Prelude story pt1

Flotilla intro 

The bridge of the Olympiad Class Strike Cruiser "Indelible Mark" was calm but alert. As the lead ship in the spinward element of the Emperors Tears chapter vanguard their duty was to patrol and clear a safe path for the rest of the fleet. Flanked at a distance by a pair of Light Cruisers and trailing a collection of Frigates and support craft they cover their sector in a web of overlapping Auspex sweeps. Deep space patrol is the mandate of the Chapter, persecuting anomalies in the Void is their specialty. The bridge crew were professional, hereditary Navy, born and bred in the Void, like most of the mortal members of the Chapter fleet. Void Captain Lord Rodman sat astride his command throne reviewing reports from both internal sections but also from the other captains in his element. It had been an uneventful cruise since the last Void transition, Sublight engines were running optimally, the Enginseer's reported the plasma drives were in nominal condition. 

 Reports concluded the Captain dismissed the servo skull with a wave and sipped her recaff. The Void ahead was, as expected, empty, their in-system destination, a mining and refining outpost outlined on a Crusade era chart recovered from a drifting space station that had made it into regular imperial shipping lanes. 

This is the way of the Fleet, the way of the Chapter, prowling the Void, in search of relics, Salvage and Cargo. Not the stand up fist-fights of the Space Wolves, not the devastating hunts of the Dark Angels, but the methodical and systematic sweep and clear of their sectors more akin to the pragmatic and methodical prosecution of the Imperial Fists. But in the Void, rather than a solid holdfast. Lord Rodman and his crew were trained aboard Chapter Fleet Schola vessels and knew from childhood the purpose of the Chapter and Fleet in which they would serve. The Mortal bloodlines were selected with care; spacers from the Saturnine colonies, the Ring of Iron, the Belt and other void-fareers returned to the Imperium during the Great Crusade, free from the taint of Mutation and honed to Void-Borne life by generations of necessity. These hardy folk were no strangers to the Void, the chill of the deep nor the bite of vacuum. Long established health and training regimes, gravity therapy, supplements and screening. The Chapter Master of the Emperors Tears, a Stalwart Voidsman even before selection into and transfiguration into Astartes by the Emperor's gene-craft has governed the Fleet for almost four centuries and continues to shepherd the Fleet, both Astartes and Voidsman. Baseline humans crewed and for the most part commanded the majority of the fleet ,with the Astartes of the Chapter forming the tips of their spears and the hooks of their claws for boarding actions, purges and internal security. 

 

The Chapter recruits from within its human population but also tithes worlds on their routes, sweeping their orbital platforms, mining stations, colony moons and spaceports for likely candidates. Unlink in many Chapters, unsuccessful candidates, or at least those uncrippled, are integrated into the fleet population, keeping bloodlines dynamic. Chapter policy also has a higher than normal Scout population, with these near-Astartes bolstering ship-board security, combating Warp-incursions during Translation through the Empyrean and also as reconnaissance squads for interdictions and investigation of drifting wrecks and of course, the Chapters primary targets, the dreaded Space Hulks which routinely appear to menace the Imperium. The Mortal Voidsmen of the Fleet are not immune to the effects of Transhuman Dread that exposure to Astartes elicits in the unaugmented, but their close proximity and frequent exposure to the Angels of the Emperor have hardened them somewhat, and traditions held remedies and the afflicted are rotated to low contact duties to ensure continuity of service and efficient function. Nothing gets wasted in the Void. 

 

 

Auspex signal located  

Void Captain Lord Rudius Rodman observed her command deck, a seasoned crew, veterans of many cruises, each attending to their duties with the devotion expected of Imperial Navy command staff. Armsmen positioned unobtrusively in the corners of the room stood impassively. Routine vox-casts from within the ship and between the ships of the Flotilla chitter in the air, Warrant Officer Retief manning the Comms station, professionally, zeal tempered by solemnity of duty. The calm is cracked by a klaxon and a flash of alert lumens and 3rd Lieutenant Cheng slamming upright at the Auspex station, declaring "unscheduled warp translation, Contact bearing 15 point 45 mark 72 point 37, heading 220 point 37mark 35 point 82. Velocity 0.27C and holding. The soul-clap of the warp translation hit just as the Auspex Officer finished "Range Point zero four AU, mass 79 Mega". Practically knife fighting range. The crew all frantically surveyed their cogitator screens as the Captain spoke up "Shields! Tactical?"

