The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  Feng was already firing his bolt pistol as he closed the last few yards. Explosive rounds blasted gaping holes in the creature’s torso and drove it down onto its wounded knee, even as it tried to twist away. Its body shimmered and flickered, synapses attempting to trigger its camouflage, but it was too weakened to maintain the illusion. As he ran the last few steps, Feng’s kindjal was in his fist, firelight reflected in the naked razored steel.

  The thing was bloodied, but far from beaten. As Feng fell upon it, the lictor snatched the long haft of the impaled dao in one taloned hand and, in a motion that was disturbingly human, wrenched the crackling weapon from its side. At the same time it swung its upper scything talons at the White Scar, forcing him to arrest his charge. There was no way his kindjal, trusty though the combat knife was, could parry the thing’s vast chitin blades.

  The moment’s hesitation gave the lictor the chance it needed. It darted left, still lithe despite the terrible wounds riddling its body. It would have broken back into the darkness beyond the centre of the encampment were it not for the Beged. A dozen of the tribe’s warriors had rallied, and now they charged the thing they called yaksha from all angles, screaming with equal amounts of fear and defiance. The lictor snapped two of the spears reaching for it with a contemptuous swipe, but a third jarred off the chitin plating of its left thigh, while a scattering of arrows clattered off its carapace. A laslock banged, its crimson bolt darting harmlessly away into the night.

  One of the Beged warriors managed to get behind it, stabbing a spear into the small of the xenos’ back. A twitch of its thick tail sent the man tumbling, but Feng followed up. He snatched his dao from the ichor-slashed dust where it had fallen and reactivated its disruptor field. The lictor had caught one of the Beged, its claws raking his stomach and leaving him screaming and ­haemorrhaging into the dirt. A second man was almost cleft in half by a downward swipe of a scything talon. But, though horribly outmatched, the Beged had delayed it for long enough. With a shout Feng slammed his dao into the lictor’s wounded leg. The power weapon flared brilliant; Feng gritted his teeth and kept the swing going, shearing through alien chitin, meat and bone. With a gout of stinking fluids the limb came away, and the lictor toppled, shrieking.

  The humans redoubled their attacks, raining down blows with their crude weapons. Even crippled and savagely wounded, the xenos was still not done. Its talons sliced the legs out from under one of its attackers, and its claws ripped away the face of yet another. Amidst the screaming, bloody mess, Feng mounted the thing’s writhing body, using his power-armoured weight to pin it as much as possible. Then, with a single, furious blow, he cut the alien’s twitching head from its shoulders. The Beged recoiled from the hissing gout of ichor, and Feng snatched at the severed head, hauling it into the air by the stubs that had once been its feeler tendrils.

  ‘In the name of the Khagan and the Emperor,’ he shouted, brandishing the trophy before the Beged, his armour steaming where acidic ichor ran off it. But the Beged weren’t watching him. Even the remaining warriors that had helped him fell the xenos terror were now staring skywards, their expressions wide with awe. Feng followed their gaze.

  Overhead, the night sky was lit by a thousand thousand stabs of light. A constellation was falling upon Darkand, glittering and vast, and in its belly were the hungry seeds of death.

  There is a cancer eating at the Imperium. We have given the horror a name to salve our fears; we call it the Tyranid race. If it is aware of us at all it must know us only as Prey.

  – Inquisitor Czevak

  Chapter Seven

  INVASION

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 45 HOURS.

  TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL [TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

  The scriptorium, Heavenfall

  The commanders of the Fourth Brotherhood – Joghaten, Qui’sin, Chaplain Changadai and those squad leaders not riding among the tribes – watched the beginning of the alien invasion from the arching windows of Heavenfall’s primary scriptorium, seated high on the upper slopes of the temple district. The night sky was filled with falling stars: the contrails of a thousand xenos spores, each packed with ravenous warrior organisms. The sight would have been beautiful had it not presaged such horror.

