The Last Hunt Page 7
‘That is even assuming the tribes can be brought within the wall in time. If not our defence will be for nothing.’
‘We shall find out soon enough. Our outriders cannot be far away from the closest ones.’
‘My lord,’ called Harren. Joghaten realised he was gesturing up at them. A pale-faced staffer in the uniform of a vox primary was standing at his shoulder.
‘What is it?’ Joghaten called back, his bass voice cutting easily across the chatter of the command centre.
‘A message from the augur stations watching over the rimward edge of the system. They are reporting contacts. Something… vast is arriving in-system from deep space.’
‘Then your faith and your abilities are about to be tested as never before, Commander Harren,’ Joghaten replied. ‘Has the wall been fully manned?’
‘Soon, lord,’ Harren said. ‘My generals estimate the final battalions will be in place by nightfall. The reports from the augur arrays estimate the xenos will reach upper orbit in around forty hours. They move slowly. The choristorum is also reporting that our astropaths have lost contact with the Imperium at large. The primaris has suffered a fatal stroke.’
‘The Shadow in the Warp,’ Qui’sin responded. ‘The psychic darkness these xenos always bring with them. Do not let it trouble you, governor. In times such as these, none were coming to your aid anyway. Your champions already stand with you.’
The Chamber of Seers,
Iyanden Craftworld
The high, wraithbone chamber echoed with the sound of mourning. The seer council of Iyanden was remembering its dead, the cost a dying race had paid and would pay again. Lillen, the most youthful warlock to have taken a seat among the council of seers, sung for the souls of Alnoth and Murai, just fallen in battle with their dark cousins. Their passing had left Farseer Yenneth feeling hollow. Even now their spirit stones were communing with the infinity circuit, seeking their final rest.
Understanding as she did the threats that faced the craftworld, Yenneth suspected that any rest they did find would be very far from final.
Little time had passed since the farseer and a detachment of wraithguard had returned from the webway. The City of Pillars, that long-abandoned portal to the material plane, had once more been the scene of desperate fighting against Archon Skalorix and the Kabal of the Pierced Eye. The cursed drukhari were refusing to abandon the ancient aeldari city and the portal which led to the mon-keigh world beyond. Unless they could be dislodged, Yenneth and her kindred would not be able to seal the entrance off before the bio-monstrosities of the Devourer arrived.
Despite their withdrawal, the spirits powering the wraithguard detachment had not been released. Another farseer, Venerable Hildar, had proposed requesting the assistance of more before returning to the City of Pillars. The council had urged caution before moving the proposal forward. The craftworld was already on a war footing, beset by a dozen threats. What craftworld wasn’t, now that Biel-Tan was shattered and darkness had blanketed half the galaxy? The loss of venerable council members like Alnoth and Murai were but the latest of many tears.
‘The drukhari humiliated us,’ said Farseer Galoran after the mourning song had faded into silence. The fragment of the council that had been dedicated to the expedition to the City of Pillars sat in a circle, cross-legged, around the shimmering stones of the seeing chamber. The precious vision shards were hovering a foot above the smooth surface of the floor, moving in slow, ever-changing patterns. Their depths glowed, casting twinkling patterns across the slender, curving wraithbone arches high overhead. They were the only source of illumination in the chamber, and they gave it an aquatic, submerged feel.
‘The portents did not predict the drukhari would be so numerous,’ said one of the council’s warlocks, Yetoc.
‘A wrong path was taken,’ Yenneth admitted. They were the first words she had spoken since Lillen had finished her song. She felt the weight of expectation in the chamber pressing down upon her, distracting her, like a buzzing in her ears. At times like these she suspected taking up her position among the current council had been a wrong path as well. Fate could be confounding, even for one who walked the lonely way of the Seer.
‘Sometimes the most obvious route is the right one,’ Hildar intoned. He was old, even by the standards of the eldar. The crystalline curse that beset all farseers now forced him to use his wraithbone staff as a walking cane. It would not be long before he withdrew into the Dome of the Crystal Seers, to become one with the craftworld and guide it from the beyond.
