Delia's thermal cutter, enhanced by Lin Fan's buffs, had no idea how many times its efficiency had increased. Under the thermal cutting laser, so dazzling it hurt even through their visors and so hot they could feel it through their full-body armor, the twenty-meter-thick ship walls were sliced open piece by piece. Lin Fan and the warriors of his 3rd Company stepped through the cuts in the wall, warily observing the derelict around them.
A derelict was a massive piece of space junk formed from the piled-up wreckage of countless ships. Some were entire colossal warships that had been utterly wrecked in battle, while others were gigantic garbage asteroids cobbled together from the remains of many vessels, space rocks, and all sorts of other debris.
The derelict Lin Fan and his men had entered was the latter. These heaps of junk, which had drifted through the Warp and the cosmos for untold years, contained everything imaginable. Relics of ancient technology? The lingering souls of armies from ages past? Or even more terrifying daemon spirits parasitizing the ships? You might encounter all of it aboard a single derelict.
This lottery-like nightmare was something the Imperium had no choice but to deal with. Otherwise, if a Warp-corrupted derelict crashed onto the surface of an Imperial world, it would not be a problem that could be easily solved by dispatching a few fleets.
Perhaps only Orks and the poorest adventurers liked derelicts. For the former, this space junk could be stripped for parts and offered plenty of fights to pick. For the latter, they had nothing left to lose anyway—whatever they found would be an improvement.
Lin Fan's group advanced through the dark interior of the derelict, remaining alert to everything around them.
"Delia, have you found any trace of the other units?"