  Barely an hour had passed since reports from the brotherhood’s outriders about encountering vanguard organisms had started to filter in. From the contact zones and the approximation of the primary xenos landing sites, relative to the contrails streaking overhead, Joghaten had located the nearest likely swarm clusters. For now they would be assembling out on the plain, forming a horde with which to overwhelm the slope-city and its defenders.

  The White Scars would strike before they were ready.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain Changadai,’ Joghaten said, breaking the scriptorium’s silence. Changadai’s grim death’s head visage swung to face him.

  ‘Go with Steedmaster Chokda and the demi-ordu. Strike out towards the Hills of the Broken Bones – that is where the nearest swarm is gathering. I will have exact coordinates uploaded to the tactical displays as our wind-brothers triangulate them. Slaughter all that you find. I will take the other half of the brotherhood and make for the Yellow River. I suspect there is another swarm forming there. They are still weak and scattered immediately after planetfall. If we strike hard and fast, we will cut away some of their numbers before the main brood can gather.’

  ‘What of the city’s preparations?’ Qui’sin asked. ‘The populace has not yet been fully relocated underground and the wall is still being prepared.’

  ‘The squads assigned to Heavenfall will continue assisting the preparations,’ Joghaten said. ‘But you will ride with me, weathermaker. If our strikes are successful, we will buy enough time for the final defensive efforts and give hope to the tribes still coming in from beyond the Founding Wall.’

  For a moment it looked as though Qui’sin was going to debate his commander’s strategy, but instead he bowed his head.

  ‘As you will it, my khan.’

  Joghaten’s gaze turned back to the window arches, and to the thousands of twinkling lights falling with distant, silent grace from the firmament. How strange the irony, he thought, that the galaxy’s horrors could arrive clad in such beauty. After a moment more, he turned abruptly back to his brothers, his face set, eyes burning with determination in the dull light of the scriptorium’s ancient lumen orbs.

  ‘The hunt calls us,’ he said. ‘We wait no more. To war, brothers.’

  Qui’sin remained in the transcription chamber after the khan had departed, looking out at the glittering lights of the slope-city below, and the utter darkness that had now swallowed up the plains beyond. Apart from Kemich, the young Stormseer was alone. Dawn was approaching, and there was a strange sense of disquiet hanging over the city, something more than the fear that came with an alien invasion. Qui’sin could not quite place it, and so he waited a little longer while his brothers assembled along the Slope Road, preparing to ride from the city and out onto the plains.

  It was a bold plan, typical of the Master of Blades. Qui’sin would have disapproved of it, if he could see any viable alternative. He had witnessed the unpreparedness of Heavenfall and its human defenders with his own eyes. If the swarms could amass and attack in full, the city would fall in a matter of hours, even with the help of the White Scars. Bleeding the tyranids while they were at their most vulnerable was the only viable strategy until Shen and the fleet could drive the aliens from orbit, or the Furnace Season burned them all.

  Kemich let out a cry, shuffling along the perch she had adopted on the raised edge of one of the scriptorium’s data-slate lecterns. The psyber-hawk’s wicked talons clacked on the polished rustwood. She was growing restless. She needed to hunt. Qui’sin soothed her with a low, soft voice, the flowing words of native Chogorian momentarily quelling the augmented bird’s agitation.

&n
bsp; The Stormseer shared the raptor’s urge to hunt, to succumb to the rush of the chase and the kill. They all wanted to be out there on the steppes, not overseeing the ponderous behemoth of a city-wide relocation and defensive preparations. Yet still Qui’sin did not depart. The night air, which once would have been chill this high on the mountainside, was balmy, the effects of the Furnace Season’s height obvious. A low wind moaned about the window slits and flagstones underfoot, tweaking the Stormseer’s totemic charms. His expression grew darker. Something was coming, he was sure of it.

  Kemich let out her shrill cry once more, beating her great wings. She was disturbed. Perhaps she should be fed after all. She had always hated void travel, and her enhanced physiology was likely still adjusting to being planetside once again. He reached for the pouch where he kept the strips of cured meat she fed on between hunts. For once, however, Kemich did not move for the dangled morsel.

