---
The bridge felt like a vault carved out of old iron and older prayers. Cogitators blinked in tired rhythm; the deck thrummed underfoot, pulse of the reactor running through steel bones.
Cassian, Farron, and Faevelith stood before Admiral Spire, black coated and iron spined, with eyes that didn't had good sleep properly in months.
Spire's gaze swept over them first, measuring, not unfriendly just a bit tired. "Vale. Magos Farron. And your… companion." His voice carried gravel and old smoke. "You get your rest? Quarters adequate?"
"Better than I've known," Cassian answered, dry as ship biscuit.
Farron inclined his head, mechadendrites coiling behind him. "Functional and clean," he added, tone clipped and metallic, but faintly approving.
Faevelith smiled, hood hiding the edges of her amusement. "Bed wasn't straw. I'll survive."
Spire's mouth twitched, almost a ghost of humor. "Good enough. You'll need the rest. Things move quick on my deck."
His tone firmed, iron seeping back. "Here's how it stands."
He nodded toward Farron first. "Magos. You'll liaise with the Enginseers. Our void shields and plasma hearts are older than some Hive worlds. But word is you're… inventive."
Farron's voice was dry iron. "More than word, Admiral. I'll see them running cleaner than they have in decades."
Spire's brow twitched. "They're yours, within reason. Keep the Machine Spirits calm, keep us alive. That's all I ask."
Then to Cassian. "Vale. You're with the Breacher squads. Their work isn't pretty board, burn, clear, hold. Close quarters hell. We've seen more boarding actions in the last year than the last decade."
Cassian nodded, jaw set. "Fine by me Admiral."
Spire gave a curt nod. "Good."
His gaze slid to Faevelith, resting a moment on the shimmer of her illusion. "And you, miss? Civilian? Enhanced? Or just stubborn?"
She tilted her chin, voice low, firm. "Closer to stubborn."
Spire's lips twitched again. "Fine. Stay close to Vale. Try not to burn a hole through my deck with any tricks."
She only dipped her head. "Understood."
Spire's voice dropped lower, gravel rough. "Alright, learn how this ship operates. Acclimate yourself to it, follow orders and we shall have no problems."
He paused, studying all three. The bridge hummed around them orders murmured, vox crackle, scent of machine oil and faint incense.
"Questions?" he offered, curt, but human.
Cassian shook his head. "No, Admiral."
"Then get moving," Spire finished, softer than a bark. "The ship doesn't wait."
---
Breacher Deck
Cassian followed an Armsman down clanging stairs, breath hot with recycled air. The Breacher deck stank of sweat, oil, and steel.
Inside, men and women moved like one unit: old scars, broken noses, augmetic limbs clanking. No parade ground neatness, just hard practicality.
A sergeant, face pitted with burns and an augmetic eye clicking faintly, stepped forward. "Vale? Spire's new man?"
Cassian gave a nod. "Cassian. Just Cassian works."
"Fair." The sergeant jerked his chin. "Come on. Watch and learn."
They moved past lockers heavy with void armor plating thick as a man's arm, magnetic boots scarred from old engagements.
Ahead, a live demo in progress: a squad ringed a mock bulkhead. One Breacher slapped a melta charge on steel; hiss of heat so fierce it steamed the air. Metal ran like wax.
"Move!" the sergeant barked.
The squad surged through the molten breach, shields up, shotguns barking. Two men hooked the doorway with boarding axes, dragging aside scrap. A second team poured in behind, clearing corners with brutish speed.
"Board. Burn. Hold," the sergeant rumbled, voice low. "In the void, you don't wait for orders. You move, or you die."
Cassian felt eyes on him measuring, curious. Not friendly, but not hostile either. These were killers used to blood mist and panic. But they smelled calm in him, and calm mattered much here.
One Breacher with half his jaw replaced by black iron spat blood, then grinned. "You look like you've kicked in a door or two."
Cassian's mouth twitched, just a hint. "More than two."
"Good," the sergeant cut in. "You'll need it. Next drill's real pressure: smoke, noise, panic. You freeze, you die."
Cassian nodded. "Understood."
The sergeant's augmetic eye whirred, studying him. "We'll see."
---
Engine Room
Farron stepped through brass rimmed doors, mechadendrites curling like hunting snakes. Red robed Enginseers turned some muttered, some stared. Servo‑skulls hovered, dripping sacred oils.
