Chapter 220: Rust, Fungus, Pain
The Death Guard lingered briefly in the warp, having received no reply from Rust, but instead picked up another faint distress signal.
After analysis, this signal, dynamically encrypted, was found to use Mechanicus cipher codes. Master of the Forge Hades managed to break the code and trace the source—a small Mechanicus vessel, close to breaking apart.
The little ship drifted quietly amid the warp's turbulence. It was clearly never meant for warp travel, with its Gellar field virtually nonexistent, suggesting it had entered the warp in an emergency. From the paint markings, the Death Guard judged it to be a ship from Rust.
The mission to recover the ship and any personnel aboard was issued. Given the possibility that the Mechanicus vessel might have suffered warp corruption, the Death Guard dispatched a team led by Hades.
. . . . . . . . .
'Something felt wrong.'
Hades stood silently on the deck of the small ship. Lacking proper warp shielding, it showed clear signs of corruption.
Normally, going into the warp without proper protections was a gamble: if lucky, nothing much happened; if unlucky, the crew would go mad, the ship might grow mouths, and the warp would manifest nightmares from the deepest human fears, driving any sentient being into insanity.
So, Hades had in fact prepared himself to see a ship full of twisted horrors, but—
The corruption on this ship was very specific in its character.
Swarms of flies crowded the deck, buzzing noisily. Pus seeped from gaps between planks, making the floor slick. Glittering, colorful granules piled up on the metal walls, while rust was consuming every corner of the ship. Those rough yellowish lumps crawled like living slime mold, transforming the steel they passed over into a filthy, soil-like crust.
Hades fell silent.
These were clear signs of Nurgle doing.
Was it too late for them to just run?
And weren't they supposed to be fighting Rangda? What the hell was this?
Could it be that this region of the warp was too close to Nurgle's domain? Or was it just a coincidence? In any case, when the Death Guard and Nurgle's presence overlapped in a single area, no amount of caution was excessive.
This vigorous, living scene was faithfully transmitted back by Vorx to the command chamber aboard the Endurance.
Mortarion watched the swarms of flies in silence, the Primarch breathing heavily.
He raised his hand to signal Garro to place all Death Guard on high alert. Their Gellar fields were pushed to maximum output, and they stood ready to execute an emergency warp jump at any time.
[Hades, act according to your own judgment. If you sense danger, be prepared to withdraw at once.]
Standing near the edge of the ship's deck, Hades crouched down and ran his hand across the now-fertile flooring. Thick moss seemed to breathe upon the rust, emitting a beautiful yet dangerous greenish glow. But where Hades' hand passed, this life withered instantly, revealing the deck's original surface beneath—the metal was already gone, replaced by a thick crust of rust.
They were still within the warp, and Hades was unsure what might happen if he tried using a large-scale null-field here. It was possible that as soon as these warp phenomena were dispelled, he himself would be ejected from the warp altogether.
'Hm….'
Right now, the Death Guard's main fleet was still holding position in the warp, and their only clue about Rust's star system was this little ship where he stood. If there was no further news, the Death Guard would have no choice but to either forcibly open Rust's Mandaville Point to follow Imperial orders, or disobey and fall back to the previous star system.
But if they retreated without a legitimate reason, it wouldn't be a good choice—at the very least, they needed an excuse. Yet they couldn't exactly tell the Lion that the Death Guard had backed off because of Nurgle, could they?
Hades looked at the moss on the ground. After briefly sensing the warp energies here, he stood up and began his deployment.
They could at least take a look. The warp atmosphere here was insufficient to sustain large-scale psychic entities or summoning circles.
[We can give it a try first.]
Hades replied.
This ship was too small for a Knight to board, so Hades positioned a Wraith Knight on the landing craft's deck nearby, to help suppress the warp energies around it and at the very least, to guarantee a viable retreat route. Then he picked out a dozen veterans to accompany him deeper into the ship.
[If you feel any mental discomfort, including auditory or visual hallucinations, report to me immediately.]
The veterans replied in confirmation seriously.
They, too, were aware of how unusual this mission had become—images from old nightmares, and the suddenly grave demeanor of Hades, told them clearly that something unexpected was at play.
But the good news was that as they crossed the floor made spongy by corrosion, and passed through the crew quarters overrun with humanoid-shaped fungi, they encountered no enemies. Apart from the flies drifting through the damp air, and the fungi that seemed to still be breathing, they saw nothing else.
Hades took a deep breath, gripping his Obituary.
They are inside a spaceship tainted by one of the Chaos Gods, and they saw no enemies.
That kind of abnormality put him even more on edge.
The ship was tiny, so they reached its deepest compartment in no time. There, they found the source of the signal.