  Qui’sin frowned. He had been holding a strip of flesh before the raptor’s hooked beak for long seconds. The bird wasn’t moving at all. After a moment the Stormseer realised that his familiar was totally motionless. There was not even the tremor of a heartbeat. For a second that seemed to stretch out into eternity, Qui’sin took in his surroundings. Even the motes of dust, caught in the light of the inscription chamber’s ancient lumen orbs, had frozen, like a pict-feed put on pause.

  Too late, Qui’sin realised what was happening. Too late, he snapped a string of arcane syllables, smashing the base of his force staff into the flagstones underfoot. A bow wave of psychic energy, blindingly bright, burst from the staff across the floor, then stopped, frozen like everything else. Qui’sin found the breath catching in his throat, and his lips locked, his entire body snared in a vice of unyielding mental strength. For a moment, he was neither living nor dead, present nor absent. For a second, he did not exist.

  Only a creature of immense psychic power could have approached through the alternative plain unnoticed by the Stormseer. Only Kemich had sensed it. Now it had them both at its mercy.

  It seemed to take a long time for Qui’sin to focus on it, or perhaps it happened instantaneously. It was impossible to say. Time was meaningless while they remained trapped, locked in such a bubble of unreality. The creature before him was the only one capable of breaking it.

  Sharai Qui’sin Xaoin,+ it breathed. It was tall, slender, clad in robes of blue and yellow and hung with gemstones that glittered in the frozen light. In one hand it held a bone staff, its top woven into a complex spider’s web of arcane patterns.

  It is dangerous to stand here alone, mon-keigh,+ the creature said.

  Its features were obscured by a tall, crested helm of blue, but the words seemed to slip directly into Qui’sin’s thoughts. He willed his own words back, his jaw still locked.

  Eldar.+

  So you call us,+ the xenos witch responded. +And so we are.+

  Release me.+

  Once you have heard my thoughts, mon-keigh, and given them proper consideration. Time is short.+

  Qui’sin’s mind railed against the xenos presence, but his body could not respond to its blasphemous invasion. He cast his thoughts wide, searching for any weakness in the witch’s curse. It was flawless, however, a trap woven with a mastery no human psyker could ever hope to emulate. The xenos had literally frozen time.

  Your struggles will only prolong this encounter,+ the eldar willed. +You may know me as Yenneth. I am a farseer of the ancient craftworld of Iyanden. I have come here both to offer assistance, and to seek it.+

  The sons of the steppes do not consort with xenos, regardless of what form they take,+ Qui’sin responded, channelling his impotence into a spike of anger that he directed at the eldar. If Yenneth even felt the attempt at a psychic counter-thrust, her relaxed stance didn’t show it. The powers she was utilising would have burst the brain and ravaged the flesh of even the most gifted human psyker, and yet she began to pace around Qui’sin’s trapped form as though unaware she was caging a Space Marine Librarian.

  Your doctrines are as stubborn as they are idiotic,+ Yenneth said from behind Qui’sin, before pacing back into his locked field of view. +This is well known. It is also known that some among your kind are pragmatic enough to set aside their hatred when faced with annihilation, at least momentarily.+

  Qui’sin tried to respond, but the xenos continued.

  The presence of the monster you call the Great Devourer on this world is as much a threat to my people as it is to yours. Neither of us can defeat it alone, but together, utilising my abilities, there is cause for hope. To do that, however, we too need assistance. Our dark kindred have struck up a feud that can only end in blood. Theirs, or ours. By helping us overcome them, you will help yourselves.+

  Your race does nothing but lie and manipulate,+ Qui’sin responded. +My brothers and I will not be used as tools for whatever schemes you are embroiled in.+

  There is more to consider,+ Yenneth added. +This is not your brotherhood’s first time on this world. The souls of many of your kindred cry out for vengeance against those who slew them here. I can give you that vengeance. The very dark ones we fight, the drukhari, are the same that slew your previous chieftain.+

  Arro’shan,+ Qui’sin thought, unable to keep the shock from his mind.

  His killer yet lives,+ Yenneth replied. +She is named Skalorix, and she is an archon, leader of the drukhari. She still keeps Arro’shan’s helm on her hip as a trophy.+

  You lie!+ Qui’sin snarled.

