You hawk a gob of acidic spit onto the voidlock, letting the acid eat into the metal. Walking alone into a chaos ship is foolish enough. Doing so aboard a space hulk seems twice-foolish and a swift route to an ignominious end. You will return later, but for now you have a mission to complete elsewhere.

It takes you four hours to hook around to the Mhongu Khagahn, but you encounter no threats or particular dangers. You do have to slog through a refuse sump, but it hardly slows you down. Sections of ship with faltering gravity generators leave you floating for half a step before you activate the magboot function of your armor and clamp yourself to the ferrous deckplates.

Turning ‘north-east’ on your mental map you plow back into the unmapped sections of the Capitalis Congestus. Almost at once you are gliding along the weathered-bone deckplates of an eldar ship. The curving corridors and winking stones set into the walls try to set you on edge but you push on. You are but passing through and the ghosts in this place will not slow you down.

You press ‘east’ and clear the curving bone confines of the Eldar craft to encounter more rough-and-ready ork construction. You slow, cautious for traps or ambushes, and stretch your armor-enhanced senses forward.

Look for traps / ambushes / surprises. Perception test: +0%

Success: needed <63, got 27. Danger spotted.

Your autosesenses pick the two figures out of the gloom with ease. A pair of orks, either out on what passes for a patrol among their brutish kind or scavenging for resources. Both in all likelihood. It doesn’t matter to you. They are between you and your objective, you have a perfect ambush position, and your targets are unlikely to be missed by their fellows until long after you are gone. You flip a mental coin and target the Ork on the left.

Single shot from Bolter (magazine #1 - standard ammunition): +0% to hit. Magazine is now at 27/28 rounds. Range is short: +10% to hit.

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Fire at Ork sentry: Success! needed <63, got 52.

Damage inflicted: 2d10+5 explosive. Result: 23.

The ork drops like a string-cut puppet, its torso blown out across the walls by your shot. Its luckless companion gives a start, grabbing its shoota and searching frantically up the passageway. It utterly fails to spot your black-painted armor in the gloom, while your Power Armor’s autosenses pick it out clearly for you.

Single shot from Bolter (magazine #1 - standard ammunition): +0% to hit. Magazine is now at 26/28 rounds. Range is short: +10% to hit.

Fire at ork sentry: Success! needed <63, got 06.

Damage inflicted: 2d10+5 explosive. Result: 23.

Critical Hit! One damage die rolled a 10: inflict a further 2d10+5 damage. Result: 44 total damage done to target.

Critical Hit! One damage die rolled a 10: inflict a further 2d10+5 damage. Result: 67 total damage done to target.

Critical Hit! One damage die rolled a 10: inflict a further 2d10+5 damage. Result: 89 total damage done to target.

The round takes the ork just beneath its beady left eye and it detonates in the middle of its head. The flat bang of the explosion is punctuated by a bit of bone rattling off your sabaton clad foot. You wait a few heartbeats, listening for the clamor of other orks responding to the violence, but nothing comes. You step over the cooling corpses and press on ‘north-east’ towards the Tisiphone.

It takes you but an hour to traverse the hull of some luckless merchant, the Deathwatch-coded beacon pulling you forward. You press on into the hull of a converted merchant raider, one of numerous Lokis in the service of the Emperor. You consult the copy of the map you have stored in your memory, overlying your current position. You have entered the wreck of the Tisiphone. The sound of a chainsword carving through flesh caries clearly in the still air, the screams of battle indicating the the beacon-carrier is still active and engaged in a close-quarters fight.

A Space Marine in the black-painted Power Armor of the Deathwatch is driven back around a corner into your line of sight. He throws the body of a Chaos reaver renegade from his chainsword, then hugs the corner as a long ripping burst of bolter fire blasts chunks of bulkhead into the air. He charges back around the corner into the fray, and the sounds of a chainsword cleaving flesh fill the air once more.