The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  The beast lunged for Joghaten as his bike reached the edge of the gully, one of its great fists sweeping down to pulverise the khan’s skull. Feng struck first.

  The steedmaster’s dao caught the beast by the throat, mid-swing. The wicked lance’s disruptor field cut flesh and bone, the full weight of Feng’s careering charge behind it. The tyrant guard’s shriek was cut brutally short as its head was cleaved from its torso, its lunge faltering.

  A second later and Feng’s bike slammed into the bulk of the creature’s heavily armoured body. The White Scar left the saddle with the bone-crunching impact of plasteel and reinforced rubber meeting thick chitin. The three went down together – Feng, his bike and the beast, broken as one. Darkness took the steedmaster.

  Something had exploded from the hill’s heart in a hail of rock and dirt. The White Scars closest to the upheaval had fallen, flung across the flattened grass by the sudden upsurge of muck. Subodak turned in time to see a monster breaking forth amidst the deluge of dirt, dragging itself up out of the tunnel it had burrowed beneath the Space Marines’ defences. It was vast, bigger than any of the xenoforms yet engaged on Darkand, a nightmare of coiling armour plates and scythe-arms. Its body was long and sinuous, like a serpent’s, its segmented plates of chitinous exoskeleton caked with the thick grime it had wormed its way through to reach the hilltop. Its upper limbs, each ending with a blade-talon longer than Subodak was tall, clacked as they freed themselves from the thing’s serpentine flanks. Its skull was broad and flat-plated, built for burrowing through sightless subterranean depths. Its maw unhooked like a steppe adder’s, distending to a hideous length as it announced its arrival with a screech.

  It was a mawloc, a vast, serpentine xenos, and it was about to tear the heart from the White Scars’ defences.

  ‘Up,’ Subodak barked over the vox. Every squad leader on the hilltop had already painted the lithe monster as a priority target, but the White Scars heavy weapons specialists were scattered and disorientated by the sudden fury of the subterranean upheaval.

  And it was fast, by the Khagan it was fast. It was already killing before Subodak could bring up his bolter. The brotherhood’s Whirlwind, Skyfire, was the closest vehicle to the epicentre of the mawloc’s arrival. The monstrous tyranid brought down one set of scything talons as the missile support vehicle attempted to simultaneously reverse and bring its rocket systems down to lock with the looming beast. The creature’s blades punctured the Whirlwind’s armour, lodging in its main drive compartment. Then, with sickening ease, the beast heaved the entire vehicle into the air, whirring treads leaving the ground in a cascade of dirt. The mawloc brought it up to the height of its head before slamming its four other talons into the chassis, from all angles, impaling it like a child stabbing pins into a steppe-grass doll. Then, shrieking as though in petulant frustration, the monster flung the entire vehicle straight at Subodak.

  The White Scar ducked. He felt the passage of Skyfire as it arced with agonising slowness a dozen paces overhead, the air shuddering with its passing. It cleared the edge of the hill before slamming into the cordon beneath, where it detonated. Subodak’s auto-senses registered the heat blast as it rolled back over him like a thunderclap, flattening the few stalks of grass still standing on the hilltop.

  He found his feet and brought his bolter up, his expression grim. There were times when a leader could do no more. His squad knew the target. If there were none able to take the shot, he would.

  His bolts burst harmlessly against the mawloc’s grime-caked exoskeleton as it twisted, seeking to drag its long, barbed tail free from the tunnel it had burst from. It slashed its lower talons as it did so, slicing apart Imchi and Songatten as they too fired up into it. It was toying with them.

  It would not toy with Khum Karta though. The mighty Land Raider, named after the great mountain range of Chogoris, came thundering over the brow of the slope all guns ablaze, Darkand dirt spinning from its aquila-stamped treads. Modified engine roaring, the heavy battle transport slammed into the mawloc’s segmented body prow-first, before the tyranid could properly free itself from its burrow. The crunch of impact was followed up by the snap-crack of lascannon sponsons and the thudding of heavy bolters as the great tank unloaded its weaponry point-blank into the monstrosity.

  The beast was tough. Even the searing power of Khum Karta’s lascannons barely drew ichor from its grubby hide. In response to the ramming attack, the thing brought down four talons in a vicious series of stabs, the clang of diamond-hard chitin rebounding from white adamantium ringing out across the hilltop. Khum Karta’s armour, however, held.

