On the bridge of the Emperor's Unbroken Will.
Captain Cornelius Davenport stared at the drifting space hulk suspended in the void.
According to the Imperial calendar, today was some day, some month, some year in M42.
He could no longer remember the exact date.
In the dark half of the Imperium, calendars had long since begun to lose their meaning.
After the Great Rift, time on this side no longer flowed in step with the Imperium Sanctus. The discrepancy shifted from place to place, never constant, never predictable. No one could tell him what day it truly was anymore.
"Arms Commander Belak."
"At your command, Captain."
"Assess the feasibility of a torpedo strike against the hulk's primary mass core."
Belak pulled up several data panels and scanned them.
"Captain, our current torpedo reserve stands at three rounds. We are also under orders to proceed to Saldinos and Christo-Urban to provide援助... assistance. If we exhaust our remaining payload here..."
"I understand."
Of course he understood. He had only wanted to hear someone else say it aloud.
At that moment, the ship's Navigator, Alvar Mebaracarlai, stepped out from the rear of the bridge.
He had come aboard three months earlier. The previous Navigator had died at the entry point of their last blind jump. That eye of his had remained open in the warp far too long.
Now it would never close again.
Mebaracarlai had taken his place.
"Captain, I have observed that rift for thirty-six standard hours."
"The hulk's mass-anchor remains on the warp side. By my most conservative estimate, within eighty to ninety standard days, it will be dragged back into the depths of the immaterium."
After hearing the report, Davenport gave the order.
"Cancel the torpedo launch request."
"Bring the ship about. Maximum thrust. We are leaving this region."
"Captain." A young voice rose behind him. "There may still be survivors from the Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment. On that hulk. In there..."
"Lieutenant Julian." Davenport turned and looked the young officer straight in the eyes. "The Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment lost all contact fourteen hours after boarding."
"They are gone. Carry out the order."
"The Emperor protects them."
After the Great Rift tore the galaxy apart, the light of the Astronomican no longer reached this place. They sailed through darkness with worn-out charts and the half-blind eye of a Navigator.
Davenport did not know whether the Emperor's gaze could still reach the dark half of the Imperium.
He hoped the answer was yes.
But he was not sure.
The Emperor's Unbroken Will tore open a brief warp rift in the void and plunged into an even deeper stretch of unknown darkness.
Only the hulk remained behind, hanging in silence at the edge of the sector.
In the wreckage zone of Deck Seventy-Seven, two gretchin were fighting viciously over the spoils on a dead human soldier.
"Old Naro grabbed it first!"
"You squig-shit idiot, you couldn't spot loot on the floor if it bit you! I found it first!"
"I'm standing on the floor already, you maggot-brained moron!"
They were among the smallest members of the greenskin race, barely reaching the waist of an adult human male. Their yellow-green skin was caked in stains of uncertain origin, and their oversized ears stuck out sharply to either side.
Both of them were staring at the corpse of the Imperial soldier.
More precisely, they were staring at the knife on his belt.
The Fang of Catachan.
The blade was over fifty centimeters long, broad and heavy, single-edged, with saw-teeth along the spine and a handle wrapped in rough cloth.
Its surface reflected a cold metallic gleam.
In the aesthetic system of a gretchin, shine was the ultimate standard by which all value was judged.
The corpse jerked once under their tugging.
Then again.
The two gretchin noticed nothing.
Lawson's consciousness had been drifting in darkness for a very long time.
No sense of time. No sense of boundaries.
He was piecing himself back together, fragment by fragment.
Then the memories returned.
Two sets of them.
One belonged to Cole "Iron Serpent" Lawson, veteran of the 317th Catachan Jungle Fighters.
The other belonged to a soul that had no business being here.
The instant the two sets of memories finished merging, Lawson cursed in the depths of his mind with extreme lack of civility.
He knew where this was.
Warhammer 40,000. The Imperium Nihilus, after the Great Rift.
If someone had to pick the single worst point in the entire timeline of this universe to wake up in, his current location would absolutely rank in the top three by unanimous vote.
The Imperium had been split in half. The veil between reality and the warp was riddled with holes. The tides of Chaos gnawed at every world not sheltered by the Astartes.
And he, an utterly ordinary Catachan jungle fighter, was currently sprawled across Deck Seventy-Seven of a space hulk, bleeding from the right leg, listening to two idiots argue.
"System? Hive mind? Anybody in there still breathing?" Lawson called out inwardly to his power.
There was no response.
Lawson did not panic.
He guided his consciousness back into his body a little at a time, assessing damage, calibrating his senses, confirming threats, and determining his condition.
Head wound.
Right temporal region.
Considerable blood loss, but cognitive function was basically intact.
Light injury.
Pistol, gone.
Rifle, gone.
Nav-unit, gone.
Communicator, destroyed.
But the Fang of Catachan was still there.
That gave him a faint measure of comfort.
A firearm could jam. It could run dry.
But a blade forged on Catachan could outlive its owner, and then keep being passed down.
He lay there silently for a few more seconds.
Then his right hand shot out and clamped around the throat of the gretchin on the right.
One hard twist.
A textbook jungle execution.
The gretchin on the right went limp immediately. It felt less like snapping a neck and more like breaking a sentient bundle of enoki mushrooms.
At the exact moment the one on the right lost all ability to resist, the one on the left gave a hard yank, stumbled backward, and stared in horror as the corpse sat up.
"Huh?"
It did not even have time to scream before the Fang of Catachan punched through its throat.
The two gretchin ended their dispute over property rights in two completely different ways.
Lawson rose to his feet, wiped the blade twice against the deck plating, and slid it back into its sheath.
Then he heard a familiar voice.
Life Points +1
Life Points +1
"Hm?"
Lawson froze for a moment.
Was this the return of his system?
Or some illusion spun by Tzeentch?
Only when a familiar translucent holographic interface appeared in the corner of his vision did he finally relax a little.
The system had indeed returned.
It had just been castrated beyond recognition.
The vast hive-mind network it once possessed was gone.
The current interface was absurdly crude, almost pitifully bare-bones.
The entire display was divided into five lonely tabs:
[Retainer Page]
[Technology Page]
[Armory Page]
[Valhalla]
[Scrap Yard]
Four of them were greyed out and locked.
The only one still lit up was [Retainer Page].
Lawson opened it.
A few lines of data appeared on the panel:
[Retainer System Rebooting]
Current Host Status: Lightly Wounded
Resource Reserves:
Life Points: 2
Adamant Steel Reserve: 0 cubic meters
Available Exchange Sequence: Basic Ground Combat Unit (Locked)
[Catachan Jungle Fighter]
Current only available template: Constructed using the host's current genetic template as a base, with wounds and illness removed. One hundred percent loyal.
Exchange Requirements:
[Life Points: 2 / 100]
[Adamant Steel: 0 / 1 cubic meter]
Lawson stared at the lines of data, his brows knotting tightly.
"Oh, by the Emperor's shriveled balls..."