The Navy destroyer Wrath floated through uncharted space on stuttering thrusters, a few minutes ago they had made a quick jump away from the battlefield when the fleet admirals own ship had been destroyed by Chaos forces. He had given the order to retreat but by the time his order was in motion, the entire fleet had been decimated by thousands of lance and torpedo strikes bar the Wrath. The crews morale was low, they were the cowards, the survivors of the battle. Ship master Tsenius whispered in the ear of a bridge Lieutenant and spun to look out of the frontal view port, he wondered where they were, a strange blue gas giant was orbited by a single moon to the starboard. He turned over the possibility of landing on the moon and trying to make contact with surface command on Gravitalia II, but was reminded of what chaos craft could do to small planets, it didn't bear thinking about.
In the engine rooms directly behind the bridge, Technician Larson Vask lay with his arm crushed beneath a transportation tram, that had long since lost its occupants, behind him several abominations with dead technicians sprouting from them slipped around the deck leaving trails of blasphemous liquids. Vask had only just regained consciousness and wondered why the foul Daemon things had not yet consumed him. Frozen in terror Vask offered prayers to the emperor in his head as one of the creatures moved toward him, he could only watch in horror as it lifted the small tram revealing his mutilated arm. There was no pain. Not even as he became part of the daemon, buried into its soft flesh.
On the command deck of the Wrath a lieutenant approached the ship master "Sir we have lost a team of technicians in Engine room 4C, we have also a small rupture in the same room. That could be the cause for the deaths." Tsenius thought for a moment, then said "Send a team of Ratings down there, and grant the use of standard shells. There are no windows in the engine rooms after all. Make sure they are equipped with breathing apparatus, there could be a vacuum down there." The head of the ship's security, Paplon Vertinus, a man with a huge scar running over his eye and down his cheek turned a nodded affirmatively. "Yes, sir" Tsenius turned to look at him
"And for holy emperors sake, Vertinus not your best men again."
Down in engine room 4C, the daemons went into phase two, one by one the bags of flesh and half buried technicians exploded and the blue suited humans began to reanimate and stand up, with flesh deteriorating as they walked. Shuffling along the floor with frothing mouths and red eyes, some still carried wrenches, hammers, plasma cutters or had mutated arms or faces. All of the other ships in the fleet would be filled with shambling zombies by now. It was a Nurgle tactic, they fired torpedoes filled with tanks of the Zombie Plague virus. People hit by the pure form of the Zombie virus slowly turned into walking abominations, then they would consume others eventually turning them into zombies which could multiply if given a suitable host. At the far side of the room the door slid open and four Navy ratings slipped in. Two more followed, one by one it slowly dawned upon them that the inhabitants of Engine room 4C were dead but were still walking around. As the door closed behind them, twenty pairs of red eyes focused on the eight Navy soldiers. Phase three had begun.