The Last Hunt Page 9

  The xenos’ skull was now yellowing on a spike above his throne mount. Shen still bore the wicked white scars all down his face, a counterpoint to the ritual markings of his tribe and Chapter. He had refused the offer of augmetics, preferring to see only through the ship’s senses. The Pride of Chogoris likewise remembered that last, brutal engagement. Though new sheets of adamantium had been bonded to its hull, and old scars painted fresh and white, Shen could still feel the vessel’s hunger for vengeance, a rare spike of discord amidst its ordered thoughts. That flash had been growing stronger and more frequent since the first detection of Hive Fleet Cicatrix’s vanguard organisms, making their way in-system from the void’s depths. Shen knew he would have to monitor it closely if he were to ensure the Pride did not lose its harmony in a blood-fuelled hunt for revenge.

  The old voyagemaster reached out once more with the Pride’s augurs, scanning the xenos fleet that was spreading like some vile, void-borne cancer from the system’s edge. The hive swarm would be filling the yurut’s oculus displays and viewscreens, a morass of hostile returns, rendered not in armaplas, plasteel and adamantium, but in ugly, leathery flesh, craggy asteroid-scarred chitin and throbbing, toxic ichor. The number of contacts was far in excess of any enemy fleet the Fourth Brotherhood’s vessels had faced since they last encountered the Great Devourer off Nebrison. But Tzu Shen had seen worse.

  ‘Send this information to the Master of Blades as a data burst,’ he ordered one of the yurut zarts over the vox. ‘Along with the following analysis. Xenos threat gauged to be level three or four, no higher. Progressing in-system, standard pattern. The bio-ships at the formation’s heart seem uncommonly large for such a comparatively small splinter, possibly indicative of a lack of bio-fodder or recent hostile action. Estimated time to arrival in Darkand’s high orbit, forty-two hours, Terran standard. Will move to the second phase unless otherwise notified.’

  After a moment the primary vox zart confirmed that the burst had been delivered, logged and auto-acknowledged, with Shen’s addendum attached. The voyagemaster thanked the Chapter-serf, his mind still focused on the approaching swarm.

  As far as hive fleets went, Cicatrix was small, a ravaged remnant from Baal’s fallout. That being said, the swarm approaching Darkand was still more than sufficient for the task of engulfing the White Scars and consuming the honour world. If it could feed off poorly guarded outlying planets and systems like this one, it could take advantage of the Imperium’s overtaxed defences to regain its strength.

  That, surely, was what Qui’sin’s visions had been referring to. That was why they had hastened here, to catch the xenos at their weakest, and exterminate them before their filth had an opportunity to spread between the stars once more. Cleanse and purge; despite his centuries of service, the opportunity still brought a slow smile to Shen’s scar-twisted lips.

  ‘We have an preset message response from the khan’s personal vox-uplink, voyagemaster,’ the primary vox zart said. ‘Message reads, “Proceed at personal discretion.”’

  ‘Acknowledge it, and good hunting to the Master of Blades,’ Shen replied. ‘Helmsman, prepare a new fleet heading, and issue a preparatory formation change directive. The wait is nearly over.’

  When the skies of Heavenfall are filled with fresh constellations – that is when we shall know that our salvation is at hand.

  – Septimus Traik,

  High Enunciator of the Emperor’s Voice,

  personal writings (redacted)

  Chapter Six

  NEW STARS

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 68 HOURS.

  TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL [TERRAN STANDARD]: 23 HOURS.

  The steppes, Darkand

  Lau Feng rode through the night. It brought him joy. After a month of confinement on board the Pride of Chogoris, to be free again, to ride the steppes unfettered and alone, gave him a sense of release he had not experienced for a long time. His auto-senses guided him in the darkness; the rugged bulk of his assault bike steered firm and true across the rolling hills and plateaux that stretched away from Heavenfall. He had found himself riding into the sunrise, red light bleeding life back into the steppes around him. Even if it was nothing compared to a true Chogorian dawn, such a sight was a far cry from the cramped hallways, briefing yuruts and sparring gers of the brotherhood’s strike cruiser.

