The Last Hunt Read online

  ‘Gene-seed lost,’ Hagai surmised as he focused a lumen on Chyen and his shattered bike. ‘Equipment unsalvageable. We must go, before we share his fate.’ His words were underlined by the reptor hissing, and the thud of the auto feed for Timchet’s heavy bolter. It looked as though the nearest lizards were about to leap.

  Wind Tamer climbed up out of the hidden gorge and into the burning light of Darkand’s merciless sun. Hagai turned them left, towards the route being taken by Chyen before his death. There was a tribe still to be warned, the Jebig. Timchet opened a link to Steedmaster Gadi to report Chyen’s loss.

  ‘He underestimated this place,’ Hagai said darkly as Timchet waited for the steedmaster’s response. ‘Let us hope he is the last of our brotherhood to do so.’

  The scriptorium, Heavenfall

  The outriders were beginning to return. Joghaten received the news in a transcription chamber located in the draughty halls of a scriptorium perched high up on the mountainside, near the upper edge of the temple district. He and Qui’sin had chosen the gothic stone structure as their initial base of operations in the city. It was near enough to the primary vox-hub and the Pinnacle’s centrum dominus to ensure direct communication, while being sufficiently removed to afford a degree of security. Joghaten had deployed Delbeg and the brotherhood’s First Tactical Squad in and around the building’s immediate vicinity, with orders that no one was to be allowed in.

  Timchet and Hagai, the pilots of the Land Speeder Wind Tamer, were the first of the outriders to make it back to Heavenfall. The two White Scars had put aside their seemingly endless critiques of each other’s poetry and their discourse over the best chinyua vintages for long enough to reach four Darkand tribes before the second dawn since planetfall. Three long, winding caravans were now approaching the Founding Wall, hastened by dire warnings of the predators that stalked the stars. Timchet and Hagai had also located brother Chyen of the Second Bike Squadron, who’d run foul of Darkand’s natural dangers and fallen to his death through the crust of a dust-concealed canyon. The warning the two wind-brothers bore had been circulated to the rest of the brotherhood – Darkand was not Chogoris, and even the most experienced White Scars ignored its dangers at their own peril.

  Others had started to return now as well. Bleda and most of his hunt-brothers, Khuchar and Omni, Jelmar of the Khitan. The brotherhood’s Stormhawks and Stormtalons had also arrived back with the early dawn, like berkut to their mountain nests, refuelling on Heavenfall’s skyshield landing plates high up the slope. Their pilots brought with them reports of being able to see dozens of steppe tribes turning back to Heavenfall from across the plains. It seemed the terror and awe the people of Darkand reserved for the Sky Warriors was sufficient to break their migratory cycles and overcome their dislike of the slope-city and its inhabitants.

  ‘Not all will make it,’ Qui’sin said, looking down at the maps spread before the two White Scars. They were standing over a wide secondary workbench near the centre of the scriptorium’s transcription chamber. It had been cleared of heavy leather tomes and the data-slates they were being transferred onto, and replaced by a spread of cartographic sheets and zonal charts. Joghaten had requisitioned them from the commander of the Darkand Pinnacle Guard, an overweight, pugnacious off-worlder who seemed far out of his depth.

  ‘Is that a prophecy or an opinion, weathermaker?’ Joghaten asked. He’d been brusque ever since leaving the company of Commander Harren. Qui’sin did not begrudge him his mood. The idea that xenos taint may already have infiltrated the city – indeed, may have been lurking right before their very eyes – vexed them both. Joghaten was a hunting hawk that had caught its prey’s presence, and yet remained hooded and tethered.

  ‘It is an opinion,’ Qui’sin clarified. ‘The bartering of the Golden Season has just finished and the tribes are laden with goods. Their progress will be slow. Even if they can be convinced to abandon what they are carrying and make all haste, those farthest out will take at least three days to reach the Founding Wall.’

  ‘Then we must slow the xenos down,’ Joghaten said. ‘Protect the convoys as they come in.’

  ‘We will be stretched thin,’ Qui’sin warned, gesturing at the maps. ‘The migratory routes are far from our base of operations, and I assume we will be without fleet support.’

