The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  Toren was standing in the doorway to one of the wall’s rear bastion armouries, in section two. In the half-darkness behind her the great auto-loaders rattled, the mechanised system carrying Earthshaker shells up through a hatch and onto the loading deck for the heavy artillery pieces. Half of her squad were inside the dimly lit armoury, watching over the loader and the dead-eyed servitors that hefted shells from their cradles to the clattering belt feeds. The other half were posted outside, trying to keep their eyes on the open space of the loading bay before them rather than stare up at the horrors battling overhead. Silver slope haulers would roll on their electrified wires into the bay every fifteen minutes, their carriages packed with fresh munitions brought up from the reserve catacombs. A quartermaster and his team of lifter-servitors ferried the shells into the bastion, but for the past half hour Toren had been using her squad to assist them, ­hoping to keep their minds off what was coming for them from the other side of the wall.

  The next hauler was still a few minutes away when a squeal of tyres announced the arrival of an ochre Pinnacle Guard flatbed in the loading area. The transport had barely come to a stop before a dozen figures leapt from it – a fully armed security detail, their snarling steppe canid visors lowered.

  ‘Who is in command here?’ one of them demanded as he strode towards the armoury’s open blast door. Toren snapped a hurried salute.

  ‘First Sergeant Toren reporting, sir.’

  ‘I am Guardmaster Nergüi, Seventh Pinnacle Security Troop,’ said the figure, features inscrutable behind his visor. ‘This armoury is secure and functioning at maximum capacity?’

  ‘It is, sir,’ Toren responded.

  Nergüi didn’t say anything back. He simply raised his laspistol and shot Toren through the head.

  It only took a few seconds. As their sergeant crumpled back through the armoury’s doorway the half of the squad in the bay outside were cut down in a spray of fully automatic las-fire. On the inside one Guardsman reacted fast enough to scramble for the blast door’s locking wheel, but a stun grenade tossed by Nergüi left him stumbling and dazed. The security detail swept into the armoury with kindjals drawn, butchering their screaming comrades while the loading servitors continued dragging shells to the mechanised hoists, oblivious to the cold-blooded killing going on around them.

  ‘Glory to the Great Devourer,’ Nergüi hissed as the last ­Pinnacle Guardsman was silenced. ‘The demo charges, my brethren. Quickly.’

  Nergüi’s kindred began taping explosive blocks to the sides of the armoury’s shell cradles, while the guardmaster closed and locked the blast door, sealing them all inside. He grinned as he did so.

  All throughout the city, their brethren were striking. At long last, the day of ascension was upon them.

  On the parapets of the Founding Wall, Qui’sin stumbled. The Stormseer had bent the full weight of his psychic abilities into an earth tremor that had widened a gully rift a few hundred yards out from the wall, pitching dozens of shrieking tyranids to their deaths. As the aftershocks shuddered up through the rockcrete beneath him the White Scar slumped against the parapet, panting, his grip on his force staff shaking.

  That was when the vision came for him. For a split second he found himself frozen in mid-air, suspended amidst a sea of shattered stone and torn bodies. He snapped back to the present with a gasp, lurching back from the parapet.

  ‘Great hetman?’ Colonel Uygar enquired, shouting over the furious snap-cracking of his men’s ongoing las fusillade. Qui’sin stared about with wide eyes, even his well-trained mind struggling to accommodate the lurch from future back to present.

  ‘The Wall,’ he managed to say, sending a mind-imperative to Kemich that drove the airborne raptor higher. ‘Get your men off the wall, colonel.’

  ‘Great hetman–’ Uygar began, but it was too late. Qui’sin realised, in that double heartbeat, that they were going to die.

  The Founding Wall beneath burst upwards, and for a second all was curiously slow and silent. Qui’sin felt himself lifted into the air, his transhuman senses rendering everything in painful clarity. He saw rockcrete shattering into a hundred crumbling shards, plasteel shredded into a thousand scraps of twisted metal. He saw the autocannon emplacement directly to his right break into pieces, the heavy weapon buckling, its crew flung up amidst the debris. He saw Uygar’s head struck by a spinning piece of broken parapet, the colonel’s flesh splitting and deforming around the impact before his skull cracked, brain matter splattering slowly across Qui’sin’s white battleplate. He felt his own armour taking impacts, warning sigils igniting one by one across his visor as rubble battered and pounded him.

