The journey through the warp turned out to be far less boring than he had assumed. The gellar field should have acted as a shield against the various warp entities whose home they were passing through. Instead, it acted as a cage. As he traveled aboard this originally unimaginable vessel, he saw more and more how such a thing was able to exist in the hands of random mercenaries. The simple truth was, it was far from the prize it would have seemed on paper. For Urgrugg, though, that ultimately meant inflight entertainment.
Not long after they had taken off, the crew had set to work making ready for warp entry. Most of the process was standard, if somewhat modified. The ship was given time to build energy for the initial entry, the small engine needing more time than usual to fill the capacitors. It would be necessary, though, as the ship would need the extra energy to tear open the hole into the warp, but still have power left for the gellar field. While that was going on, the rest of the crew saw to the dull, ordinary tasks associated with entering a rough patch of travel. Cargo was tied down, various equipment and personal belongings were put away and fastened securely. At the time, Urgrugg simply stayed out of everyone's way. He had very little in the way of personal belongings. Beyond that, no one seemed eager to entrust any potentially vital tasks to an ork, and he was happy to let others do the work. It took very little time for the ship to get ready, in terms of his previous experience with warp travel.
Just before entry was when things started to get strange. First, the entire crew, Urgrugg included, were ushered onto the bridge. Second, instead of the sudden jerk that generally meant entry into the warp, he was almost thrown from his feet when the ship started hurtling towards the solar system's sun at maximum velocity. When he managed to reorient himself, he realised that the ship had, at some point, entered the warp. More significant, though, was that the engines were quiet. When the green skin turned to leave the bridge, the ship's captain told him to stay. It quickly became obvious that there was something they had not told him before, when he still could have conceivably left the crew.
Truth be told, he understood why when they explained it to him. The ship's engine required every ounce of power it could generate to project gellar fields around the most key areas of the ship. Considering the only places on the ship that were shielded were the power core, the atmosphere generator, and the bridge, it made the term 'key' seem almost an understatement. Even the ship's engine was left out of the protection of the field. Apparently, the reason they had built up so much speed before entering the warp was so the ship's momentum could carry them forward without the engine actively providing thrust. He had known that a gellar field was extremely difficult to produce, but just how little protection their advance generator was able to provide but clearly into perspective how amazing it was. This was was very clearly an act of desperation for whoever had designed it.
The odd design did not end there, though. In addition to the restricted quarters while they were in the warp, the ship was also forced to leave the warp on a regular basis. At a minimum, it had to exit at least twice every standard day, in order for the crew to determine their location, replot their course, and make corrections to allow for any needed changes in their trajectory. Since the engines were unable to provide thrust during warp travel, turning was impossible. Beyond that, the warp was not entirely like space. While there wasn't exactly an 'atmosphere,' the warp was not a void. There were things in it, and each thing that collided with the ship stole some of its momentum. That required even more stops to be made, so that momentum could be replaced. Finally, there was the issue of technical difficulties. Being an imperial ship, and an extremely advanced one, meant that it was old. As tends to be the case with old technology, it had a habit of breaking down and needing maintenance. However, the gellar field wouldn't allow for such work, so even more stops had to be made when an issue came up. Before long, it became quite clear that the ship was not the ideal vessel he had thought it was when they first told him about it. Instead, it was more likely one of the earliest successful attempts at a warp engine, with 'successful' being a misnomer. Ships like this one weren't meant to be secret weapons, but instead existed to prove that warp travel is practical only on a large scale.
None of that really mattered, though. Urgrugg was less than happy with being forced to spend countless hours cooped up with spineless humans with nothing to do but complain about their boredom. However, as travel in the warp tends to have, there were more than a few complications. When systems broke down, for example, it was normally a simple matter of leaving the warp, fixing the problem, and then continuing. A few times, though, the systems that broke down were some part of that process. Once it was the gellar field itself, once it was the warp drive, and twice it was some part of the navigation system which had to be fixed to determine where the ship would emerge if it left the warp. Each time, Urgrugg relished the opportunity to have something to do. Without fail, when the crew was sent to try to repair the ship to the point that an exit could be made, they fell under attack. Urgrugg was always the one sent to their rescue. The daemons did not know what to make of this strange, warp-channeling ork, and in their confusion, he was able to strike them down.
By the journey's end, the crew had been changed. Instead of the original seven humans and one ork, they arrived with only four men and the one xeno. The crew consisted of the ship's captain, their medic, the astropath, and a priest who had spent most of the trip with a pistol aimed at Urgrugg. The green skin himself had been cut, stabbed, bludgeoned, and at one point even lost an arm. In true ork fashion, though, he made a full recovery each time within a matter of days. Even his arm ended up being reattached, though it did leave that hand with notably less feeling. As always, his battles left him with just more scars to be added on top of the hundreds he already had. Compared to the rest of the crew, he may as well have walked there along a trail of flowers.
When he finally got a look at their destination, though, he was fairly certain the worst was yet to come. The massive hulk of various wrecked ships, and the staggering number of other vessels that their long-range scans were showing surrounding it, all pointed towards a coming battle. Luckily, as small as their craft was, it was unlikely in the extreme that they would be noticed by the other ships. There were any number of places that a vessel of their size would be able to land, and a good number of them looked to be connected to the main bulk of the behemoth. If nothing changed, they would be able to land unnoticed near the loading dock for the primary munitions. From there, it would be a straight shot to anything left of the offensive systems. So long as nothing complicated matters, there would be little cause for concern. A perfect example would be the captain speaking through a com-link with an 'Inquisitor Marcus,' as the priest reaches for a chain sword. They really should have held off on the automated landing sequence until after they had ambushed him.
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