Deathwatch 6: First to Hunt

Chris Dows

Jetek Suberei opened his eyes and looked up to the blazing twin suns of Ballestae, their harsh white glow unfiltered by helmet or visor. Reaching down with his ungloved left hand, he touched the barren rocky surface of the planet and, like any good son of Chogoris, tried to read its secrets.

Sheer walls of granite towered hundreds of yards above him on either side. Their shape and form funnelled a vicious wind that whipped dust and tiny fragments of rock onto his exposed face, flicking the ends of his drooping moustache and long, braided topknot. Suns and breeze were scorching in their own way, but none of this registered on the kneeling Deathwatch warrior, too focussed on learning what the floor of the yawning chasm had to tell him about what lay ahead.

Unfortunately, the tale being told was of little use.

‘Difficult to say how much further we must travel, Vengla. You will have to take flight once again and be the eyes of Suberei. The xenos scum cannot be too far away.’

Rising to his feet, the White Scar strode over to his idling bike and snatched his helmet up from the broad seat. Thrusting it back on, he reached for his gauntlet and clicked it into place, but instead of mounting the battered vehicle, he extended his left arm and took the weight of the magnificent cyber-eagle as she glided from her perch on top of the bike’s rear wheel cowling. His impulse-link with the hunting bird might be at the most feral, basic level when they were not in direct communion, but during the long and isolated scouting missions that Suberei favoured, he spoke to her as though she understood every word.

Vengla took flight and climbed swiftly, using the swirling currents and rising heat of Ballestae’s unforgiving surface to twirl into the open sky. It filled Suberei’s heart with joy to see her soar. It brought back his memories of being a child on Mundus Planus, when he would go hunting with his tribe on the brutal Chogorian steppes. It mattered not that Vengla carried the augmentations of the White Scars Techmarines, that she was not a pure-breed – in fact, with her enhanced vision, power and reactions she had proved a great ally and, on occasion, a formidable weapon.

Canyons. Harsh rocky outcrops. The distant horizon.

Images of her hunting perspective formed in his retinal display as he mounted his bike and gunned the accelerator. He felt the deep treads of the rear wheel bite into the chasm’s rough surface and set off. If Vengla was his companion, this bike was his most beloved possession.

Every time he mounted the iron steed he felt at home. There was some truth to the saying that Chogorians were born in the saddle; he felt a feeling of absolute freedom and power every time he went out riding. However, there was something unique about this bike. It had served him so well for so long that he found it unthinkable that he would ever replace it. When he had first met his new Deathwatch brothers, he’d had to fight, and fight hard, to keep it. They couldn’t understand his attachment to the dented, scarred machine when better and newer technology was available. When it became clear that Suberei’s usual good humour and bluffly eccentric manner didn’t extend to losing his bike, a compromise was finally reached and the old bike had been given a fearsome weapons upgrade. Such was the state of its once-white livery that the need to paint it black had been questioned.

With a sudden lean to the left, Suberei deftly avoided a massive sheet of rock thrusting up from the ground and sped onto a wide, flat ledge – one of thousands that ran along the jagged walls of Ballestae’s myriad canyons and ravines. This world had been harsh enough before the eldar had invaded, and had continued to provide no comfort or tactical advantage as wave after wave of the xenos battered against the embattled Imperial presence.

But then, when one final assault would have likely engulfed the Imperial forces, the eldar had inexplicably stopped their onslaught and withdrawn deep inside their own territory.

‘That is why Suberei is here – to find out why, and to bring the storm.’

Suberei might have been addressing his eagle, but whether or not she heard he didn’t care. He liked to talk to himself. On more than one occasion fellow battle-brothers had commented on it. He did not care about that either. He was the Living Hurricane, the master of the Chogorian steppes, always first to hunt, and–

A flash of red. Then another. Very fast, closing.

‘Higher. Go higher.’

Again – there. Two vehicles with xenos riders.

Eldar jetbikes. ‘Return. Now.’

Suberei went up a couple of gears, the sudden increase in speed jolting him backwards and bringing the broad front wheel inches off the upwardly angled granite. In front of him was a steep incline leading to an overhang of rock from the mesa running along the top of the sheer canyon wall. Vengla’s commanding view showed that the grav vehicles were heading towards him down the same valley, and the last thing he needed was to be discovered out in the open like this.

He had been travelling constantly for nearly two days, moving as fast as he could across the wide-open spaces, then ducking and dodging through twisting passageways to avoid any long-range patrols. Curiously, there had been none. The reconnaissance pieced together from the single functioning Imperial orbital recon unit had been imprecise, but the impression was of a significant concentration of eldar forces fairly close to this position. Attracting their attention and bringing them down upon him before he’d even managed to discover what was going on was not part of his plan, nor his usual stealthy approach.

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Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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