Chapter 13: Intelligence from an Imp
Rosen waited three seconds.
No reaction from the warp.
None of the subtle resonance that rippled through the boundary between realspace and the warp when a daemon's true name was spoken aloud.
Rosen's left hand tightened again.
This time with noticeably more force. The one-eyed Imp's neck produced a series of deeply unpleasant cracking sounds.
"Hiss, let go! Let go! You'll crush me!"
The one-eyed Imp's shoulders sagged.
"Fezekks Vorrmulin."
The instant the last syllable of that name fell.
Rosen felt the warp shift.
When a daemon's true name was spoken aloud in realspace, the underlying structure of the warp produced a faint resonant echo, like an infinitely vast library where a book in some far corner had been pulled from the shelf.
The name was real.
Rosen confirmed it.
The one-eyed Imp, Fezekks Vorrmulin, went slack in his grip.
"Satisfied now? Insect?"
"You have my true name. Enjoy your pathetic little victory, before the greenskins on this hulk gnaw you down to bone."
Rosen raised the one-eyed Imp slightly, bringing its eyeline level with his own.
"Shut up."
"From here on, I ask, you answer."
"Swear on your true name."
"Every word you tell me has to be true. If you mix in even a single lie, a single misdirection, a single deliberate omission."
"You'll end up exactly where your companion did."
He held it in his grip like a particularly ugly cat being held up by the scruff of its neck.
The Imp was quiet for a moment, then spoke.
"I, Fezekks Vorrmulin, take my true name, condensed from the depths of the warp's abyss, as anchor. With the eternal tides of the Sea of Chaos as witness. All that I speak to this mortal henceforth shall be true, free of deception, free of omission."
"Should I violate this oath, may this name shatter and this soul be extinguished forever."
The warp resonance faded. The contract was sealed.
The true name oath had generated an irreversible binding mark in the warp's underlying laws. From this point forward, every lie it told would cause that mark to strike back against its soul core. For a minor daemon of this tier, one that even the warp's lowest organisms looked down on, three such strikes would probably be sufficient to collapse its soul into fragments too small to count.
Rosen knew this, which was why he moved directly to his first question.
"How many greenskins are on this hulk?"
Fezekks's single eye swivelled.
The corner of its mouth twitched involuntarily, the subtle expression of something trying to lie and being strangled by the binding mark before the impulse could get started.
"...Many."
"Specific number."
"Do I look like an Imperial Census Bureau to you?" Fezekks shrieked. "I haven't gone around counting every one of those damned green mushroom-heads—"
Rosen's grip tightened one degree.
"Gah, fine, fine! Approximately three million or more! Maybe higher! Those damned spores keep sprouting new ones from the corners of the hull plating every single day! Who knows how many there are now!"
Three million.
Rosen's pupils contracted slightly.
Three million greenskins packed into a space hulk one hundred and twenty kilometres across. The density itself wasn't staggering. Averaged across the total volume of the hulk, it worked out to a few dozen per square kilometre. But the problem was that greenskins didn't distribute evenly.
Which meant in certain critical areas, the local density could reach thousands or even tens of thousands per square kilometre.
"What are they doing here?" Rosen pressed. "Three million greenskins crammed into a single hulk can't just be here to fight each other."
Fezekks let out a laugh loaded with contempt.
"Hee hee hee... you actually know those mushroom-brains fairly well. Of course they're not just fighting each other, though fighting does account for about eighty percent of their leisure activities."
Its single eye flickered.
"Their Mekboyz, those gear-brained lunatics, are planning to convert this entire hulk into a Rok."
A Rok.
Rosen's heart gave one hard beat.
In the Imperium's threat assessment database, an Ork Rok was one of the highest-tier strategic threats in existence.
It was the pinnacle of what greenskin civilisation could achieve in the field of mechanical engineering. Taking an asteroid or an enormous piece of space wreckage and converting it, through technology that completely violated the laws of physics but somehow worked in Ork hands, into a mobile fortress of annihilation.
A Rok typically carried a terrifying number of massive artillery pieces, countless fighter launch bays, and residential capacity for several million Orks.
Its destructive potential in space was comparable to a roaming Hive Fleet tendril.
In Imperial history, the most famous engagement at the Battle of Uranos had been triggered by a single Ork Rok breaking through the defensive line, reducing the orbital defence networks of three civilised worlds along with tens of millions of their inhabitants to cosmic dust.
"But those mushroom-brains aren't getting on nearly as well as they'd like."
Fezekks tilted its head, clearly enjoying the spectacle it was describing. "Because this hulk doesn't only have greenskins in it."
Rosen's eyes narrowed. "What else?"
"Chaos."
"This hulk has been soaking in the warp for hundreds of years. Did you think only green mushrooms grew during all that time? Chaos seeds have taken root in every crack."
"In the hulk's deep decks, I'm talking about anything below Deck One-Fifty, there are substantial daemonic presences. Not garbage like me, not something that couldn't even qualify as warp bottom-feeders. Real daemons. Bloodletters, Plague Bearers, Flames of Change, and at least a few Bloodthirsters that crawled out of some hell-rift and nested in the deeper decks."
"And Chaos Space Marines."
Fezekks added with undisguised relish: "Your human traitors. Space Marines who turned their backs on your Corpse-Emperor. Approximately twenty to thirty of them, belonging to some small warband called the Dark Whisperers or the Sons of Despair, I don't remember, all your human names are equally unpleasant and long. They set up an altar near Deck One-Sixty and occasionally grab a few greenskins to sacrifice."
Rosen processed this without any change in his expression.
Chaos Space Marines, even just twenty or thirty of them, were superhuman soldiers clad in power armour, armed with boltguns and chainswords, sharpened by centuries or even millennia of continuous warfare.
With his current strength, six Catachan Jungle Fighters and a few knives going up against Chaos Space Marines in a straight fight was not survivable under any circumstances.
"There's more." Fezekks snickered. "In the hulk's core sections, deep in the oldest ship wreckage, there are Genestealer infestation nests."
Genestealers.
These alien infiltrators, seeded ahead of Tyranid Hive Fleets, possessed unsettling abilities to disguise themselves and assimilate their hosts.
Throughout Imperial history, Genestealer infiltration had triggered the fall of countless worlds.
They sometimes spent decades or even centuries working their way through a planet's social structure, from the lowest-level miners up through mid-tier administrators and eventually into the upper chambers of the planetary governor's office. By the time the Tyranid advance fleet arrived in orbit, the planet's entire defence apparatus had already been hollowed out from the inside.
Rosen turned this over in silence.
Three million greenskins, planning to convert the hulk into a Rok.
Substantial organised daemonic entities and a small band of Chaos Renegade Space Marines in the deep decks.
Genestealer infestation nests in the core sections.
Three factions in continuous conflict inside the hulk, none of them yielding to the others.
And he was wedged in the gap between all three.
Rosen quietly directed a brief internal remark toward the old man sitting on the Golden Throne.
Then he asked the next critical question.
"Are there any surviving human Astra Militarum soldiers from the 88th Strike Force?"