Lawson waited three seconds.
The warp gave no response.
There was none of that subtle resonance that occurred at the boundary between realspace and the immaterium when a daemon's true name was spoken.
Lawson's left hand tightened again.
This time, the force was clearly greater. A string of sickening cracks came from the one-eyed warp imp's neck.
"Hssk, let go! Let go! You're going to crush me!"
The one-eyed warp imp's shoulders sagged.
"Fezex Vomyulin."
The instant the final syllable of that name fell into realspace, Lawson felt the warp shudder.
When a daemon's true name was spoken in reality, the deeper structure of the immaterium produced a faint answering vibration, like one book being pulled from a hidden shelf somewhere inside an infinite library.
That name was real.
Lawson confirmed it.
The one-eyed warp imp, Fezex Vomyulin, visibly wilted.
"You satisfied now, worm?"
"You know my true name now. Enjoy your pathetic little victory before the greenskins on this hulk gnaw you down to bone."
Lawson lifted the one-eyed imp a little higher until its gaze was level with his own.
"Shut up."
"From here on, I ask. You answer."
"Swear it on your true name."
"Every word you tell me must be the truth. If you mix in even a single lie, a single misdirection, a single deliberate omission..."
"You'll end up exactly like your companion."
Lawson held it in one hand like an especially ugly cat being lifted by the scruff of the neck.
"I, Fezex Vomyulin, take my true name, forged in the abyss of the warp, as my anchor, and the eternal tides of the Sea of Chaos as witness. Everything I say next to this mortal shall be true. No deceit. No concealment."
"If I violate this oath, may this name shatter, and may this soul be erased forever."
The ripple faded.
The contract was sealed.
Its oath on its true name had formed an irreversible sigil of binding within the fundamental laws of the warp.
From this moment on, every lie it spoke would trigger a backlash against that sigil and scar its soul-core. For a lesser daemon like this, a creature even warp scavengers would look down on, three such backlashes would probably be enough to unravel its soul into fragments so fine not even dust would remain.
Lawson knew that very well, so he began with the first question.
"How many greenskins are on this space hulk?"
Fezex's lone eye shifted.
The corner of its mouth twitched involuntarily. It was the tiny expression of a creature trying to lie, only to have the oath mark strangle the impulse before it could take shape.
"...A lot."
"A specific number."
"You think I'm the Imperium's Departmento Census?" Fezex shrieked. "I haven't counted every one of those damned green mushroom-heads one by one..."
Lawson's fingers tightened another notch.
"Gkkk, all right, all right! More than three million, probably! Maybe more! Those damned spores sprout new ones out of the cracks in the bulkheads every day! How the hell should I know the exact number now?"
Three million.
Lawson's pupils contracted slightly.
Three million greenskins packed into a space hulk one hundred and twenty kilometers in diameter. The overall density did not sound absurd. Spread across the full volume of the hulk, it averaged out to only a few dozen per square kilometer.
The problem was that greenskins were never evenly distributed.
That meant in certain key zones, the density might reach several thousand, or even tens of thousands, per square kilometer.
"What are they doing here?" Lawson pressed on. "Three million greenskins don't cram themselves into a hulk just to fight each other."
Fezex let out a sneering little laugh.
"Hee hee hee... you understand those mushroom-brains pretty well. No, they're not only fighting each other. Though to be fair, that does still make up eighty percent of their recreational lives."
Its lone eye glinted.
"Their Mekboyz, those lunatics with gears growing in their heads, are planning to turn this entire hulk into a Battle Moon."
Battle Moon.
Lawson's heart kicked once in his chest.
In the Imperium's threat-assessment archives, an Ork Battle Moon ranked among the highest class of strategic threats.
It was the peak of greenskin mechanical achievement, a small moon or supermassive void wreckage transformed by their insane, law-defying technology into a moving fortress of death that somehow worked simply because Orks believed it should.
Battle Moons were usually armed with terrifying numbers of giant guns, countless launch bays for fighters, and habitat zones capable of housing millions of Orks.
In void warfare, their destructive capacity rivaled that of a roaming hive world.
In Imperial history, the most famous example was the Battle of Ullanor, where an Ork Attack Moon broke through the defensive line and reduced the orbital defense networks of three civilized worlds, along with the tens of millions living there, to drifting dust in space.
"But the mushroom-heads haven't had such an easy time of it."
Fezex tilted its head, positively delighted to add fuel to the fire.
"Because the greenskins aren't the only things in this hulk."
Lawson narrowed his eyes.
"What else is here?"
"Chaos."
"This hulk's been soaking in the warp for centuries. Did you really think the only thing that grew in all that time was green fungus? The seeds of Chaos took root in every crack too."
"In the deep decks, and I mean everything below Deck One Hundred Fifty, there are large numbers of daemonic entities. Not trash like me, not things unworthy even of being called warp sludge. Real daemons. Bloodletters. Plaguebearers. Flamers. There are even a few Bloodthirsters nesting on the deeper decks, things that clawed their way out of some hell-rift or other."
"And Chaos Space Marines too."
Fezex sounded positively gleeful.
"Your species' traitors. Those Space Marines who turned their backs on your Corpse-Emperor. Around twenty or thirty of them. Some little warband called the Dark Worders or the Sons of Despair, I don't remember. Human names are all long and foul. They built an altar near Deck One Hundred Sixty and drag greenskins there for sacrifice every so often."
Lawson absorbed the information without letting anything show on his face.
Chaos Space Marines, even only twenty or thirty of them, still meant superhuman warriors in power armor carrying boltguns and chainswords, each one forged by centuries or even millennia of war.
At his current level of strength, six Catachan Jungle Fighters and a few knives going head-on against Chaos Space Marines would be pure suicide.
"There's more," Fezex said with a nasty little grin. "In the core zone, deep inside the wrecks of the oldest ships, there's a Genestealer nest."
Genestealers.
These infiltrator organisms seeded ahead of the Tyranid hive fleets possessed a horrifying capacity for disguise, infection, and assimilation.
Throughout Imperial history, Genestealer infiltration had brought down countless worlds.
Sometimes they spent decades, even centuries, worming their way through a planet's entire social structure, from the miners at the bottom to middle-tier officials to the governor's own staff, until the day a Tyranid vanguard arrived in orbit and the whole planetary defense system collapsed from within.
Lawson went still in thought.
Three million greenskins, trying to turn the hulk into a Battle Moon.
Organized daemonic forces and a small band of Chaos Space Marines in the lower decks.
A Genestealer nest in the core zone.
Three hostile factions locked in constant conflict inside the hulk, none willing to yield to the others.
And he was trapped in the crack between all three.
Silently, Lawson offered a brief greeting in his heart to the old man sitting atop the Golden Throne.
Then he asked the next crucial question.
"Are any of the human Astra Militarum soldiers from the Eighty-Eighth Assault Detachment still alive?"
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Oh, you like the story? Wow, who knew. Go ahead, drop a review and throw some power stones maybe I'll be motivated to keep going.