Lt Botha spoke up from tactical immediately "no shields. no active weapons, no scans, no targeting locks." They pause briefly as their cogitator updates. "appears to be a three vessel conglomeration, human origins, pre-imperial with an icy-chondrite and iron debris matrix. Space Hulk in early stages. Reactors online but spinning down, post translation." A pregnant pause echoes across the bridge with the news. Not panic, but palpable dread mixed with excitement. This was their purpose, why they were out here in the Void at the vanguard. "All stop!" ordered the captain. Lt Johanssen at Helm control mirrored the command back as acknowledgement and moments later the bridge crew felt the deceleration surge as the Strike Cruiser's retrothrusters halted the massive vessel over the course of mere minutes. By the time Lt Johanssen reported "Showing All Stopped" the situation was stable. The flotilla has come to a halt at a close but not perelous distance from the interloping mass, now designated Sigma 83-9-12 and given the name "Echo of Perdition" and entered into the Flotilla's logs. 

 

Threat Assesment 

On the Bridge’s main hololithic display the Flotilla was arranged as gold and orange icons, a wall in the Void before the sickly red and green indicators of the "Echo of Perdition". The captain adjusted setting from her command throne and zoomed in on the hulk. It was tumbling in place, relative to the Wall, its residual post-translation momentum matched by the Chapters vessels as they observed and considered. The display indicated the three distinct vessels identified, as well as the asteroid components which made up the bulk of the objects mass, smaller indistinct vessel fragments scattered across the exposed surface. At least one of the vessels engineering section was still "hot" from the translation back into real space, indicating activity if not active and occupied. Warp drives are notoriously fickle and if unmanaged, prone to spontaneous activation and chronometric anomaly. This can lead to Space Hulks translating in and out of the Empyrean unpredictably, making them hazardous to encounter, explore and police. It also makes them invaluable sources of archeotech, relics and data from bygone ages. They also often carry unwanted passengers. Orks, Chaos spawn and the most horrifying, Genestealer Tyranid lifeforms. These make them dangerous not just as Astrogational hazards, but also as invasion and infection risks.

The captain considred the data on the hololith for a few moments, pondering as the display rotated in the cool air of the Bridge then announced "Tactical mission briefing in 15 in the stategium. XO you have the Bridge". She stood from the Throne and its interfaces de-couple as she rose, its integral restraints opening and assisting her to rise as she moved to the portal of the strategium. One of the Armsmen broke position and crossed the bridge to stand sentinel at the Strategium's portal, checking inside before the Captain entered, hard won lessons enshrined in procedure. The XO, Commander Tertius Douglas, having arrived on the Bridge during the deceleration maneuver, takes up position at the throne and inputs his command code before it accepts him, its mechadendrites seeking his connection ports and integrating him into the ship, not unlike the Princeps of a God-Engine of the Legio Titanicus. “I have the Con” he intoned and was echoed via the vox-casters around the Bridge he was now intrinsically a part of. 

 

Mission Brief 

The Captain was joined in short order by Flight Operations Chief Dingly, a lightly Augmented Enginseer who had transferred from Engineering to Flight Ops. some thirty cycles ago and oversay launch and recovery operations from the Indelible Mark’s hangars. They were then joined by Lieutenant Annullir of the Astartes Marine contingent who was accompanied by Veteran Scout Sergeant Astin of Ghain Squad. The Lieutenant in his full ceramite battle plate, dwarfing the mortal contingent and even the Scout Sergeant in his half plate. The two Astartes took seats across from the Captain, in appropriately scaled conference chairs, backless to accommodate the Astartes power-packs. Last to formally arrive was the representative from the ships Mechanicum contingent. Archeo-Magos Wahed-7-8 clicks into the Strategium on his 9 mechadendrite leg augments, void-optimised and elevated beyond the weakness of the flesh as his creed demands. The Magos interfaces with the conference table without pre-amble and the holo-lith springs to life, displaying the Hulk with various annotations. 

 “Shall we begin?” intones the Captain with a tone of mild irritation at the presumption on the part of the cyborg. “Indeed” rasps Wahed-7-8. “Sigma 83-9-12 represents a significant opportunity not only in terms of materiel but also in likely salvage from the three pre-Imperial vessels thus identified in its mass. These include The Long Haul Agri-Ark identified as the “Valley Forge”, the deep space crewed probe “USS Palomino” and Bulk Hauler THX-1138. We have found references to the first two in our Dark-age archives but no data on the latter, other than its hull markings.Deep Auspex scans indicate tunnels between the three hulls, through the icy-chondrite and iron debris matrix indicating survivors existed for some duration at some time but no current active emissions or life signs detected. We recommend caution but enthusiastic investigation for the good of the Chapter and the Omnisiah’s blessing be with you.” 

Auspex signal located 

Threat Assessment 

mission brief 

Mission prep 

boarding 

beachhead 

investigation 

contact 

objective secure 

fallback! 

cut off 

cavalry 

ramming speed