Chapter 24: Echoes in the Void

The battered Dauntless sat heavy on the cracked soil of Gethsemane IV, her hull streaked with soot and battle scars. At dawn, the ship's engines rumbled to life, sending a tremor through the makeshift camps clustered around her landing struts. One by one, the survivors-Imperial Guardsmen, civilians, and the two Blood Angels-filed aboard. The last look at the ruined world was a silent promise: they would not forget those left behind.

Inside, the air was thick with tension and exhaustion. Colonel Voss oversaw the final checks and rationing, his voice hoarse from days of barking orders. Guardsmen moved with mechanical discipline, securing the hatches and herding civilians into the crowded holds. Children clung to their mothers, wide-eyed and silent, while the elders whispered prayers for safe passage.

With no Navigator among them, the Dauntless could not risk a full plunge into the warp. Instead, Voss and the ship's remaining officers plotted a desperate course-short, calculated "blinks" through the empyrean, each one a gamble with fate. With the approval of Thaddeus, the crew gathered in the command chamber, hunched over star charts and battered cogitators, plotting each jump with the utmost caution.

First the Gellar Field was engaged, its ancient machinery humming to life, casting a shimmering veil of reality around the ship. The air grew heavy, as if the warp itself pressed against the hull, hungry for a weakness. The survivors braced themselves as the engines howled and the world outside twisted into madness. For a heartbeat, there was only darkness and the sensation of falling sideways through time.

Then, with a gut-wrenching jolt, the Dauntless would reemerge into realspace. Sometimes, the stars outside seemed unchanged; other times, the constellations had shifted, and the ship's chronometers disagreed by days or even weeks. Each jump was a trial, and every emergence was met with a collective sigh of relief.

Life aboard the Dauntless was a study in endurance. The holds were packed tight, Guardsmen sleeping in shifts on bare metal, civilians huddled together for warmth. The air was stale, thick with the scent of sweat, oil, and fear. Rations were thin protein paste and recycled water, distributed with military precision. Children played quietly with scraps of plasteel, their laughter rare but precious. The ship's chapel became a refuge, where the desperate sought comfort in prayer and the presence of the two Blood Angels. 

Thaddeus spent long hours in meditation, seeking clarity and strength in the silence between jumps. The whispers still haunted him-strange, half-formed voices that brushed the edge of his thoughts-but he buried them beneath discipline and ritual. Vorn, meanwhile, walked the lower decks in restless vigil, his presence alone enough to keep order among the frightened masses. The Red Thirst simmered within him, but he held it at bay, inspired by Thaddeus's example and will.

Yet, through it all, the Dauntless pressed on-each blink through the void of space bringing them closer to hope, or perhaps to another battlefield. Thaddeus watched the stars from the observation blister, his resolve hardening with every jump. He would find the lost, gather the scattered sons of the Emperor, ambushed by traitors or abandoned on forsaken planets, and send them to where they were needed most... 

But... nothing was good. In fact, everything was suddenly, terribly wrong.

It began with a flicker-a stuttering in the Gelar Field, that invisible shield between reality and the howling madness of the Warp. For a heartbeat, then another, and then a third, the world aboard the ship unraveled. The air thickened, heavy with the stench of burning ozone and copper, as if the ship itself had begun to bleed. Thousands of whispers-soft, seductive, maddening-filled every corridor, promising power, secrets, and oblivion. The Warp had slipped its leash, and for those seconds, hell reigned.

---

He was just a survivor; his name was Jerek, though it barely mattered now. The world had gone sideways, the air thick and wrong, and the light strips above him writhed like worms. He pressed his back to the cold metal wall, heart pounding so hard it hurt, breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps.

There were faces in the walls. He saw them-oh Emperor, he saw them. Eyes, hundreds of them, blinking and rolling, mouths stretching wide, grinning, whispering. Their teeth were black and endless. Their tongues flicked out, tasting his fear. He tried to shut his eyes, but the faces followed, burned into his eyelids, wriggling and shifting, whispering his name in voices that sounded like his mother, his brother...

Don't look, don't look, don't look; they'll crawl out, they'll crawl out; they're in the pipes, in the wires, in my head, in my head, in my head-

He clawed at his scalp, nails raking through sweat and grime. The faces laughed, their mouths stretching wider, wider, impossibly wide. He could feel them behind the metal, pressing agains it, bulging it out, ready to burst through and drag him in.

"Stop it!" he screamed, voice cracking. "Get out! Get out of my head!"

People around him shrank back, eyes wide with terror. Someone tried to touch his shoulder to calm him, but he spun and lashed out, shrieking. "Can't you see them? They're in the walls! They're watching! They want to eat us, eat us, EAT US-"

He slammed his fists against the bulkhead, desperate to silence the whispers, to crush the faces back into the metal. Blood smeared on the wall, his own, but the faces only grinned wider, their laughter crawling into his ears, his bones, his soul. 

I have to get them out, have to get them out, have to-

His fingers clawed at his eyes, trying to tear the visions away, but the faces only multiplied, filling the world, filling him, until there was nothing left but screaming and darkness and the endless, hungry faces in the walls, he died.

---

Panic exploded. Civilians bolted, shrieking, their faces masks of primal terror. Some dropped to their knees, clutching their heads, eyes wide and unseeing as visions clawed at their minds. Others turned feral, lashing out at anyone near them, their sanity shattered. A young woman convulsed on the deck, her mouth splitting into a scream and a laugh, two voices fighting for control of her body. Guardsmen began to warp-one's arm bubbled and split into a jagged claw that tore open a comrade's throat before Vorn's plasma fire ended his agony. A child's shadow peeled free, growing a mouthful of teeth, and bit through a fleeing man's tendon, sending him crashing to the blood-slick floor.

