The Last Hunt

by Robbie MacNiven

  Rannik forced herself not to respond. She could feel the scorn of the older arbitrators as they clattered along the Precinct Fortress’ darkened rockcrete tunnels, following in the warden primary’s footsteps. None of them thought she was fit to oversee her own sub-precinct, regardless of her exceptional progenium training and indoctrination statistics, or the fact that she’d finished top of her class at the Schola Excubitos on Terrax. In their eyes, in the five Terran months since Rannik had arrived, she’d done nothing to prove she was worthy of holding the same rank as them.

  She would prove them wrong.

  The warden primary burst into the precinct’s Centrum Dominus, buried deep within the fortress’ armoured depths. There was a scrape of chairs and a thud of combat boots as the two-tiered room came to attention, cogitators and scanner systems still humming.

  ‘Report,’ Sholtz snapped. Chief Tarl strode across from his station at the augur arrays, a yellow message chit in hand.

  ‘It’s definitely the Imperial Truth, sir,’ he said, giving the ident readout to the warden. ‘Almost seven days ahead of schedule, and breaking from the warp in completely the wrong place.’

  ‘Comms?’ Sholtz asked, looking up at the vox-banks ringing the Centrum’s gantries.

  ‘We caught a burst of transmission code less than sixty seconds ago, sir,’ said a ruddy-faced vox-lieutenant, earphones in hand. ‘Unintelligible. There’s been nothing since. The contact is just clearing the asteroid belt now, so the signal should become stronger. We’re keeping all channels open.’

  ‘Sub-Warden Rannik,’ Sholtz said, turning to the officers who’d followed him into the cogitator-ringed pit at the heart of the Centrum. ‘Operations manual seventeen, chapter one, paragraph one. What is the foremost rule when faced with the unknown or the uncertain?’

  ‘Prepare for the worst,’ Rannik said. ‘And trust in the God-Emperor, sir.’

  The warden nodded.

  ‘There, you see, even the bluntest blades have some cut if you sharpen them enough. We are arbitrators. We always assume the worst. Master-at-arms.’ He gestured at Macran, the head of Zartak’s Combat Division. The big woman, her shaved skull twisted with old flamer burns, came to attention with a clatter of flakplate.

  ‘Warden primary?’

  ‘Issue a priority broadcast throughout the fortress and to all sub-precincts across the planet. Code red, effective immediate. Stand to.’

  Blood was dripping onto the floor, slowly. Dolar hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Dolar,’ Skell said. The older convict started, looking down at him with wide, worried eyes.

  ‘Your nose,’ Skell said, holding out a rag ripped from the hem of his grubby penal fatigues. Dolar stared at it, uncomprehending. Skell wondered if he was concussed.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said after a moment, stuffing the rag back into his pocket. Dolar’s eyes became vacant again, and he leaned forwards over the edge of his shackle bunk. Blood continued to fall, drip by drip.

  Skell rolled back onto his own bunk and grimaced. Around them the sounds of the prison intruded, drifting up through the cell’s mesh flooring and around the bars of the hatch window – raised voices, the slamming of doors, the buzz of active alarm systems and pict monitors, thudding boots and the rattle of magnicles.

  Skell had only been here five months, and he already wished he was dead. At least then he wouldn’t have to dig and grub with his numb, bleeding hands any more. The requirements of the hundreds of mine works branching out from Sink Shaft One were without end. When prospectors had discovered that Zartak possessed a rich strata of raw adamantium-based minerals, the nearest consortium of hive worlds had acted quickly to forge a pact with the Adeptus Arbites, one that both relieved them of a good deal of their criminal underhive and enabled the tithing grade of the new mining colony to triple – much to the delight of the subsector’s Administratum officios. At some point the original miner colonists had vanished and been replaced by the lowest savlar – dregs, scum and the plain unlucky – of half a dozen miserable, industrialised Ethika subsector planets like Fallowrain or Nilrest. That was why Skell and tens of thousands of convicts like him were on Zartak. To drag raw material for the Imperium’s starships and armies from the hard, black earth.

  Dolar had finally noticed his nosebleed, and was ineffectually trying to stymie it with his grime-caked fingers. He was two years older than Skell – sixteen, Terran standard, or so he claimed – yet most of the time he acted no more coherently than a ten-year-old. Only his solid build and his willingness to resort to his fists had kept him alive so far. That, and his partnership with Skell.

