289.947.M30 – Eremus Gate
Four days of uneventful duty. Four days of routine. We crossed the void toward the derelict that the Magos swore bore the mark of Mars. Sergeant Kallin detached half the Alpha Legion, Pheron leading them, to scout the Orks in one of the pinnaces. Fast enough to run, small enough to hide—at least in theory. The rest of us remained aboard.
Meanwhile, the hunt for the missing servants—and the warp charts they bore—continued. The Ashen Promise is vast, but not endless. If they yet live, they will be found. If they are dead, the charts will be found. The cold truth of probabilities.
Brother Daecrus has returned to duty, his new bionic arm moving with mechanical surety. Iskandra is choosing her staff from among the crew. I continue to observe them all. Mortals and Navigators, even the new serfs: I see in them valor, not fear; purpose, not panic. Halcyd laughs at me for this, telling me they are mortified to become slaves to a house full of mutants, but I know what I see. The spark of the Emperor burns in them no less than in us.
The derelict proved to be the Myrmidion 7-17, an explorator cruiser. Far larger than the Ashen, but not a true warship. The hull was strangely intact. Orks would have looted or destroyed it. Instead, it drifted in silence for ten years, whispering only a faint IFF reply to an uncaring galaxy content to ignore it.
We boarded. Two Thunderhawks. One half squad of Wolves under Sergeant Hrothgar, one half squad of the Guard. I went with Menalkos, Kharros, Akeiron, and Halcyd. The Magos joined us. We are honored by his presence.
The bay doors would not answer. We left our gunship and crossed the void. Even the airlock refused us, until I interfaced my armor with its systems. For one heartbeat I saw the Navigator’s pattern again—the serpent spiral, the radiance in darkness—but in machine code. Then the handshake completed, the system reset, and the hatch yielded.
Inside, the Magos reset local systems and the bay doors groaned open. Imperial Fist serfs remained to tend the Thunderhawk. We advanced.
Everywhere: silence. Systems caught in recursive loops, crew long dead but still jacked into their consoles. Their bionics asked the ship endless questions, and the ship answered endlessly. Ten years of meaninglessness. Ten years of madness.
At the manufactory decks, the silence ended. Dormant slaughter-servitors reawakened, eager to obey their final command: reduce all flesh to paste. Pallets of the wretched matter sat stacked, mute testimony to the crew’s fate. The Magos forbade any direct communion with the ship’s systems. He himself used a Black Device—his firewall against binaric corruption.
The Wolves reached the bridge. They reported the captain had ordered the ship shut down, non-essential crew recycled, and only essential members preserved. But soon even the essentials forgot food, forgot time. They, too, became consumed by endless computation.
There was fighting. Turrets turned against us. I destroyed them with my bolter, channeling the Dragon's wrath. Akeiron fell when a shell tore through shield and leg both—painful, but not fatal. Servitors attacked in droves as we neared the datacore, but we held them while the Magos tore what knowledge he could from the troubled machine.
Then we fell back. Static drowned our vox. The Wolves did not answer. The bay doors refused to yield, and we blasted them apart—the ship is lost to us anyway.
We launched. The other Thunderhawk launched, too. But I watched the auspex. Its course was wrong. Not toward the Ashen. Toward us.
I shouted the order. The crew hesitated—they saw allies, brothers. I saw only an attack profile. They obeyed at last. We fired every weapon. The gunship blossomed into fire before it could kill us.
For a heartbeat, I thought we had slain our own. But no—the Wolves had never boarded their craft. They had left “on foot,” void-crossing to be retrieved by us. The Emperor protects even his most foolhardy of servants.
The Myrmidion 7-17 will not be allowed to drift again. The Magos has decreed its destruction. As soon as we were clear, the Ashen opened up, batteries stripping shields from the Mechanicus vessel, now quickly coming to life, before our lances tore it to shreds.
Another mention in dispatches, perhaps. Another stone placed in the wall of my duty. We endure.
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