The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  By midday the battle of the Founding Wall was over. The tyranids had scattered, those that fought on isolated and destroyed. Detachments of wide-eyed Pinnacle Guard troopers moved out onto the plain, moving cautiously among the carpets of xenos dead to administer las-bolts to anything still twitching. The White Scars gathered on the low hilltop where they had anchored their stand, carrying their dead with them. Feng brought Eji, while Timchet carried Hagai in both arms, his heavy bolter salvaged from Wind Tamer’s wreck and slung over his back. Servitors and salvation teams would recover what they could from the machinery that lay broken among the mounds of alien dead. Timchet knew, however, that Wind Tamer would never touch the sky again.

  As the White Scars gathered around the hill, Subodak was still working on its crest. The türüch had been lowered into the pit burrowed by the mawloc, its sheer flanks levelled at one end into a dirt slope thanks to the careful placement of a clutch of grenades. The smaller ravener tunnels had been sealed up after the beasts had been killed, bereft of the hive mind and beset by a counter-attack led by Qui’sin and the assault squads. Something about the mawloc’s pit, however, had drawn Subodak down into the dirt and darkness.

  ‘What do you see?’ Joghaten called after him. He’d descended as far as he could unaided, close to where the pit seemed to reach its deepest extent before levelling out. He could make out Subodak on the edge of the burrow-dark ahead, shining a stab lumen inbuilt into his right pauldron into the shadows beyond.

  ‘The tunnel passage,’ the türüch replied over the vox.

  ‘So?’ Joghaten demanded. ‘The beast is fled – we would feel its tremors if it were still nearby.’

  ‘We would, khan-commander,’ Subodak acknowledged. ‘But that is not what concerns me. What concerns me is the direction the tunnel goes in. It leads straight back towards the city, and it’s the only passage I can see.’

  Joghaten murmured a Chogorian curse as he realised the import of what the türüch was saying. It wasn’t even just the fact that the giant tyranid serpent was now beneath Heavenfall’s streets.

  It was the fact that, to reach the hilltop beyond the Founding Wall, it had come from there in the first place, and not from out on the steppes.

  The Void, Darkand System

  During the voyage to the system’s heart Shen turned and savaged his pursuers twice. On the second time, they lost the Steppe Lord. The hive fleet showed that the White Scars were not the only ones capable of sudden speed. A brood of the kraken drone vessels swept out of the protective formation they’d adopted around the sole remaining hive ship, catching Shen’s twin Cobra escorts in their rearguard position. The Falcon managed to get clear, but the Steppe Lord was caught by one of the kraken. The long, hook-like alien craft latched on to the white Cobra like a greedy parasite, its snout tearing through the escort’s flank before unlatching its jaw. The nightmarish creature then began to suckle, dragging whole decks and their crews into its acidic gullet, draining the Steppe Lord and leaving it like a withered husk.

  Shen managed to suppress the anger he felt at the Steppe Lord’s hideous fate. Victory necessitated control; no matter the passions of battle, to turn away from a wise strategy would only bring more pain. A good hetman, luring the enemy away, did not turn back to the fight because his brother had fallen. The fleet swung back towards the system’s star, the Falcon now alone.

  Despite their minor victory, the hive fleet was suffering. Shen could sense it across all the data being fed to him by the Pride. The White Scars were still outnumbered thousands to one, but Cicatrix had been bloodied above Baal, and now it was being bloodied once more. It had lost vast amounts of organic ­material and, so far, had gained almost nothing back.

  ‘Voyagemaster, we are approaching Fury’s Pillar,’ reported one of the bridge zarts. Shen drew himself from his running analysis and cast his consciousness wider, addressing their latest heading. They were coming up on Darkand’s star, and with it the fixed stellar flare that brought on the planet’s Furnace Season. The augurs were reading dramatic spikes in radiation and heat.

  ‘Cut speed by a third and hold course,’ Shen ordered, the command transmitted across the fleet. The reduction in speed meant the tyranids, already dangerously close, would be in the long-range engagement sphere in a matter of minutes. Such a risk was necessary.

