Oath of Salvation
Warp travel is funky at the best of time and dangerous at the worse. Given the paranormal blood that rained from ceilings, faces contorted in the walls and the occasional daemon, Warp Travel was never a thing someone would take lightly or without great care. Plus the nightmares you'd get are literally unreal. Normally you'd have the Captain organize and plot a proper route after consorting with the Navigator, a Cartographer, the Pilot and at least half of the Engineering Staff and maybe have a Cardinal or a Confessor lead a mass prayer before jumping in. The Oath of Salvation only really had time for that last bit and even then the prayer was missing about half of the more superfluous words; the priests managed to get "God-Emperor save us" in about half a dozen times in slight variations before the ship ripped a hole in reality and jumped into the Warp.
Going into the Warp with little preparation is nothing short of extremely dangerous and most likely lethal. Going into the Warp without a properly plotted course is nothing short of practically suicide and very likely to be lethal. Going into the Warp with no preparation, non set course and a damaged Warp Engine is nothing short of complete and utter suicide guaranteed to be lethal in the most horrific ways possible. However, between the fact it was a relatively short and shallow jump and the hundreds of litanies of prayer and hope in Gothic and Binary, the Oath of Salvation got out about as well as it could as its bridge crew picked themselves off the ground.
Groaning as loud as the metal hull, Rogue Trader Captain Talvyrne, First of his Name, cracked his neck after landing face first into his podium after an impressive somersault into it, "Unless the Emperor has given us the good will to allow us to stay on the ship in death, I think we are all alive. Whats the situation?"
A loud pained cry from the corner of the bridge turned into a wailing howl of curses and ethereal shrieking as a crew man grabbed his face and began to rip his face off, preaching the death of the corpse-emperor and how the warp will claim all their souls. The only thing that the possessed crewman claimed today was several dozen rounds of las-beams, bullets and bolt shells to the various parts of the body. Everyone instinctively reached for their guns the second they heard screaming and once the talk of ruinous powers came in, munitions replaced most of the oxygen around the Daemonhost.
"Add 'possessed crewman' to whatever list of issues the ship currently has and get a Confessor up here to purify it." Talvyrne barked as the body was carefully disposed of by a pair of servitors, "Anmari, get Magos Thalmar on the comms and find out anything else that this ship has broken."
After a rigid and silent effort of everyone dragging themselves back into position as well as claims of lingering voices, the metallic face Magos Errant Thalmar appeared on the screen in the captains podium. Honestly it had more in common with the front end of a Chimera APC than a human face, but few were stupid enough to say it to the Magos's face. Krag probably would have if he could string together enough words to form a coherent insult. The senior tech priest rattled something in binary to someone off screen before he began a list of malfunctions currently plaguing the ship without even a greeting.
According to the Magos, the Oath was currently stuck in space with critical damage to their Warp Engine while their Sublight Thrusters were only capable of rather pitiful spurts of thrust due to what amounted to a power line failure and what happens when a Daemon gets sucked into a ventilation fan going at mach 3 for some reason. Some of the weapons systems were also having issues, most notable being that of Macrocannon number five having to managed to shift a good 30 degrees to the left and 15 degrees down from its original housing and a potentially corrupted turret that had already claimed 4 lives and 3 limbs. Fires where of course raging across the ship in various levels of intensity with firefighters scrambling up and down lifts to reach them.
Anmari soon added that the Augur Array was offline and would require an external repair team to fix having already scrambled a swarm of servo-skulls to the location. In addition it seemed that there was still taint in some parts of the ship as reports flooded into the console of the man she was leaning over about it raining blood, distant voices, brightly colored lights and corrupted servitors. Clean up crews, clergymen and naval armsmen were hastily dispatched to take care off everything. Everything except for Pipe 448 which according to the lady had burst again but this time on the far end of the ship.