  Despite the undeniable beauty, the sense of kachan emanating from the world around him was strong. Feng had heard other members of the brotherhood talking about it on board the Pride. The kachan, the uncanniness, was typified by the legend of the örchölt, an ancient Chogorian city tale that had eventually bled out into the culture of the steppes. In the story a steppe spirit would delight in swapping a child from the plains with one from the city. Neither sets of parents would be aware of the trickery of the örchölt, until it became apparent how out of place the child was. The household’s lineage thus ruined, the örchölt would then switch them back. Feng had once heard an anthropologist from the Imperial scholam on Rondaris claim that the tale grew from the city-dweller’s ancient fear of interbreeding with the steppes tribes of Chogoris, and their efforts to explain away affairs. Such cynical analysis seemed to miss the point, as far as Feng was concerned. In this life, there were those who were alike, and those who were unlike – the kachan.

  Many White Scars believed Darkand and its people to be akin to the tale of the örchölt. As a world it was alike and unlike, a planet that at a glance bore undeniable similarities to Chogoris. Warzones classified by the Adeptus Munitorum as geo-gradient aleph five through to sigma three – open plain battlefields – were the favoured hunting grounds of the Khagan’s sons. Feng had seen many an alien grassland in his century and a half of service to the khans, but Darkand was something different, something closer to Chogoris than all the others. In the way the winds twitched the grass, the manner in which the sun slid lazily towards the distant mountain peaks, how the raptors circled slowly overhead, watching and waiting. All these things were like an eerie memory, as though the steedmaster was lost deep in meditation in his busad, remembering the Plain Zhou as though with the disjointed surrealism of a dream.

  And yet, Darkand was not home. It could never be Chogoris. The scents on the wind were different, and the land lay in a curious fashion, its low, rolling hills and rises falling in patterns his own Chogorian mind found strange. The birds high above were not the majestic golden-feathered berkut of the Khum Karta, but dark, fork-tailed creatures with ignoble, hungry countenances.

  The people were different too, a short breed, weathered and toughened like native Chogorians, but without the upright noble bearing. They were quick to scorn and sneer, and held grudges beyond the limits of an honourable debt. To the White Scars they seemed mean-spirited and cruel when squabbling among themselves. They rarely smiled, the ones from the slope-city even less so. They would never hesitate to take up arms against anyone outside their tribal groupings. To an off-worlder the peoples of the steppes might have seemed similar, but between them the differences were as clear and vast as the open skies of their respective home worlds.

  A little after sunrise, the White Scars steedmaster reached his first objective. The Ukit tribe had spent the night encamped around one of the rock formations that broke up their traditional migration route. Darkand’s plains were dotted with such outcrops, the strange, elegant stones not quite ordered enough to appear intelligently designed, yet too out of place to seem wholly natural.

  The Ukit were breaking camp when Feng arrived. Lookouts had spotted him from the top of the rocks minutes before his bike roared past the scouts on their tough steppe ponies. When he rode into the circle of tents and wagons the tribe had already reacted the only way it knew how – taking up arms, each tanned expression emblazoned with a mixture of fear and awe.

  The White Scar set his engine to idling and placed one boot on the dry Darkand soil. The sq
uat steppe people surrounding him scrambled to get as far away from the white-armoured giant and his growling beast as possible, mothers snatching children up in their arms and young men trying to shield their stumbling elders. The warriors stood their ground, composite bows and spears raised.

  Feng assessed the entire scene in a single double beat of his hearts, feeling his mood darken. It was not only the mixture of panic and defiance he saw before him – steppe warriors were closing in around him, brandishing their crude weapons, their fear at the giant warrior’s presence clashing with their instinctive desire to face down any challenge. More were appearing with every passing second from the encampment’s gers and yuruts to join the circle tightening around the White Scar.

  And in among the masses, seemingly invisible to those teeming around them, the bloody spectres of Feng’s dead brothers watched him still.

  He swung his other leg over his bike’s saddle and locked the kickstand, looking for somebody to address. The tribal warriors around him came no closer, but did not back down. The dawn appearance of a figure that until then had only been half-believed legend was enough to test the reactions of the most stoic people, yet it was clear that they would not hesitate to attack him if he so much as reached for his dao. They had a fighting spirit worthy of Chogoris, that much was true.

