A long pause follows, followed by some ashen faces in the crewmembers. The grizzled spokesman steps forward and says in a very reasonable tone of voice-
The charms make the men feel safe Missionary. The mighty Xenos weapons on this blessed vessel smite heathens and heretical Xenos in the name of the Emperor... The Xenos tokens are really just the lads own way of venerating the Emperor and the Omnissiah...
'Then let the men carve charms in the likeness of the Emperor! In the words of Galan Noirgrim:'
"Heresy is like a tree, its roots lie in the darkness whilst its leaves wave in the sun and to those who suspect nought, it has an attractive and pleasing appearance. Truly, you can prune away its branches, or even cut the tree to the ground, but it will grow up again ever the stronger and ever more comely. Yet all awhile the root grows thick and black, gnawing at the bitter soil, drawing its nourishment from the darkness, and growing even greater and more deeply entrenched.
Such is the nature of heresy, and this is why it is so hard to destroy, for it must be eradicated leaf, branch, trunk and root. It must be exorcised utterly or it will return all the stronger, time and time again, until it is too great to destroy. Then we are doomed."
'It is a slippery slope you men descend! These weapons are tools of the Emperor and do His bidding; let there be no question of this. All you men are to swear an oath before me and the Emperor that NONE OF YOU shall ever worship false idols or carve graven images.'
'There will be no more second chances.' Praetia turns to allow the cameras to get a full view of her as she addresses the whole crew. 'If I EVER find evidence of any more Xenos artifacts on board this ship, I will personally kick you out of the airlock and watch your eyes explode out of your heretical skull!'
The threat of death and Praetia's fiery speech cow the men. Grovelling and begging for penitence ensues, and a large quantity of Xenos charms are thrown from the centre of the crowd, no one having the courage to throw them from the edge and admit he was carrying them. Garin and his men maintain order, and everything seems to be going well...
Until one of the men suddenly pulls a Laspistol, and begins ranting and screaming. His eyes wide, he whirls and spins, forcing those around him back and waving the laspistol in their faces.
Garin and his men have lasguns trained on the man, but seem unsure of what to do. Garin looks to Havelock and Praetia for instructions...
Praetia turns her head to Garin and gives a slight nod.
A loud CRACK is heard as Garin's men kill the raving man with well placed lasgun fire. A moment of stunned silence descends, before other men nearby begin spouting nonsense. Chaos begins to ensue as the mob begins a swirling maelstrom of raving, fighting men. Garin and his men seem to be unaffected, but begin to swiftly fall back towards the door.
Orders, ma'am? Garin asks.
Over the vox, panicked signals begin to come from all over the ship, talking about mutiny and madness...
One of the vox messages coming in is from Jactor. He reports that the Gellar field was doing something strange a few minutes ago, and it seemed like the gellar field was weakening for a short time. He reports the fluctuation was fixed by himself...
You can hear a brawl break out behind you in the bridge- it seems four junior officers have attacked Trask with their bare hands...
Havelock calls for Jerol on his vox bead.
"Jerol, sound the general alert, have someone on the bridge make a scan for hidden ships in the area, make sure the vital areas of the ship are secured. This may be a coincident, but I don't believe in them."
Havelock will fall back towards the door along with Garin, he will try to pull Praetia along, things are about to get very messy indeed.
Next, Havelock voxes Jactor.
"Jactor, this is all too coincidental, it must be a signal of some sort, if this is originating from the cargo hold I want it found right now, if nothing else it means we can write that of as a cause and focus on other things. If not then identify where the disturbance originated at once!"
As far as Havelock is concerned, he thinks it is unlikely that something small enough to be dropped into a cargo box and not found easily would be able to cause this, but better safe than sorry.
Havelock turns to Garin.
"Hold fire, this madness is ship wide it seems, we can't afford to kill them now, let us lock them up here and try to find the cause of the madness, they may yet be saved! Follow me. You too sister Praetia please."
Havelock will get to the cargo bay as soon as he is able to break free.
"Lion, if you can hear me, something must be causing this madness, an outside source, can you find out if it is affecting the mercenaries as well? Also, something or someone was tampering with the Gellar field."
You receive a reply from Jactor- Sir, what if its the Warp itself? Strange things are always at risk of happening during Warp travel...
Hearing the scuffle behind him, Jerol stood up and spun around. Seeing the savage way the junior officers attacked Trask he immediately snapped back to his home planet. Everything faded out, the noise, all logical impulsions. It was like he was there again, facing the mutant onslaught. Without hesitation, or even conscious though, in one fluid movement he grabbed his long las from beside him and briefly aimed before shooting.