‘Can we afford to awaken more of our sleeping kin though?’ Yenneth asked, letting the truth of her words work for her. ‘How many more sections of the infinity circuit are we willing to disturb in our quest to oust Skalorix?’
‘We are all in agreement that the portal must be sealed,’ Hildar said. ‘If we do not use force to drive away the drukhari, then how do you suggest we stop the Devourer from breaching the webway? It is a risk we cannot afford to take.’
‘There are other ways,’ Yenneth said slowly. ‘Other… allies we might seek.’
‘You are right to speak with caution,’ Hildar said slowly, his piercing gaze not leaving Yenneth. ‘You refer to the mon-keigh, yes? The ones that infest the surface of the portal world. The place they call Darkand.’
The last word, delivered in the mon-keigh’s barbaric tongue, sounded like a wracking cough. The council’s sense of discomfort filled Yenneth. She pressed on regardless.
‘We know how the immediate paths before us play out. We can change them. Bring some together, and seal others off. Engineer success from many possible futures.’
‘You have already proposed this,’ Hildar said. ‘The council voted unanimously against it. It is too dangerous.’
‘I would have the council reconsider,’ Yenneth said. ‘Awaking a further phalanx of our slumbering kin is not feasible. We cannot countenance the price Skalorix demands in her bargains, but we must seal the portal. We all know the threat the Devourer poses, more so than any of our kin. If the hive mind senses the portal’s presence and succeeds in penetrating it, half a dozen craftworlds will find themselves directly threatened. The mon-keigh are our best hope now.’
‘But the distortion you suggest,’ Farseer Galoran said, speaking for the first time. ‘Is it even possible?’
‘Yes,’ Yenneth replied, masking her uncertainty with firmness. ‘I can tread the path to its completion. There will be no missteps.’
‘You have done it before?’
‘I have not.’
‘There is nothing more difficult or deadly than what you propose,’ Hildar said, leaning heavily on his staff. Unlike the other seers he’d remained standing, unable to sit due to the slow crippling of his lower limbs.
‘One wrong turn, one false step, and you could cause infinitely more damage than even the Devourer is capable of.’
‘I understand the risks,’ Yenneth said.
‘But what of the realities?’ asked a warlock, Druai. ‘How can you even go about reaching the mon-keigh if the drukhari control the City of Pillars?’
‘Skalorix holds the gate,’ Yenneth said. ‘But a palace has many other doors. I have scryed them all, and I will use them to reach those who may prove most malleable to our suggestions.’
‘You think you will find any among that blind race that can fulfil the role we require?’
‘If the plan is adhered to, we will require only slaughter. The mon-keigh have shown themselves perfectly capable of that. With Ynnead’s blessings they will be our instrument of destruction. Darkand holds great meaning, and even greater purpose, for many of them.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Hildar asked when Yenneth paused.
‘The runes are unequivocal about certain matters,’ Yenneth continued. ‘Observe.’
She drew her sheaf of wraithbone rune sticks from her robes, and cast them
across the floor beneath the seeing stones. As they slid to a halt her long, slender fingers were already indicating the salient patterns, her mind inching ahead of present reality.
‘There, see how the runes representing the Upstart fall upon the marker of the Home world?’
‘That much is true,’ Hildar allowed. ‘But I see precious little certainty in anything else. All about it is flux.’
‘Watch again,’ Yenneth said, gathering up the sticks and casting them once more. As they clattered to a stop they again settled in a similar pattern – at their centre, the Upstart and the Home world met.
‘The mon-keigh’s tie to Darkand is a fixed point,’ Yenneth explained. ‘That is why I have proposed this plan. All paths lead to their involvement.’
‘But what of the other runes?’ Galoran asked, leaning forward. ‘I see not only uncertainty, I see gravest danger. The Wrath of Khaine has fallen inverted twice. The Tears of Isha lie crossed with the Cosmic Serpent. And Ynnead is ascendant.’
The farseer indicated the rune stick that topped the scattered pattern. Yenneth felt the psychic flicker of unease from those around her.