  Then the explosion blossomed, fierce and untameable, searing away flesh and bone, rockcrete and plasteel. Qui’sin was shielded from its fury, his auto-senses killing the visor glare and dampening the eardrum-bursting roar of the great detonation. Regardless, as it engulfed the Stormseer a part of his mind fled. He found himself amidst the clouds, weightless and free, drifting on air currents rent by aerial combat. He watched the explosion far below him, splitting open the Founding Wall, demolishing an entire section just north of the Mountain Gate in a great cloud of fire, smoke and rubble. He realised he was seeing it all through Kemich’s eyes and was content, just for a second, to imagine that in death he had become truly as one with the noble berkut.

  It was the screaming of his armour that brought him back to his own body. His auto-senses were warning him of multiple servo impairments. He deleted the reports and was on his feet before he was even truly aware of where he was or what was happening. A Space Marine could not be stopped or stunned the way a normal human could, but the dislocation was still jarring.

  His staff was still in his grasp, lashed by its cord to his wrist. The left side of his visor was unresponsive, fuzzed with static backwash. He was surrounded by a wall of dust that resisted his helmet’s wounded optics for a second. He was standing amidst furrowed, smoking dirt that had once been section two’s rear echelon bastions, while ahead of him a part of the Founding Wall almost a hundred paces across had simply disappeared, replaced by a jagged mound of scorched, broken rubble. Debris was still falling from above, dirt pattering down on the Stormseer’s befouled armour, mixed in with liquefied or burning organics. There was no one living in the space revealed by his auto-senses, only a broken wasteland, rendered in shades of gloomy ochre by the death-shroud of smoke that choked the air.

  For a second, apart from his connection to Kemich, Qui’sin felt as though he was the only one still alive in the entire city.

  Then the first hormagaunt came bounding over the rubble. It was followed immediately by another, and then another. The scrape and clatter of hundreds of hooves on broken rockcrete reached Qui’sin over the patter of falling remains.

  Bellowing an oath to the Khagan, the Stormseer hefted his force staff, and met them head-on.

  The Pinnacle Guardsmen around Joghaten fell when the explosion hit. The khan’s auto-stabilisers triggered as the shock wave struck the Mountain Gate, yet even so he was forced to steady himself. A moment later and the dust and debris hit.

  A normal human would have spent long, precious seconds recovering from the detonation that shook Heavenfall to its core. Joghaten, however, took only a moment to reassess the situation as rubble clattered from his scarred armour. A long section of the Founding Wall just to the north of the gatehouse had been breached by a terrific internal explosion. It could only be a detonation in one of the reserve armouries. Whether it had been caused by an accident or treachery was impossible to say. Either way, the result was a fatal gap in the wall’s defences.

  Through the smoke, Joghaten could already see the swarm shifting.

  ‘Reserve units to the breach, sector two,’ he voxed over the joint command frequency as the Pinnacle Guardsmen around him picked themselves up. He was met with discord over the net. A dozen panicked voices shouted over one ano
ther, demanding clarification or issuing contradictory orders. Joghaten snarled a curse and switched to a direct link to the reserve commander, Brigadier Yegem.

  ‘Wall sector two,’ he instructed. ‘Move everything within one mile to the breach and lay down suppressing fire. I am bringing as many of my brethren as I can muster to you.’

  ‘Great hetman, the governor has ordered us to withdraw,’ Yegem replied, voice shrill with distress. ‘I-I cannot countermand a direct order from the Pinnacle.’

  It was treachery then. In the back of his mind the khan had feared as much. The upper echelons of Heavenfall’s command structure were causing Pinnacle Guard units to abandon their positions at the crucial moment.

  ‘If you are a servant of your treacherous governor, withdraw your forces,’ Joghaten told Yegem. ‘If you are a servant of mankind and the God-Emperor, follow my instructions and seal the breach. The choice is yours.’