  ‘Keep monitoring shield integrity,’ Shen added. The carbon heat shields, ceramite-layered equaliser plates and active magnetic shielding would preserve the White Scars fleet from the concentrated heat and cosmic radiation as they passed through the Pillar. At least, that was what Shen hoped. Anything less than a military-grade vessel would already be suffering. Few ships other than those of the Adeptus Astartes could hope to reach the other side largely unscathed.

  The hive fleet was not so fortunate. Sensorium data ramped up to maximum amplification, Shen watched as the hive fleet’s near-perfect coordination gave way to apparent confusion. The greater part, caught in the Pillar’s extreme heat, sought to turn back on those behind. Astral tendrils snagged and became locked, and gnarled hides cracked up against one another. The smaller drones began to combust and liquefy, flames flickering brief and blue in the void, blackening shells cracking and bursting apart to emit streams of half-cooked innards that froze in gory tendrils. Shen was reminded briefly of a plains beast coming across fire for the first time, and not understanding the source of its pain.

  The voyagemaster smiled, blind eyes unseeing but the senses of his ship knowing more than enough. The hive fleet was in turmoil, the screens of drones protecting the bigger ships stripped away by the unrelenting heat and radiation of Fury’s Pillar. For the moment, the eerie coordination that typified the xenos was gone, the remaining major bio-ships exposed. Now was the time to turn and strike. Shen knew this would be the last time he would need to give the order against this foe. He held up one hand, index finger raised.

  ‘Helmsman, priority order, effective immediate. Break.’

  The Mountain Gate, Heavenfall

  Joghaten stood in the shadow of the Mountain Gate, alone. The great adamantium doors had been swung open, allowing purge units with flamers and promethium dousers to move out beyond the Founding Wall and start torching the mounds of xenos dead. In the rising heat of the Furnace Season it was a hellish job, but to their credit none of the Pinnacle Guard commanders had complained to Joghaten. It seemed they were mostly just relieved to be alive.

  The khan watched a Hellhound flamer tank rolled past, dust kicking up off its tracks, the promethium gel in its flamer canister sloshing audibly over the growl of engines and the clatter of treads. He had left his bondsmen on the gatehouse above while the rest of the brotherhood had pulled back within the wall. He had needed a moment of separation to clear his mind.

  It wasn’t over, he was sure of it.

  A blip in his ear heralded an incoming vox transmission. It was Qui’sin. The Stormseer had been sent further up the slope-city’s steep streets, to see with his own eyes the situation being faced by the tribes brought within the Founding Wall.

  ‘Speak,’ the khan commanded, accepting the transmission.

  ‘The area around the Old Town is overcrowded, my khan,’ Qui’sin’s voice replied, the words spoken against a backdrop of raised, chattering voices and lowing beasts. ‘Pinnacle Guard reserve units are corralling most of the steppe folks along the lower slope-streets. They claim to be doing so on orders from the Pinnacle, but I have been ­unable to contact anyone in the government claiming responsibility for their actions. Commander Harren seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘What of the catacombs?’ Joghaten asked, turning away to better shield his hearing as another Pinnacle Guard armoured fighting vehicle trundled past in a haze of dust.

  ‘Full, or so the government ministers I spoke with are claiming. The citizenry of Heavenfall have been moved below ground, but supposedly there is no room for the tribesfolk. The Pinnacle Gu
ard will not allow them to pass. The heat is continuing to rise and there have been outbreaks of fighting between the Pinnacle troops and the tribes, as well as within the tribes themselves. I fear some are using the confusion to settle old scores.’

  ‘If the tribespeople are left to burn out in the heat the sacrifices made to save them will have been for nothing,’ Joghaten said angrily. ‘Show yourself to the Pinnacle Guard in person and make that clear. And what of the… other matters we spoke of?’

