Footsteps echoed through the underground passage, each impact of boot against tal floor creating hollow percussion that bounced off bare walls. The sound repeated endlessly, overlapping with itself in the confined space, creating an acoustic signature of isolation.
The lighting was dim, inconsistent. So sections of the corridor blazed with full illumination while others had been reduced to ergency lighting or darkness entirely. With David departed to establish the second base, no one remained to manage the facility's energy distribution systems. Equipnt had been switched to power-saving modes, reducing consumption to absolute minimums.
Nolan walked through this patchwork of light and shadow, his form alternately visible and obscured as he navigated the familiar route. Two hours of circling through New York's streets in wind and snow had finally concluded. He'd returned to the empty, silent underground base, leaving winter's baptism behind him.
Seven days had passed since Bucky and Old John departed.
They'd led two hundred Gang Dogs, all disguised in civilian clothing and carrying forged docuntation, escorting his aunt toward new lives far from New York. She'd packed everything she owned, reducing decades of accumulated possessions to a manageable collection of suitcases and boxes.
Imperial Heavy Industries had arranged passage on an ocean liner, a ship large enough that a group their size could travel without drawing particular attention. The ship would carry them across the Pacific toward Japan, where new arrangents awaited.
Originally, May had expressed interest in returning to her holand first, visiting family she hadn't seen in years. But hosickness and practicality had warred within her, and ultimately she'd followed Nolan's advice. Japan would serve as her temporary settlent, a place where she could eventually reopen The Evening Hearth in safety, far from anyone who might use her against him.
Surprisingly, Jason going to accompany them. The young man who'd worked at the restaurant had ntioned going ho for the New Year holidays, his tone carrying a wistfulness that suggested he'd been away too long.
Auntie Wu, always generous, had felt terrible about his travel expenses. She'd insisted he join them on the liner, treating this as a farewell gift for his loyal service.
Nolan had simply agreed. As long as his aunt was happy and safe, the specific arrangents didn't matter.
With nearly half the personnel departed, the base felt cavernous. Empty. The echoes were more pronounced now, sounds carrying further without bodies to absorb them.
Two hundred thirty-one Gang Dogs remained, spread throughout the facility on rotating shifts. Dr. Connors continued his work in the laboratory, absorbed in his regeneration serum research to the point where he barely noticed anything beyond his imdiate experints.
Including Nolan himself, that made two hundred thirty-three living humans occupying a base designed to house considerably more.
Raditus and its growing army of intelligent machines didn't count toward that total. They weren't human, required no food or rest, existed in a separate category entirely.
Nolan's thoughts wandered through these ntal calculations as he approached the base's main hall. The lighting grew brighter here, one of the few areas maintained at full power for security and operational purposes.
Sothing moved in his peripheral vision.
The Fist of Belia scuttled across the corridor like an enormous dark green tal rat, its five fingers creating rapid tapping sounds as it propelled itself along. The power gauntlet moved with disturbing organic quality despite being entirely chanical, disappearing into a side passage before Nolan could properly track its trajectory.
He raised his eyebrows, exhaling slowly through his nose. The mysterious artifact had been exhibiting increasingly strange behavior lately, but he lacked the energy to investigate. Let it do whatever it wanted. As long as it didn't actively interfere with operations, he could ignore its peculiarities.
Nolan removed his woolen coat as he walked, the garnt still damp from snow that had lted against his body heat during the journey ho. He draped it over one arm and continued toward the material storage warehouse.
Inside the cold storage unit, he located several Grox steaks. The at was still frozen solid, rock-hard slabs that would require ti to thaw properly. He selected a few pieces and carried them to the base's small kitchen area, beginning the process of preparing dinner.
Half an hour passed.
The scent of cooking at filled the air, mixing with the sll of hot oil and the char from seared surfaces. Nolan worked through the preparation with chanical efficiency, his mind elsewhere even as his hands perford familiar tasks.
When finished, he carried a large plate laden with perfectly cooked steaks to the tal round table in the main hall. The at still crackled slightly, fat rendering and creating small pops as internal heat redistributed.
He sat down heavily, the tal chair creaking under his weight. The steaks sat before him, steam rising in thin wisps, the aroma rich and appetizing.
But as he stared at the food, his appetite simply... vanished.
His brow furrowed. He continued looking at the plate, willing himself to feel hunger, to experience the desire to eat. Nothing ca. The at might as well have been plastic for all the appeal it held.
With a soft sigh, Nolan slumped backward in the chair, his posture abandoning any pretense of proper form. His hand moved almost unconsciously, pulling out the simulator interface and scrolling through its pages.