  Before the brigadier could reply Joghaten’s attention was dragged back to the gate below by a furious, ululating bellow. A shape burst through the swirling smoke blanketing the combat zone, big as a Land Raider and gaining speed. Joghaten recognised the brute form of a carnifex, and it was headed straight for the Mountain Gate, its head lowered.

  ‘Decrease elevation!’ Joghaten roared at the gunners manning the Hydra flak cannon. ‘Bring it down!’

  The Hydra’s quad cannons lowered with painful slowness. The swarm was rushing headlong now, dragged as though by a vacuum into the breach in the wall to the right of the gate. The curtain of firepower that had been keeping them at bay was now reduced to a few stuttering las-bolts and the work of a single battery of Colossus siege mortars, sited north of the blast radius. The detonation had not only destroyed the wall, it had also broken the interlocking fire discipline that had given Joghaten cause for hope.

  The Hydra finally locked into its new firing depression. The air shook as its quad cannon opened up, pumping a withering stream of heavy calibre rounds into the oncoming tyranid monstrosity. Any other creature would have been torn to pieces, yet the carnifex absorbed the worst of the damage, its thick plates of chitin riddled and cracked but its forward momentum unchecked. Worse, the Hydra’s elevation meant that it managed to lock on to the beast for only a few seconds before the xenos was beneath its arc of fire.

  ‘Brace!’ Joghaten bellowed to the gateway’s defenders. A second later and the carnifex impacted into the adamantium gates beneath. There was a shriek of buckling metal and the rockcrete around Joghaten shuddered. The khan did not have time to issue fresh orders, however – the carnifex was not the only tyranid to have reached the Founding Wall. The first hormagaunt leapt for the parapet, powered into an almighty leap by the thickly bunched muscles of its hind limbs. It fell short, scything talons scraping sparks from the bulwark. The second, however, cleared the edge. Its hooves clipped the rockcrete and it tumbled directly onto one of Joghaten’s drawn tulwars.

  ‘Bondsmen, on me,’ the khan grunted over the vox, igniting his blades as the alien tide crashed against the Mountain Gate. Beneath, the carnifex beat what remained of its armoured skull against the broken adamantium, driving the entrance to the city open even as its mangled body finally succumbed to its wounds.

  The Founding Wall had fallen.

  It only took a moment’s assessment for Qui’sin to realise that they couldn’t hold the breach. Already the rubble left by the detonation was swarming with gaunts, spreading like water from a burst dam into the space behind the wall and the streets beyond.

  For a moment, the Stormseer was alone. For a moment every ounce of his physical and mental strength was bent towards stemming the tide. He met the gaunts skittering down the reverse side of the wall’s remains wreathed in a tornado of summoned power, the whipping elements shot through with bolts of lightning that earthed and cracked into anything that came close, flinging shrieking xenos from his path. The Stormseer’s eyes blazed with the golden light of Chogoris as he mounted the rubble, every footstep a thunderclap, his hair erect with the static charge that played and sparked across his blue-and-white battleplate.

  For a moment, the weathermaker held the breach, at the eye of the tempest the power of another dimension channelled through his body and mind. That moment was enough. Like moonfins darting through cloudy water, red las-blasts started to punch through the dust kicked up by the wall’s destruction and the White Scar’s psychic potency, first a few, then dozens. Figures came charging through the gloom, bayonets fixed, shouting in fear and terror. The tyranids, unable to lay a single talon on the warrior bestriding the breach, turned aside as one, driven back by the fury of Qui’sin’s localised storm and the sudden counter-attack mounted by the prey.

  The Pinnacle Guard’s First Battalion had been savaged by the blast that had broken the Founding Wall, but it had not been destroyed. Those soldiers who had survived in reserve in nearby streets, or the extreme left and right flank companies on the parapets, had initially been left stunned by the scale of the disaster and the death of Colonel Uygar.

  It was Lieutenant Senga who took control as the aftershock of the mountain-shaking explosion finally faded away. Senga’s platoon had been stationed north of the armoury, and were sheltered from the worst of the blast by one of the poor hab blocks clustering the base of the slope-city, nearest the wall. While others stared in horror at the cloud of dust and smoke rising from the epicentre of the blast, Senga followed his training; he got his men on their feet and, ears still ringing, led them in a boots-pounding rush directly into the carnage, all the while barking orders to the nearest surviving units over the regiment’s short-range comms frequency.