  ‘I have deployed four squads in combat teams to the temple district,’ the Stormseer replied. ‘There has been no sign of the High Enunciator or his priesthood since the swarm was broken outside the gates. The first hunt-brothers are moving into the crypts below as we speak, but they are reporting tunnel collapses and sections of the catacombs that have been sealed from within. I fear something lurks down there, Master of Blades. We must find it.’

  ‘Have there been any anomalies above the surface, besides the priesthood’s disappearance?’

  ‘It is difficult to say. The tribespeople here are on the brink of panic. I cannot tell whether the unrest I have witnessed is human emotion, or something darker.’

  ‘Harren’s disappearance speaks volumes. Go to the Pinnacle as soon as you can, weathermaker, and seek to bring the situation there under control. We need to find shelter for the tribespeople before the temperatures rise any further.’

  ‘Understood, my khan,’ Qui’sin replied. There was a moment’s pause before he spoke again.

  ‘Remain on your guard. I do not need to have trod the Path of Heaven to know that there is something wrong here.’

  The Temple District, Heavenfall

  The White Scars cleared the temple district. It was on Qui’sin’s advice – more so than any other part of Heavenfall, the site of the city’s Ministorum cult was the most riddled with catacombs and underground passages. If there was a xenos threat still lurking beneath the slope-city’s streets, it was likely to be there. The priesthood’s recent disappearance only heightened the White Scars’ suspicion.

  Four squads performed the clearances, broken down into combat teams. Feng’s was one of them. They had dismounted in the street outside their first objective, a yellow stone devotarium, slowly baking in the heat. Jakar, Oda and Sauri moved with their steedmaster in a loose spread between the colonnades, the spore-shrouded sunlight burning the hot sandstone underfoot and casting long shadows between the pillars.

  Feng paused them on the edge of the open-aired building’s central square. Shadows glared back at him from beneath the opposite cloisters, hard and menacing. The square’s central fountain, built around a graven effigy of Saint Paulus, was dead, its waterworks inactive, the pools of water drained by the Furnace Season’s heat and scummed with xenos spores. The readings on Feng’s power armour showed ever-rising levels of atmospheric toxicity, and the filtration units were starting to struggle with the sheer amount of alien microbes clogging the air. Their armour could resist both the heat and the xenos spores for some time to come, but it could not do so indefinitely. There were also rising reports of Pinnacle Guard troopers succumbing to both respiratory difficulties and the blistering heat of near-peak Furnace Season. Emergency response units from the slope-city’s medicae ward were setting up makeshift treatment clinics on the lower slopes of Heavenfall to cope with the thousands of tribespeople similarly affected – all were overwhelmed with patients. Even with the main swarm scattered, it felt as though Darkand was dying. Such grim revelations had not served to lift Feng’s mood in the wake of the victory before the Founding Wall.

  ‘Jakar, Sauri, cover. Oda, on me.’

  The steedmaster stepped out into the open square and advanced, big Oda at his side, their bolt pistols raised and auto-senses probing the surrounding pillars for sudden movements. Jakar and Sauri adopted braced shooting positions, scanning the entire space. Still, there was no sign of any contact. The two White Scars made it to the opposite cloisters without incident, boots thumping on the hot stone underfoot. Sauri and Jakar joined them moments later.

  ‘Auspex says they’re clear,’ Feng said, glancing at the vambrace-mounted augur he’d taken from his bike. The device was speeding up their clearances considerably, but there were still several blocks to go before they could descend into the temple district’s underbelly.

  ‘Scan them,’ the steedmaster said, indicating the archways leading off from the cloister’s flanks. ‘Let’s pick up the pace, brothers.’

  The squad went door to door, sweeping into one chamber after the next, weapons ready, senses on edge. Still, however, they found nothing. There weren’t even signs of struggle or hasty evacuation. Sub-scriptoriums lay deserted, data-slates stacked neatly and stylus pots capped. A refectorum had its plastek trays laid out and the heating stoves scrubbed and gleaming. The psalters in the primary devotion annex all lay open at the last reading. Even the light that filtered in through the bare window arches in each stone-flagged room seemed undisturbed, xenos spore clouds hanging heavy and lazy in the shafts of illumination.