  ‘Something’s coming,’ Skell said, looking at the darkness beyond the hatch window.

  ‘Argrim again?’ Dolar asked vacantly. Skell shook his head.

  ‘Something worse. It wasn’t him I felt earlier.’ The pressure from the mine tunnel was still there, like a dull, ever-present headache, pulsing incessantly in his temples. He’d never felt it so strongly before.

  ‘Is it the things you see in the dark?’ Dolar asked. ‘The things that keep giving you nightmares?’

  ‘They aren’t nightmares,’ Skell said, scowling. ‘They’re just... I don’t know what they are.’

  ‘Nothing good,’ Dolar mumbled.

  ‘Well they can’t be worse than this place,’ Skell replied. He was speaking lightly, but in truth he was afraid. The things he had started seeing in his dreams recently – claws and talons spun from shadows, the crackle of lightning and bitter red eyes – had not brought him any comfort. Worst of all had been the face. It was a skull, a death mask, leering from a void of black. Whenever he saw it, it drew closer, grinning with savage, unblinking intensity.

  ‘They’re coming for me,’ Skell said, still gazing at the barred entrance to the cell.

  ‘Not me?’ Dolar asked. Skell shot him a look.

  ‘All of us.’

  Dolar nodded. He always paid attention when Skell talked about the future. Theirs was a mutually beneficial partnership – the larger, older inmate protected the smaller physically, while the smaller guided the larger. Even for someone as slow as he was, Dolar had realised within weeks of their incarceration on Zartak that Skell had a special talent. It was the same talent that had made him such a lucky charm with the older gangmates back in the sump-sink of Fallowrain’s planetary capital, Vorhive. At least before Roax had ratted him out. It was the same talent that always earned him such regular beatings from superstitious inmates like Argrim, whenever the arbitrators were looking the other way. Skell had the Sight. Nosebleeds, headaches, nightmares. Few appreciated it.

  ‘We need to be ready,’ Skell said. ‘It’ll start soon.’ His body still ached from Argrim’s last attempted murder. The ambush had been sprung just as he’d predicted, when the work gang had been returning from Lower 6-16 at the end of that day-cycle’s labour shift. Argrim, the big, brutal ex-smuggler from Shantry, would have staved his skull in with a concealed pick haft if Dolar hadn’t put him down before he could get swinging. When the arbitrators had arrived, shock mauls buzzing, Dolar and Skell were still on their feet while their three attackers most definitely weren’t. All thanks to Skell’s foresight.

  The arbitrators had beaten them all the same.

  ‘When are they coming?’ Dolar asked, casting a lingering glance at the cell hatch.

  Skell didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. An ear-splitting wail made Dolar start, the magnicles binding him to his upper bunk clattering against its metal sides. The red emergency lumen over the aquila-stamped hatch bathed the small, dank space in angry light. There was a jarring thud as secondary blast doors throughout the honeycomb structure of Sink Shaft One’s prison complex thumped shut on auto-hinges. Dolar stared down at Skell.

  As the sound of heavy boots thumping past reached him over the screaming of the alarms, Skell swallowed and nodded. He shouted up to Dolar.

 
‘It’s started.’

  The Centrum Dominus was buzzing with activity, operators clattering at their rune banks as they sought to update the data streaming in from the augurs. In the tunnels outside, containment squads could be heard running past from the armouries. Sholtz was reviewing squad dispositions throughout the sub-precincts via the Centrum Dominus holochart, Rannik and the other officers still clustered around him. A shout from Vox Chief Hestel, seated on the upper communications gantry, disturbed the warden’s assessments.

  ‘Sir, we’re receiving a transmission from the Imperial Truth.’

  ‘She’s just cleared the asteroid belt,’ Tarl added from his station at the augur array.

  ‘Put it on vox,’ Sholtz ordered, gripping the brass railing running around the holochart. The room went suddenly quiet.

  There was a rush of static interference, rising and then dipping from an eerie squeal to a low grumble. Hestel bent over a frequency module, working a pair of sliders. A voice came and went, like a passing phantom. Eventually it snapped into focus.

  ‘...repeat, this is Captain Van Hoyt of the Imperial Truth to anyone who can hear me. We are code black.’