  Engine gunning, the Land Raider reversed, dirty smoke churning from its exhaust stacks. The mawloc shrieked at it as it went, thick acidic spittle splattering the hull. The tank had been engaged on the White Scars’ extreme left, almost single-handedly holding back the swarm there. Its white-and-red armour plates and heavy treads were smeared with alien remains and pitted by countless claws and acid sprays.

  For a moment, Subodak thought the tank was attempting to disengage from the monster it had so rashly charged. He should have known its commander, Xiamet, better. Engines once more roaring into life, the tank ploughed forward again. This time it hit the xenos so hard it bent the creature back almost double, the tank nearly rolling over the monster’s burrow hole. Its talons, driven by frenzied desperation, gouged great rents in Khum Karta’s hull, but failed to stop it or reach its crew. The great tank rolled back once more, treads biting dirt and alien flesh alike, engines growling as it readied for one more charge.

  The mawloc, it seemed, was willing to face such a wild foe no longer. Screeching woefully, it dragged its broken body back down into its hole, fresh earth cascading down with it into the darkness. Khum Karta remained where it was, like a snarling attack dog watching over a snake’s pit.

  ‘Melta bombs and krak grenades into that hole, now,’ Subodak snapped. His order went unheeded. The earth beneath was shifting again, right across the hilltop. Drawn by the tremors of their sire, a dozen sinuous raveners surged from Darkand’s depths, dirt-encrusted shovel-talons reaching for the White Scars.

  Low orbit, Darkand

  The White Scars fleet had swept back into orbit, leaving the drones that had been shadowing them trailing in their wake. Now they were tearing the sluggish xenos hive ships apart.

  ‘Again,’ Voyagemaster Shen commanded. Gunnery complied without query, and through the augur links and oculum feedback the commander of the Pride of Chogoris saw another brilliant beam of red light sear through Darkand’s upper atmosphere. It punctured the side of the hive ship like a surgical tool lancing a blood-swollen tick, tearing its bloated flank. A second beam of energy followed the first as the next lance strike slashed home, causing bulbous birthing sacs lining the monstrosity’s back to explode.

  All data agreed, the xenos was dying. Its void-scarred carapace had been split and shattered by a flurry of broadsides from the Pride, its bio-defences no match for a close-range engagement with an Adeptus Astartes strike cruiser. The Pride’s lance batteries, assisted by torpedoes from the fleet’s twin Cobra escorts, had finished the job. Now one of the alien fleet’s three hive ships was wallowing like a beached leviathan, its vast body wracked by internal organ failure and death-spasms, haemorrhaging vile life fluids out into the void where they froze in great trailing, glittering sheets. A second hive ship was already dead, gutted by the Pride’s ministrations and the continual, terrier-like snapping of the three Sword-class escorts that swooped in from the strike cruiser’s starboard flank.

  Only one xenos capital ship remained. It was rising out of orbit now, ponderous, trying to drag itself away from the White Scars. A thick screen of crustacean-like drone ships protected it, clogging the Pride’s targeting matrices and lines of fire in a suicidal effort to protect their brood-master.

  Shen mentally scanned trajectories, new headings, and the speed of the vast section of t
he tyranid fleet they had sidestepped in the sudden race back to Darkand’s orbit. The xenos were returning, desperate to preserve their last hive ship. Even crippled, the combined alien fleet was more than sufficient to swallow up the small White Scars expedition. Shen keyed the bridge-wide vox.

  ‘Break.’

  Such a simple order would have meant nothing to the officers of the Imperial Navy, but for the void assets of the White Scars it triggered a spree of well-honed reflexes. Whereas most fleets would have required a long string of orders and directive-bursts, the White Scars turned on a single command. The sons of Chogoris had always valued simplicity, Shen reflected. It left more room for skill.

  On his one word the fleet turned, disengaging from the final remaining hive ship. Supercharged plasma drives engaged as the six ships, unharmed bar some damaged shields and hull scarring, pulled back out of Darkand’s exosphere. Shen had already input a new heading before beginning the engagement, now being auto-locked by the main helm. The fleet made in-system, for Darkand’s star and the Pillar of Fury, the great solar flare stretching away from its broiling heart.