‘I take that as a good portent,’ she said. ‘We are all Ynnead’s servants now.’
‘It is a bleak time, when all of the aeldari have been reduced to the service of Death,’ Hildar said quietly.
‘Yet these are the times dealt to us,’ Yenneth replied. ‘You can see the runes, how they have fallen. Few are within our power to change now. Too many paths have already been set. For this reason, I petition the council once more.’
None of the assembled seers raised the tokens that indicated opposition. After a moment’s silence, Yenneth bowed her head in formal thanks.
‘Take the outcasts with you,’ Hildar said. ‘We can ill afford to lose another of our Venerable Seers, not during times such as these.’
‘Very well,’ Yenneth said. ‘I shall seek out Pathfinder Roneth in person.’
‘You know the routes you must take to reach Darkand?’
‘I have foreseen them, honoured farseer. That will have to be enough.’
‘It will,’ Hildar agreed. ‘Ynnead guide you, my sister. Much hangs upon the thread of your existence.’
You cannot engage these monsters as you would a conventional xenos threat. They are unlike any other enemy this damnable galaxy has to throw at us. They fight not as a gathering of sentient warriors, but as the billion-strong extensions of a single mind. They are the ultimate predator. But gentlemen, having said all that… how many predators have we hunted, trapped and killed on Myralis when we were last on leave? I assure you, this one will be no different.
– Admiral Golkin Vatt, Imperial Navy battlefleet
472-Pacificus, to his assembled deck officers
prior to his victory over the Great Devourer
at the battle of High Anchorage, 997.M41
Chapter Five
THE FLESH NOOSE
TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK
[TERRAN STANDARD]: 88 HOURS.
TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL [TERRAN STANDARD]: 43 HOURS.
Augur Void Station JUF-D19/Rimward,
Darkand System
They were all going to die. Augur station Vox Primary Ankum had admitted as much before the station’s commander, Sensorium Master Crasus, had ordered him to be silent. None of them needed the vox primary’s analysis to know what was about to happen.
Augur analyst Davrick’s main viewscreen had just come back online. It had shorted out three times in the last hour, overloaded by the sheer weight of returns it was getting from the augur arrays that monitored the edge of the Darkand System. The counter for his sector had stalled at 1314 and was simply blinking on and off, its red digits throwing Davrick’s face into light and dark, light and dark. The displays all around him were now a morass of unidentified, organic returns, rendered all but useless by the weight of data appearing across the screens.
Augur Station JUF-D19/Rimward’s processors were unable to comprehend the sheer size of Hive Fleet Cicatrix as it arrived in-system.
Tech-adept Groll seemed to have gone into some sort of standby, cortical plugs still linking him to the deep-space station’s drives. He sat bound in his binary communion chair, eyes glazed, pale lips quivering. Crasus had given up trying to bring him back online.
‘Estimated time to contact?’ the sensorium master asked, voice hoarse. He was watching the external pict screens.
‘Unknown,’ another of the void station’s six-man crew, Sereen responded. ‘My systems are all glitched, but running off the last speed and trajectory readings we managed to file, I estimate no more than ten minutes.’
Nobody replied. Everyone’s eyes were on the pict-feed.
The external recordings had managed to pick out their doom. The view of real space in the station’s immediate vicinity was a grainy, static-washed green, but the resolution was enough to make out the thing approaching them through the void. The augur’s systems had been constructed to collate and analyse nonvisual data – such clinical information was of far more use than the scant things that could be detected through the naked eye, watching viewscreen images of distant objects. In a twist of cruel irony, JUF-D19/Rimward’s grainy old pict recorders were the only pieces of data collection equipment not overloaded by the sheer size of the xenos fleet.
