The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  In the Khagan’s name, the breach would not fall. Not yet.

  The Temple District, Darkand

  Feng felt the alien’s claws bite deep.

  There was no pain. Though the diamond-hard edges clamped around his arm and carved into the meat of his left bicep, adrenaline and battle-fury drowned the wound’s bite. Even as the genestealer dug its claws in, hissing in his face, Feng’s guan dao was driving into its midriff, disruptor field effortlessly slicing through spine and exoskeleton. The xenos monster shrieked as it fell, ichor splattering Feng’s already-scarred plate. Even as it died it clung on, until a backslash of the dao severed its arm.

  They’d made it to the surface. So had the xenos. When Feng and his hunt-brothers had finally emerged onto Heavenfall’s streets, all of them wounded and ichor-plastered, they’d found the whole city locked in desperate slaughter. Feng had barely had time to transmit a warning to the rest of the brotherhood before the waves of genestealers that had nearly cornered them in the feeding chamber burst out after them. Had it not been for the narrowness of the rock tunnels, forcing the aliens to come at them one at a time, Feng knew they would all be long dead. They had battled back the way they had come for what felt like an age, back up through the catacombs, until they’d finally reached the streets above. There a Pinnacle Guard Leman Russ tank had put a series of battlecannon rounds into the building near the devotarium, demolishing it and burying their pursuers.

  Or so they’d thought. Feng and his brothers hadn’t even had time to mount their bikes before the first genestealer had burst up out of the rubble. They’d started taking fire from across the street as well – well-armed hybrids in the armour of the Pinnacle Guard had left the Leman Russ a blazing wreck with a well-placed melta shot, before Jakar and Oda had flushed them out and slaughtered them in a desperate melee assault.

  ‘On me,’ Feng ordered over the vox. They’d turned their bike’s bolters onto the ruins of the nearest building, chewing apart each new xenos as it dragged its battered form up from the rubble. Even then, some were still getting through, a few reaching the White Scars despite the barrage of firepower.

  ‘A message from the Master of Blades,’ Sauri said as the squad closed in around Feng. The steedmaster had been so focused he’d missed the transmission sigil on his visor. He blink-clicked it open as Sauri once again opened fire beside him, putting down another genestealer leaping up from a rupture in the jagged rubble before them.

  ‘We’re to consolidate our positions,’ Feng said after a split second spent assessing the new orders. ‘Old Town and the upper slopes are the two primary rally points.’

  The squad remained silent. Ever since finding the feeding chamber, they’d known they would either die within the city, or abandon it to its fate. Either way, the Fourth Brotherhood had failed. The knowledge had turned every blow to bitterness and given every wound a crueller sting.

  ‘Mount up,’ Feng ordered. ‘Before they breach the cordon. ­Coordinates are downloading.’

  ‘Can’t we just die here?’ Jakar grunted as he slammed a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol. Feng didn’t reprimand him. He knew he was only half joking.

  The upper catacombs, Heavenfall

  The catacomb shelter was littered with a fresh carpet of dead – genestealers and their hybrid offspring, piled on top of the citizens they had massacred before the White Scars had arrived. Timchet didn’t realise the xenos attack had ceased until Janggi snatched him by his pauldron and dragged him back. He stopped firing, the heavy bolter clattering to silence as he fought off Janggi’s grip.

  ‘We’re going,’ the Tactical Marine said, letting go and backing away. ‘You can come with us, wind rider, or you can stay here and die.’

  Timchet shook his head, trying to focus. He’d lost himself completely when the genestealers had first exploded from the darkness at the far side of the catacomb shelter. The thunder of his heavy bolter had filled the cavern, drowning the firepower of the rest of the combat team as the great weapon had burst apart skulls, limbs and torsos. For a moment he’d been back on Wind Tamer, Hagai at his side once again, free to hunt, free to kill. For a moment he’d lost himself utterly as he took revenge on the hideous monsters that had killed his brother.

  Reality reasserted itself. The genestealers were dead, their remains joining the rippled corpses of the Darkanders they’d butchered mere moments before the White Scars arrival. The rest of the combat squad were leaving.

