
I had been toying with the idea of making it a free PDF file for e-readers, but it seems this is my best shot at getting some readers. Thanks to one and all who can take the time to read as much or as little as you fancy...
INCOGNITUS
Hunters
‘HOLD YOUR FIRE, Neophyte Markius,’ the Father-Chaplain’s voice exuded power as it rattled from the vox-bead in his ear. Markius paused. The boltpistol poised in his grip was a precious relic, forged in a bygone age and reverently passed down through generation after generation, and now it had become Markius’s ward. He shared a born warrior’s keenness with the ancient machine-spirit enshrined within its hammer-like housing of fashioned steel. The Father-Chaplain thinks I will miss, Markius scowled.
An image of the mass-reactive bolts roaring and destroying their prey flashed across his mind’s eye. He was an excellent marksman. How many times had he proved it to the veteran-sergeants during firing rites? He could strike this target. That would impress the old grouch. The Father-Chaplain spoke again, ‘The mission, Neophyte. We must find the nest before the alarm is raised. No bolters; blades only.’
‘Acknowledged, Father-Chaplain,’ whispered Markius, sighing before holstering his boltpistol, his first opportunity to kill real prey with the weapon denied. I will consecrate you in time, he promised the machine-spirit within. He unsheathed his combat blade, its diamantine edge honed to a monomolecular razor that carved through flesh and bone. Thrust with the full might of a bio-enhanced Adeptus Astartes, the gladius could rend even ceramite armour. Its warrior-spirit, too, was awake and eager.
‘This way’ll be better, eh?’ Neophyte Rasmus growled next to Markius. Even when he whispered, big Rasmus rumbled like an ice bear. Markius glanced at his old friend, and Rasmus flashed him a crooked grin beneath a bulbous nose that had been broken too many times in close-combat rites – and too many rash challenges against the veteran-sergeant instructors. Though his balding pate had been shaved close to the skull, it did not hide that Rasmus was going a manly grey despite his mere eighteen summers. His pulse quickening, Markius grinned back then nodded to his squad.
Beads of sweat trickling from their heavy brows, the hunters stalked like sabretooths between the boulders and stalagmites of the cavern. They clung to the shadows, avoiding the hellish glare of the seething magma flows. Markius flicked his left hand in the signal they had learned in training, and the six hunters froze still, hugging the jagged terrain. Dark combat fatigues camouflaged the muscular warriors. Markius watched the half-alien things guarding the entrance to another cave, his enhanced senses detecting their foul scent. One of them turned, took a few paces, and faced their direction.
Abominations! Markius’s lips twisted into a sneer. How can such scars on humanity exist and not immolate themselves for shame? Any pity he might have felt for them was eclipsed by his hatred.
Spying through a crevice between jagged rocks, he could see the blasphemous face of the nearest one, thirty paces away. The hide of the thing’s distorted head was stained a violet pigment; a warped parody of its human ancestry. There was something unnatural about the piercing eyes, too; jaundiced, alien, evil. Markius spotted the lasgun it clutched in mutated hands that ended in three claws, and speculated whether it had any other weapons or grenades secreted beneath its tattered layers of grey cloaks.
The thing turned and Markius signaled to his brother neophytes. Three slunk away in another direction. When the time came, they pounced in silence.
Markius swooped, closing with his target as swift as an eagle. The thing whirled and its eyes widened. Its mouth opened to scream, but Markius was on it, his powerful arm wrapped about its distorted skull. He remembered at the last moment not to slice across the throat, as the gurgling when its blood flooded its esophagus could cause too much noise. He wrenched its head round and sawed his gladius through the vertebrae at the base of the skull, then twisted the blade, severing both the cerebral and carotid arteries.
‘The Emperor’s gaze burn you for an eternity,’ Markius whispered. As the prey crumpled onto the baked ground, he shivered with the ecstasy of cleansing the abomination from the Emperor’s omniscient eye. Brother Rasmus dispatched the other guard, hefting it clear from the ground before ripping its neck around, splintering its spine.
The six scouts, neophytes of the Storm Eagles chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, stared into the maw of the next cavern where their first true combat mission was about to begin.
