955.M41
The stench of death and terror drifted upon a stale wind, pushed along by decayed air processors.
As Ulryk's booted footsteps clacked ever so lightly upon the metal deck, he cursed each sound. Keln whimpered, hands shaking, gripping an autopistol in between them. The rating's eyes darted to and fro. Ulryk was silent but for his steps; he cursed the rating, but could not blame him. The Woe of Marca was in hell itself.
The vast ex-Chartist transport had been commandeered by the Imperial Navy centuries before for use in the Gothic War; Kardos' family line had traced back well before that. The former ship foreman had once organized entire districts of the vessel as his ancestors had done before him, maximizing efficiency and keeping the ignorant crew working and praising the Emperor. But in a way, he had always expected something like this.
It was no prophecy of his own. The Woe had always borne a stigma of bad luck, and worlds it docked over experienced a rash of anxiety and suicides. Entire worlds refused the Navy sending the Woe of Marca to help, even if it meant they would face an invader with their PDF alone. The ship itself reflected this. Glossy-black on the outside, a full twelve kilometers long, decaying on the inside from sheer age and neglect; the vessel's tech-priests insisted it was fit for duty, but who ever knew?
His mind returned to the present. He had to focus- stay focused. Distractions were dangerous. He noted with displeasure, distantly, the scream of a Guardsman. It rang for some time. An echo, then; distant from them. The shotgun in his hands swept the hallway before him; they were nearing their destination.
The gilded doors to the bridge loomed before them. Rotted corpses, too mauled to be infected, were strewn in front of it. The door held. Clutching the shotgun's grip in one hand and beckoning to his two companions with the other, Keln, a gibbering rating he had found hiding in a vent with nothing but a dagger, and Weiss, a Navy armsman he had found in a little side passage, dozens of zombies lining the hall to his little barricade.
The three of them had lost count of the time. Their mission, they decided, was to make it to the bridge and to try and jump-start the ship's engines from there. As Ulryk pressed his weight against the bridge doors, he felt the slightest budge. He drew back and threw himself at it. He bounced off and rolled on the deck. Getting up, scowling, he ordered Keln up.
"You were staff on the bridge for some time. You remember the password, right?"
The rating nodded nervously.
"Get up and open this door. I was a foreman- my place wasn't on the bridge."
Getting down on one knee with the silent Weiss, the two racked shotguns and covered the rating while he tapped, cursed, tapped again and kept straining with the uncooperative door panel. Then they heard the moaning.
The dim, flickering lights registered the slightest shadows in the distance. The dead approached. Clutching his gun tighter, Ulryk swept for any targets. The hall was fifty meters long and had no other entrances; the enemy was bottlenecked, but unless Keln got the doors open, they were trapped. The first corpse-walker shambled out of the main pass; stringy hair, pale green skin, wasted flesh- boils everywhere. Ulryk lined him up and fired. The zombie popped in a wet slap of pus and blood. Two more entered. Ulryk fired again, so did Weiss. Both fell. Some more entered. The two men covered Keln for a minute or two, one shooting while the other reloaded. They expended nearly a hundred shells, but they had many left. The dead had not made it as close as twenty meters.
The doors creaked open while more zombies poured through. Keln whimpered as he fired a few shots from his autopistol. One corpse-walker fell. Another collapsed to the ground and crawled forward with its hands, legs snapping off behind it. The trio raced through the door and pressed it shut. The servos whined as the auto-lock set in.
The bridge was an unimpressive room; a small throne in the center, three lines of consoles around it, and a small walkway for observation. The Captaincy had once attempted to make the ship into a personal empire of sorts, but was defeated by Navy security. The captain's Discipline Officers corps was disbanded and his bridge stripped of decorum. The Captain had become little more than a figurehead; the Chaplain was the ship's real ruler. Was.
Keln, shaking, stepped forward and checked for his console.
"Y-yes. This controls the warp engines, as does-" he moved between consoles- "this one and this. Give me a m-moment."
The rating tapped on heavy ivory keys for a few seconds. The rating stopped cold dead for a short time.
"Is there something wrong, Keln?" Ulryk asked.
"T-the engines cannot be accessed from here."
Ulryk felt like he had been shot. Emperor knows how long he had been moving to the bridge to get the ship out of the Warp.
"So where do we go to start it?" Ulryk said, trying to keep calm and suppress the shouts of despair inside him.
"T-the engines themselves. I can- I can jumpstart them by flooding the engines with plasma from the reactor. Hopefully we will escape this n-nightmare."
Sighing, Ulryk knew he had no other option. Die in hell, or suffer long enough to wriggle free of it. He knew his decision.
"Then we go. Keln, Weiss, follow up behind me. I know the way. I once commanded the reactor precinct."
The three entered a secret passage only Foremen, Captains and other high-level officers knew about- intended to get the bridge crew out safely if the crew mutinied and besieged the doorway. The throne slid back as Ulryk followed instructions dimly remembered from the chaplain's tutoring. Under it was a narrow walkway suspended above a jumble of scrap metal collecting over the millennia. The trio held their heads low as they hurried through the creaking pass. The exit door slid open. If he remembered right, they should be in a storage room under the armory. If there were any humans left but them, there was bound to be someone in there.
Kicking the grate to the armory open, Ulryk looked out.