  ‘Orders from the khan,’ Janggi said. ‘We’re redeploying to the Pinnacle.’

  ‘We can’t retreat,’ Timchet said, sudden anger colouring his voice. ‘We can’t let our brothers’ deaths have been in vain.’

  ‘We’re not retreating,’ Uygai said tersely. ‘Consolidating. A last hunt, before our end catches up with us.’

  We do not truly understand Time, young one. And if we – immortal, all-seeing practitioners of arts far beyond your comprehension – cannot grasp it, what hope have you?

  – Farseer Nara, Lugganath Craftworld,

  at the Treaty of Dorisel

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE WEAVE OF FATE

  TIME TO FURNACE SEASON PEAK

  [TERRAN STANDARD]: 1 HOUR.

  TIME TO PREDICTED PRIMARY XENOS PLANETFALL [TERRAN STANDARD]: 0 HOURS.

  The Exchange House, Heavenfall

  Joghaten and his bondsmen had dismounted. The tyranids were flooding the Mountain Gateway and the breach, the broken rockcrete and plasteel covered by a dark tide of rising chitin. Three squads – the khan’s honour guard, Subodak’s Devastators and Torchin’s Assault Marines – had rallied and held the courtyard beyond the gateway for over fifteen minutes following the initial breach. Torchin himself had fallen, the türüch run through by the bio-blades of a trio of hormagaunts. Two of his assault brothers – Sokhor and Khadan – had flung themselves into the press and managed to drag his body back, his gene-seed still intact. Sokhor had fallen seconds later, head half dissolved by a gout of bio-plasma.

  In an effort to check the tyranid flood long enough to allow the wall’s defenders to withdraw further up the slope-streets, Joghaten had ordered the squads under his immediate command to rally at the Exchange House. It was the first building beyond the Mountain Gateway, a grand six-storey structure in the Imperial gothic style set on the corner of the Slope Road, that great, steep thoroughfare running from the Mountain Gate up towards the Pinnacle. The remains of Subodak’s heavy weapons specialists set themselves up on the Exchange’s roof while the bondsmen and the survivors of Torchin’s assault team garrisoned the lower floors.

  ‘Hold the door,’ the khan snarled as he lashed out with one boot, snapping a termagant’s spine and cracking its chitin shell. The Exchange’s main entrance was a grand affair, a short flight of stairs carved from yellow Darkand stone leading up to the double doors. The wood had already splintered and caved, but the space was narrow enough to allow the White Scars defending it to meet their attackers no more than three at a time. Joghaten stood at the centre, flanked by his bondsmen, their powerblades ignited as they sliced apart each and every xenos that set foot inside the Exchange House, slashing the marble floor with sizzling purple ichor. The rest of the honour guard and the Assault Marines were committed to the arching windows down the hallway that ran the length of the building, shattered glassaic and alien corpses crunching underfoot as they heaved back against the ravenous tide threatening to spill in and flood the lower levels of the building.

  ‘Leader-beast in the gateway,’ Subodak’s voice crackled in Joghaten’s ear as he physically shouldered another termagant out of the doorway, smashing its elongated skull off his battered pauldron.

  ‘Hive tyrant,’ the Devastator türüch elaborated.

  ‘So bring it down,’ Joghaten growled, parrying the scything talon of a hormagaunt as it cleared the steps to the doorway.

  ‘Ammunition is approaching critical lev
els,’ Subodak said, his voice backlit by the roars and thuds of the heavy weapons on the rooftop. ‘We need to resupply or we’ll have to start prioritising between the swarm and the leader-beasts.’

  ‘Hit the tyrant,’ Joghaten ordered. ‘Let me worry about the swarm.’

  ‘Khan-commander, xenos coming through the second floor windows,’ said the voice of Assault-Brother Waylan, cutting through Subodak’s transmission. ‘Hormagaunts. They’re leaping from below.’

  ‘Khuchar, take the door,’ Joghaten barked, taking a pace back from the Exchange’s entrance. Khuchar went past him, the brother­hood’s champion grinning with battle-joy as his blade replaced his khan’s in the breach.