STALKING BETWEEN MONSTROUS speleothems that had melded over the millions of years into pillars stretching up to the distant cavern roof, Markius was reminded of his homeworld; a place he had only recently discovered was actually called Prism. There, he had once ducked and dashed between giant blackwood trees of similar girth.
However, there ended any familiarity. Instead of the scents of fresh pines, his nostrils drank in the stench of burning sulfur. Instead of the freezing chills of the towering ice mountains, he haunted the roasting shadows of volcanic caverns. Instead of the frosty skies of his homeworld, the caverns were covered with fiery-red roofs of rock that danced with shadows from the smoldering fires below. Instead of hunting mammoths for food, his quarry was now the miserable xenophile deformities that hid and plotted here beneath the kilometers-thick crust.
Here they spread their vile alien-worshipping heresies like a poison through the surface city hives. Here they had escaped the planetary defence forces and Arbites’ vigils. But there is no hiding from the justice of the Holy God-Emperor, Markius thought with a grim sneer.
His carapace shoulder and chest plates felt far lighter than the tanned leather hide he had once called armour, his biogenetically enhanced body devouring the distances easily as he ran. Four of the pitiful xenophiles he had purged so far, and not one had made a sound as its wretched soul was released into blessed oblivion, save a surprised groan and a low hiss as it exhaled its final diseased breath.
‘Sergeant Markius,’ Rasmus’s excited voice, tinny and small, growled in his ear through the vox bead. ‘Holy Throne, I think that might be it, eh?’
The squad halted and hugged the shadows. Markius examined the place that Rasmus had indicated. It was a large dome, carved from the baking stone and almost the size of the Librarium at the fortress-monastery of his chapter back on Ornisgard, the moon that orbited Prism. A number of arched mouths offered shadowy entrances to its interior, standard human-sized so he and his men would have to hunch to go through them. And there were more of the half-breeds; half a dozen, keeping watch with those unnerving eyes.
Markius needed only a moment: This is it! Something in his instincts, beyond the endless hours of psycho-conditioning and brain-engram information downloads; something told him this was what they were looking for. He could almost sense the presence of the thing inside. The hunter’s instinct of a Storm Eagle space marine, he congratulated himself.
‘Father-Chaplain, this is Neophyte Markius of Omega squad: I believe we have the target in sight, roughly six hundred metres north from our position,’ Markius keyed the vox-communicator channel and tried to restrain the excitement in his voice.
‘Acknowledged, Neophyte Markius,’ came the Chaplain’s terse reply, lacking the enthusiasm that Markius felt. ‘Remember the minerals in the crust distort the signal; I need Omega squad to get to within five metres. The Emperor will bless your work this day.’
‘Acknowledged, Father-Chaplain,’ said Markius, exchanging grins with his squad at that last rare comment of encouragement.
‘Father-Chaplain, this is Neophyte Goran: I think Epsilon squad has a better line of approach to the target,’ a smooth voice crackled on the vox and Markius immediately grimaced. He resisted spitting in the custom of his old tribe whenever one heard the name of a hated enemy.
‘Can you see Epsilon squad’s position, Neophyte Markius?’ said the Chaplain.
It is the same again! Markius’s memory flashed back to the final Hunt of the Rites before the induction.
‘We are two clicks north-east of you,’ said Goran, ‘On the big slope that meets with the sandstone pillar.’
He is running through the blackwood forest on Prism, the scent of the sabretooth in his nostrils, flint-tipped spear ready and quivering in his hands. This time I will pass the test and travel to the moon of the eagle-warriors!
‘I see you,’ said Markius, controlling the hatred in his voice, checking the position as his occulobe implants enhanced his eyes’ ability to filter through the shadows, ‘Be careful! The scum will spot you if you don’t get back behind the rock.’
‘This one is mine, Markius,’ Goran is bursting into the clearing between the trees, his own spear brandished, green eyes flashing and long black hair flying. ‘It is time the Wolf-scar tribe had one of their own chosen! And it will be me!’
‘I saw him first,’ Markius growls as the two braves circle one another, ‘so the prey is mine.’
‘Father-Chaplain; request permission for Epsilon squad to make the approach. We have the better angle. Omega can cover from their side,’ said Goran.