  Shen’s careful concealing of the upper limit speed capacity of his ships had paid off – he had executed a near-perfect khan alakh, luring slower elements of the more powerful enemy fleet away from their leaders before swinging back and delivering two fatal blows. The xenos had been caught by the terrific speed and deft handling of things they had thought of only as prey. Shen wondered whether the hive mind was capable of regret.

  ‘All xenos contacts moving in full pursuit, voyagemaster,’ an augur zart reported. Shen saw that the serf crewwoman was correct – reunited with the main part of its fleet, the remaining hive ship was still rising from orbit, lunging after the small band of vessels that had dared slay its sisters. Shen knew he had left it with little choice. If it remained above Darkand, supporting the swarms it had already seeded across the planet’s surface, his fleet would continue to harry its drone ships and pick its defenders apart. Another day perhaps, and with careful handling, the entire hive fleet would have been destroyed. The xenos needed to snap up the threat posed by Shen’s strikes while it still had the chance – while the White Scars were withdrawing.

  ‘Maintain current speed and heading,’ Shen ordered, satisfied with the escort dispositions and noting with approval the disciplined order that emanated from the bridge dome. Most ships, in a knife-edge engagement like the one they had just left, would have been filled with report chatter, vox blurts and the chemical stink of defence shields and macrocannon venting. The command hub of the Pride of Chogoris, however, remained a quiet, tranquil place, as was befitting a capital ship of the White Scars. Such harmony belied the skill behind the battle just fought – a daring raid on the enemy’s heart, followed by a disengaging manoeuvre that would have been beyond many senior Navy captains. For the first time since contacting the bio-fleet, Shen relaxed in his throne mount.

  All that remained for the moment was pray to the Khagan that the Master of Blades fared as well as his fleet.

  Near the Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

  Joghaten was barely aware of Steedmaster Feng and his slamming collision with the tyrant guard to his right. The khan’s attention was fixed on the king tyrant as Whitemane crested the gully’s edge. The beast was different from the one he had cut apart out on the plain earlier – larger, more heavily armoured, more ponderous. It turned its chitin-crested head towards Joghaten as Whitemane leapt. To a superhuman such as the khan, the two-and-a-half seconds he spent in the air seemed to last long minutes. He saw the tyrant’s eyes, black, doll-like, even as it beheld its death coming from the Darkand skies.

  Time reasserted itself with a crunch, and Whitemane’s front wheel impacted into the beast’s upturned skull. Spinning rubber flensed flesh from bone in an instant, followed by the crack of fracturing bone and shattering fangs being slammed back into the tyrant’s brain. One side of its head caved in beneath Whitemane’s impact.

  Joghaten was already leaving the saddle as his assault bike tumbled, anticipating the collision and kicking his feet from the mag-locking boards. He hit the stony earth of the gully floor, armour absorbing the worst of the impact, rolling with it. He was springing up, tulwar ignited in each fist before Whitemane had even crashed to the ground.

  Of course, the xenos monster was not dead. The bike’s impact had crushed part of its skull, but not killed it. It turned on Joghaten, an ugly noise rattling from its ribbed throat, huge talon blades coming at the White Scar. He kept on his toes, ducking the first, deflecting the second with both tulwars raised. A front-foot lunge took him inside the monster’s guard. It was sluggish, its brain damaged, ichor weeping from the fractured mess that had once been the right half of its skull. Any other creature would have already been dead, but the raw imperatives of the hive mind kept it functioning well after much of its cranial matter had been pulverised.

  Joghaten would make sure the wound was fatal. He delivered two violent slashes to the beast’s upper torso, just below the rim of chitin that protected its throat, dodging away from the acidic ichor that splattered out onto the scarred earth. A third blow cut to the bone of one of its scythe-limbs as it swung clumsily at him once more.

  The creatures around the king tyrant were reacting to their leader’s distress, a wall of termagants rushing towards Joghaten with fangs snapping. They could not get close enough to him, however, pressed right up as he was against the tyrant’s haemorrhaging bulk. He stayed there, using his abilities to keep close to the monster while at the same time avoiding its struggling efforts. His tulwars were a blur of lightning, slicing through chitin and meat, a dozen deep wounds in two dozen seconds.

