Space Hulking pt 2 Report
General Summary
The elevator plan worked wonders to kill off most of the direct spider threat, but made it difficult for the party to move around the ship. Before they could get to the engine room, the engines had already flared to life enough for the derelict cruiser to lift itself from the grasp of Malina. For the first time in decades life had returned to the ship, and the machine spirit was happy to comply to any command that would allow it to once again sail the voids. It was later claimed by witnesses aboard the Sovereign Venture that solar flares had reached out from Malina as the Fist of Fury left orbit, and that an imaginative mind might find that it almost resembled a hand reaching out for the prey that was so nearly in its grasp. Of course, such ideas were quickly squashed as tricks of the eye, ideas of exhausted minds, and sheer folly.
The Sovereign Venture was contacted via the boarding crafts comms, and it quickly send out extra teams to help salvage equipment from the Fist of Fury, as well as to provide medical assistance to the away party and the heroic figures in the engine room.
Alas, he help came too late. In the engine room was found a small barricaded area with a makeshift camp. It was clear from the rest of the ship that this was part of an ever-decreasing perimeter around the engine room, established to make sure enough vital systems would maintain power so that the ship might survive. The last 10 men that had held the line were found around a fuel pump that they had redirected to the engines, part of their void suits removed so that they could better work the fine machinery they had at hand. It was clear that they had suffered from extended radiation exposure, and were well on their way to death long before the salvage operation. Leaving the safety of their suits and the shield generator their camp had huddled around had merely struck the final blow.
One of them sat against a nearby bulkhead, hands wrecked by necrosis crossed in an attempt to form the sign of the Imperial Aquila. Above him, written in blood, was their final message "Only in death does duty end."
Notes
The logs of the ship were accessed and the fate of the Fist of Fury was laid bare. It would seem that during the fighting, some of the heretics' voidships had broken through and Command wagered they were going after on of Malina's habited planets in order to either bombard or invade it whilst the response fleet was tied up.
The Fist of Fury had peeled away from the rest of the fighting to chase these vessels, tearing away at them from afar with its lance batteries. Days passed as the ships moved ever close to the star. The main engagement was going much in favor of the Imperials, and more ships were taking up positions to intercept the running heretical vessels in case they decided to break off their attack vector and warp out. One of the enemy vessels released ordnance; Not towards any of the planets, or even orbiting stations, but at Malina itself. It was considered either an error or the mad command of a deranged heretic. Either way, the chase continued, until the ordnance reached the star.
Malina went haywire. In hours time it had expanded considerably, and was violently shooting multi-hued flares each and every way. The enemy vessels disappeared into the inferno, and the Fist of Fury was pelted hard enough to have her shields taken down and much of her external components either fried or blown off. Its astropaths screeched and convulsed with many dying almost moments alter. Even those not sensitive to the Warp could feel the disturbances between the two realms. With comms and sensors either down or reduced to static due to the star's radiation, and their astropaths dead or dying, the Fist of Fury was flying nearly blind. Fully blind once the emergency bulkhead shut over any viewports due to shield from the intense radiation.
The crew fought to keep shields up, to keep everything from overheating, and to keep the waves of gravitational distortion that swept out after the flares from bouncing the cruiser around like an ancient sailing vessel caught in a violent storm. These disturbances made it impossible for the cruiser to attempt to move towards the edges of the system.
The last logged command of Lord-Captain Janus Wick was that any non-essential personnel evacuate deeper into the ship and set up personal shielding units to prevent everyone from succumbing to radiation poisoning. He, and a handful of the bridge crew, would remain on deck to steer the ship into some kind of stable orbit. His hope was to ride out the disturbance so they could be rescued. Or that at least the ship could be. He opened the bridge bulkheads, dousing him and the few who remained with lethal doses of radiation whenever the void shields flickered under the perpetual assault of star fire, just so he could actually see where they were going. They fought to keep the ship from being swallowed by the star, even as they saw the first of the planets burn up. Hours became days, became weeks. One by one the bridge crew fell silent as their body was riddled with tumors and their flesh sloughed off their bones. The Lord-Captain was the last to go, kept alive by his command throne's built-in stimulants and emergency aid servitors.
Throughout the ordeal he had kept the crew up to date via regular reports, which became increasingly less coherent. His last few transmissions he whimpered about things crawling out of vents and the floor, creeping, crawling, eating. Until one day no report came and the ship fell silent, drifting in orbit around the much calmed star.
Duncan Stryde
Drusus
Report Date
09 Feb 2020
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