  Thankfully, not quite all the Ukit seemed intent on assaulting Feng. There was a bastion of order amidst the sea of confrontation. A dozen big, broad men carrying antique laslocks and clad in red-dyed leather plates and cap-helmets had formed an avenue outside a particularly large yurut, sited near the centre of the encampment. As Feng approached a family emerged from the yurut’s entrance flap. They were led by an elder and a father, followed by a gaggle of wives and offspring, all clad in the hastily donned finery of tribal leaders. They were unmarked, as the Chogorian saying went – the Darkand natives had never adopted the ritual scarification culture of Mundus Planus. The flattery of impersonation, it seemed, only ran so far.

  Feng halted before them, towering over the whole family. The elder snapped orders to one of the red-armoured guards flanking the yurut’s entrance. The man raised his laslock and discharged it into the dust-shrouded air. The sudden shock of the snap-crack report finally brought a degree of calm to the wider assembly.

  ‘Hetman,’ Feng said to the elder, inclining his head slightly. The sound of his voice had as much of an effect as the las-shot. A hush fell, all eyes fixed on the impromptu meeting.

  ‘Great khan of the skies,’ the elder said in the heavily bastardised Chogorian spoken by the steppe peoples of Darkand. ‘I am Tach-Tachii, of the Swifthorse, Master of the Ukit. This is my family, and these are my people. We humble ourselves before your long-awaited coming.’

  At the elder’s words his family bowed. Taking the cue, the rest of the tribe, from Tach-Tachii’s guards to those peering over the heads of their kin from the back, knelt. Even before the last had got down, Feng was motioning for them to rise.

  ‘You need not bow, children of the Swifthorse,’ he said. ‘There is neither time nor reason. A terrible foe is coming here to destroy you all, and you must make haste if you are to escape it.’

  ‘You have come back early,’ Tach-Tachii said, still on his knees, apparently oblivious to what Feng had just said. ‘Sky Steed bless my soul, I did not think I would live long enough to see the day spoken of by my forefathers.’

  ‘I am here with a hundred brothers,’ Feng went on. ‘We have come this Furnace Season not for the trials, but for war. You and all your people must go to the slope-city of Heavenfall immediately.’

  The White Scar’s words finally registered. The elder’s joyful expression became overcast.

  ‘The city of the off-worlders? But we have not long returned from there. The Golden Season has passed. If we do not make for the far snows, we will all perish from firethroat.’

  ‘You will all perish if you make for the snows,’ Feng said, not bothering to hide his rising frustration. ‘There are monsters coming here, inhuman hunters from beyond the veil of stars. They will consume every man, woman and beast if you do not seek out shelter in the slope-city.’

  Feng could see confusion and uncertainty still writ large across the elder’s face.

  ‘Yaksha,’ the White Scar said, raising a fist skywards to emphasise his point. Daemon. An inaccurate description, all things considered, but it had the desired effect. The assembled crowd gasped, and a child began to cry.

  ‘They will tear you all apart,’ Feng pressed on. ‘We are not enough to protect you all here on the steppes, but in Heavenfall you shall be safe. We will preserve you there. We ride to all the tribes of Darkand this day, warning them to go to the slope-city with all speed. The monsters from the void may be here tomorrow, if not then the day after.’

  ‘Sky fathers preserve us,’ Tach-Tachii said quietly. ‘If you advise it, then we shall make haste, great hetman.’

  ‘Take the shortest path to the city,’ Feng said. ‘Carry on through the night. If you stop, none of you will make it. My brothers will be waiting for you at the end. They will protect you.’

  ‘We shall protect ourselves,’ Tach-Tachii said, his steppe pride overcoming his awe at the Sky Warrior’s presence. ‘You will not find us wanting, great hetman.’

  ‘I must ride on. There is another tribe I must warn, the Beged. Do you know if they are near?’

  At the Beged’s mention Tach-Tachii’s expression soured. Feng had expected nothing less – the tribes of Darkand had little love for one another.

  ‘I cannot know for certain, but at this time in the cycle of ­seasons it is likely they will have reached the spring at the Gates of Eternity. You know of it, Sky Warrior?’