Even a fully functional gellar field is not infallible. A lucky warp entity could still get inside, or something could seep through. A functional gellar field makes warp travel possible, but it could never be ruled out as safe...
Havelock, Praetia and Garin and his men flee the scene of a maddened mob fighting and tearing each other apart, swiftly sealing the door. Moving swiftly to the cargo bay, the men searching the cargo have found nothing noteworthy to report, nor do they appear to be affected. Throughout the ship, further reports of madness and attacks reverberate through the vessel. Armsmen and crew members alike desperately seek leadership. Over the micro-bead you have contact with one another, and no one has heard from the captain.
Jerol's lasrifle makes a loud CRACK as a shot slams into a junior officer attempting to chew off Trask's ear. He screams in pain and begins clawing at his own chest, while the other two officers ignore Trask and begin to tear at their wounded comrade like Ghouls...
Lion sees the scuffling breaking out and immediately breaks out his best Imperial Officer.
Atten-shun! You pukes better have a good reason for disturbing the calm of my bridge! Get your tunics in line or I'll have you broken with more than words.
Clearly the threat implied by Lion was far from the consideration of the Junior Officer's minds.
------------
'Havelock, do I look like a sanctioned psycher! I'm an Imperial Navigator. I don't listen in on the thoughts of others. But, I'll see what the Imperial Tarot has to say when I have control again of the bridge.'
'Tampering with the Geller Field! Madness, certain madness. Only a navigator with years of training is capable of such exposure and not suffer repairable harm.'
Even a fully functional gellar field is not infallible. A lucky warp entity could still get inside, or something could seep through. A functional gellar field makes warp travel possible, but it could never be ruled out as safe...
Havelock, Praetia and Garin and his men flee the scene of a maddened mob fighting and tearing each other apart, swiftly sealing the door. Moving swiftly to the cargo bay, the men searching the cargo have found nothing noteworthy to report, nor do they appear to be affected. Throughout the ship, further reports of madness and attacks reverberate through the vessel. Armsmen and crew members alike desperately seek leadership. Over the micro-bead you have contact with one another, and no one has heard from the captain.
Jerol's lasrifle makes a loud CRACK as a shot slams into a junior officer attempting to chew off Trask's ear. He screams in pain and begins clawing at his own chest, while the other two officers ignore Trask and begin to tear at their wounded comrade like Ghouls...
Jerol fired a second shot into one of the men ravaging the junior officers chest. Walking towards him as he did it, he stowed his long las on his back and withdrew his shot pistol. He kicked the final man off and executed him with a point blank shot to the face.
He looked up and used his vox caster to contact the rest of the command crew.
This is some type of mutant infection. Ive seen it before. We have to exterminate all infected now in order to survive this outbreak.
He turned to Lion
Lion, I'll get control of the security systems. Shut the doors to the worst infect areas. You're a thinker, come up with a plan with everyone else when they get to the bridge. Ill try and keep the damage as low as possible
Praetia dodges blows as she darts into the middle of the crowd to retrieve the madman's las pistol, lest the blast a hole in the hull with it. She hands it to one of Garin's men as they dashed out of the chamber and sealed the doors behind them.
'Emperor's Breath, what is this madness? Havelock, my Acolytes need to return to the shrine to pray for our salvation. If ever there were a time for reciting the Imperator Salvitorus, this is it!'
Lion hated emergencies they were filled with too much screaming and not enough thinking.
His mind ran through the current stocks on the ship and there wasn't anything that would slow down the spread of the madness unless the Ploin Juice had some hidden disease fighting quality that he wasn't aware of.
A few cammo cloaks wouldn't also save the lives of the crew.
Lion then remembered that the officers of Imperial Ships had a variety of techniques for dealing with crew revolts. A not unknown problem though not highly reported.
Lion considered things like decompression. It was certainly popular in half Throne novels to space pirates and other crew. The problem was that it was extremely damaging to ships and piping that didn't usually survive well the harsh cold and boiling of fluids inside the piping.
Most Imperial Captains preferred to regulate the flow of Nitrogen in the air. It was an undetectable gas for humans to smell and was already present in the atmosphere. It was just a matter of shifting the selection to increase the quantity. The nitrogen would drive the oxygen out of the people's blood and have the effect of drowning without all the damage to the ship.
There would need to be a period of higher pressures to drive the nitrogen out of the joints but it could be done. In the mean time the areas flooded would be reduced to gasping people and the harder the people fought the more they would use up their oxygen and collapse.