Farron's robes parted to show the sigil of an Arch Magos, polished and old as sin. The change was instant: robed figures dipped heads, binaric whispers shifted to deference.
A senior Enginseer approached, vox gravel layered with caution. "Arch‑Magos Farron. Honored."
Farron's optics flickered. "Skip the incense. Show me the state of the plasma hearts."
They obeyed.
They walked through cathedral‑high halls of brass tubing and reactor glow. A priest traced fresh litanies on a cracked coolant conduit; another knelt, pressing oil‑soaked cloth to prayer etched steel.
"These systems," Farron murmured, half to himself, half to them, "could run cleaner. Rites layered wrong, calibration drifted."
An Enginseer hesitated. "You would… adjust the sacred routines?"
"I would improve them," Farron rasped, lenses narrowing. "You think the Omnissiah loves a ritual more than a result?"
Silence. Then slow, reluctant nods.
"And the shields?" Farron pressed.
"Stable, but strain is increasing," the senior priest admitted. "Warp tides growing restless."
"Then we reinforce them," Farron intoned, voice edged with iron. "Begin prepping capacitors for recalibration. And clear a workspace. I won't watch from the rail."
They obeyed, servitors shifting aside, data slates offered up.
In the reactor's pulse, Farron stood like a man born to it: finally feeling at home here with the machinery.
---
In a narrow side corridor, Cassian found Farron leaning over a dataslate, mechadendrites flickering.
"Settling in?" Cassian asked.
Farron didn't look up. "They're slow, but they're not fools. Once they see it works, they'll follow."
"And you'll make it work, you always do after all." Cassian murmured.
Farron's mouth twitched, the closest he got to pride. "Of course."
Faevelith stepped closer, illusions shimmering around her like heat haze. "And the Breachers?" she asked Cassian.
He scratched at an old scar. "Brutal, loud, ugly. My kind of people, really."
She smirked, eyes softening. "I know."
He leaned back against the bulkhead, breath steady. "What about you, how are you settling?"
"Its fine." she murmured, voice softer. "I have been to lots of places like this, the novelty wears off."
Cassian met her gaze then, felt the tired warmth under the masks they both wore. "Together," he said.
"Always," she whispered back.
Far away, a deck klaxon sounded, a warning not yet urgent. But the deck plates seemed to hum a little harder, like a heart beating faster.
They turned, stepping deeper into the steel veins of a ship that had seen a thousand battles and would see more before it burned.
---
Months passed aboard the Ship and they learned its rhythm the hard way.
Cassian drilled with the Breachers until sweat soaked through his shirt, but movements never slowing. Shotguns slammed into his shoulder, but he took each shot like it weighed nothing. The boarding axe felt light in his grip, even as it carved practice plates clean in half.
The others stopped to watch, caught between respect and something closer to wariness. A few of the women in the squad let their eyes linger on him not subtle, but in this place, nobody bothered to hide it. In a ship where death floated outside the hull, strength was its own kind of currency. And Cassian had it in spades: not just raw muscle, but the quiet, dangerous poise of someone built and scarred for worse.
By the end, nobody had to say anything. When he walked past, they made space without thinking and he caught more than one pair of eyes still on his back.
Faevelith wrapped illusions so tightly around herself they felt part of her skin. When they shared a room, she dropped them only for him. Outside, she wore her mask; inside, only teeth and tenderness. She has made herself busy by talking to some navigators and how there third eye operated in the warp.
Farron stalked the Engine rooms decks, mechadendrites clicking in irritation as he rewrote canticles that had fossilized centuries ago. Younger Tech-priests watched with awe and fear, while the older ones muttered about blasphemy. Farron answered them with flat, biting logic and a badge heavy with old authority. Sparks flew sometimes from the machine-spirits, sometimes from words.
They ate when the bells tolled, slept under iron bulkheads humming with reactors older than worlds. And slowly, the crew got used to them: the Breachers' clipped nods, the Enginseers' muttered binaric greetings, the bridge officers' polite distance.
---
Then, it started.
Cassian was on the bridge that watch Spire had ordered him to observe fleet operations, "to know what you might be dying for," as he put it dryly.
The air was stale, screens flickering softly. Officers whispered over data slates, hands moving across cogitator runes. Farron stood near a display, mechadendrites humming. Faevelith watched the hololith with silent, sharp eyed attention.