  ‘Bleda, Jubai, with me,’ Joghaten said as he sprinted for the stairwell, his tulwars still crackling. The two members of his honour guard followed. Joghaten could already detect the revving of chainswords from above. He took the stairs in a few strides, nearly barrelling into a hissing gaunt as he burst into the Exchange’s upper corridor.

  The thing died in an instant, its chitin and leathery flesh no match for the khan’s power swords. It had flung itself in through one of the upper windows, its powerful leap easily clearing the building’s height. More were doing so along the length of the corridor as the rest of Joghaten’s bondsmen and those Assault Marines on the upper level counter-attacked. Joghaten snatched one hormagaunt by its ribbed throat as its talons jarred off his armour, hoisting the writhing creature into the air before flinging it bodily back out of the window it had come through. It struck another bounding xenos on the way down, the two aliens disappearing with a crunch into the brood swarming at the foot of the building.

  From the upper window the khan was afforded a better view of what was happening. He realised immediately that delaying their holding action any longer risked annihilation. The entire space between the Exchange House’s street and the broken remains of the Mountain Gate was an undulating carpet of tyranids. The gateway itself had been demolished, allowing easy access to the bigger leader-beasts. The firepower being laid down from the Exchange’s roof by Subodak and his brethren was hardly making any impression at all on the rising tide.

  The rear of the Exchange, an open slope courtyard, could only be reached from the front by going through the building, or around the end of the street. Thus far the desperate, fighting withdrawal of Pinnacle Guard companies had stopped their position from being completely outflanked, but that situation had to change soon. If they were going to make it to a stand higher up the slope they needed to reach their bikes and the Rhino stationed in the rear courtyard.

  ‘Brethren, switch out,’ Joghaten voxed to all White Scars in the Exchange House. ‘Fall back on the next rally point.’

  The Space Marines yielded the front rooms of the Exchange amidst a blizzard of short-range bolter fire, supporting blasts from a flurry of grenades giving them the space necessary to disengage from the voracious xenos crowding the doors and windows. The Devastators and Assault Marines switched positions, the former boarding the Rhino waiting with its engine gunning at the rear of the building while the latter took to the heat-hazed sky from the rooftop, using their jump packs to power to the adjacent block.

  Joghaten’s honour guard closed around him as he reached the rear doors of the Exchange, his auto-senses reading a notable spike in external heat as he stepped out into the blistering Darkand sun.

  ‘Is that everyone?’ he demanded over the vox. There was a flurry of affirmations as his bondsmen fired back into the Exchange House – it was already overrun, xenos hooves skittering and clacking on polished floors as they pursued the prey.

  Pursued too eagerly. Joghaten hit the detonation stud wired to his vambrace, before throwing one leg over Whitemane’s saddle.

  There was a crump, followed by a concussive blast as the demo charges left taped to the front doors went off.

  Old Town, Heavenfall

  Qui’sin slammed his force staff into the cobbled street and roared a Chogorian phrase long outlawed among the superstitious tribes of the steppe. A bolt of lightning split the spore-befouled Darkand sky, earthing itself into the zoanthrope drifting up the narrow street. Its distended brain sac burst with a spectacular detonation, splattering the cracked, yellow stone façades of the Old Town buildings around it with a thick layer of dripping grey matter.

  The Stormseer staggered slightly, and was caught by Jeddah’s steadying hand. The annihilation of the zoanthrope had left a psychic aftershock behind it, a splitting headache that was only worsened by the strain already being put on Qui’sin’s mind. Channelling Darkand’s natural wrath was becoming progressively more taxing as the world slipped further and further into the clutches of the tyranids. The Stormseer steadied himself with his staff as Jeddah barked orders to his combat squad. Qui’sin had linked with them and Zabeg’s reserve Tactical Marines during the retreat up the slope from the Founding Wall. Few of the Pinnacle Guard who had stood with the Stormseer at the breach had survived the relentless waves of xenos that had poured into the city after them. The last he had seen of Lieutenant Senga, the young officer had been leading the ragged remnants of his platoon in a fighting retreat north-east. Qui’sin had become lost in the powers of the warp, and when he had re-emerged the Guardsmen were gone. Worse, the White Scars had been completely blocked out from the Pinnacle Guard’s comm-nets – presumably it was another deliberate act of sabotage.