Markius felt his adrenalin surging through his system, despite the artificial organs implanted to regulate its release. That’s not true!
‘Father-Chaplain,’ crackled a different voice, ‘Neophyte Tobias, Lambda squad. I now have the target area under surveillance.’
‘Report, Neophyte Tobias,’ said the Chaplain. Markius held his breath. He could not remember if fair-haired Tobias was from the same tribe as Goran.
‘Omega squad has the advantage,’ said Tobias, not wasting more words. The vox hissed and crackled for what seemed like a very long time to Markius. His grip tightened around his blade.
‘Neophyte Goran, Epsilon squad will stand down and give cover,’ the Chaplain’s voice finally came. ‘Neophyte Markius, we trust Omega squad to complete the mission.’
Markius punched the air and exchanged silent cheers with his squad as pride burned in his chest.
‘Acknowledged, Father-Chaplain,’ said Markius, as calmly as he could.
‘Acknowledged, Father-Chaplain,’ came Goran’s sour voice, unable to hide his disappointment.
As they approached the dome, Markius admonished himself for feeling vindicated in his revenge. That incident with Goran during the hunt had cost him three months of penitent meditation in the chapter’s Solitorium. He remembered the weekly visits by the Father-Chaplain.
‘Do not lie to me, Initiate, or I will know it,’ the Father-Chaplain is saying. ‘Do you hate Brother Goran?’
They came to within ten paces of the nearest entrance into the dome and took cover as another half-breed came into sight, patrolling around the perimeter. Markius felt as if his additional implanted Heart of Guilliman was deliberately beating extra loudly in order to betray him.
‘Father-Chaplain, what must I say?’ he is replying. ‘I do not wish to miss this season’s induction.’
Rasmus took the thing out, again cleanly and from behind, then signaled to the squad as he wiped the sickening blue blood off his combat blade on its rags. Led by Markius, Omega squad ghosted into the dome interior.
The place stank of xenos in the baking heat, a rankling stink akin to rotting piles of dead cockroaches. It scratched at Markius’s nostrils even over the acrid stench of the flickering flame-torches racked along the walls. Inside it was a warren of low, curving tunnels; just like a nest of Prismish blood-rats. Strange xenos letters were scrawled on the walls in a dubious substance, alongside despicable images of six-limbed alien beings. They danced as if alive in the flickering shadows of the torches. Despite the heat a chill ran down his back and somehow, up ahead, Markius could sense they were nearing their target.
The inquisitor-led purges of this world had destroyed hundreds of the half-breed scum over the years, but they could never quite trace the infection to its source. And so the xenophile cults and half-breeds returned again and again, sometimes with years or even decades in between purges, like a persistent cancer, to plague the Imperial citizens. If the inquisition’s information is right, this time we can end it for good, the Father-Chaplain had briefed them. We cannot let them slip through our fingers and escape again!
Two more of the half-breeds appeared around a dark corner in the tunnel, confronting the advancing space marine scouts. Their alien mouths dropped open in surprise for an instant, but Markius and Rasmus rushed them before they could shout the alarm. Despite the confined space, their martial training prevailed and silent death-blows were quickly administered, snapping necks the only sound in the flickering half-darkness.
The Father-Chaplain is sighing. ‘How many times have I come here and ministered to your spiritual well-being?’ he is saying. ‘I will return in another week. You will have another week of solitude to think upon what you must do.’ Then he is leaving again.
The tunnel opened out into an arched chamber perhaps fifty metres across. Markius estimated they were now at the centre of the dome complex. A further entranceway, this time barred by roughly hewn stone doors, lay across the other side of the chamber. The doors looked as if they rolled aside in grooves carved into the rock. More curling xenos script had been gouged into them.
Boltpistols raised and trained on the dozen gaping mouths of tunnel entranceways into the chamber, Omega squad advanced towards the doors. Markius unhooked the teleport homer from his backpack and thumbed the pre-activation rune. The ancient metal device was about the size of his forearm. Little amber lights blinked along one side of the display and glowing numbers and runes that Markius did not understand scrolled down the screen. He did know the machine-spirit within was now awake and calibrating its position ready to transmit.