With most of the problems being attended too, Talvyrne loudly pondered if there was anything on his ship that wasn't broken. Xantol the Everliving Sky Warrior proudly proclaimed that the recaffe machine was still working, oblivious to the sarcasm in the Captain's voice as his feral world mind continued to be amazed by such an amazing, awe inspiring piece of machinery. The only other people that shared such an interest in kitchen appliances were the Tech-Priest on board who would have bonded with Xantol the Brave Star had it not been for their religious believes on what was and wasn't a machine spirit/"iron beast soul".
By the time that everything had returned to a degree of normalcy and Xantol the Son of the Solar King and Lunar Princess stopped being amazed by a machine that heated liquid, Talvyrne was fully ready to retire to his bedchamber and spend some quality time with his bedwarmers, "Have our Astropath send a-"
"Astopath is currently unconscious and mumbling about polar bears." an out of breath runner dashed into the room waving a piece of paper forcing a change of plans.
"Okay, have the Navigator-" the Captain didn't even get out enough words before another runner barreled into the bridge.
"Navigator is unconscious and mumbling about polar bears." the man waved his own piece of paper before correcting himself, "Southern polar bears, not Northern polar bears."
Its common imperial knowledge that silence was always worse than loud noises. For the Guard it was because loud noises usually involved the comforting knowledge of artillery strikes. For Nobles it was because silence usually meant that someone had just slit the throats of all their guards and was about to receive an unwarranted but free throat reconstruction courtesy of an assassin. In this case, the silent fuming of the Captain was the exact opposite and between the terribly dangerous Warp Jump and the fact that there were Space Hulks safer than his ship at the moment conveyed more emotions than words ever possibly could. Also helped that his face turned an impressive number of colors during this time. In the end, it took some sweet whispering and a light massage from Anmari to calm Talyverne down to the point he could send out a general vox call for assistance across all known channels; surely there was at least one other Imperial vessel that could help them. Otherwise they'd have to rely on the polar bear-obsessed pyskers once they woke up.
The message itself had been laced with several half-truths and flat out lies. Broadcasting on open frequencies was a dangerous move and was practically inviting raiders and pirates to attack. Overstating the true nature of the damage would hopefully at least give the ship a leg up in surprise when the raiders found out it could still fight. the mention of families and children on the ship were also true; most ships had entire families or dynasties born and raised on its decks. There was even a primitive tribe that lived in Hydroponics responsible for food production that was originally press-ganged into service from some backwater, feral jungle world. After an initial disagreement over concepts such as "indirectly serving the Emperor" and what the technical definition of slavery was, they had settled in quite nicely and have become a part of the ship. The material compensation was mostly groxshit though; Talvyrne was not in a particularly generous mood as he stormed off the bridge.
Going into the Warp with little preparation is nothing short of extremely dangerous and most likely lethal. Going into the Warp without a properly plotted course is nothing short of practically suicide and very likely to be lethal. Going into the Warp with no preparation, non set course and a damaged Warp Engine is nothing short of complete and utter suicide guaranteed to be lethal in the most horrific ways possible. However, between the fact it was a relatively short and shallow jump and the hundreds of litanies of prayer and hope in Gothic and Binary, the Oath of Salvation got out about as well as it could as its bridge crew picked themselves off the ground.
Groaning as loud as the metal hull, Rogue Trader Captain Talvyrne, First of his Name, cracked his neck after landing face first into his podium after an impressive somersault into it, "Unless the Emperor has given us the good will to allow us to stay on the ship in death, I think we are all alive. Whats the situation?"
A loud pained cry from the corner of the bridge turned into a wailing howl of curses and ethereal shrieking as a crew man grabbed his face and began to rip his face off, preaching the death of the corpse-emperor and how the warp will claim all their souls. The only thing that the possessed crewman claimed today was several dozen rounds of las-beams, bullets and bolt shells to the various parts of the body. Everyone instinctively reached for their guns the second they heard screaming and once the talk of ruinous powers came in, munitions replaced most of the oxygen around the Daemonhost.
"Add 'possessed crewman' to whatever list of issues the ship currently has and get a Confessor up here to purify it." Talvyrne barked as the body was carefully disposed of by a pair of servitors, "Anmari, get Magos Thalmar on the comms and find out anything else that this ship has broken."
