Chapter 15: The Armoury on the Hulk
Deck Seventy-Five. Maintenance branch corridor.
Exactly as Fezekks had described, the armoury entrance was completely hidden behind a layer of collapsed hull plating and warped metal sheeting.
From outside it looked like a section of corridor that had been fully blocked off and abandoned.
"The door is behind that debris."
Fezekks indicated with its forked tail toward a plate in the lower right corner, one that was noticeably more uniform in shape than the surrounding wreckage.
"That's the original door panel. The Imperial Aquila is still on it. If you don't mind the grime, scrape the dust off and you'll see it."
Rosen signalled Number 1 forward.
Number 1 examined the edges of the plate, found a gap with enough purchase, and drove both hands into it.
His arms swelled under the dim light, veins rising.
Creak. Creak creak creak.
Under the force of his grip, the plate began to deform. Its edges pulled free from the wall channel millimetre by millimetre.
The entire door panel was torn away from the frame by brute strength, revealing a rectangular entrance behind it large enough to pass through.
Beyond the entrance was complete darkness.
Rosen left Numbers 2 and 3 on watch at the entrance and went in with Numbers 1, 4, and 5.
Fezekks remained in his grip.
It was a standard Imperial shipboard small-arms storage bay, roughly twenty metres long and ten metres wide.
Multi-tier metal weapon racks lined both walls, though centuries of exposure had left everything under a thick layer of dust and rust.
The moment Rosen took in the full contents of the bay, his pupils widened slightly.
Several hundred weapons.
On the first rack to the left, at least forty M-G standard-pattern Astra Militarum lasguns were stacked in neat rows, their overall structure still visibly intact. On the lower shelf beneath the lasguns, a row of sealed charge pack storage cases.
The second rack to the left was the bolt weapons section.
Rosen recognised the silhouettes immediately. Locke-pattern boltguns. Bolt pistols. And two heavy boltguns with longer, thicker barrels.
Beside them, ammunition cases stacked in order. Brass-coloured .75 calibre bolt rounds gleaming coldly through the dust.
The racks to the right were even better stocked.
Crates of Imperial standard fragmentation and krak grenades, secured carefully in shock-dampening frames.
Several Imperial chainswords, the terrifying close-combat weapon that used a high-speed rotating chainblade as its cutting edge. The chainteeth had accumulated significant rust from lack of maintenance, but a proper application of machine oil would have them running again.
Several melta charge tubes, and a collection of demolition charges and detonators in patterns Rosen didn't immediately have names for.
At the very back of the armoury, on a dedicated metal stand, sat a round power shield.
Its face was roughly sixty centimetres in diameter with visible impact damage along the edges. The Imperial Aquila carved into the centre had been worn down significantly by time but was still recognisable.
On the back of the shield face was a set of leather and metal straps for mounting on the forearm, and a compact force field generator connected to an energy cell.
The power shield's force field generator could project an energy barrier across the shield face capable of deflecting las-fire, solid rounds, and low-yield plasma fire for a short duration.
Judging by the age of the shield, the energy cell probably had enough charge left for a few minutes of sustained defence.
A few minutes, when the difference was between life and death, could be the difference between eternity and nothing.
"The Emperor protects." Rosen said it quietly.
He let go and shifted Fezekks to his armpit, freeing his hand to pick up one of the Locke-pattern boltguns. He pulled the bolt back and checked the action. Intact.
The anti-rust oil had done its job in the sealed environment.
Not as smooth as a new weapon, but all the mechanical components were still functional.
He was about to put the gun down and move on to checking the ammunition cases.
Then something happened.
At the edge of his vision, a boltgun resting on the top shelf of the right-side rack moved.
The gun was floating in mid-air.
It rose slowly from the rack, hung suspended for roughly half a second, then swung its barrel to point at Number 4, who was standing near the weapon rack checking ammunition.
Rosen's body moved before his mind had finished processing.
His right hand shot out before the gun completed its aim, five fingers clamping hard around the frame, pressing it down out of the air.
The gun struggled in his grip. It actually struggled, as if an invisible hand was contesting control of it.
Catachan grip strength was not something a warp trick could overcome.
Rosen pressed the gun flat against the weapon rack and felt, through the metal frame, a faint warmth that didn't belong to the metal itself. It was the signature of warp energy residue on a physical surface, like an invisible layer of something sticky.
The gun had been contaminated by warp energy.
Sealed in a weapons bay for hundreds of years, the warp radiation that had permeated the hulk's entire metal structure had worked its way into certain weapons as well.
Most were probably only trace contamination. But some would have absorbed enough Chaos energy to develop a rudimentary form of self-direction. In the Warhammer universe, this was not unusual.
Rosen held the contaminated boltgun flat against the rack and looked back at Fezekks, still tucked under his arm.
Fezekks was looking up at him with an expression of complete innocence.
"You did that." Rosen's tone was flat, like he was reading something off a clipboard.
"What?" Fezekks let out a shriek sharp enough to hurt. "I didn't! I swore a true name oath! I can't harm... wait, actually my oath didn't say I couldn't cause harm, but I genuinely didn't control that gun!"
"Those weapons have warp contamination residue on them. It's entirely possible for them to exhibit spontaneous abnormal behaviour on their own. You should know that if you have even the faintest understanding of Imperial ordnance!"
The argument was reasonable.
Rosen didn't spend any time assessing whether it was true.
Because it didn't matter.
Whether Fezekks had moved the gun, or the gun had moved on its own because of warp contamination, the outcome was the same. The Imp's presence was an inherently unstable variable.
As long as it was alive, as long as it was nearby, the same thing could happen again at any moment.
And with an Imp's natural instinct for cunning, even with the true name oath binding it, it would be probing every possible grey area for an opening at every opportunity.
Fezekks had clearly sensed the calm, cold killing intent that had settled into Rosen's eyes.
The single eye went wide. The small body began to shake hard.
Rosen's fingers began to close slowly.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait—"