  See for yourself, mon-keigh,+ Yenneth replied. She reached out one slender finger. Qui’sin redoubled his efforts to escape, mind an angry roar, but it was futile. The alien’s finger brushed his brow, and suddenly he was elsewhere.

  He saw images. Visions, too quick for even his enhanced mind to process properly. A strange city, wreathed in mist. Broken pillars. Eldar warriors, clad in dark, barbed battleplate. A female with a wicked grin. Khan Arro’shan’s helm, broken, one eye-lense cracked. Cruel laughter, drifting through the ancient, shattered colonnades.

  Yenneth withdrew her hand, and the frozen scriptorium rushed back around him.

  That means nothing,+ he snapped mentally. +You conjured those images. Wove them from falsehoods.+

  And what if I did?+ Yenneth demanded, an angry edge finally breaking into her serene tone. +You will all die here if you do not accept my aid, and I will not give it unless you swear to strike down these traitors.+

  You yourself said the tyranids are as much a threat to you as they are to us,+ Qui’sin replied. +So why should we help you? You need us.+

  Regardless of the danger posed to the aeldari, you will all die by the claws of this monster. It is already among you, among the ones you seek to protect, worming itself into this city. If you refuse to help us, your fate is set, a path to destruction that cannot be deviated from. But if you do aid us in our struggle, we will intercede. We will uproot its evil together.+

  How? How can you have the strength to help us, yet not overcome your own feuding cousins?+

  You can see for yourself. I could crush you right now, mon-keigh. Take each of your memories and tear them apart. I could leave you a drooling, dull-eyed wreck, unable to recall your own birth name.+

  This is xenos trickery, and well you know it. We have the powers of earth and sky, wind and fire. We are the Khagan’s will made manifest, warrior-sons of the steppes, and we will not be beholden to your treacherous, murderous kind.+

  You call yourselves great warriors, and yet you will not avenge the sire whose genes you bear, the leader of your brotherhood?+

  I will not parlay with you. Release me, or kill me.+

  I had hoped one who wielded the powers of the Maddening Sea would understand the depths of my offer,+ Yenneth responded. +I see now that I misjudged. If you cannot be of assistance, I will find one who can.+

  And, in an instant, time no longer stood still. Kemich s
hook her head and shrieked loudly. The dust continued to drift lazily through the wan light of the lumens. The inscription chamber stood empty. The witch was gone.

  Qui’sin fell to his knees, ceramite cracking on stone, his force staff clattering down beside him. He gasped for breath, his twin hearts a double-thunder in his breast, his brow throbbing. Before his eyes blood pattered onto the cold stone floor, dripping from his nose to run slowly between the flagstones.

  He stayed there for what felt like a long time, head throbbing and body aching as it tried to recover from the psychic pressure placed upon it. To struggle mentally for so long, all the while being physically frozen and trapped, left behind a terrible aftershock. Kemich swooped from her perch and landed on his fallen staff, wings beating agitatedly. It wasn’t until he heard the thump of footfall and the whirr of servos that the Stormseer managed to push himself back up onto his feet. He sensed the presence of Türüch Jeddah entering the chamber a moment before seeing him.

  ‘Stormseer,’ the leader of the Fourth Tactical Squad exclaimed, and rushed to Qui’sin’s side. ‘Have you been attacked?’

  ‘It is nothing,’ Qui’sin said, struggling to master his breathing. He cuffed the blood from his nose, smearing his white gauntlet, and bent to retrieve his force staff. Kemich took flight, circling the chamber’s vaulted ceiling with a loud shriek.

  ‘Has the khan departed yet?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Jeddah replied. ‘But he rides soon. You are sure you are unharmed?’

  ‘By the Khagan’s will,’ Qui’sin said. ‘I must be on my way. Let us speak no more of this.’ The witch had caught him off guard, and the memory of the effortless extent of its psychic power would have made a lesser mind quail. The Stormseer pushed the eldar’s intrusion to the back of his thoughts, seeking the balance, the focus that he always aimed for when troubled.