‘Markius!’ a voice hissed from behind Omega squad, from the entrance they had arrived by, and the space marine scouts spun with weapons raised.
Markius narrowly avoided unleashing several explosive rounds from his boltpistol as he witnessed Goran and Epsilon squad entering the chamber. Markius took in a deep breath. To have used his first shots to kill a fellow space marine would have been an intolerable dishonour.
‘You followed us!’ he hissed, trying to keep his voice quiet despite his rage, aware that the heart of the xenos infection was mere metres away. ‘You disobeyed the Father-Chaplain!’
The members of each squad backed away, returning their aim to the surrounding entrances and the stone doors, as Goran and Markius came face to face and holstered their pistols.
‘Listen to me,’ said Goran. ‘The homer may not work down here; the signal is distorted, remember? This can be our chance.’
‘Our chance to what? To be expelled from the chapter for good?’ said Markius. Both men tensed, their hands hovering near their combat blades.
‘Sergeant Markius,’ growled Rasmus nearby. ‘We don’t have time for this, eh?’
‘We can take them out,’ whispered Goran, nodding towards the stone doors. ‘This time we do it together, and then we will be heroes! The Father-Chaplain will surely honour us and forgive us.’
Markius looked at the stone doors, then back to Goran. The long, thick black hair Goran had on Prism was shaved close to his skull now, but the lethal flash in those green eyes and the sneer that twisted his angular face were the same.
‘Yes, I still hate him,’ he is saying, ‘but our rivalry can be for the good, if it drives us to strive for our best to serve the Holy God-Emperor.’
‘Well done, Initiate,’ the Father-Chaplain is replying. ‘You have learned an important lesson. Your love for your fellow battle brothers, and indeed, your rivalry, will exist; but let nothing eclipse your love of the God-Emperor. Before his all-seeing eyes, allegiance to the Imperium must come first. Now come with me and return to the Assimularum.’
‘NO, GORAN,’ MARKIUS said. ‘We do not know what lies behind those doors. The mission must come first, before our glory.’
‘Damn fool!’ hissed Goran, and he launched into an attack on Markius, his hand closing into a clenched fist, punching for Markius's throat.
Markius was astonished by the swift strike, shocked that Goran would do such a thing after the months of penal solitude. But he managed to block Goran’s fist just before it struck his windpipe. He attempted to turn Goran’s arm, using his momentum against him, while their other hands locked. They wrestled for a moment on their feet, but Goran had the initiative and Markius toppled onto his back, the teleport homer skidding away.
This time I will finish him, Markius thought. This has gone on long enough. I will not back down!
The two space marine scouts scuffled in the dust, grunting quietly, neither wishing to raise the alarm and bring the entire xenophile cult down upon them. The rest of the two squads glanced between one another and the entrances to the chamber, open-mouthed, unsure how to react to this unexpected crisis.
‘Goran, stop this madness!’ said Markius, struggling under the other’s weight. Goran did not reply, grimacing as he slowly gained the advantage in their struggle. Both now applied every martial technique they had been taught, augmented with a savage hatred born of their feral past. Markius glimpsed Rasmus’s face, his hesitant astonishment. He knew the big man wanted to come to his aid, but also knew honour forbid it. This was one against one.
Markius tried to throw Goran off in a desperate jolt, but only succeeded in dislodging his opponent for a moment. His hand, momentarily free of Goran’s grip, went for his gladius, but was blocked before he could reach it.
‘Sergeant Goran, please!’ one of Goran’s Epsilon squad begged him. Goran slowly gained a lock over Markius’s arms that would allow him to get one hand free. His green eyes glinted. Markius realised one or the other of them was going to need to use their boltpistol to end this; and the violent blasts of the weapons were all the aliens needed to discover their presence.
Emotions howled like Prismish storm winds through his mind. He could not bear to give in to Goran, not after everything, but if this struggle continued the enemy may be warned of the attack. Could he take the offer and join in the heroic assault without using the teleport homer?
Markius considered the idea, but as soon as he thought of how proud the Father-Chaplain might be, he remembered the lessons he had learnt during the penitent meditation. He could never live with himself for disobeying orders, nor could he allow Goran to get away with it. But Goran was winning the fight; there was no doubt about it. He was going to be able to get a hand free, despite Markius’s struggles. Markius mentally rifled through the multitude of throws and holds he had learned in unarmed combat training since becoming an initiate.