Possession struck with cruel randomness. A man staggered forward, crystalline growths bursting from his skin, chanting heresies in a tongue older than stars. Thaddeus was on him in a blur, faster than any other Blood Angel, his power sword hissing through the air, bisecting the abomination in a spray of gore. Another one stood with eyes like swirling starfields, devouring the light around him. Vorn's plasma gun roared, fire incinerating him before he could speak. An elderly matriarch's fingers stretched into bone blades, and the mob, driven to madness, brought her down with pipes and wrenches.

Thaddeus moved through the carnage like a crimson storm. His armor, once resplendent, was battered and scarred, the once-proud sigils now obscured by grime and blood. His Crimson veil, dulled by soot and gore. He fought with speed that blurred the eye, his power sword a streak of blue-white light, his bolter pistol barking death into the faces of the possessed. When the press grew too close, he lashed out with his fist, crushing bone and splintering skulls. He was everywhere at once, saving, killing, judging.

Vorn, ever at his side, wielded his plasma weapon with surgical precision, vaporizing threats before they could reach the survivors. Where Thaddeus was a whirlwind, Vorn was a lance of focused fire, his shots burning through flesh and mutation alike.

When the field stabilized, the ship was left in ruin. Survivors gathered in the ruined corridors, trembling, bloodied, and hollow-eyed... Corpses lay sprawled across the deck, some of them twisted into grotesque shapes that defied reason. Some victims lay comatose, blood leaking from their eyes, their souls lost somewhere in the Warp's embrace. On the deck, a permanent bloodstain had formed, eerily shaped like the Eightfold Path-a symbol no one dared acknowledge. Despair hung in the air, thick as blood. Some wept openly. Others simply stared, lost. Thaddeus, with the power sword, made that symbol unrecognizable. 

Then Thaddeus, his green eyes rimmed with red from smoke and grief, forced himself to speak. His voice, hoarse but unyielding, cut through the silence.

"Look around you!" Thaddeus called, his voice ringing out, battered and raw, echoing off the blood-splattered walls. His words cut through the hush, drawing the eyes of the broken survivors. "These were our kin-shopkeepers, welders, children who never held a weapon. When the veil tore, they stood between us and the abyss. Their sacrifice is not a defeat. It is proof that we can endure!"

A hush fell. Some clung to each other, sobbing quietly, their grief momentarily stilled by the force of his conviction. A grizzled laborer squeezed his daughter's hand, tears streaking the grime on his face. A wounded youth, blood seeping through a makeshift bandage, straightened, hope flickering in his eyes. Others simply stared, hollow and numb, as if Thaddeus's words were the only thing holding them together.

He knelt beside a dead woman, pressing his forehead to her unmutated hand, drawing strength from her memory. The sight of the crimson-armored giant in mourning sent a ripple through the crowd-some wept openly, others whispered prayers, and a few, battered but unbroken, nodded with grim resolve.

"The Emperor does not promise safety," he said, voice thick. "He gives us this-the chance to be the light that outshines this chaos. Every breath we take is a rebellion against the dark." His gaze swept over the survivors and the Guardsmen, meeting their eyes one by one, as if willing them to believe. "Now help me bear our fallen... and let the galaxy know we are still here."

For a heartbeat, despair loosened its grip. The survivors, the guardsmen, drew together, finding in Thaddeus's words a fragile spark of defiance. Some limped, some leaned on friends, but all moved-lifting the dead, honoring the lost, their faces set with a new, desperate courage. Hope flickered in the darkness, they became more than victims-they became a brotherhood, united in loss, and in the stubborn will to endure.

---

Thaddeus, made the decision: no more blinks... 

Colonel Voss approached Thaddeus, his voice low but earnest. "You've been good to us, Sargeant. Are you certain about no more jumps? We could reach our destination faster..."

Thaddeus nodded his gaze distant. "Yes. And no one deserves to die that way..."

Then the distress call was sent, a plea cast into the void, let fate decide their path...

Vorn stood beside him, silent and immovable. He understood more than he let on, his plasma plasma weapon cradled with habitual precision. He knew of Thaddeus's grim communion with the Night Lord Dread-Contemptor, knew the price that had been paid for forbidden knowledge. But Vorn asked nothing, said nothing. He simply followed, trusting his brother's resolve.

Vorn flexed his chainsword-arm, the whir of the mechanism a quiet reminder of Cassian-another ghost among so many. His eyes hard as ceramite, he never left the void beyond the viewport.

Colonel Voss, exhausted and bloodied, closed his eyes. He began to pray, the words silent in his mind but fervent all the same. Around him, officers and crew huddled in tense silence, watching the sensors, waiting for deliverance or doom.

The wait stretched on, every second a lifetime. Hope and dread warred in every heart.

Then, a signal. The auspex screamed. A ship emerged from the darkness-a silhoutte vast and unmistakable, prow bristling with gun batteries, cathedral spires rising from its armored back. It was an Imperial vessel. a Dictator-class battlecruiser, five kilometers of adamantium and faith, a city in the void crowned with the sigils of the Emperor. Its hull bore scars and soot, but its running lights blazed defiantly, casting long shadows across the battered survivors.

For a moment, no one dared believe it. Then Voss's eyes widened with disbelief and relief, tears welling unbidden. Officers gasped, some crossing themselves, others simply staring, slack-jawed and trembling. A murmur swept the bridge-first a whisper, then a cheer, then a ragged chorus of laughter and sobs. The survivors clung to one another, hope rekindled at last.

Colonel Voss pressed a shaking hand to his brow and whispered, "Thank the Emperor... We're saved."

For the first time since the nightmare began, the ship's battered crew dared to believe in tomorrow. Allies had come. The darkness, for now, had been held at bay.