The designated salvage page still showed active countdown tirs
But the simulation option had completed its natural cooling period. The function was available again, ready to be activated.
Nolan reached for his wrist, untying the red prayer rope that held the small jar of illusion dust. The disguise faded imdiately, revealing his true appearance.
He studied the simulation interface for a mont, considering whether this was the right ti. The base was quiet. No imdiate threats. No pressing obligations requiring his attention for the next several hours.
Decision made, he extended one finger toward the simulation startup option.
The interface responded to his touch, beginning its activation sequence. Status indicators shifted, preparations comnced, reality started bending to accommodate his consciousness transfer to another universe.
Several seconds passed.
Then Nolan's eyes snapped wide open, pupils dilating with sudden realization. His mouth opened in a gasp of horrified recognition.
"Oh no! I forgot to pray to the Emperor!" The words burst out in a rush, panic coloring his tone. "Emperor protect , Emperor..."
[SIMULATION STARTED]
The text blazed across his vision, cutting off his desperate prayer mid-sentence.
[Current Identity: Space Wolf Blood Claw Warp, Inquisitor, ….]
[Please choose identity to descend]
[If you refuse, descent will occur imdiately]
[Identity selection refused]
[SIMULATION STARTING]
[You have descended to the Warhamr Universe]
[Ti Period: [M31, Great Crusade Era]]
[Location: Warp, Death Guard Fleet Flagship "Terminus"]
Reality twisted, consciousness fragnting and reforming across impossible distances.
Awareness returns in stages.
First, sensation. The feeling of trendous weight encasing your body, ceramite and plasteel and adamantium layers creating a shell that should have been immobilizing but sohow feels natural. The armor responds to your thoughts as if it were a second skin, servos humming softly with each micro-adjustnt.
Second, sll. Even filtered through the helt's rebreather systems, the air carries a pungent chemical stench. Cleaning solvents mixed with sothing organic, sothing rotten underneath. The scent makes your eyes water despite the environntal seals.
Third, sound. Screaming. The wet sounds of blades cutting through flesh. The crash of tal on tal. Crying, pleading, desperate voices begging for rcy that will not co.
Fourth, sight.
Your vision clears, adjusting to the helt's eyepiece displays. Auto-senses calibrate, providing targeting data and tactical overlays that your mind instinctively understands despite never having used this equipnt before.
You stand in what appears to be a lower deck cargo bay. The space is vast, high-ceilinged, designed to hold massive quantities of supplies or equipnt. Crates and containers have been shoved against walls, creating an open area in the center.
And in that open area, a massacre is occurring.
Hundreds of people huddle in one corner, pressed together like frightened animals. Most are human, or human-adjacent, their features largely normal except for one critical detail. Each possesses a third eye positioned vertically in the center of their forehead. Navigators, those rare mutants whose unique gift allows faster-than-light travel through the Warp.
Mixed among them are their servants and attendants, ordinary humans whose terror is absolute. They scream and weep and try to push further into the corner, as if the tal walls might sohow open and provide escape.
Before them stands their killer.
An Astartes in Iron Cavalry-pattern Terminator armor, the massive suit making him tower over his victims like a giant from nightmare. The armor is painted in muted colors, Death Guard livery marked with personal heraldry you do not imdiately recognize.
In the Terminator's hands, a massive scythe swings with casual, almost lazy efficiency. Each arc of the blade harvests lives. Limbs separate from bodies. Heads tumble from necks. Blood sprays in arterial fountains, painting the deck in spreading crimson.
The Terminator works thodically, without hurry or emotion. Just steady, patient killing. Another swing. Another dozen corpses. The screaming intensifies, but the slaughter continues unabated.
Your mind processes this information with crystalline clarity. Navigators are irreplaceable. Their gift is genetic, rare beyond asure, essential for any fleet operation. Killing them en masse is tactical insanity, crippling any ship's ability to travel effectively.
This is not combat. This is sabotage.
Your body moves before conscious thought finishes forming.
The Terminator armor you wear is different from the killer's. Cataphractii-pattern, you know sohow, the information simply present in your mind. Gray-white tallic finish, reinforced plating, systems optimized for close combat and environntal protection. The armor is exquisite craftsmanship, bearing the particular quality that marks it as equipnt reserved for elite units.
In your hands, a weapon. The Manreaper, two and a half ters of killing edge mounted on a reinforced haft. The weight should be trendous, but the armor's power assistance makes it feel light, responsive, an extension of your will.
You charge.
The Terminator armor's servos scream with sudden acceleration, propelling your massive bulk forward with speed that defies physics. Deck plating cracks under the force of your footfalls. The distance collapses in seconds.