  The reports coming in over the vox told the same story. Despite High Enunciator Traik’s pledge that his priests would not abandon the surface for their catacombs, the White Scars could find no hint of a single monk, devotionary or deacon anywhere throughout the temple district. Worship halls, vigil closets, auto-flagellation racks and confessional stands that should have all been busy with the unending benedictions and scourging of the God-Emperor’s worship were silent and empty, bar the low purr of the Space Marines’ power armour and the tread of their heavy boots. It was as though some curse had rendered the faithful entirely invisible, while all their works and daily preparations remained.

  The eerie absence was frustrating Feng. Creeping through buildings and alleyways in some deserted part of the city: this was not how the White Scars made war. It was bad enough that they’d been separated from their bikes, let alone that they were now chasing noon shadows. He wanted this done with, as quickly as possible.

  ‘Last section,’ he voxed, indicating the final unexplored side of the square to the rest of the squad via the visor display. Five doorway arches, one of them an open metal grate leading down into the undercroft. Shontai’s assault brothers had already been through that section of the catacombs and reported it clear.

  ‘Split this time,’ Feng ordered. ‘One to a door. Let’s get this over with and report back to the wall.’

  Oda, Sauri and Jakar’s icons blinked affirmatives across Feng’s display. He squared up to one of the arches, the entrance to the refectorum pantry from what he could see beyond, and checked his bolt pistol.

  Movement to his right caught his eye before he could enter. He spun, bolt pistol going up automatically. The other three had already breached their assigned rooms, leaving Feng alone. But there was a fourth figure among the cloisters, about to pass into the darkness of the undercroft entrance. Feng’s finger eased off the trigger as he recognised the white markings of a brother White Scar, a half-second before his blood turned to ice.

  It was not just a fellow battle-brother, appearing out of nowhere. It was him.

  Saint Attia’s Ward, Heavenfall

  Heavenfall’s primary medicae ward was full to capacity. Sited midway up the mountain slope, on the corner of the temple district, it had become a locus for the tribes brought within the Founding Wall – hundreds had been admitted with symptoms indicative of the peaking Furnace Season. Firethroat and steppe-skin, along with the more common complaints of heat exhaustion and dehydration were all taking their toll. There were already dozens dead, and it would only worsen over the coming days. The medicae facility, a sprawling complex of white-painted rockcrete, was running on a volunteer staff with key chirurgeons gone to the shelter of the catacombs. Pinnacle Guard details stood throughout the buildings, sweat-slick and red-faced in their ochre combat kit, watchful lest the panic brewing beneath the surface should spill over into o
utright disorder.

  Joghaten passed through the crowded wards like an angel of death – the incessant chattering, arguments and grieved wailing that filled the rest of the facility grew still and silent at the presence of the giant in battle-scarred white armour. He ignored the stares and the muttered prayers, his mind elsewhere as he made his way to the fifth chirurgeon bay.

  The brotherhood had triumphed once again. Despite the odds, the White Scars’ gamble – simultaneously striking down the primary leader-beasts both in orbit and on the surface, decapitating the swarm – had succeeded. Furthermore, word had come through from Tzu Shen: the hive fleet’s threat was ended, the vast majority of the xenos bio-ships incinerated in Fury’s Pillar or blown apart by the guns of Shen’s counter-attacking fleet. Relative to what he had expected, the brotherhood’s losses had been light. And yet, instead of the victory-joy he should have felt at another notch in the lodge pole, his thoughts were weighed down by a sense of foreboding. The xenos taint was not yet fully purged. None of the squads yet deployed to the catacombs had reported any contacts. They were down there though, the khan was sure of it.

  He drew back the plastek drapes leading into the chirurgeon bay, his keen senses struck by the familiar scents of blood and counterseptics. The White Scars had requisitioned the small side ward for their own uses. There were six Space Marines present – four wounded hunt-brothers being administered to by the emchi Dorich, and a guard on the door, Assault-Brother Hechin. He bowed in salute and made way for the khan.