Now that fleet’s vanguard was visible. Something was nearing the station, drawing towards it with a silent, eerie inevitability. Its form defied easy definition. Davrick, born to a middle-ranking ash hiver family on Colaris Prime, had never seen the ocean before, but he’d witnessed the strange, frilled creatures imported as foodstuffs for Colaris’ teeming hab blocks from harvest worlds like Aquim and New Haven. The thing approaching JUF-D19/Rimward looked like one such creature, albeit far larger and cast out into the void. Its back was a gnarled, curling hump of scarred bone plating, while its underside was a mass of dozens of limb-like tendrils that waved back and forth with a lazy synchronisation, as though powering it forward through the depths. Streamers of void-frozen fluid clung to its fronds, while its head constituted nothing more than a fleshy maw. Orifices in its spine shell occasionally gouted bursts of bio-effluvium that crystallised in the void.
‘Vanguard organism,’ Analyst Korday said, as though to break the awful silence that had fallen over the station. ‘No specific class or designation.’
‘Estimated time to contact less than five minutes,’ Sereen added quietly.
‘We’re about to be boarded, or God-Emperor knows what else,’ Crasus snapped, trying to wake up his stunned crew. ‘I want everything wiped, now. Follow your damned protocols.’
The icy, expectant stillness that had settled over the station dissipated as they all hurried to comply. Davrick began to wipe his core cogitators and processor units, inserting a series of codes that were authorised by Crasus’ gene stamp. The hurried activity helped draw his mind away from the cold sweat slicking his body, the throbbing in his skull and the base, panic-stoked fear churning in his stomach.
‘Systems are beginning to go offline,’ he confirmed. ‘Criticals multiplying, chief.’
Crasus didn’t respond. He was too busy giving authorisation to Ankum to scramble the vox-systems. Sereen was wiping data-slates while Korday was dumping sheaves of paper backcopies and data readout chits into the vacuum chute. Only Groll was motionless, still staring into nothing.
‘Tech-adept, respond,’ Crasus said, turning his attention to the Adeptus Mechanicus acolyte. The coghead remained unmoving.
‘Maximum priority response override,’ Crasus snapped. ‘Look at me, Groll.’
The adept blinked once, slowly.
‘He’s gone, chief,’ Korday said, glancing over from the chute. ‘You gotta unplug him from the dataframe.’
For a moment Crasus looked as though he was going to reply. Then, instead, he reached
down to the base of the adept’s mem-unit, sutured into the pale flesh at the base of his skull. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled. There was an instant of resistance, then the unit disengaged with a click. Groll didn’t react, though a line of saliva escaped his sagging lips. Crasus reached up to the heavy cortical plug inserted into Groll’s cranium, near the surgery-scarred crown of his white scalp.
‘God-Emperor forgive me,’ the sensorum master muttered, before yanking the plug free. Systems across the station’s remaining displays began to chime and flash, as though the machine-spirits were calling out in shock. Groll spasmed violently for a moment, held in check by his binary chair’s restraints, then slumped back. A single hand continued to twitch and clench.
‘Eyes on your stations,’ Crasus ordered, though the surety in his voice was gone.
‘Contact,’ Sereen said.
The void monster filled the pict screen. Up close its form was even more nightmarish – Davrick could see the spine growths that lined its motion frills, and the scarring on its curled shell where debris had lashed it during its long voyage between the stars. As the station crew watched, its maw distended, pulling apart. Contrary to Davrick’s horrified imaginings, it did not possess row after row of snapping lock-teeth. Instead, its mouth was a fleshy morass of feelers, disgusting tendrils trailing icy slime. They extended as it came blindly upon the station, reaching out past the pict screen’s pan. A proximity alarm bell started to clatter, and Davrick felt the decking beneath him shudder.
‘It’s… it’s going to eat us,’ Ankum stammered, looking as though he was about to be sick. ‘Oh, Throne, it’s–’
‘Silence!’ Crasus snapped, though he too was visibly shaking.
More tendrils reached ponderously out, questing around the station’s flanks. Secondary alarms activated, and the adamantium around the crew shuddered and groaned.
Was it going to crush them? Tear them open and expose them to the void? Suck them into the vile, drooling orifice now practically pressed up against the pict display? Davrick found himself staring at the terrifying image, unable to shift away from his workbench, unable to look at anything other than the unnatural, pulsating flesh that now filled the screen.