‘Alright, Goran. Alright!’ Markius finally whispered, allowing his arms to go limp. ‘You win.’
It burned every fibre of his being to submit, went against everything he had learned back on Prism from his tribe. He imagined himself the loser of the ritual fights between the sabretooths, when the alpha-male was established. He had submitted after this challenge, and back on Prism that meant exile or servitude. It knifed him inside just to think of it. Markius prayed the God-Emperor was watching them at that moment.
Goran unhooked his boltpistol and shoved it into Markius’s face. Markius tried not to flinch. Markius said, ‘You go ahead, Omega squad will cover the other entranceways.’
‘You won’t regret this,’ Goran grinned his victory, his canine teeth looking sharper than ever. ‘They’ll sing about this for years in the chapter sagas.’
Goran shoved himself away from Markius, keeping his boltpistol trained on his face. Markius even helped to push Goran up and away, gripping something in the other’s backpack for a moment. Goran stared down. Markius didn’t move, lying on his back and breathing heavily. How much time have we wasted? It’s a miracle we are not yet discovered.
As a final thought came to him, Goran strode across and picked up Markius’s teleport homer, lying several paces away. With one stroke he dashed it onto the hard stone ground. The solid crack as its metal casing was broken echoed harshly off the walls of the chamber and Markius winced.
‘Epsilon squad, with me!’ Goran hissed to his men, then turned back to Markius. ‘You, back off!’
Markius and his squad retreated from the stone doors to the other side of the chamber. They exchanged stunned but understanding looks with him. Shame burned on Markius’s cheeks. He couldn’t look at Rasmus.
It took moments for Epsilon squad to set frag grenades around the stone doors and they blew out seconds later, sending blinding clouds of dust and shards of stone billowing into the chamber. Goran screamed a battle-cry to his men, the alpha-male claiming his territory, and they charged into the unknown beyond the fractured doors. There was a deep, throaty growl from something beyond.
‘Cover that entrance!’ Markius barked through the dust cloud and dropped to one knee. Sounds of battle echoed through the opaque air; the shouts of the scouts and the roars of some unimaginable monsters. Markius removed from his backpack the teleport homer that he had taken from Goran just before they separated their struggle, and quickly thumbed the pre-activation rune.
‘Come on! Come on!’ he urged it.
‘Neophyte Markius, what is happening down there?’ The Father-Chaplain’s voice rumbled urgently in his ear. ‘We do not receive your teleport signal and I cannot raise Epsilon squad.’
‘Another moment, Father-Chaplain,’ voxed Markius, watching the green runes flicker across the teleport homer’s screen.
The boltpistols of his squad suddenly barked all around him and Markius flinched as their self-propelled bolts exploded into the far walls with deafening booms. He glanced up and glimpsed a swarm of six-limbed monsters surging out from the gap where the destroyed doors had been. Purestrains, he recognised from the images in his brain-engram. These were the true xenos scum, utterly inhuman, with powerful hunched bodies covered in armoured chitin plates.
Their elongated faces, blotched a deep purple, were dominated by screaming maws packed with needle-like teeth, and yellow piercing eyes. Even as he glanced up, Markius witnessed one member of Epsilon squad ripped apart by the crab-like claws of the creatures, his armour easily penetrated by their razor-sharp edges.
The rest of Epsilon squad staggered back before the onslaught of the preternaturally fast monsters, fighting for their lives, while Omega squad blasted into the fray, still half-blinded by the swirling clouds of dust.
The teleport homer burped a low note signaling the machine-spirit within was ready to transmit and Markius punched the rune. He saw Goran stumbling back towards him, carrying one of the monsters on his shoulders and trying to fend off slicing attacks from its multiple claws.
The alien caught Goran’s flailing right arm in an armoured pincer and, as Markius watched in horror, sliced right through it just above the elbow. Goran howled with fury, toppling almost on top of Markius. Blood spurted from the wound, but already the flow was starting to stem as the implanted Larraman’s Organ clotted Goran’s blood and accelerated the healing process. Markius had no time to think. The roars of the monsters and explosions of the boltpistols filled all his senses.
