The ventilation system of a space hulk was a tangled three-dimensional spiderweb.
Centuries ago, these ducts had belonged to different starships. When those ships collided, crushed together, fused, and were reborn in the warp as this colossal steel graveyard a hundred and twenty kilometers across, their ventilation systems had been smashed together as well, forcibly linked, twisted, broken, and reassembled.
For Lawson, though, that made it the perfect battlefield.
They took seven or eight turns. At some intersections, the ducts were so narrow they had to turn sideways just to squeeze through.
Behind them, the Orks' roars and chaotic footsteps echoed through the ductwork, reflecting and amplifying until it sounded as if pursuers were everywhere.
Then, as they passed the fourth junction in the ducts:
"There are greenskins ahead," came Number One's mental signal.
Through Shared Awareness, Lawson saw through Number One's eyes. Roughly thirty meters ahead, below an outlet in the duct, a small band of greenskins was wandering aimlessly through a corridor.
Three Ork boyz.
A dozen or so gretchin.
They were spread out across a relatively open hallway, loafing around with nothing to do.
They clearly were not part of the pursuing force behind them. They were just another small tribe that happened to be patrolling or scavenging in the area.
"Punch through."
Taking a detour meant wasting time, and time was exactly what would allow the several hundred greenskins behind them to close the distance.
The moment Lawson hit the floor, the Fang of Catachan was already plunging into the nearest Ork boy's armpit, driving straight for the cluster of ventricles above the heart.
The Ork boy let out a furious roar and grabbed for Lawson's skull with its other hand.
Lawson twisted aside and drove his knee hard into its lower abdomen.
In that same instant, Number Three's blade slashed in from the side, severing the central spinal cord in its neck with perfect precision.
[Life Points +7]
Numbers One and Four worked together on the second Ork boy.
One in front, one behind.
Number One used his blade to block the horizontal swing of the iron pipe studded with spikes.
From the rear flank, Number Four drove the Fang of Catachan into the creature's kidney area and violently churned upward toward the heart.
The Ork boy howled and turned.
Number Four had already withdrawn.
Number One followed up with a slash straight into the carotid, opening most of its neck.
[Life Points +7]
The third Ork boy was caught between Numbers Two and Five. Wielding a massive curved blade, it managed to fend them both off for nearly five full seconds.
But after five seconds, Number Five cut through the tendon behind its right heel.
The moment the Ork pitched forward, Number Two drove the Fang of Catachan into the back of its skull, destroying the brain matter that would otherwise still have let it struggle even after a headshot.
[Life Points +7]
The gretchin were not worth mentioning.
The moment the three Ork boyz went down, they scattered in all directions. Lawson did not even bother to chase them.
The six men kept running.
The footsteps in the ducts were getting closer.
Lawson led them through a warped blast door that had been crushed down to a gap barely half a meter wide, then over a section of metal platform.
That was when he spotted a perfect hiding place.
A small shuttle of unknown make and era had been jammed diagonally into the gap between two decks.
Its hull had been mangled almost beyond recognition, but the cockpit and the central cargo section were still largely intact, forming a long, sealed space about six meters in length and less than one and a half meters wide.
More importantly, because the shuttle was wedged into the deck gap at an angle close to forty-five degrees, its entrance sat in an extremely inconspicuous position.
"Inside."
All six of them quickly climbed into the wrecked shuttle.
Number Two entered last. He shifted the metal debris outside into a slightly different arrangement, hiding the entrance even more thoroughly.
Then they went silent.
Outside, the thunder of Ork footsteps passed near the shuttle wreck.
"Where did those damned humies run off to?"
"Sniff 'em out! Sniff out da humie stink!"
"I can't smell nuffin'! All I smell is rust!"
"Useless little snotling!"
The greenskins did not give up the search. They kept prowling the nearby area. The roars of the Ork boyz and the shrill cursing of the gretchin rose and fell not far away.
Lawson and the others waited in silence.
The wrecked shuttle's hull blocked out most of the sound and light. Inside, it was pitch black. Only the faintest thread of light, leaking through cracks in the warped cabin walls, barely outlined their vague silhouettes.
Then Lawson felt something wrong.
It was as if something beyond the metal wall was staring directly at him.
"Heh heh heh heh heh heh..."
A sharp, thin laughter seeped through the shuttle's port-side bulkhead.
Lawson's pupils contracted sharply.
A face was slowly surfacing beneath the metal skin of the wall.
It was an ugly little face, about the size of a fist.
Two wildly oversized eyes.
Cloudy orange-yellow irises.
Pupils narrowed into vertical slits like a cat's.
Its mouth split all the way to the sides, revealing several rows of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.
Two curved little horns grew from the top of its head. The left one was shorter than the right, as though something had chewed half of it off.
A warp imp.
The lowest tier of daemonic entity. In the archives of the Imperial Inquisition, a Minor Non-Corporeal Malign Presence. If true daemons were sharks of the warp abyss, these things were parasites clinging to sharkskin.
But parasites had teeth too.
To an ordinary human, even the weakest warp imp was enough to corrode the mind and tear apart the soul.
The Great Rift had torn open the barrier between reality and the warp, and this space hulk had been soaked in the immaterium for centuries. Its material structure had been infiltrated to the limit. For a low-level entity like a warp imp, slipping through such a badly softened boundary was as easy as a fish poking its head out of water.
"Poor little insects, hiding in here and trembling?" the first face cackled from within the bulkhead.
Then, less than an arm's length away on the starboard wall, a second face surfaced as well.
This one was even uglier.
Its left eye was blind, the socket crawling with dark red parasites that wriggled ceaselessly. Half its lips had been chewed away by something, exposing the uneven teeth beneath and a strip of blackened tongue.
"Hee hee hee... six little rats, hiding in a tin can."
The one-eyed warp imp let out a laugh sharp enough to scrape the teeth.
"There are so many big green cats outside looking for you. If I just scream once, they'll all come running over..."
"You're going to die in here."
The first warp imp licked its lips.
"I can smell the fear in your souls. Sweet. Sticky. Feed me more of it... feed me until you die!"