  ‘Captain,’ the warden primary called out. ‘We read you. This is Zartak Arbitrator Precinct Fortress Alpha, Warden Primary Sholtz speaking. What is your status, over?’

  ‘Thank the God-Emperor,’ the voice of Van Hoyt crackled back. ‘We have a situation here, warden primary. Multiple prisoner exfiltration attempts, a heavy security breach. I’ve been forced to seal off vital decks and open the airlocks. I am currently barricading the bridge alongside the remains of my security detail.’

  ‘Is First Arbitrator Nethim there?’ the warden prime demanded.

  ‘Negative. He’s currently holding out in the enginarium. We have locked our course to Zartak’s high orbit. Emperor willing we can keep the scum at bay long enough to reach you.’

  ‘Standby, captain,’ the warden primary said, signalling to Hestel to pause the connection. ‘Macran, are the sub-precincts mobilised?’

  ‘I estimate eighty-five per cent readiness, sir. But my shock troop squads can deploy immediately.’

  ‘Tarl, how long do we have?’

  ‘Going off the Imperial Truth’s current course,’ the augur chief said, bending over his screens, ‘and assuming Nethim manages to hold the enginarium, she’ll achieve high anchor in a little over two hours.’

  ‘Sir, should I forward a message to the choristorium?’ asked Hestel.

  ‘Negative, there’s no need to tax the astropaths just yet. The situation is still developing. Macran, take your teams into the void via the Divine Retribution. Intercept the Imperial Truth and contain the insurrection. I will continue to communicate with Van Hoyt while you are in transit and pass relevant intelligence on to you. After the suppression has been carried out and the situation is stable I will deploy detachments from the sub-precincts to support the clean-up operation. Use extreme prejudice.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Macran replied.

  ‘Warden primary, I have a request,’ Rannik said from among the assembled sub-wardens. Sholtz scowled.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Let me go with the shock squads. I can provide liaison between you and Macran. Subordinate to her orders, of course.’ Rannik inclined her head towards the master-at-arms. She crossed her arms over her breastplate and glared back.

  ‘What makes you imagine she’d need you as an intermediary, Rannik?’ the warden primary demanded. ‘Macran is a veteran of twelve code black insurrections and a master suppressor. She is more than capable of heading up the operation and maintaining contact with the Centrum Dominus at the same time.’

  ‘If I may speak plainly, sir,’ Rannik said, taking a breath. ‘I want to be with the shock squads because I want to prove I’m capable. I understand my status as the youngest sub-warden in this room. Progenium training modules can only account for so much. I wish to show my devotion to the God-Emperor and the Lex Imperialis in the fires of an active suppression.’

  ‘You are impertinent, Rannik,’ the sub-warden growled. ‘The Adeptus Arbites does not operate on such vain whims. You will be assigned to tasks I deem you worthy of. Macran will have enough to think about on board that ship without your inexperience getting in her way.’

  ‘With respect, warden primary,’ Sub-Warden Klenn cut in. ‘Maybe it would be good to bloody her. This incident aboard the Imperial Truth should not be difficult to contain, and if we were to experience a security breach down here on the surface I’d rather know all my fellow arbitrators have first-hand combat experience. One compromised sub-precinct can have dire consequences for the safety of all of our facilities on Zartak.’

  ‘Let me prove myself,’ Rannik added. ‘The progenium thought I was ready, ready enough to assign me here.’

  ‘The bowels of an Imperial prison hulk are nothing like the simulation exercises,’ Macran snapped, the faint red glow of the holochart giving her grizzled features a bloody hue.

  ‘Which is precisely why she needs to experience it,’ Klenn said.

  ‘Sir,’ called Hestel from the vox-banks, transmission horn in hand. ‘Captain Van Hoyt is still on vox. I believe the prisoners are attempting to storm the bridge.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this foolishness,’ growled Sholtz. ‘Macran, I leave Sub-Warden Rannik’s assignment up to you. Just intercept that ship before it reaches high anchor.’

  Rannik looked at Macran. The flamer-scarred arbitrator glanced from the warden primary to Sub-Warden Klenn, then finally nodded at Rannik.

  ‘Draw shock kit from the armoury. Shuttle bay fourteen, ten minutes. If you’re not there we’re leaving without you.’