After a rigid and silent effort of everyone dragging themselves back into position as well as claims of lingering voices, the metallic face Magos Errant Thalmar appeared on the screen in the captains podium. Honestly it had more in common with the front end of a Chimera APC than a human face, but few were stupid enough to say it to the Magos's face. Krag probably would have if he could string together enough words to form a coherent insult. The senior tech priest rattled something in binary to someone off screen before he began a list of malfunctions currently plaguing the ship without even a greeting.
According to the Magos, the Oath was currently stuck in space with critical damage to their Warp Engine while their Sublight Thrusters were only capable of rather pitiful spurts of thrust due to what amounted to a power line failure and what happens when a Daemon gets sucked into a ventilation fan going at mach 3 for some reason. Some of the weapons systems were also having issues, most notable being that of Macrocannon number five having to managed to shift a good 30 degrees to the left and 15 degrees down from its original housing and a potentially corrupted turret that had already claimed 4 lives and 3 limbs. Fires where of course raging across the ship in various levels of intensity with firefighters scrambling up and down lifts to reach them.
Anmari soon added that the Augur Array was offline and would require an external repair team to fix having already scrambled a swarm of servo-skulls to the location. In addition it seemed that there was still taint in some parts of the ship as reports flooded into the console of the man she was leaning over about it raining blood, distant voices, brightly colored lights and corrupted servitors. Clean up crews, clergymen and naval armsmen were hastily dispatched to take care off everything. Everything except for Pipe 448 which according to the lady had burst again but this time on the far end of the ship.
With most of the problems being attended too, Talvyrne loudly pondered if there was anything on his ship that wasn't broken. Xantol the Everliving Sky Warrior proudly proclaimed that the recaffe machine was still working, oblivious to the sarcasm in the Captain's voice as his feral world mind continued to be amazed by such an amazing, awe inspiring piece of machinery. The only other people that shared such an interest in kitchen appliances were the Tech-Priest on board who would have bonded with Xantol the Brave Star had it not been for their religious believes on what was and wasn't a machine spirit/"iron beast soul".
By the time that everything had returned to a degree of normalcy and Xantol the Son of the Solar King and Lunar Princess stopped being amazed by a machine that heated liquid, Talvyrne was fully ready to retire to his bedchamber and spend some quality time with his bedwarmers, "Have our Astropath send a-"
"Astopath is currently unconscious and mumbling about polar bears." an out of breath runner dashed into the room waving a piece of paper forcing a change of plans.
"Okay, have the Navigator-" the Captain didn't even get out enough words before another runner barreled into the bridge.
"Navigator is unconscious and mumbling about polar bears." the man waved his own piece of paper before correcting himself, "Southern polar bears, not Northern polar bears."
Its common imperial knowledge that silence was always worse than loud noises. For the Guard it was because loud noises usually involved the comforting knowledge of artillery strikes. For Nobles it was because silence usually meant that someone had just slit the throats of all their guards and was about to receive an unwarranted but free throat reconstruction courtesy of an assassin. In this case, the silent fuming of the Captain was the exact opposite and between the terribly dangerous Warp Jump and the fact that there were Space Hulks safer than his ship at the moment conveyed more emotions than words ever possibly could. Also helped that his face turned an impressive number of colors during this time. In the end, it took some sweet whispering and a light massage from Anmari to calm Talyverne down to the point he could send out a general vox call for assistance across all known channels; surely there was at least one other Imperial vessel that could help them. Otherwise they'd have to rely on the polar bear-obsessed pyskers once they woke up.
+++VOX MESSAGE+++ +++PRIORITY ALPHA-PRIMUS+++ THIS IS THE OATH OF SALVATION REQUEST AID FROM ANY IMPERIAL SHIP IN THE AREA. WE ARE A SIMPLE MERCANTILE VESSEL THAT HAS SUFFERED CRITICAL AND CRIPPLING DAMAGE. THERE ARE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES ABOARD. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE. MATERIAL COMPENSATION, PERSONAL THANKS AND BLESSINGS FROM THE GOD-EMPEROR WILL BE REWARDED. |
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