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The star-maps haven't made it out this far. Telescopes, even those granted from the various tech-thralls and mechano-lords cannot reach this far. This ship is but one of what had been a mighty fleet, now whittled down by cosmic storm and alien threat. Each psycho-navigator is dead, their minds absolved to the decay of aneurysm and cloven into misshapen red matter. Each Alastoran life wasted on this venture will be avenged, though perhaps not by myself. I had been chosen to escort this expeditionary force through to the other side of an unexplored galaxy.

What we found could only be described as volatile, and dangerous.

Every system brought with it new and sometimes insurmountable perils. Communication with the home fleet was almost immediately severed, and could not be recovered. Strange energies that were not native to our form of telecomm frequencies interfered with our equipment. How arrogant of us to assume that it would all be the same across all spans of time and space. Though I had long ago acclimated to the changes, those who were not born of similar genetic engineering were less fortunate.

Chemical burns appeared on patches of skin untouched by material or even the open isolated air supply of the ships themselves. Reports came flooding into the apothecarium of people "living" despite their vitals showing otherwise. These cases were confined to the Litany, and I was subsequently sent to purge what had become of them. Flesh aberrations, amalgamations of various crew members and soldiers, vile mutations of bone and skin, it all smelled of blood and marrow. What remained were defiled corpses, not even suitable to bury. The purgation of the flame was all that was necessary for such abhorrent things.

And so our guns turned upon the Litany, and it sank into obscurity beneath the stars. There were no survivors. I only make casual mention of this now in the reports due to the nature of our journey afterwards.

The condition of the patients aboard the Litany had spread to other ships, despite our best efforts, and affected the psycho-navigators in a peculiar way. Their logical faculties were still sharpened to a keen point, and they were able to negotiate the starways in a manner that alluded to cognizant thought and understanding - at least, for a while. The flesh aberrations only happened once the creatures perhaps began to realize that the greatest possible threat to their survival couldn't be corrupted from within. Panic, perhaps a survival instinct, kicked in.

The vessel I had been assigned to, the Hand of Doom, has been drifting ever since that incident, independent of the other ships which I can only assume met a similar fate that could not be prevented. Unfortunate at the most, but as part of the 116th Grand Legion I had been accustomed to misfortune many times over. The derelict Hand of Doom held no further use to me and I go now aboard a Fire Raptor gunship named the Iron Talon. Ammunition stores were halved in favor of fuel. There were reports of radio signals being received from various artificial deep-space satellites prior to my departure, reports that went purposely unanswered by the psycho-navigators already corrupted by what overtook them.

By my estimations it would be at least ten or so years before I could make contact with what sent those satellites out, based on their trajectories and speeds.

Gadrak Surlan stared into the dark red eyes of the ceramite-steel before him. He did this every day for ten years now, to start and end his ceremonial pseudo-meditation of exercise and discipline. There were very few supplies when he began, and that stock barely changed for over a decade. Two squad-sized dried meals a day, equal to about 55,600 calories each, and then exercise for the duration of what amount to a twenty-hour period.

Four hours of sleep were all that he required, and then it began again. Meal before rest, and after. Water was his main concern. Though he had taken enough from the Hand of Doom to fill most of the hangar bay, almost half of that was gone now. His initial estimation of a decade to find the source of the radio signals seemed somewhat troublesome now. Though, he could survive for months without water, it was necessary to keep up his health and ensure that he made it planet-side.

Within the past ten years, he noticed that the signal was indeed getting stronger, but its direction was still uncertain. He could easily miss the source entirely, due to the radars still not having acclimated to the radiation unique to this galaxy. Alastorian metric was drowned out by unfamiliarity. Gadrak knew how to navigate a Fire Raptor well enough, but the Iron Talon could not completely cooperate despite its best efforts to communicate. The machine spirit within was confused and anxious to return home. Even in the decade-long turmoil, that it but a momentary lapse of time for a machine spirit - especially one as ancient as that within the Iron Talon.

It was sixteen hours into his routine.

Basketball-sized biceps curled against the strain of twenty-two tons, though this was hardly the first repetition. A test of stamina, and one that stopped at 500.

"Forty now," he muttered into the automated gravity well within the weight. It complied and he lowered his arms. Triceps screamed with the effort but he ignored the pain, bit it back into the pit of his stomach.

Reaching down, deeper than before, his back and neck swelled as the clenched fists came closer to his face inch by painful inch. Then, as they touched his chin, the gravity wells tugging at his wrists, he turned his arms and put them next to his head - and lifted straight up, almost as if wrestling with the air around him.

"One," he grunted.

He would lower his arms slowly and keep doing this until he reached twenty, then increase the weight again to forty-one, forty-two, for the remainder of the next four hours.

But an unfamiliar noise gave him pause in his routine, and he switched the gravity wells off - which became disgustingly light in his hands as he set them down. He grasped the head of the pilot's seat as he looked out into the great dark beyond. A planet, covered in water, returned his curious glance. The machine spirit within Iron Talon chirped as it recognized the source of the radio signals. They had finally arrived.

He identified an isolated part of the planet, and set the autopilot. Even throughout the course of atmospheric reentry, he would pay no mind to the rest of the journey. He still had four hours left in his routine, then another meal. Sleep could wait however.

The planet in question, perhaps, would not.