  ‘It depends how the Devourer chooses to attack us,’ Joghaten replied. The words started to come more readily, the surly edge lost as his mind turned to the art of war, a practice that had been denied to him for long months.

  ‘The strongest hive fleets are unafraid to strike directly at the heart of a world’s defence. But going off our analysis Cicatrix is not strong, not yet. It is unlikely to be able to rain bioforms down on our heads here. Protocol suggests it will seed the swarms far out, in the areas of least resistance, where they are safe. Only once they’ve gathered their initial strength will they strike. That should give us a few more hours.’

  ‘A few, but not enough,’ Qui’sin mused. ‘You know as well as I how fast the swarms move when they have the scent and are coordinated by the hive mind.’

  ‘So we shall contest their planetfall,’ Joghaten went on with a tight, hungry smile. ‘As soon as we’re able to triangulate the landing sites of the first swarms we will ride from Heavenfall and strike while they are still scattered and uncoordinated. Collect their leader-beast’s heads. First blood for the Khagan. That will give us more time and bleed their numbers before the main swarm can gather.’

  ‘You have been waiting for this, khan-commander, haven’t you?’ Qui’sin said, shaking his head and matching Joghaten’s smile with a wry one of his own. ‘If we catch them on the plains, scattered to deal with their multiple seedings, we run the risk of being caught and overwhelmed when the swarms start to converge. It is a high-risk strategy.’

  ‘The best kind of strategy,’ Joghaten corrected, a note of relish now colouring his voice. Despite his best efforts, Qui’sin felt himself getting caught up in Joghaten’s bloody enthusiasm. It had been too long since he had seen the khan with fire in his words and killer’s steel in his eyes.

  ‘It may give Heavenfall’s populace longer for the evacuation into the catacombs,’ the Stormseer allowed, tapping one of the subterranean charts. ‘But it will take discipline and timing if we are not to be swept away by the rising tide.’

  ‘The Khagan watches over us,’ Joghaten said, with the dismissive flair that had seen some question his suitability for khan-commander. Qui’sin knew better – he had learned that such an apparently arrogant statement was more a reflection of his faith in the primarch than a dismissal of potential difficulties. Beneath Joghaten’s obvious hunger for a challenge was the shrewd and calculating mind of a true and seasoned steppe hetman. For all the apparent new-found fire, Qui’sin knew the plan settled on by the Master of Blades would be sound in concept and effective in execution.

  ‘What of the tribal exodus into Heavenfall?’ Joghaten went on, pulling a street plan of the city’s upper slope districts to the top of the pile. ‘You have spoken with the ministers leading the operation to move the city-dwellers below ground?’

  ‘I have,’ Qui’sin said. ‘They reek of uncertainty and confusion. The movement of people into the underground zones is slow. Right now there are still tens of thousands who have not left their dwellings, mostly in the poorer hab blocks at the bottom of the slope. The shift from the Old Town is progressing at a quicker pace, but the priesthood of the Emperor’s Voice that controls the temple district is refusing to abandon their devotariums. Thank the Khagan most of the citizens had already begun moving before we arrived, otherwise I doubt many of them would be below ground before the xenos made planetfall. As it stands, I expect around three-quarters of the city populace will be secure within the next twenty-four Terran hours. Of the remainder, we will assist the Pinnacle Guard in relocating as many as possible. They at least have worked hard to assist the shift underground
.’

  ‘And what about the tribespeople when they reach Heavenfall?’

  ‘The ministers were resistant to even allowing them within the Founding Wall, let alone giving them access to the evacuation catacombs.’

  ‘If they are not allowed below ground they will perish when the Furnace Season reaches its peak. I trust you made it clear they are to be admitted into the relocation zones, weathermaker?’

  ‘Of course. Whether there will be sufficient room for them all is another matter though. If the xenos draw their invasion out they will all perish.’

  ‘The invasion will not last long, one way or another,’ Joghaten said. ‘This hive splinter is weak and desperate for fodder. It must feed as quickly as possible, and it cannot do that until the surface has been fully seeded. They will seek to overwhelm us as soon as the swarms have gathered. We must be ready for them.’