  The fore armoury of the White Maw, like every level above the slave decks, was almost completely silent. The only noise was the throbbing heartbeat of the warp drives, which shuddered up through the decking plates. The air was alive with the static charge of the active Geller field, the chlorine tang of ozone warring with the familiar scents of bolter oils and preservation unguents.

  Bail Sharr, Reaper Prime and Company Master, passed noiselessly down the length of the armoury hall, his bare feet making no sound on the cold metal deck. The few artisan serfs and repair savants still at work in the depths of the ship’s night cycle bowed as he passed, their gaze averted. Sharr ignored them, his void-black eyes focused instead on the objects the malnourished humans were attending. He passed row after row of empty battle suits, ranked either side down the armoury’s long walls, every one mounted on a steel pedestal-brace.

  Each set of power armour was different, each an amalgamation of patterns and designs. Many of them were ancient. The most common parts were from Mark Vs, their surfaces studded with the gleaming brass orbs of the molecular bonding pins that held the worn plates of plasteel and ceramite together. Some bore the hook-nosed helmets of Mark VIs, others the ancient, circular ceramite banding of Mark IIs, or the vertical faceplate slits and horizontal mono-lens of the Mark III great helms. Only two features united the antique collection. All were painted with the same shade of deep grey, and all bore the same crest upon their right pauldrons – a white shark motif, jaw curling towards tail fin to form a razor-toothed crescent set upon a void of black.

  Despite the efforts of the repair savants, the majority of the suits were still visibly scarred, not only with the ancient, swirling honour patterns of exile markings, but with the blows of desperate, bloody and all-too recent battle. The artisans that laboured in the ship’s fore and aft armouries had been working for almost a month, Terran standard, to repair the damage done by the Great Devourer. Still Sharr saw the gleam of bare metal as he passed, noting where armour had been raked and scored by chitin talons and blades or pitted by bio acids and burrower beetles.

  The toll the War in the Deeps had taken upon the Chapter’s venerable equipment had been high. The toll on the flesh of its war
riors had been even higher. Sharr himself walked with a slight limp, the pale grey skin of his right leg still not fully recovered from a gene­stealer’s claws. He had refused the offer of an augmetic – the wound was bearable and, Void Father knew, high-functioning bionics were in scarce enough supply as it was. He’d ordered Apothecary Tama to save the replacement for a void brother who needed it.

  The Reaper Prime reached the end of the hall. Before him, mounted upon the naked rivets and bare steel of the high wall, hung the faded remnants of the war banner of the Third Battle Company. His company now, Sharr reminded himself. Like the armour of the warriors that had fought to defend it, the heavy cloth bore fresh scars. Unlike the armour, the damage would remain unpatched, a ragged testimony to the fallen. Only the company’s crest – the intertwining shark-and-scythe symbol mirroring the fresh tattoo on Sharr’s left temple – would be woven anew in white. The new honour scroll pinned to the banner’s ragged bottom looked fresh and out-of-place. The ink describing the battle company’s actions during the War in the Deeps was barely dry.

  Sharr’s gaze lowered to the object that had drawn him to the armoury during the dead hours of fasting and cryo-meditation. It was another suit of power armour, its hard plates the opposite of the plain white robe clothing Sharr, standing rigid and inert on its pedestal like the other eighty-six suits lining the hall. This one, however, was different. Mostly Mark IV, its pauldron bandings were the colour of bronze, and the exile honour markings inscribed upon its dark grey surface were more intricate – they covered the suit’s gauntlets, vambraces and greaves in whorling, interlocking designs, mirroring the tattoos on Sharr’s own pale forearms and legs. The breastplate bore in its centre an embossed skull and twin lightning bolts, the crest of the ancient Terran Pacification War, the Chapter’s first battle honour.

  The helmet was also more elaborate. A heavy, modified Mark III great helm, the vox-uplink strip running along the top had been fashioned into a high, jagged ceramite crest, while the visor plate around the vox-grille was painted with the likeness of a yawning white maw. The Third Company’s shark-and-scythe sigil was inscribed over the helm’s left temple. Sharr felt his new tattoo, identical to the armour’s marking, throb. The helm’s inactive black lenses seemed to glare down at him in the armoury’s quiet, murky half-light.