken," Doll praised.

"Clever," Bolaar commented.

"Reinforcements are en route. Hold position." Drakios nodded in acknowledgement and frowned fiercely.

"What kind of sick, heretical psychopath fills an entire cargo hold with animated corpses?"

"Trying to understand the mind of those who fall to chaos is a fool's errand," Xor spoke as he loaded a flask of ammunition into his long plasma rifle. Drakios felt it and heard it first, the deep rhythmic thumping of something heavy moving at great speed across the metal deck, rapidly approaching from behind him. As he glanced back over his shoulder, Bolaar called out, "Move aside, clear the path," just in time.

"For. The. Emperor!" The blurred form of Silverfury in his Contemptor Dreadnought rushed by them. He yelled as he slammed into the horde of zombies like a freight train impacting a herd of deer. His combat claw scything through them as his assault cannon opened up. Right on his heels was Brother Solantor in his Ironclad Dreadnought. The two massive figures occupied the majority of the hallway as they plowed and purged their way towards the bay.

Additional Astartes with heavy flamers followed the two dreadnoughts to pick off any stragglers and cleanse the filth inside with fire. Drakios looked at the slowly vanishing backs of the two murderous machines and then turned his gaze to Bolaar.

"Couldn't you have done something similar?" he asked.

"Possibly. However, there was a minute chance that such a horde could damage a part of my armour. I evaluated the risks. Even as armoured as I am, I am not immune to being fully swarmed," Bolaar explained as the upper half of a flaming zombie crawled towards him. He lifted an armoured boot and stomped down, crushing the undead's skull to a pulp.

"I do hope the other teams are having more success than we are," Drakios sighed, his plans for an exciting night of exploration and treasure hunting had been interrupted with foul warp sorcery. —------------------------------------------------------- POV: Nicole I was reviewing the latest reports from the other teams as we set up our newest communications relay. Lord Drakios and Master Doll had run into quite the swarm. It had turned into a slog, but with the Star Dragons' support, I figured they'd be fine.

The rest of the teams weren't faring much better. All three Inquisitorial squads had requested reinforcements, but it would take time to reach them. One team stumbled into a hive of metal-eating, death-world-grade wasps. Insects the size of mastiffs, nesting deep in the fused wreck of the Forge vessel and the Mass Conveyor. An extermination team was already en route, loaded with what I can only describe as an irresponsible amount of promethium.

Another team found a sealed vault and cracked it open, only to be attacked by a daemon engine. That wasn't the strange part. The strange part was that two daemons had possessed it and were fighting each other for control just as fiercely as they were attacking the team. That team is stuck on a chunk of a Carnage-class cruiser. The Inquisitor has dispatched her assassins to assist. The third team… drew the shortest straw.

They found a secured vault in one of the asteroid chunks, only to be repelled by battle servitors and auto-defenses that refused to recognize any authority but their own. Their retreat path led them into the claws of an unbound daemonhost. According to the report, it's still chasing them. The Inquisitor has dispatched her Deathwatch kill team, either to assist or to clean up what's left. Meanwhile, I've picked up an odd energy signature buried in the wreckage of what looks like part of a space station.

We've been threading our way through the debris and twisting corridors for hours, heading toward the source. The Felinids have been brilliant, with their forward scouting, often being faster than even my drone. As we near the signal, we start to see flickers of power. The lights in the corridors pulse on for a moment, then blink out. A few minutes later, they flicker again. The generator must be stuck in a restart loop. We enter through a ragged hole in the hull and begin working our way inward.

The architecture was bare, minimal, and unfamiliar. Definitely not Imperial, not Aeldari either. Some minor Xenos? Or a forgotten offshoot of humanity? I am not sure. We are almost at the reactor when we pass through a room, and something catches my eye. A holographic map flares into existence, flickering and half-glitched. Most of it was indecipherable, but what I could see made me stop cold. It was a broad-spectrum galactic map. It even showed the region around the station.

Little blinking lights dotted the display, none in the Ur-Haven system, but many scattered elsewhere. I waited for the cycle to repeat, and when the map lit up again, I record several images. As we move towards the reactor, I study the display, and try to make sense of it. A bundle of thick cables snake away from the core, running upward towards what looks like a sensor array a few levels above. The reactor itself is damaged, but some basic repairs should stabilize it somewhat. I run a deep scan and get to work.

The language on the interface isn't in my databanks, so I kick off a decryption program while I start making adjustments, rerouting cables, closing valves, bringing the core down to a low but steady output. My goal isn't to power everything. I just need the room with the map and its connections stable. It works, mostly. Instead of brief moments of power, the cycle shifts to almost an hour online, with only short interruptions.

Fuel levels are dangerously low-the fuel is some sort of exotic liquid I don't recognize, but there is just enough to keep it going for a few hours.

"Alright, team. Secure the closest rooms and settle in. I want a thorough analysis of this thing. L3-3T, Rayke, you're with me," I command the Tech-Priests. They join me as I watch the display cycle again. The map is mostly the same, but the blinking dots keep shifting. Especially those near the Great Rift and the major warp storms. Each blinking point had one or two links to others, but the links weren't static. They kept changing over time. It took a few hours before it hit me. I drew in a sharp breath.

L3-3T and Rayke both look up immediately.

"Princeps?" L3-3T asks.

"I know what this is," I murmur, a grin creeping onto my face.

"Oh, Drakios is going to want this." I step back and gesture around us.

"This is a Warp Gate Map. Not just a static chart, an active system. It can't navigate the warp on its own, but it marks the temporary corridors. The short-lived warp gates that appear and vanish. With this, a ship could catch those windows and cut travel time immensely, if you know what you're doing."

"It's a clever system," I added.

"Doesn't even need its own augurs. Just interfaces with a station's or ship's sensor suite and builds a broad-spectrum map of the surrounding region. The blinking lights? Those are the warp gates. But with the sensor damage… it could just be replaying logs from before it arrived here."

"Is it human-made?" L3-3T asks, a little too hopefully.

"Doubtful. Xenotech, most likely," both Tech-Priests immediately recoil from the console. I roll my eyes and keep my tone calm.

"Relax. This type of Xenotech is covered under the Drakios Dynasty's warrant. Besides, someone aiming to join the Xenologis could spend a decade studying this thing," that got their attention. They both settle down and lean back in, curiosity overcoming their weariness.

"Let's finish documenting everything. Once we're done, I'll shut the reactor down, and we can head towards the Galleon. It sounds like it's getting interesting over there," I say, confidently. The scouts have taken the opportunity to rest. The Skitarii, Baldos, and Brother Silverwalker stand guard, silent and immovable, at the perimeter. The station fragment doesn't have any other artifacts, just this module. Still, we depart in high spirits. The data alone is a major find.

But just as we begin to make our way into the hulk, I catch something, a flicker of movement. A shadow, where there shouldn't have been one. When I look, it is gone. I ignore it the first time. No psychic interference. No Auspex pings. Nothing unusual. But as we make our way deeper into the wreckage, that feeling creeps in again. That slow, cold certainty that something is watching me.