  ‘Fire shift, target the gaunts,’ Jeddah snapped at his Tactical Marines. The zoanthrope had been acting as the cornerstone of the tyranid swarm flooding up through the heart of Old Town. With its destruction the lesser xenos had been thrown into momentary confusion. Jeddah and his Tactical Marines took advantage of it as best they could, closing into rapid fire range and slaughtering the leading termagants with a hail of bolts. There was a familiar whoosh-crump as Brother Taigar ignited his flamer, coating a swathe of howling, squealing xenos in a gout of blazing promethium. The stink of burning alien flesh caught in Qui’sin’s throat, penetrating even his helm’s filters.

  The Stormseer used the brief lull brought about by Jeddah’s counter-attack to collect himself, steadying his breathing and seeking balance. The amount of concentration required of him and the sheer power he had been channelling for the past hour had left him shaking and weak. His psychic hood was throbbing, struggling with the mind-crushing strength of the Great Devourer and the shadow it had cast over the slope-city. It felt like claws scratching on the inside of his skull, scraping away incessantly. He turned his mind to the situation reports blinking across his visor, using them to centre himself.

  They did not make for encouraging reading. The Founding Wall had now been breached at four different points besides the Mountain Gate and the initial blast site. Imperial forces had been completely driven back from over a third of the outer defences, and two major prongs of xenos ingress were driving up the slope-streets on either side of Old Town’s steep, tiled houses. The brotherhood were battling for every inch of Heavenfall’s mountainside, but a glance told the Stormseer that those squads holding Old Town were minutes away from being cut off. Bar a few Pinnacle Guard units still operating alongside other White Scars squads, they didn’t even have the support of Heavenfall’s human defenders anymore.

  The khan had clearly come to the same realisation. Fresh orders overlaid the tactical updates, routed through to Jeddah and Zabeg’s squads.

  Withdraw. New rally coordinates uploaded.

  They were to abandon Old Town, before the swarms that had broken the last vestiges of the Pinnacle Guard units holding the tannery complex to their south and the tramline haulage depot to their north cut across the slope and collapsed their flanks. The rally point was close to where Joghaten had placed himself after pulling back from the Exchange building, right on the edge of the government district, in a legislative review office-turned-strongpoint.

  ‘Zabeg to cover the withdrawal,’ Qui’sin voxed to the two
combat squads as he blink-acknowledged the khan’s orders. ‘Watch the alleys either side, brothers. We are about to be enveloped.’

  Jeddah’s Tactical Marines backed up the street as the swarm they had been savaging collected itself, hissing and snapping while the hive mind once more assumed control. Despite the death of the zoanthrope, they hadn’t immediately scattered. Black smoke from the burning remains of those gaunts doused in flame by Taigar shrouded the street, twisting and broiling in the spore-choked air. The old stone buildings echoed with the thunderclap reports of the White Scars’ bolters as they pushed further up the slope.

  The other half of Jeddah’s squad joined the combat team at the far end of the street, where the Old Town’s warren of winding stairways and precarious red-tiled buildings gave way to the pale colonnades and arching windows of the government district.

  The xenos had already passed through. A group of tribespeople, clearly fleeing from further down the slope, had been caught by a brood of hormagaunts halfway across a slope haulage junction. The dozen or so unfortunates had been sliced to strips of bloody yat wool and torn meat by the wicked talons of the lithe aliens. The gaunts themselves came at the White Scars from across the haulage wires, the air filled with their hissing and the clatter of hooves on cobbles as they leapt for their prey.

  ‘For Chogoris!’ Qui’sin bellowed as he swept his force staff in a vicious arc, pulverising the skull of the first xenos to leap at him. Jeddah and his squad managed to cut down the lead attackers with bolter fire before those behind reached them, talons cracking viciously off scarred white ceramite.

  The melee did not last long – the brood was not a numerous one, and the White Scars were lent fresh vigour by the bodies of the slain tribespeople they fought over. They had come to Darkand to uphold their honour and protect these people, and they were failing. Their shame bred a ferocity above and beyond even the warlike traditions of the steppes.