Markius leapt forward and rammed his boltpistol’s barrel into the monster’s jaws as they reached down to tear into Goran’s jugular. The thing’s jaundiced stare locked eyes with Markius for a heartbeat, and then he blew its head off with a squeeze of his trigger.
Markius and Goran collapsed together as the black blood and ichor of the xenos sprayed across their armour. Goran grunted as the alien’s corrosive blood also splashed into his face, burning into his scalp, and Markius quickly wiped it off with his carapace vambrace. It took Goran a moment to realise who had stepped in to aid him, but when he saw it was Markius his stare was blank. Steam rose from the scars burned into his face and scalp.
‘This changes nothing,’ Goran hissed, then he saw the activated teleport homer in Markius’s other hand. Goran started, ‘What the…?’
The temperature in the chamber suddenly plunged, and Markius felt the sweat on his brow start to crystallize with frost. Fingers of white ice crept along the walls. His sinuses ached with an inexplicable pressure. A mouldy stench grasped at the back of his throat and Markius gagged. The air shimmered and the noise of the explosions and screams were muffled. It was the stench of the warp, Markius guessed, even though his engrams had not yet been downloaded on this subject.
Then there were seven figures standing in the chamber that had not been there before: Looming figures, dwarfing even the space marine scouts, clad in terminator battle armour more akin to walking tanks. Six were painted in the deep cerulean hue of the Storm Eagles chapter, while the seventh was the distinctive ceremonial black of the Father-Chaplain, decorated with skulls and purity seals.
‘The veterans are here!’ Markius breathed.
As one, each of the armoured giants swung their stormbolters, the twin-barreled heavy weapons mounted in the servo-assisted left arms of their battle-suits, towards the aliens.
‘Get down!’ Markius yelled to his men, and both Epsilon squad and Omega squad threw themselves to the ground, leaving the clawing aliens momentarily bewildered.
The terminators unleashed their payload and the entire chamber exploded into an inferno of mass-reactive destruction. The bodies of the aliens burst apart in sprays of fire, ichor, osseous carapace and acidic blood, while the steady thump-thump-thump of the stormbolters filled the chamber like the deep beats of old Prismish mammoth-skin drums. The xenos recovered their shock and their ear-splitting shrieks cleaved the air even through the deafening fire of the stormbolters as they swarmed towards the veterans.
Markius and his squad crawled away from the maelstrom of conflict, watching as the terminators’ right fists energised into power-gauntlets wreathed in crackling lightning. The destructive power of one strike by a veteran smashed right through the first xenos animal to leap towards him and swept out of its back, pulverising its backbone and internal organs all in one stroke.
Markius looked to Goran, nearby, but the sergeant of Epsilon squad angrily shrugged off his offer of help, crawling backwards one-armed towards another entranceway to the chamber.
Then Markius witnessed the… it could only be the alpha-male of the xenos… a six-limbed brood-lord that dwarfed its clawing kindred and stood a head taller than even the terminators. Its muscle-bound frame emerged from the last dust clouds clogging the gap that was the former stone doors, and it roared its challenge to the terminators.
This is it, Markius realised. This is the source of the infection that the inquisition has been looking for all these years. We finally have it cornered!
The Father-Chaplain turned towards the scouts at the periphery of the chamber and rumbled through his vox-grate, ‘Don’t let anything get out of here alive!’
The smaller aliens, now perhaps realising they were outmatched by the terminators, scattered as the brood-lord stalked towards the Father-Chaplain. The black-armoured Chaplain brandished his Crozius Arcanum, a double-headed axe stylised as an Imperial Aquila that crackled with white electric light as its machine-spirits wreathed it in an energy field. He clomped forwards to face the monster.
The scouts added streams of missiles from their boltpistols to the punishing volleys of the terminators and together they blew apart the xenos as they desperately tried to escape. The veterans gradually closed their ring, targeting one xenos after another and detonating each with well placed bolts to thin their swarming ranks. The scouts were gradually closed out of the ring, too, left behind to guard for any single stragglers that managed to get past the contracting cordon of death.
Markius watched, holding his breath, as the Father-Chaplain confronted the brood-lord.
.