'Enviromental controls. Where there is fighting, increase the nitrogen ratio in those areas and start to seal hatches to contain the problem.'
'If you people don't stop fighting then I will open the third eye and blast the flesh from your bones and purge this bridge of everyone.'
Hearing the sound of the savage attack Minerva spins, her bolt pistols already in her hands. Taking in the situation with a glance she fires at the closest of the officers.
48 (BS) +10 (semi-auto), -20 (shooting into combat)
HIT! - only 1 degree of success though. To the body
Damage: = 10 points damage
Cowards! she yells, Have you no thought for you duty? You will suffer for your lack of inner strength!
Upon hearing Lions words, Havelock explodes, he knows he shouldn't talk back, he knows it will accomplish nothing, but the words escape his voicebox before he can stop them.
"For the love off...Don't be such an ass Lion! I mean try to contact them on radio or something! If we can't contain the madness we may need them to purge the ship before the infection spreads, by the Omnisiah!"
Havelock is relieved that his own detail seems unaffected by the madness; he turns to Garin and Jactor.
"This madness is contagious or so it seems, and that means we cannot take any chances. Jactor, you will barricade yourself with the crew here, arm yourselves and don't let anyone in until you get an all clear signal or you hear from me."
He then sighs deeply.
"Garin, we are going to have to go on a hunt, most likely the navigator is sealing off the infected areas, but there is a chance some of the madmen have slipped out before that, we can't let the infection spread, so we will go and hunt down any who might have escaped. Questions?"
Havelock pauses a moment to see if anyone has anything useful to add.
"We can't let them get to close, so set weapons to semi auto and divide into two fire lines so that the first can fall back and reload while the other one takes over."
"While you are here Jactor, finish the search as well, that will be one headache less for me after this is all done."
Between Jerol and Minerva, the infected on the bridge are quickly killed. Lions plan begins to be implemented as nitrogen levels are manipulated to rise throughout the ship while Lion gives the orders for his plan to be put into motion...
Havelock rushed towards the bowels of the ship, the Gellar field was the priority for him now, he needed to do something, both to forget his own frustration at certain peoples pig headedness, and to help save the ship...and the lives of the crew, which surprised him a little. Ordinarily a tech priest would care less about the flesh and blood than the sacred metal itself, being a part of the Void wolf's crew seems to have had an effect on Havelock.
since he had no weapons on himself at the moment, he was grateful indeed for the escort by Garin and his men, they all looked grim but determined, clearly not the sort of men to break and run easily, no doubt honed in the fires of war.
As he reached the controls he whirled around to face Garin.
"I will need some time to assuage the machine spirit and to stop the leaking of blessed energies, you must guard my back since I will not be able to defend myself while I communicate with the machine spirit."
Offering a short apology to the Omnisiah for failing to observe the proper protocol and rituals, Havelock grabbed his combi tool and began working, the areas where he could not reach he sent his servo skull to instead.
Praetia sends her Acolytes to the Shrine to secure it and check on the other clergy, 'Once you are there, seal the doors and report to me via the spare micro-bead in my office.' Seeing them off, she follows Havelock down into the middle of the ship to sick bay to assist Doctor Hestus. Perhaps he has some sedative that could be released into the life support systems...
Praetia reaches sick bay and sees that the orderlies, nurses and Doctor Hestus have their hands full with unruly patients which were already in for treatment when the outbreak started. Medical instruments have been strewn across the floor and blood spatters are almost everywhere. Dodging blows and swings from crazed patients, she runs to the drug cabinet and is relieved to see several packs of aerosol sedative. 'Doctor, I'm taking these. May the Saints watch over you!' She blocks a scalpel strike with one of the packs before ducking out of the door. Praetia leaves the chaos of the sick bay and dashes straight to the life support chamber...
Lion does what he can to co-ordinate the ship's crew but he is clearly unused to the multiple task environment and does his best to try to hold things together.
