Life in the Warp

"I'll never get used to this nausea from traveling through the Warp." Old Jock fought back the urge to vomit as he voiced his feelings to Lin Fan.

When a ship entered the Warp from realspace, many who had never been trained or spent long periods voyaging would suffer intense discomfort. The chaotic, turbulent Warp brimmed with all manner of terrifying Incubi, along with frenzied, disordered currents of emotion and souls—enough to tear apart everything an innocent person possessed. The daemons living within also watched the soul of every living being, ready to emerge and feast at any moment.

Lin Fan weaved through the passing naval crewmen and servitors, taking in everything before him.

Everything here felt novel to Lin Fan. Though he could not enter the chambers housing the macro-cannon and lance batteries, he could still find plenty of interesting things within this absurdly enormous spacecraft. More than that, however, was the suffocating feeling he could hardly suppress.

Like nearly every ship of the Imperium, the Flame was clearly divided into three deck zones. The upper decks were where the Space Marines and ship officers commanded, fought, and lived. Without special need or necessity, they would not even take a single step off their decks to look at the middle or lower levels.

The middle decks were where the numerous Astra Militarum units and naval crewmen worked and trained. This was also the busiest area of the entire ship, with the most machinery and compartments. Countless servitors continuously patrolled the middle decks under the guidance of Tech-Priests, repairing any possible damage.

The lower decks were the place on the entire ship that felt most like hell. Many people's first reaction upon entering was that they had arrived in the dark and dangerous lower levels of a hive city. No one knew how many generations those ragged ship servants and countless labor slaves had lived aboard this vessel. Generation after generation survived on the ship, only to be dismembered by those around them after death, or sent into the furnaces to add another scrap of fuel to the ship's voyage.

Not to mention what might be buried within the vast labyrinth assembled from pipes and composite chambers. Every ship took an incredibly long time to construct, anywhere from decades to centuries. During those long construction periods, all sorts of strange things would settle into the ship's dark, hidden corners. People often vanished without explanation at the junctions between the middle and lower decks, leaving behind pools of scarlet blood from slaughter. But to the Space Marines and command staff on the upper decks, these were merely trivial details, not enough to make them feel any sense of crisis.

Lin Fan ducked into a naval mess hall and carefully searched for something that looked reasonably appetizing.

To his disappointment, aside from all manner of bland meals made from recycled starch and water, the restaurant only had things like the individual canned rations and energy bars issued by the Departmento Munitorum. Perhaps because, as members of the military aboard this ship, they truly lacked the abundant food supplies available on an Agri-World, the soldiers from Karmaklan Agri-World suffered greatly. More than once, they complained to their superiors that the food was simply too hard to swallow.

Colonel Mark, however, did not care about such matters. He merely told those recruits, "Be content. Once you're fighting in a war, you won't even have this stuff to eat." Then he kicked them all out with his powerful, heavy boots.

Life aboard the ship seemed rather interesting in Lin Fan's eyes. Every morning, Ecclesiarchy priests walked back and forth carrying censers and reciting the Emperor's scriptures. The commissars were equally fierce, watching every soldier like hawks as they offered devout prayers to the Emperor. Once after getting up in the morning, and once before sleeping at night—if morning and night truly had any meaning in the Warp. To be honest, Lin Fan had not seen any natural light for a long time. He could distinguish so-called morning from night only through his original body clock and everyone's daily routines.

The soldiers from regions where the Ecclesiarchy's control was not especially strong found these prayers somewhat baffling. Some even felt that the commissars had far too much free time if they meddled in such things. But Lin Fan knew what devout faith in the Emperor truly meant.

The enormous chapels aboard the ship, the various sacred statues, and the elaborate, complete prayer rituals all existed to protect, as much as possible, those traveling through the Warp from the corruption of the Chaos Gods and prevent them from becoming grotesque monsters. In this realm of thought-made-real, this was the place second closest to the Emperor. After all, his cold, sunlike soul was here, silently hostile toward the Chaos Gods while devoting part of its attention to protecting the ships passing through.

Thus, for the sake of the few men under his command, Lin Fan spared no effort in promoting devout faith in the Emperor. With the help of Damian, the newly appointed zealot, the entire 3rd Company became loyal believers of the Emperor. The first thing they did each day upon waking was instinctively offer the Emperor a devout prayer.

In truth, this was not difficult to accomplish. Karmaklan World was merely an ordinary Agri-World, and most of its inhabitants were simple, honest farmers. They did not have so many twists and turns in their minds, wondering whether the Emperor's great deeds and sayings were true. Coupled with the influence of the group, anyone who did not believe in the Emperor became especially conspicuous and out of place. Thus, those harboring doubts were quickly assimilated into believers of the Emperor in such an environment.

On the lower decks, in corridor D1347, an armed maintenance team was on patrol.

"If I had a choice, I really wouldn't want to come here a second time." A young naval soldier wearing a gas mask carried a lasgun in one hand and a maintenance case in the other, his complaint muffled behind the mask.

The dim corridor was filled with crisscrossing pipes running in every direction, as well as high-temperature steam constantly blasting from various pressure-release valves, leaving the passage hazy and unbearably humid.

The sergeant at the front spoke to reassure him, though there was not the slightest trace of comfort in his tone. "Give it a rest, rookie. You haven't even been to the return outlets and main reclamation valves on the lower F and G levels. At least the stuff spraying out here is only high-temperature steam headed into the recycling water system. Down there, poisonous chemical gases are one thing, but those weird bugs are the real problem. Last week, Sergeant Hank from Deck Maintenance Team Three Hundred and Eight got bitten by a little green bug. He's still lying in the medbay."

"Uh, so that's why we're carrying guns? To kill bugs?"

"No, worse. Maybe it's the various mutants that have been hiding in the lower levels, or slaves who have gone mad, or all sorts of strange things that have lived here since the ship was built."

The older sergeant turned back and glanced at the maintenance crew again. "Protect yourselves, understand?"

No one could see the sergeant's expression through his mask, but everyone's hearts had risen into their throats. They gripped their lasguns tightly and watched every corner around them with wary eyes.