  ‘The Pinnacle Guard units not assisting the relocation of the citizens into the catacombs are assembling along the Founding Wall,’ Qui’sin continued. ‘I am reviewing their First Regiment soon, but I doubt many will be properly prepared for what is coming.’

  ‘We will do what we can to bolster them. I will inspect the defences along the Founding Wall before sunfall.’ Joghaten leaned in closer to his Stormseer across the table, the heavy frame creaking. ‘And what of the taint, weathermaker? Have you sensed anything more?’

  ‘It is still impossible to say. The xenos is cunning. It hides its trail well. I still believe the government district is the root of the potential infestation, but if we seek to purge it we will derail the entire catacomb relocation operation at a crucial time. I mentally probed several of the ministers, cautiously. I am confident at least some are uncorrupted, and the operations they are overseeing are proceeding as quickly as can be expected.’

  ‘They have us in a dangerous position,’ Joghaten muttered. ‘If we trigger any potential uprising now it will be beyond our current capabilities to suppress, but the longer we allow them to fester the more powerful they will become. They must not be allowed to strike when they are fully prepared. We need more information, swiftly. If the corruption runs deeper than we suppose it could turn into a massacre.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Qui’sin. ‘They may already be in the catacombs, but beyond providing extra internal defences there is little we can do for the time being. Our focus should be on the relocation of both the city’s populace and the steppe tribespeople.’

  ‘We must be ready, all the same. The xenos may strike from anywhere.’

  Qui’sin inclined his head. What Joghaten said was true. He could practically sense the taint, even here. It was like a scratching in his mind, scraping against the inside of his skull, more bothersome and insistent than the numbing horror generated by the impending hive fleet. Something was festering in Heavenfall.

  ‘I will dedicate two tactical squads to the city’s inner defence,’ Joghaten continued. ‘They will assist in the city’s preparations, at least until the xenos make planetfall.’

  ‘I understand,’ Qui’sin said. Joghaten didn’t respond. His eyes had become distant, and his hand had gone up to his vox earpiece. After a moment he nodded, and looked again at Qui’sin.

  ‘You must hurry, weathermaker. Tzu Shen reports that the Great Devourer has just attained high orbit.’

  High orbit, Darkand

  The Pride of Chogoris hung like a dart above Darkand, flanked by its escorts as it awaited its commander’s orders. Shen leant forwards in his throne mount, hands clutching the yellowing ork skulls that constituted its sides. His head twitched back and forth sightlessly, as it was prone to do when his neural nodes came close to information overload.

  ‘The rest of the fleet is standing by, voyagemaster,’ a vox zart reported over the link. Shen didn’t respond. He already knew. He had seen the confirmation runes flash in his mind’s eye, and knew that his escorts were ready on either side. All waited on his word. And he waited on the xenos. The timing had to be perfect.

  ‘Boost the sensorium magnification,’ he ordered. ‘Apply focus on sector two-eight.’

  The serf crew hurried to comply, focusing the Pride’s primary augur spike and external pict-feeds on the designated area of voidspace. Shen saw, through his ship’s eyes, the images channelled directly to his brain via the cortical plugs and the data links that studded his flesh.

  Hive fleet Cicatrix was close. Its horror filled the viewscreens and oculus stands, and flooded the pict images. A sea of a thousand bio-ships, from minnows barely larger than a Space Marine Thunderhawk to a trio of leviathans that dwarfed the largest Imperial Navy battleship. They were closing on Darkand in a broad spread, the smaller scout vessels on the flanks of the swarm edging ahead so that their forward crescent moved to engulf the planet’s upper hemisphere.

  In the decades since he had last witnessed the Great Devourer, Shen had not forgotten the strange, alien majesty that best described its movements. The entire fleet made its final approach to Darkand with a level of coordination and grace that would have been far beyond the clumsy efforts of even the most experienced human admiral. In his four centuries Shen had witnessed the reaper pirates of the eldar off Gorisel Prime, the well-drilled slaver fleets of the Sheltiel at Drusus and the grand armada of the renegade Lord Praxsis, but he had never seen any gathering of ships, human or xenos, deploy with the coordinated surety of the tyranids. It was just another example of how wholly unnatural they were, a signifier of the single, terrible consciousness that controlled each and every one of them. It made Shen hate them even more.

