Chapter 1: Restart on the Space Hulk
On the bridge of the Emperor's Unyielding Will.
Captain Cornelius Davenport stared through the viewport at the derelict drifting in the void.
By the Imperial calendar, the date was some year, some month, some day of M42.
He couldn't remember the exact date.
In the Imperium Nihilus, dates had been losing their meaning for some time now.
After the Great Rift tore the galaxy open, the flow of time on this side no longer synced with the Imperium Sanctus. The drift varied depending on your position. Nobody could tell him what day it was.
"Weapons Commander Bellak."
"Here, Captain."
"Assess the feasibility of a torpedo strike on that hulk's primary mass core."
Bellak pulled up several data panels and gave them a quick scan.
"Captain, our current torpedo stock is three rounds. We also need to reach Sarteinos and Kristo-Urban for relief operations. If we burn through our stores here..."
"Understood."
He already knew, of course. He just needed to hear it said aloud.
At that moment, Navigator Alvar Mebelakrellai emerged from the rear of the bridge.
He had come aboard three months ago. His predecessor had died at the entry point of their last blind jump, his third eye having been open in the warp for too long. Now it wouldn't close anymore.
Mebelakrellai had taken his place.
"Captain, I've been observing that tear for thirty-six standard hours."
"The hulk's mass anchor is still on the warp side. By my conservative estimate, it'll be pulled back into the warp's depths within eighty to ninety standard days."
Davenport listened, then issued his orders.
"Cancel the torpedo strike request."
"All hands, bring the ship about. Full thrust. We're leaving this area."
"Captain." A young voice spoke up behind him. "There may still be survivors from the 88th Strike Force aboard that hulk, in the..."
"Second Lieutenant Julian." Davenport fixed the young officer with a steady look. "The 88th Strike Force went dark fourteen hours after they boarded."
"They're gone. Execute the order."
"The Emperor protect them."
After the Great Rift ripped the galaxy apart, the light of the Astronomican couldn't reach this side anymore. They sailed through the dark using worn-out charts and a navigator with half-blind eyes.
Davenport wasn't sure whether the Emperor's gaze could still reach the Nihilus.
He hoped it could.
He wasn't sure.
The Emperor's Unyielding Will tore a brief warp rift in the void and plunged into deeper, unknown darkness.
The hulk remained behind, quietly suspended at the edge of the star system.
In the wreckage zone of Deck Seventy-Seven, two Gretchin were brawling viciously over the loot on a dead Imperial soldier.
"Old Naro found it first!"
"You squig-brained piece of squig dung, you can't see what's right on the floor! I found it first!"
"I'm on the floor, you maggot-faced idiot!"
They were the smallest members of the greenskin family. Standing barely waist-high on an average human adult, their yellow-green skin was plastered with stains of uncertain origin. Their oversized ears jutted out on either side of their heads.
Both of them had their eyes locked on the Imperial soldier's corpse, specifically on the knife at the dead man's hip.
A Catachan Fang.
The blade was over fifty centimetres long, broad-bladed, single-edged, with a serrated spine and a grip wrapped in rough cloth.
The steel caught the dim light with a cold, indifferent gleam.
In the Gretchin aesthetic system, shiny things were the ultimate measure of all value.
The corpse was yanked back and forth, back and forth.
Neither Gretchin noticed.
Rosen's consciousness had been drifting in darkness for a long time.
No sense of time, no sense of boundaries. Piece by piece, he pulled himself back together.
The memories came back. Two sets of them.
One belonged to Kol "Iron Serpent" Rosen, veteran of the Catachan 317th Jungle Combat Regiment.
The other belonged to a soul that had no business being here.
The moment the two sets fused completely, Rosen swore something deeply unprintable somewhere in the back of his mind.
He knew exactly where he was.
Warhammer 40K. The Imperium Nihilus, after the Great Rift.
If you had to pick the single worst point in time across every timeline this universe had to offer, where he was sitting right now would be a top-three candidate by a landslide.
The Imperium split in half. The warp barrier riddled with holes. Chaos tides gnawing at every planet without an Astartes garrison to hold them back.
And he was one ordinary Catachan jungle fighter, currently face-down on Deck Seventy-Seven of a derelict space hulk, bleeding from his right leg, listening to two idiots argue.
"System? Swarm Mind? Anything there?"
Silence.
Rosen didn't panic.
He let his consciousness seep back into his body, slowly and methodically. Assess the damage. Calibrate his senses. Identify threats. Determine status.
Head wound, right side near the temporal lobe. Significant blood loss, but cognitive function mostly intact. Light injury.
Sidearm, gone.
Lasgun, gone.
Navigation unit, gone.
Comm-bead, destroyed.
But the Catachan Fang was still there.
Small comfort. Guns jam. Guns run dry. A blade made on Catachan outlasts its owner and then gets passed on to the next one.
He lay still for a few seconds.
Then his right hand snapped up and locked around the right Gretchin's neck.
One clean twist. Standard Catachan jungle execution.
The Gretchin on the right went limp, with about the same resistance as snapping a slightly smarter-than-average enoki mushroom.
In the instant the right-side Gretchin stopped fighting back, the left one yanked hard on the corpse, stumbled backward, and stared in horror as the dead man sat up.
"Hm?"
Before it could scream, the Catachan Fang was already in its throat.
Both Gretchin had settled their dispute over property rights in entirely different ways.
Rosen stood up, wiped the blade twice on the deck plates, and slid it back into its sheath.
Then he heard something familiar.
"Life Point +1"
"Life Point +1"
"Hm?"
He paused.
Was his system coming back online, or was this some Genestealer hallucinatory plot?
Then a semi-transparent hololithic interface flickered into the corner of his vision.
The system was back. It had just been gutted beyond recognition.
The Swarm Mind network was gone entirely.
What remained was a bare-bones interface. Sparse. If he was being honest, embarrassingly sparse.
The whole thing was divided into five lonely tabs:
[DEATH WARRIORS], [TECHNOLOGY], [ARMOURY], [HALL OF HEROES], [SCRAPYARD]
Four of them were greyed out and locked.
The only one lit up was [DEATH WARRIORS].
Rosen opened it. A few lines of data:
[Death Warrior System: Rebooting]
Current Host Status: Light injuries.
Resources:
Life Points: 2
Refined Steel: 0 cubic metres
Available Exchange Sequence: Basic Infantry Unit (Locked) [Catachan Jungle Fighter]
(Current sole available template: constructed from host's genetic baseline, injury and disease states excluded, one hundred percent loyalty guaranteed.)
Exchange Requirements: [Life Points: 2 / 100] [Refined Steel: 0 / 1 cubic metre]
Rosen stared at the numbers.
His brow slowly knotted together.
"Oh, for the Emperor's shrivelled..."