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Hunting Ground – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Hunting Ground

Ian St. Martin

Asander stood at the foot of a goddess.

A snarling, wolfish face peered out ahead of her hunched shoulders, leering out across the plain in her tireless hunger for prey. Her claws were colossal weapons, implements of destruction that had reaped quarry from a thousand worlds. The curving, sculpted plates of her carapace were lacquered in a deep tourmaline red, so dark it was nearly black.

A name, shining in brilliant silver, was etched into her armoured greaves, just below the bladed lioness icon of the legio at the ankles of the goddess’ splayed feet. The artisans had placed the name there for a reason. All those who had deemed to raise arms against her, from mortal men to towering engines that could scour cities of life, had ended at her feet. All would spend their final moments learning the name of the one that had cast them into the waiting dark.

Her name was Ruber Captrix.

Asander’s heart raced. She was always the most beautiful in the first quiet moments after a hunt. Even at her feet, he felt their distance as if it were the space between stars. The pain of separation was worsening as the years passed, and even moments after disconnection, he yearned to return to her, to join his frail flesh with her divine spirit and sanctified machinery. Where she ran, he ran. When she hunted, he hunted. Turning his gaze from the Warhound’s countenance to the field around him, Asander smiled.

They had hunted well this day.

Everywhere the weak light of the planet’s star touched, fighting to pierce the caustic veil of burning smoke that swallowed the sky, the corpses of the Great Devourer lay. Mounds of twisted alien bodies were heaped beyond counting, an ocean of pale, bleeding flesh with its rolling tides frozen in place. Shattered chitin and jagged chips of horn glittered upon the ground, like bits of shell covering a beach. The field of tyranid dead stretched unbroken to the horizon, broken and destroyed by Asander to reach the true prey that slumped in death at its centre.

Bio-Titan. The memory sent a ripple of warmth over the princeps. Feeling the lesser Tyranid bioforms pop and rupture beneath the tread of Ruber Captrix, as surely as if it had been his own boots. The speed of circling the monstrosity’s flanks, tearing its legs from its worm-like form. Waiting until the moment was perfect, the goddess and her sister striking the killing blow as one.

A piercing war-horn cut through the silence, jarring Asander from his reverie. He looked beside his engine as her sister goddess, Domina Mortis, roared again, her carapace just as charred and slathered in ichor after their run through the battlefield.

No, Asander thought as he crouched down, scooping up a handful of the soil. Not a battlefield.

He allowed the dirt to slip from his grasp, as he had done across all the worlds he had walked upon in the Omnissiah’s name. This was a hunting ground, and Asander gave silent thanks for it. A sentimental ritual, perhaps, but Asander had seen enough engine deaths to understand each successful hunt was to be cherished.

There may come a day when Ruber Captrix would fall, when she would no longer be able to run and hunt. But it was not this day. For Asander, as the last grains slipped from his fingers, that was enough.

The Adeptus Mechanicus ark transport Baiulus crouched at low anchor above the slowly turning sphere of Tophet VI, perched in the silence of the void. The crust of the world below was webbed with iron and machine cities, vast foundries and hive manufactories dedicated to fashioning the tools of Forge World Agripinaa. Raw materials were smelted, blessed machines were forged, and millions of men and women were reborn into the skitarii legions indentured to Agripinaa as the skies were lit with the flames of industry.

Now, its surface was lit by fire of a different kind. War had come to Tophet VI, and the cry of its destruction, screamed out across the stars by its astropathic choirs, had been answered by the Baiulus and the engines of the Legio Debellator she carried. She came to rest beside a slim needle of vivid emerald. It was known as the Asuncion, frigate of the Subjugators Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The Space Marines had come both to honour their oath to protect the Tophet system, and for the pleasure of confronting an enemy older than the history of their Chapter.

Twisted fragments of shorn hull plating danced around the vessels. It glittered with the silver of bare metal, chased in hazard striping of gold and jet. Each jagged shard was older than the Imperium itself, forged in a time when the ship they had belonged to took to the stars to build the interstellar empire its commanders now fought to destroy.

The ship itself was wounded, but far from dead. After it had loosed its storm of death down onto Tophet VI, it had entertained the Asuncion for a moment before slipping from range, lost in the dark corners of the system. The Subjugators had taken to the surface, and now, so would the Legio Debellator.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-569-2

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