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Hunt-Sense

Chris Wraight

They infiltrated via the Thunderhawk Helspite.

The Chapter’s war-scryers had identified an old void-facing hangar on one of the jumble of hulls and accumulated space debris that made up the hulk’s outer skin, and the gunship’s battlecannon was potent enough to gain entry.

On the flight in, wheeling under the hulk’s flank, Gunnlaugur had been able to observe its face at close range, soaring away in every direction, mottled by age and horror, still glimmering from the wisps of aether that glowed like corpse-gas across its tortured expanse.

There was no data on the interior configuration, no archive records of previous sightings, no tactical return from sensor-sweeps of the exterior. The behemoth might have been lost in the warp for millennia, or mere centuries. It might have been empty and echoing, or it might have been crawling with xenos. Indeed, it might have been nothing more than a vast asteroid but for the vanes and turrets protruding from the ossified binding matter. Starships were buried there, some as old as the Imperium, some perhaps older. As they neared and the viewportals filled with its scabrous shell, Gunnlaugur felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

Maleficarum. The hulk had been vomited from the warp, and the stink of old aether reached out across the void, triggering the same reaction it always did. He gripped the shaft of his thunder hammer tighter, channelling the kill-urge into something more focused.

Helspite slipped under the shadow of the shattered hangar aperture, pushing hard on thrusters to hold position. Inside the gunship’s crew-bay, red lumens bled into the dark and warning lights danced across the embarkation ramp’s hatchway.

‘The Hand of Russ,’ came the pilot’s voice over the pack-comm, and the void-locks blew, sending the ramp slamming down. ‘Hunt well.’

Gunnlaugur was first out, crashing down the ridged metal in his Terminator war-plate, savouring the immense heft and craft of it as he moved. His four pack mates came down with him, each in the same ice-grey ceramite, their footfalls heavy and ponderous.

Helspite turned on its thrusters, manoeuvring tightly in the confined hangar shell, before blasting clear again, ready to hold guard-station two hundred kilometres distant.

The hulk had been given the name The Sorrows of the Just by Imperial taxonomers ever since it had appeared on the long-range augurs of the Lophrax Sector’s military deep-void stations. The standard protocol assistance requests had gone out soon afterwards, resulting in the mobilisation of the Space Wolves kill-team eldurstjorm from proximal duties. The timing had been auspicious: it allowed infiltration long before the hulk rolled into inhabited space, giving the pack time to clear its foetid depths before the explorator teams from Adeptus Mechanicus response stations were due to arrive.

The Terminators fell into pack formation: Gunnlaugur, Slay and Arfól in the centre with close-combat weapons – thunder hammer, lightning claws, power sword and storm shield – and Variek and Fjurn flanking with storm bolter and assault cannon.

The hangar’s atmosphere had blown out on entry, and there were no sounds outside his own armour. The hulk’s gravity field was erratic, generated perhaps by ancient devices buried in the conglomeration’s heart, and they used compensators in their armour to keep them securely anchored. The Wolf Guard pack advanced slowly and silently, crunching across the hangar floor, overlooked by ancient buttresses and age-withered support columns.

Gunnlaugur heard the cycle of his respirators, the slow thud, thud of his hearts, the ambient throb of the colossal power packs, the whine of his servo-joints flexing. The helm readings scrolling across his visual field were unfamiliar – a far older design than the standard helm he usually wore, with obscure sigils glowing across a foreign tactical screen.

Ahead of them loomed a portal, broken open by the impact of Helspite’s destructive entry and gaping like an open mouth. It was perfectly black within, unbroken even by the faint light of the starfield beyond.

Gunnlaugur activated his helm-lumens with a blinked command, throwing pools of silver light across the jagged interior. As he did so, he remembered another hunt, by moonlight, carrying a blade that had also been called skulbrotsjór.

But only for a second. As he advanced, he felt the first tremors running along the metal floor, picked up by both his armour-sensors and his own alertness. Things were already moving, unfurling, dropping, scuttling, scraping. He could see them in his mind’s eye – down in the depths, awakened by the impact of the pack’s insertion, opening alien lids and extending incisor-crammed jaws.

It would not be long.

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