  ‘I know it,’ Feng said darkly. He did not need the briefing dockets to recall the site of the brotherhood’s clash with the drukhari, a decade earlier. ‘Now go, all of you, with the speed of the western winds. We shall meet again at Heavenfall.’

  The steppes, Darkand

  Timchet and Hagai received new orders as they turned north from the encampment of the Tan’chi, spread across the bottom of the Gorskin Valley.

  ‘Brother Chyen’s vitae link has gone offline,’ Steedmaster Gadi reported over the vox. ‘You are the closest to his last point of contact, wind-brothers. The coordinates have been uploaded to your tactical feeds.’

  ‘Affirmative,’ Hagai said, triangulating the new objective. ‘Sector six-six. Out towards the Hachi Peninsula.’

  ‘Correct. Be cautious, Wind Tamer.’

  The Land Speeder shot across the plains, hugging the lie of the land, its passage whipping up a cloud of dust in its wake. They’d already warned two steppe tribes, the Oyega and the Tan’chi, urging them to turn back along the trails towards the slope-city, before hell descended from the heavens to consume them. They still had one more tribe, the Gorik, to reach before sunset. Chyen’s disappearance was a complication, but one the wind-brothers would treat as a challenge.

  ‘Knowing Chyen, he probably got in a fight with some dune bandits,’ Timchet said as they dropped towards the Hachi Peninsula, an area of low-lying land that gave way to the bitter waters of the Sea of Tears. The sea was on the edge of Darkand’s habitable continent, where the rad-wastes and dust bowls, scorched by the Furnace Season’s full might, made living impossible for the steppe tribes. The nomadic peoples of Darkand confined themselves to the more northerly grasslands for most of the planet’s seasons, and the poles when the heat of Fury’s Pillar became too much. Chyen had been straying dangerously close to the dust wastes.

  ‘Last known coordinates coming up,’ Hagai said as Wind Tamer dropped over a rise. The Sea of Tears lay before them, a glittering horizon of cold blue, contrasting sharply with the arid expanse between them and the craggy shoreline. Hagai banked right while Timchet maintained visual scanning, gauntlets resting on the pintle of his sponson heavy bolter.

  �
��He must be close,’ Hagai said, checking his instruments. ‘We’re practically on top of his last reported location.’

  ‘The shifting dust will have hidden his tracks,’ Timchet observed, then twisted in his harness as something caught his attention. ‘Wait… There.’

  The earth racing past below had been uniformly cracked and ochre, but there was a blemish three or four hundred yards off to their left. Hagai too had noticed it – a twist of the Land Speeder’s control stick brought the skimmer round and cut its speed, so that it came to hover close to Timchet’s discovery.

  Part of the ground had given way. A hole about forty yards long and twenty yards wide had appeared, and as Wind Tamer slowed to a hover the gap widened further, the edges crumbling in.

  ‘The earth here is weak,’ Timchet said. ‘Is it some sort of sink hole?’

  ‘The soil is different,’ Hagai said, highlighting a section on their linked pilot display. ‘Look at the discoloration.’

  Timchet realised his wind-brother was correct. There was a scar of lighter earth running from left to right, seemingly for over a half a mile either side of them.

  ‘Darkand’s surface is unstable,’ Hagai said. ‘Especially in the zones more heavily affected by the rad-heat during the Furnace Season.’

  ‘It could be some sort of subterranean tunnel or gorge,’ Timchet suggested. ‘Chyen could be down there.’

  ‘There’s only one way to be sure.’

  Wind Tamer descended steadily into the darkness of the sink, careful to avoid the jagged walls around them. The Land ­Speeder’s stab lumens confirmed Timchet’s hypothesis. The surface soil was just a crust, a bone-dry layering concealing a hidden gorge. At the bottom of it they found Chyen.

  The biker had fallen through, the great weight of his power armour and steed breaking the crust before he’d realised what was happening. If the fall hadn’t killed him, the reptors had. The hissing of the vicious lizards was audible even over the sound of the Wind Tamer’s engines. The buried gorge was their nest, and the fact that so little remained of Chyen’s bloody corpse was testament to their savagery and strength. They skittered along the stone flanks of the gorge, snapping their vicious maws at the interloper in their midst.