Fungus, rust, and moss had crept over every inch of the room. Moths clung densely like scales on the walls, and fungi piled up thick in one corner. Deep within the fat roots of the fungus, they could faintly see scarlet cloth, its color faded by sticky fluids, and coagulated blood splattered across the wall.
The signal was coming from within that mound of fungus.
After confirming there were no other threats or ambushes in the room, Hades strode forward. He channeled his null-field into Obituary and carefully, quickly cleared away the surface mushrooms—revealing a battered Magos Explorator underneath. Fungi had erupted from his part-mechanical abdomen, with red and blue cables absurdly entwined with the mushrooms.
He was already dead.
As a Master of the Forge, Hades could see at a glance that the Magos had died from a self-induced electrical short-circuit—in other words, suicide.
What on earth had happened?
Could it be that the missing Rust system had been invaded by Nurgle's forces?
But this was the timeframe for Rangda—was it really possible for a major Four Gods incursion to appear in the physical world this early?
Hades frowned unconsciously, carefully inspecting the Magos, trying to gather more clues.
He found it.
On the Magos's current log recorder, Hades saw traces of the Mechanicus's typical ciphers. The data was hidden deeply—this Magos had used faint, unnatural tremors to encode what he wanted to transmit.
Through the waveform record, the Magos had also attempted to broadcast the information, but the rapidly growing fungus had interfered, leaving him able to send only the simplest distress signal.
If one compared it to a normal human, it was as if this man had controlled his own heartbeat to transmit a message using his ECG pattern.
It's a bizarre yet ingenious act, and something that only a Mechanicus could manage, though it would also cause them tremendous pain. The unstable current would make them tremble involuntarily, vomit, suffer cognitive damage, and in the end, struggle while watching their own engine burn out and collapse into death.
What kind of thing did he want to convey for him to voluntarily endure such agony?
Hades frowned, beginning to decode the information hidden in the waveforms.
[Rust I Mining World Magos 08
Fungus, pain.
Rust system, xenos Mekanic attack, on the verge of falling.
Requesting reinforcements, reinforcements, reinforcements, Rust, large planetary forge, requesting reinforcements.
Mekanic, large fleet, Class-3 xenos, weak psykers, Mandaville Point unsealed. 2.3, 4.3, 5.7
Escape, warp, seeking reinforcements.
Reinforcements, fungus, reinforcements.
Under attack, under attack, fungus, green, white, Space Marines.
Fungus, pain, reinforcements, I don't want to die, fung— pain, pain, pain.
Pain, pain, pain.
RUST REQUESTING REINFORCEMENTS!!! ]
Dense pleas for reinforcements tangled with references to fungus, becoming this Magos's final testament.
Until the very last moment, he was still trying to call for help for the Forge World, with his log showing repeated forced attempts to activate the signal transmitter.
Hades took a deep breath and offered a silent prayer for the Magos in his heart:
[May your soul return to the Omnissiah.]
Then he opened a comm channel:
[Unconfirmed message: Rust is under attack by a weak-psyker xenos Mekanic fleet, on the verge of falling.]
[Also,]
Hades's expression turned grim, and he lowered his voice:
[In this Magos's last message, he mentioned seeing white-green Space Marines.]
On the other end of the channel, Mortarion shuddered, frozen in disbelief.
[Hades, withdraw immediately.]
Mortarion's voice brooked no argument over the vox. Everything here was simply too bizarre, and he would tolerate no mistakes at this moment.
Hades, following up on the string of numbers from the Magos's message, found a hidden database on the ship. Inside were maps of the Rust system and its war situation, along with intelligence on the Mekanic.
After confirming no other information was left behind, Hades and his team chose to evacuate immediately. On his way out, Hades used Obituary to grant final rest to a few fungus-ridden lumps that still seemed to be breathing—perhaps they were just servitors, but Hades preferred not to think about it.
As soon as Hades's ship had pulled away, the Death Guard main fleet wasted no time unleashing a saturating bombardment upon the small vessel—the Death Lord practically wishing the ship would vanish from existence.
The sudden, twisted scene once again plunged the Death Guard fleet into a long silence.
They could not linger in the warp forever, but should they advance or retreat?
At that moment, a push from the First Legion arrived, urging the Death Guard forward.
According to the Magos's last words, they had only encountered Nurgle's corruption after entering the warp—which might mean that the realspace Rust system in was still free of warp incursions, since warp forces penetrating physical reality was still extraordinarily difficult…
—or was it that Nurgle's gaze had also fallen on this place?
Nurgle was like a damn fly that never stopped buzzing around them.
Hades really want to curse that abomination; the Legion has been in a good mood to fight xenos, but he hadn't expected that giant filth to show up on its own.