  ‘Hold the scan,’ he ordered. The images channelled into his thoughts froze, locked on the sector he had picked out. He reviewed them for a moment, speeding through each still with an accuracy only a transhuman mind could enjoy.

  There it was. Near the vanguard, innocuous but for the protection it was being afforded by a thick screen of drone vessels. The narvhal. It was small, smaller even than the drones clustered around it, plated as they were in heavy sheets of scarred chitin. It was both unarmed and unarmoured, a slip of pallid void flesh, remarkable only insomuch as it bore a thick cluster of spines across its slender bow. Those spines seemed to twitch and shudder as Shen replayed the captured image, as though aware of his scrutiny.

  ‘Gunnery, I have a firing solution,’ Shen said into his vox. There was no time to waste. He thought-pulsed the coordinates to the gunnery section, who passed the sector provided on to the bombardment cannon’s control deck.

  ‘You may fire when ready,’ Shen said to gunnery. The swarm was drawing close, almost too close. They were reaching the critical engagement threshold. A few minutes more and they would trigger a direct response from the xenos vanguard. Shen could sense the Pride’s burning desire to engage. Or perhaps he was simply confusing its ancient spirit with his own. Hatred for the xenos coursed through him, causing his secondary heart to kick in and launching his transhuman physiology’s potent mix of chemicals and hormones.

  ‘Breach voided and charge ready, voyagemaster,’ crackled the voice of the chief gunnery zart in Shen’s ear. A few seconds later and he felt his throne mount shudder. The sound of the Pride’s mighty bombardment cannon was lost in the vacuum of space, but the whole vessel felt its discharge.

  Shen unpaused the sensorium images, features twitching involuntarily as he took in every scrap of information the Pride could give him. Long seconds passed. Then, finally, there was a flash. A section of void space amongst the leading edge of the swarm ignited for a heartbeat, a single, silent white burst that heralded the detonation of the bombardment cannon’s vast shell. It had hit the knot of bio-ships clustered around the narvhal. Shen saw immediately that the shot, made at extreme range, had failed to penetrate the protective shield provided by the outer ships. One of the vanguard bioforms fell away, its shell split and shattered, spinning slowly out of the perfect formation adopted by the rest of the swarm. Another slipped
in to take its place, the ponderous advance unfaltering. On the formation’s flanks smaller, faster drones started to draw inwards, moving towards the White Scars ships on a clear attack course. The narvhal remained untouched.

  It didn’t matter – the shot’s purpose had been fulfilled. The narvhal, though physically innocuous, was one of the most vital ships in any hive fleet. Tyranids were incapable of warp travel; however, the monofilament spines of the narvhal allowed it to harness the gravity of a target system to create a corridor of space-void compression. The xenos could travel faster through such a corridor, compensating for their inability to traverse vast distances via the warp. Striking a blow against it was a statement of intent. Shen was showing that he knew these xenos, and now they knew him.

  The time had come. The vanguard ships had launched spores, trailing, membranous things that could splash ships with virulent acids – or worse – on impact. It was time to disengage, while they still could.

  ‘Transmission to the rest of the fleet,’ Shen voxed to the communication pits sited around his throne mount. ‘Enter stage two. Commence full orbital withdrawal, mark three-four. There is to be no speed or propulsion variation. Maintain tight control, and keep the formation.’

  He knew his secondary directives were unnecessary given the experience of his escort commanders, but such orders came from habit. Close disengagement from an enemy as dangerous as the tyranids was one of the most fraught manoeuvres a captain could order.

  The White Scars fleet turned its back on Hive Fleet Cicatrix and pulled up out of the exosphere, weighing stasis-anchor and leaving Darkand behind. Shen switched his views to the aft pict-feeds and augurs, watching the glittering alien swarm receding behind him. The xenos fleet did not shift its angle. They would not pursue. Instead, they continued to fall upon Darkand, a shroud of alien flesh that tightened around the world’s upper curve. Shen thought of the planet, of its tribespeople, and of his own hunt-brothers, scattered across the surface of its only stable continent.