The Manreaper sweeps through the air in a horizontal arc, building montum, energy bleeding off in visible distortion of atmosphere.
The weapon collides with the killer's scythe with a sound like a bomb detonating. tal shrieks against tal. The impact sends shockwaves rippling outward, strong enough to knock nearby navigators off their feet.
The killer's next swing, aid at executing another cluster of victims, is stopped completely. The blade hangs frozen in space, trapped against your weapon.
The Terminator's helt turns slowly, ponderously, the motion carrying theatrical deliberation. Cold eyes glare from behind the eyepiece, filled with fury at this interruption.
"Death Shroud!" The voice erges through external speakers, distorted and harsh. "How dare you interfere with Lord Typhus's orders! Even the Pale King himself won't tolerate your usurpation!"
Your mind processes that information. Death Shroud. Mortarion's personal bodyguards, the silent warriors who speak only to their Primarch. And Typhus... First Captain of the Death Guard, the Traveller.
You hold the Manreaper motionless with one hand, matching the other Terminator's strength without apparent effort. When you speak, your voice erges calm, asured, carrying no trace of the shock you feel internally.
"Typhus's orders? Are you from the Death Guard?"
The killer jerks as if struck. His entire posture shifts, radiating sudden confusion mixed with alarm.
"Who are you?" The question cos out as nearly a roar, processed through the helt speakers into sothing inhuman. "The Death Shroud remain forever silent! They never speak! Never question! What are you?"
Your response is imdiate and brutally practical.
Your free hand, encased in the Terminator gauntlet, clenches into a fist. The powered servo-motors add trendous force to what is already enhanced strength. You swing from the shoulder, putting your full weight behind the blow.
The tal fist crashes into the Death Guard's helt with catastrophic force. The sound is beyond deafening, a concussive boom that makes mortal eardrums rupture. Several navigators closest to the impact collapse, blood streaming from their ears.
The sneak attack, delivered while the Death Guard was distracted by confusion, proves devastatingly effective. The massive Terminator staggers backward, his stance breaking, balance disrupted.
You press forward imdiately, giving no ti for recovery. Your hands shift grip on the Manreaper's haft, sliding along the reinforced pole with practiced smoothness. The weapon rotates in your grasp, blade repositioning from defensive block to offensive strike.
You move faster than should be possible for soone in Terminator armor, the speed suggesting either exceptional skill or sothing supernatural accelerating your reactions. The scythe's tip reverses direction, angling down and forward toward a specific target.
The weak point between helt and gorget, where armor plates et and leave minimal gaps for flexibility.
The blade drives forward like a spear thrust, penetrating through the narrow opening. Ceramite fragnts under the force, plasteel barriers crumple, and the wickedly sharp tip punches through into the space beyond.
The Death Guard's head.
The scythe's blade destroys everything in its path. Bone shatters. Brain tissue pulps. The tip erges from the opposite side of the helt, trailing gore and fragnts.
Above the Terminator's power pack, the Death Cloud launcher, that specialized weapon system designed to disperse toxic gas across battlefields, begins activating. Dark green mist starts erging from the nozzles, wisps of chemical death preparing to flood the chamber.
Then it stops.
With the Death Guard's brain destroyed, all armor systems receiving neural commands shut down simultaneously. The launcher's emission cuts off mid-activation, leaving only a few tendrils of poison gas dissipating harmlessly in the recycled air.
You pull the Manreaper free, the blade withdrawing with a wet sucking sound. Blood and cerebral fluid drip from the edge, pattering against the deck in thick droplets.
The Death Guard's corpse stands upright for one impossible mont, held vertical by the Terminator armor's locking joints. Then the suit's machine spirit registers pilot death and releases all restraints.
The massive body topples backward, crashing to the deck with trendous force. The impact dents the tal plating, creating a shallow crater in the floor. The sound echoes through the cargo bay, final punctuation to the brief, brutal combat.
You hold the Manreaper ready, prepared for additional threats. Your breathing cos controlled and asured despite the adrenaline flooding your system. Through the helt's rebreather, you draw in another lungful of that pungent, chemical-laden air.
If you had been even half a second slower in your intervention, the Death Cloud launcher would have activated fully. The navigators would have died screaming as toxic gas dissolved their lungs and liquefied their internal organs.
You turn slowly, the Terminator armor's servos whining softly with the motion. Your gaze, filtered through the helt's eyepiece displays, sweeps across the huddled crowd of survivors.
Navigators and their mortal servants stare back at you, frozen in terror. They watched one Terminator kill their companions with chanical efficiency. Now another Terminator stands before them, weapon still dripping blood, having just killed the first.
They have no way to know if they have been saved or simply acquired a new executioner.
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