Contents

Cover

Claws of the Genestealer – Extract

Warhammer Adventures

eBook license

Chapter One

The Hunt

The forest was silent. A fresh blanket of snow had fallen overnight, drifting through the gaps of the strange mushroom-trees. No birds whirled above their wide, frozen caps, nor were there insects crawling along their mottled stalks.

Heat had no place here. At night anyone caught outside without protection would freeze, and conditions barely improved during the day.

A snout pushed out of the snow. A small, pot-bellied creature scrabbled from its burrow. The tiny ridge-boar, barely a month old, shook snow from its milk-white spines. It snorted, its breath misting in front of stubby tusks. The boarlet looked around, its eyes becoming accustomed to the glare of the surface. It lifted its blunt nose into the chilly air and sniffed once… twice…

Satisfied that no predators lay in wait, the young creature trotted deeper into the forest. It didn’t care about the snow, or the tracks it left in its wake. All it cared about was the gnawing hunger in its belly.

It struggled on, the trot becoming a scramble, the boar’s skinny legs disappearing into the snowdrift. Every now and then it stopped, churning up the snow with its snout, searching in vain for roots or berries. The snow was too thick, the ground too hard.

Its nose twitched. There was a scent, something new. The boar darted forwards. There, in the middle of a clearing, a pile of dried flakes lay piled on a stump. The boar crept towards them cautiously, sniffing the air. The smell of the food made its belly rumble. The animal pounced upon the unexpected feast, grinding the flakes between its teeth. They tasted so good.

Unfortunately, they were also a trap.

A net flashed through the air. The ridge-boar squealed, kicking up snow as it scampered away. The net missed its target, landing on the stump. The boar disappeared between the frozen stalks, and a nearby voice cursed.

Talen Stormweaver stepped out from his hiding place and grunted in frustration. He had been so close that time. If only he’d been quicker springing the trap. With a sigh, he snatched up the net he’d woven from voidship cables, shaking loose the excess snow. At least the hunt hadn’t been a complete waste of time, not like yesterday or the day before. This time he’d actually found something. This time he had tracks to follow.

Trying to tread quietly, Talen followed the hoof-marks in the snow. Two weeks they’d been on this Throne-forsaken planet. Two weeks. He still wasn’t used to the cold. Yes, he was wrapped in a thick thermo-coat, but the chill was relentless. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be warm.

Talen wasn’t used to this. Home was the tunnels beneath Rhal Rata, the largest hive on Targian. It was never cold beneath the great city. It was wet and dark and stank so bad your eyes watered, but you were never in danger of freezing to death. You could be attacked by another gang or find yourself facing dire-cats in the crawlways, but you were always warm. Plus, food was everywhere, even if most of it didn’t belong to you. There were stalls ripe for looting in the markets above and plump sewer rats fresh for hunting in the tunnels below.

Here, there was nothing.

No, that wasn’t exactly true. There was a ridge-boar. He just had to find it again.

Of course, his home wasn’t there any more.

There had been times when he’d loathed life on Targian, but now the planet was gone forever. The entire hive world had been torn apart by the Necrons, living alien machines. Talen had escaped the destruction, more by luck than by judgement, and had ended up on this ice-box with a ragtag bunch of survivors. There was Erasmus, a stuffy old lexmechanic, and Zelia, one of the bossiest girls he’d ever met. They were the normal ones. The rest of the group was made up of Mekki, a Martian kid who was happier dealing with machines than humans, Fleapit, an orange-furred Jokaero with a knack of making weapons out of next to nothing, and a tiny winged robot called a servo-sprite. It was Fleapit who had fashioned their thermo-coats, and who had somehow transformed their cramped escape pod into a shelter large enough to house all six of them.

No, Talen corrected himself. Not six. Not any more.

A Necron Hunter had followed them to the ice planet, searching for an ancient artefact the old man had been hiding – the Diadem. They had barely survived with their lives, and only because Erasmus had made the ultimate sacrifice. The archeotech had lured the Hunter into the path of an avalanche. Both were buried beneath tonnes of snow on the other side of the mountain.