Scholastic Lore (Tactica imperialis): 33
Searching her memories Minerva contributes her limited expertise to the effort. However the mindless madness of the affected crew members render her tactics irrelivant
Lion is off to a slow start as he tries to get his plan into working order, and Minerva is continually frustrated by the inexperienced teams of armsmen lack of comprehension of her advanced tactics. Despite this, the command crew are successfully co-ordinated by Lion and between their various efforts (particularily Void Master Jerol's ingenious use of the security doors to keep infection to a mininum), the nitrogen gas overwhelms all but the toughest infected, who are beaten down or shot by armsmen. Havelock ensures the nefarious influence of the Warp does not provide further infection while the infected are dealt with- but it seems the madness exposure was a small pocket of the Warp and unlikely to re-occur. Praetia's sedatives save many lives, but even once the 10% of the infected crew are completely quarantined it is obvious there is no cure. Garin, his men, and the armsmen of the Void Wolf await the grim task of gunning them down, although whenever they get a chance the infected waste little time screaming and tearing each other apart anyway. Captain Demetrius apparently slept through the whole incident, his private quarters and Hand's watchful eye keeping him from exposure. He sends a messenger asking for a full report by Lion tomorrow, and congratulates you all on achieving 'acceptable losses'.
Havelock is deeply troubled, one of the most important part of his objection to simply space the gun crew had been to preserve lives, and Jerol had also pointed out that it would leave them without a gun crew, and now, because the whole crew had been in one place, they had all been exposed to the raw stuff of the warp.
Afterwards, when the incident had passed, Havelock insisted that he would walk through the chamber where they lie. Some of these faces he knew, some he had recommended or trained himself...now they were all dead, some had been torn apart by others in the madness, little more than bloody scraps left. Others had simply been gunned down, either by their fellows, or by Garin and his men.
Most disturbing of all was the fact that a few of the ones that had lasted the longest had blood around their mouths, and scraps of flesh in their teeth. It seemed that in their madness they had started to feast upon each other.
As Havelock watched the scene of carnage, he cursed bitterly, everything had fallen apart, though they had acted with the best of intentions, through the fickle fortunes of fate it had instead turned into a disaster.
Unable to contain his grief, Havelock wept bitter tears openly, how horrible to have rediscovered parts of his humanity he had thought lost, only to experience this.
Billy! Billy!
*** Munching Sounds ***
Billy's not here anymore.
After a full five days of warp travel, the ship has been restored to a more normal state. Not enough crew were killed off to truly affect the ship's day-to-day running, and the gun crews have been replenished to full. Havelock has made good progress in modifying Jerol's favoured weapon and has laid the foundations for the rest of the customisation . Towards the end of the fifth day in the Warp, Lion pulls the ship out at your destination- The Graveyard. Massive remains of Xenos vessels (and some Imperial) remain in this area, mostly looted of anything valuable long ago. However, the area remains notorious for renegades and pirates using it as an ambush spot, using the massive pices of floating metal to hide their engine signatures... It will take several hours for Lion and his assistants to plot the next Warp journey, which will be to planet Orb itself..
Havelock has been very busy during these last five days, personally taking on as much of the maintenance work as he can. He was always making sure to compliment any of the workers if he does well, and giving them a stern talking to if they messed up, and reading them the riot act if they were negligent or careless.
Having slept little, he is bone weary now, despite the loss of crew being "acceptable" and not a real threat to the operating procedures of the ship; he himself still felt the loss of life keenly.
It was a strange feeling, like having a severed muscle reattached, only to find that you don't really remember how it works, and in addition the limb is so tender that it hurts constantly.
Finally he left Jactor in charge and staggered back to his quarters, he left strict instructions to wake him at once should something happen or should his services be needed.
As the metal sheet came down so Jerol could see outside, he felt himself relax, despite the notoriety of this area. Warp travel had always made him uncomfortable, and the recent outbreak of warp madness in the crew had made things worse. At least in normal space you could see the threats.
He decided to make a quick check of the scanner, he was being super cautious at the moment, he didn't want to lose any more crew where he could avoid it.
*edit*
Alarms begin flaring as Jerol's successful use of the augurs picks up two vessels about 15 VU's away, engines running and closing on your position. It appears the two vessels were using a large xenos space hulk in order to hide behind and mask their engine signatures until the last minute, hoping to catch you by surprise. Crew begin running to their stations, and the whole command crew is swiftly ordered to the bridge for a meeting with Captain Demetrius...
Standing in front of the bridge and pacing before you all with a happy smile on his face, Captain Demetrius beams as he calls you all to order.
Most fortuitous indeed! What better way to test you than in glorious naval combat! You have the floor gentlemen, consider me a mere spectator. I'll be providing words of encouragement, but unless I deem it necessary my involvement will be minimal in this skirmish.
Captain Thule Demetrius pulls up a chair and simply takes a seat, waiting on you to plan out the initial stages of the combat...
Round 1-
Initiative-
Void Wolf- 6
Unknown Vessels- 2
'Unknown vessels, this is Missionary Praetia Saint-Claire aboard the Rogue Trader ship Void Wolf. At the moment, your maneuvers are assumed to be hostile, state your intent or we will be forced to fire upon you!'