  Qui’sin only became aware of the Pinnacle Guard’s arrival when the number of gaunts flinging themselves into the psychic maelstrom he had created lessened. He was deep in a warp trance, fist clenched around his force staff like a drowning man grasping gnarled old driftwood as his mind plunged through the wild, swirling eddies of the empyrean. It was Kemich who dragged him back with her startling cry, the psy-linked familiar acting like a beacon in the storm. The winds about him died abruptly as he gasped back into full consciousness, the after-effects of the actinic lightning still darting across his energy-wreathed form.

  ‘We can hold them, Sky Warrior!’ shouted Senga from across the rubble to his right. Qui’sin became properly aware of the Pinnacle Guardsmen pushing up alongside him for the first time. He flinched as the aftershock of the immense powers he had just wielded washed back over him – his skull was throbbing in time with his psychic hood, its wires and dermal nodes pricking his scalp, while the staff in his fist was still vibrating as it earthed the warp-spawned potency he had called upon. He could taste blood.

  ‘Hold your advance,’ he told Senga, struggling to regain control of the moment before the young officer’s exuberance carried him too far. ‘My powers are spent, for the moment, and we will need more support.’

  ‘Governor Harren has ordered all Pinnacle Guard units to withdraw,’ Senga said. ‘I fear there will be no support, Sky Warrior.’

  ‘What?’ Qui’sin demanded. ‘This is the only chance we’ll have to shore this breach up. If you withdraw now the city will fall.’

  ‘It’s all confusion,’ Senga admitted. ‘There are reports of fighting breaking out further up the slope. Some say the tribes are rioting, others that Pinnacle Guard units have turned traitor.’

  Qui’sin paused as a blinking transmission sigil on his visor display demanded his attention. It was Joghaten.

  ‘The Mountain Gate is breached,’ the khan said. It was obvious from his laboured breathing and the clash of blades in the background that he was as embroiled in the battle for the wall as Qui’sin.

  ‘The breach has not yet fallen, but it will soon without reinforcements,’ the Stormseer replied. Ahead of him the sounds of las-fire intensified. Already the edge of a fresh wave of gaunts was scrabbling through the rubble towards the makeshift d
efence, as numerous and implacable as ever.

  ‘Disengage and withdraw to secondary positions in the Old Town,’ Joghaten ordered. There was a pause, punctuated by an alien shriek, before the vox transmission continued. ‘We must tighten our defensive lines if we are to halt them.’

  ‘I’ve heard reports of fighting further up the slope,’ Qui’sin said. ‘We are being attacked from within as well as without.’

  ‘It is as we feared. I am withdrawing squads from the catacombs to reinforce our rally points in the Old Town.’

  ‘I must meet with you, khan,’ Qui’sin said. ‘There are words I must impart.’

  ‘In Old Town,’ Joghaten said, the net chopped now with interference. ‘I will meet you soon, brother.’

  ‘Begin a staggered withdrawal,’ Qui’sin said immediately to Senga, eyes on the gaunts now swarming over the rubble towards them.

  ‘But, great Sky Warrior–’ the young lieutenant started.

  Qui’sin turned on him.

  ‘Now,’ he snapped, thrusting psychic imperative into the officer’s mind. He stumbled back, eyes wide in his red, sweat-slick face, then began issuing orders into his micro-bead as Qui’sin turned his attention back towards the oncoming tyranids.

  The swarm would overwhelm the remnants of the First Regiment long before they could withdraw. They needed his power, every last ounce of it. The Stormseer pushed the fatigue brought on by his last psychic assault to the back of his mind, and clutched his force staff firmly in both gauntlets. Kemich swooped down to alight on his backpack as Pinnacle Guardsmen dropped back past him in staggered squads, firing as they went. They were brave men, good men. As the swarm poured down the reverse slope of rubble in a glittering black tide, the White Scar slammed his staff into the cracked rockcrete underfoot, and roared a word of pure power. The baking hot Darkand air, shimmering around him in the heat of the Furnace Season’s peak, ignited once more into a howling, lightning-lashed gale that slammed into the oncoming alien mass.