At least, they hoped the Hunter was buried. Talen had seen those skeletal horrors in action, seen them repair themselves in the heat of battle. They could also leap from place to place, phasing in and out of real space. Every night, Talen dreamed of steel skeletons clawing their way out of icy tombs, or appearing above his bed, green eyes blazing.

Zelia told him he was being paranoid. ‘The fact that we’re still breathing proves that it’s destroyed,’ she’d told him, ‘or at least damaged beyond repair. It’s gone. We’re safe.’

The Diadem itself was now stashed in Mekki’s backpack, shielded by a gizmo that the Martian had made from a vox-caster. It would stop other Necrons from finding it, at least that’s what Zelia said.

Zelia said a lot of things. She and the others were content to sit in the shelter, huddled near the distress beacon Mekki and Fleapit had erected, waiting to be rescued. Not Talen. The escape pod’s emergency rations were almost exhausted. Someone had to find more food, and it might as well be him.

Besides, no one was coming to help. The beacon had pulsed for two weeks with no answer. It was time to face facts. They were stranded.

Talen crept through the towering stalks, wincing as his boots crunched in the snow. He didn’t want to scare the animal any more than he already had. There it was, floundering in the snow ahead. The boar was caught in some kind of root, unable to get away. The more it thrashed, the more entangled it became. Finally, a stroke of luck!

Talen grinned. ‘Hello, lunch!’

Talen rushed forwards, throwing his home-made net over the creature. The boar squealed, extending its spines to protect itself.

‘Shut up, will you?’ Talen complained as he pulled the net tight, the boar trussed safely inside. It writhed and screamed but had no way to escape. ‘How can something so small make so much noise?’

There was another snort, over to his left. Talen looked and saw a second ridge-boar glaring at him. While the one in his net was an infant, this one was fully grown, spikes bristling along its arched back. It glared at Talen, head down, large pointed tusks jutting forwards.

‘Nice piggy,’ said Talen, raising what he hoped was a calming hand. ‘Nothing to see here. Go on. Shoo.’

With a ferocious bellow, the angry boar charged straight for him. Talen let go of the net and ran for his life.

‘Help!’ he screamed, although no one could hear him. The boar was almost on him, grunting as it carved a path through the snow.

Talen’s muscles burned with the effort of running through the thick snow. He pelted forwards, and then cried out in alarm as the ground disappeared beneath him.

He fell, tumbling through thin air, before landing with a bone-jarring crunch far below. Snow tumbled down from above. The boar had stopped itself from following Talen over the edge. It snuffled around the hole that had opened beneath his feet. Talen groaned, clutching his arm as the animal gave up on its revenge and scooted away.

Talen tried to sit up, and pain lanced through his shoulder. He couldn’t move his arm. Was it broken?

Breathing hard, he looked around at his new surroundings. Icy walls rose high on either side of him. He had no hope of climbing them with one arm. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, trying not to pass out with the pain, and stared into the gloom of the cave. Were those passages in the shadows? Had he tumbled into a labyrinth? He was used to navigating tunnels, but at least he had known where he was going back on Targian. He had no way of knowing where these icy passages led. One false move and he could stumble into an even bigger drop.

Grimacing, he reached into his coat, searching for his vox. Fleapit had fashioned small communicators for each of them, and Talen prayed that his hadn’t been damaged in the fall. He pulled it out of his vest. The case was cracked, but hopefully it would still work.

‘Hello?’ he croaked, opening a channel. ‘Can you hear me? Zelia? Mekki? Anyone?’

There was no answer. He shook the box and tried again. Someone would answer, sooner or later.

They just had to…

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Warhammer Adventures

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Warhammer Publishing,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Cole Marchetti.
Internal illustrations by Magnus Norén & Cole Marchetti.

Claws of the Genestealer © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Claws of the Genestealer, GW, Games Workshop, Warhammer Adventures, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-797-8

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