Lately I've realised that there's more and more of them after every battle, like the fallen are being added to my dreams. I always end up dying as well, which is perhaps the most disturbing thing. Sometimes I'm blown apart by gunfire, other times I'm sawn in half by a poweraxe or a chainsword, sometimes I'm burnt alive by firethrowers. Several people have told me that the warp is not bound in time like the real uni­verse. Instead, you might see images from your past or your future, all mixed together in strange ways. Interpreting warp

dreams is a speciality of Lammax, one of the ex-Departmento men. I think they threw him into the penal legions for blas­phemy after he offered to read the dreams of a quartermaster-major. He says it's my fear of death being mani­fested.

Suddenly there's a demented screaming from the far end of the cargo hold where we're held, down where the lighting has gone fritzy and its arrhythmic pulsing gives you a headache. Nobody's slept down there for months, not since there was enough room for everyone to fit in at this end. With everyone gathered in one cell now, someone must have had to try to get to sleep down there. I push myself to my feet and pull on my boots over my bare feet. As I walk towards the commotion, I rub a hand across my bared chest to wipe off the sweat. My body tingles all over with a bizarre feeling of energy, the map of scars traced out across my torso feels strangely hot under my fingertips. I look down, half-expecting the old wounds to be glowing. They're not.

I tramp into the gloom, watched by most of the others. The screaming's loud enough to wake up the Navy ratings on the next deck up. I understand their suspicion and morbid curios­ity, because sometimes when a man starts screaming in warpspace, it's not with his own voice. Luckily it's never hap­pened to anyone I know, but there are guys here who tell tales of men being possessed by creatures from the warp.