A junior vox-officer's voice broke the calm. His tone bewildered as he spoke.
"Sir… picking up a contact. Out on the edge. Drift speed."
Spire didn't move, but every other head turned.
"Distance?" he asked, voice flat.
"Thirty thousand and closing. No transponder. No vox reply."
Cassian felt the deck plates under his boots, humming with the ship's deep iron heart. The silence stretched, grew heavy.
Spire flicked his gaze to Farron. "Machine spirit readings?"
Farron's voice was clipped. "Disturbed. Auspex shows interference… biological? Hard to resolve. Could be void detritus."
Faevelith's brow furrowed. "It's not debris," she whispered, almost to herself.
The unknown contact crept closer. Slow and deliberate as it crept.
A shape on the hololith just a smear at first, then lines resolved: hull, towers, slowly started becoming visible.
"Unknown vessel," the vox-officer tried, voice steadier now. "You are entering Imperial space. Identify immediately."
Silence. The hiss of old circuits. The soft chime of range finders recalculating.
The officers around Cassian traded glances. Fear is loudest when no one speaks it.
One midshipman licked dry lips, eyes fixed on the blur of corruption on the scope.
"Twenty-five thousand now," an auspex operator called. "Still no reply."
Farron's mechadendrites twitched, metal rattling faintly. "The hull reads as… alive," he said. "Organic clusters where plating should be."
"Closer resolution," Spire ordered.
The hololith flickered, struggling to display what shouldn't exist. Shapes that pulsed. Growths, spines, lumps that might have been cargo pods once.
Cassian tasted something metallic at the back of his throat. The bridge smelled of oil and something else now. Sour. Like old milk turned.
Spire's voice cut through it, low but clear. "Keep hailing. Every thirty seconds."
The vox-officer swallowed. "Aye, sir."
"Unknown vessel, identify. Last warning."
Nothing. Only static that crawled across the speakers like wet cloth.
—-
Minutes crawled by.
The ship kept coming.
"Twenty thousand. No change in speed."
Faevelith's eyes were too wide, breath shallow. "It doesn't hurry," she whispered. "Like it knows we can't stop it."
Cassian forced his voice level. "Maybe we can."
She didn't answer.
---
Then, without warning, a cough broke the silence.
One officer doubled over, retching bile onto the deck. Another clamped a sleeve to his nose, blood trickling out.
"Medicae to the bridge," someone called, voice cracking.
Farron's optics dimmed, mechadendrites curling back. "Atmosphere shows nothing. But it feels… unclean."
---
At fifteen thousand, details on the hololith grew sharper.
Patches that shimmered with seepage. Corrosion so deep it looked deliberate.
And in the prow, something bloated. Breathing, almost.
An ensign's voice quavered: "Sir, spores in the void. Low concentration."
"Seal off all non-critical sections," Spire snapped. "NOW!."
---
Then the ship did something worse than attack.
It started responding.
Not immediately. Not as words at first. Just a ripple of static so thick it felt alive.
Then, wet and slow, like words forced through rotting lungs:
"We… bring… Grandfather's love… and his immeasurable… generous gifts…"
---
The words died, but they didn't leave. They stuck in the air, greasy, clinging to every thought.
A junior officer fell to his knees, chanting.
The vox-officer kept whispering "Emperor, Emperor," over and over.
Cassian clenched his fists so tight his nails bit skin.
Faevelith shuddered. "That… wasn't a voice," she whispered. "It was… delight. That reverberated through warp itself."
---
Spire's jaw worked. As he considered all his options.
Then the Admiral turned. And the mask returned. Iron and fire in his eyes.
"Sound battle stations. Now."
Klaxons shrieked. Red lights strobed across the deck, throwing shadows long and wild.
"Ready the gun decks, Torpedoes, missiles" Spire ordered, voice cutting through fear. "Seal the ship. Armsmen to breach positions. Prepare to burn the filth off our hull."
Farron intoned a low canticle, machine code twisted by anger.
Cassian felt the cold weight in his gut.
He sighed to himself as he prepared himself.
"It's coming," he murmured. "So let's be ready."
---
Outside, the Plagueclaw drifted closer.
Not rushing.
Just patient.
A rotted promise carried on the void.
—
Word Count: 2178
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