  It was not long before the wounded tyrant’s strength gave out. It gave an angry bellow as it collapsed onto its front, crushing a brace of gaunts scrabbling desperately at Joghaten. The White Scar spun and slew two of the lesser xenos before turning back to the fallen tyrant.

  ‘I am Joghaten Khan,’ he snarled into the creature’s face, addressing whatever nightmare consciousness the remains of its primitive mind was linked to. ‘Master of Blades, Steppe Lord and Hetman of Chogoris. Your rampage ends here. This is our galaxy.’

  The thing took one last rattling breath, ready to roar its defiance back. The khan didn’t give it a chance. With a deft flick, his tulwars opened its throat, cutting back to its thick spinal column. The swarm shrieked with one voice, minds scarred by their sudden loss of contact to the hive. Joghaten kept his blades lodged in the beast’s torn throat, until it finally slumped into Darkand’s ichor-drenched soil.

  It was over.

  Not only does the astrological phenomenon of Darkand’s star exert huge cultural and societal significance on the day-to-day lives of the system’s only inhabited planet, but it also represents a very clear danger to any vessel passing through the system core. Only military-grade shielding offers any hope of protection against the twin threats of the awesome heat and intense radiation represented by the Pillar.

  – Elim Weiss, Adeptus Astro-cartograpae,

  from the Index of Stellar Curiosities, Chapter CXX

  Chapter Twelve

  FURY’S PILLAR

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 13 HOURS.

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

  Near the Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

  There was a common misconception among Imperial strategos that killing a tyranid swarm’s leader-beast led to the immediate disintegration of the swarm itself. Such a belief, however, only held true with the smallest of broods. The one besieging Heaven­fall was too large to turn on the synapses of a single organism, no matter how powerful. Secondary leader-beasts littered the swarm – clutches of tyrant primes, warriors and zoanthropes, all capable of transmitting the will of the hive mind to the lesser creatures clustered around them.

  Joghaten’s final blow
to the king tyrant, however, was still decisive. The heart of the swarm, formerly under the umbrella of the tyrant’s leadership, fell into anarchy even as the Master of Blades freed his tulwars from the beast’s flesh. The firepower of the Devastators on the hilltop now proved its worth – targeting the larger xenos beasts earlier on had broken the swarm’s chain of command. Great sections were now without leadership, their synapse handlers already put down by krak missiles, lascannon bolts and plasma. Those gaunts no longer directed by the hive mind started to scatter, obstructing the remains of the swarm still acting coherently and, in some cases, even attacking them.

  Such disruption saved both Joghaten and Lau Feng. The steedmaster, thrown by his impact with the decapitated tyrant guard, found his feet and his bearings in time to see the Master of Blades clambering up from the nearby gully, slick with xenos ichor. He signalled for Feng to attend him. The steedmaster’s guan dao was planted in the earth two dozen paces away, deactivated, so Feng drew his bolt pistol and curving kindjal as the surrounding aliens came for them.

  For long, bloody minutes the two White Scars fought back to back, weapons in each fist, killing in a manner that would be recounted around the camp-fires and in smoky yuruts for many years to come. In truth, it was not the deadliest struggle either warrior had fought in. The lesser tyranids were confused and uncoordinated, left dazed by the sudden absence of overriding control. Most were seeking to escape rather than kill, their now-feral minds causing them to scatter out onto the plains. Joghaten’s bondsmen finally hacked their way to the Master of Blades, and together they made a mound of slaughtered xenos beneath the fluttering horsehair plumes of the Fourth Brotherhood.

  Timchet had stopped killing long before many of his brothers. He stood perfectly still in the trampled remnants of Wind Tamer, clutching his now-empty heavy bolter, purple alien viscera dripping in slow, thick strings from his armour. Hagai lay beside him, untouched. When the swarm racing back to catch Joghaten had struck, the gunner had been sure his end was at hand. The aliens, however, had simply ignored him. Realising the danger posed by the bikes to their leader, the swarm had parted around the downed Land Speeder, not a single gaunt spared from the stampede to strike at the lone prey-warrior. Timchet had emptied his heavy bolter into the passing swarm, creating a carpet of twitching, blown-apart alien dead around Wind Tamer, as chilled by their mindless precision as he was filled with hatred and rage. He remained where he was long after the swarm had dispersed, surrounded by the slain and the low moaning of the steppe wind.