Having arrived at the bridge a little bleary eyed from lack of sleep, Havelock is nonetheless able to comprehend the situation and begin to formulate a plan.
He bows in deference to the captain, and even manages to do it to Lion as well, while abrasive and perhaps a little pigheaded, Lion is still very effective in what he does, and that commands respect.
Seeing Praetia there fills Havelock with confidence, and a certain wish to show of his skills if possible, while the concept of a tech priest being infatuated or having a “crush” on someone is an alien idea, it seems to be happening, even if Havelock himself has not realized it.
Havelock suspected that if he could see Jerols face now, it would have an expression of something approaching glee now, Jerol loved flying, and if he was reckless enough then combat must be the perfect opportunity to truly shine.
"We should attempt to manoeuvre into a position as advantageous as possible for us as we are being attacked by two ships at once, allow me to suggest that we attempt to outflank them, I can communicate with the Void Wolves machine spirit at attempt to either increase its performance or it's speed.
"In the first case it would perform better in the hands of Voidmaster Soul, in the second case me might use the extra speed to outflank one of the ships before opening fire. I must however stress that the second action might strain the ships machines beyond its capacity and cause damage."
"While Lion is in charge, and Voidmaster Soul is guiding the ship, I turn to you two to decide where you would prefer me to work?"
Lion looked upon the lump in the chair and said nothing reminded of his 'keeper' Minerva. Lion had no illusions on what end of the barrel that he'd end up on if Minerva had to make a choice between the pair of them.
Thousands of years of Beneteks and he was left wet nursing someone who fate had lucked into an Imperial Warrant. How far has his family's star fallen.
'As you wish, Rogue Trader.'
Lion briefly thought of the report that still waited on his desk to be filed with the Rogue Trader detailing the recent irregularities of warp travel. With the arrival here after five day instead of forty days had left him a little behind in his work.
Lion acknowledged Havelock as he came upon the bridge.
He also listened to Praetia give challenge to the pair of vessels. The woman's actions of dealing with the gun crew without informing him or the captain was clearly reckless and dangerous to the morale of the ship. It was just fortune that Garin's troops had been armed for the occasion and had were ready to fight off the true danger of the warp at the time.
Still, she was backed by the Ecclesiastes and to challenge their base would be clearly dangerous. A pronouncement of excommunicia was a difficult fate to live with even if money could purchase you another priest's forgiveness. This time, her actions had helped save the ship. She would still need to be kept a watch upon due to her independent nature.
Weighing the possibilities that Havelock voiced.
'Let us not risk wrecking the ship yet, Explorator Havelock. It is not clear yet whether we will need the increased speed. Let us stick to the increasing of the Ship's love for her crew and her duty to serve the God-Emperor. The safer path until we have no choice but to throw all are dice upon the table.'
'For now we need to know what we face and what range our pursuers posses in weapons. Range and sensors shall be are focus.'
'I'll trust Void Master Soeul to keep us at a proper distance until we are more certain of what we are facing here. I'll suggest that we run at 80% drive speed and see what top speed our pursuers are willing to show us. It is best to know who has the faster ship in case we need to choose to pull away from the theatre.'
'In the mean time, if you don't have your Void suits, I'd recommend that you send for your suits to be brought to you. A void suit in another room is a far distance to travel should a hole appear in the ship. Sing the Anthem of Readiness and the last section to sound the anthem are to be put on report to Praetia and her priests for Administrative education.'
Praetia, you immediately receive a reply over the long range vox, a loud voice mixed with snarling and guttural groans, as well as roaring and cheering in the background-
Havelock salutes crisply as Lion dictates his actions.
"As you command, so shall it be done lord Benetek. I shall awaken the machine spirit to new heights of awareness."
Before he goes to work he quickly orders someone to fetch his voidsuit from his quarters. Some of his antipathy is dispelled, when there is work to be done, Lion can be almost...reasonable.
As he begins to work, he cannot help but wonder, the ships were waiting. Out here in dead space it seems unlikely that it would be much traffic, does that mean then that these ships were waiting for the Void Wolf?
Perhaps there really had been a signal beacon dropped in one of the boxes in the hold? Havelock quickly dismissed the idea, he had to trust that his crew would not miss such a thing when specifically ordered to search the crates. Besides, he had not found anything himself.
Praetias actions did puzzle him a little, after all, could those ships be intent on anything but mayhem? But if there was one person Havelock trusted to do what was needed then it was indeed Praetia.