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The Patient Hunter - Joe Parrino

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The Patient Hunter

Joe Parrino

The kauyon was called. The order was given. The hunt began.

Lightning split the sky. Fire raged unchecked, consuming the planet’s manufactories. Halfus burned. Storms raged in the heavens as descending troopships displaced the atmosphere.

The Tau Empire desired to liberate this world, this so-called bastion of the Martian priesthood.

They were here to free this place, to cast away the blind dogmatism offered by the distant heart of the Imperium. The choice was simple: live free, in harmony with the Greater Good, or die.

The humans, lost and blind in their belligerence, hidebound to ancient and obsolete traditions, rejected the Tau’va. Guns fired where words were offered. Screams shouted where peace was given. Silence reigned where dialogue was called.

The priesthood of Mars, as the gue’la called themselves, rejected the Tau’va with violence, with shouted prayers. Ambassadors were returned to the tau bloody and broken, executed before being allowed to speak. Accusations of fomenting rebellion were levelled. The tau, minds set upon this course, upon this planet, answered with weary hearts. This forge world would be brought into compliance with the Tau Empire, its forges repurposed, its people liberated in accordance with the Tau’va.

Shas’vre Fal’shia Bas’reh Valel paid no mind to this. Words still rang in his mind. His orders, delivered by the shas’o himself, were issued without preamble, without flattery. They were simple.

‘Hunt,’ the commander had said. ‘Teach the gue’la the price of rejecting the Greater Good.’

Vre’valel had nodded, content with his role and assured of his place in the greater conflict. His own relayed orders were just as simple.

Now he strode through the ruins of the human city. Fire warrior teams bowed with respect as he passed, something akin to awe flashing in their eyes. He paid them all no mind.

He passed a team of Broadsides hunkered down behind the tumbled brick walls of some gue’la structure. They ceased their railgun bombardment until he was past, guns dipped out of respect.

To these, his cousins, Vre’valel offered quiet words of encouragement.

Then he was past them, into the deeper parts of the night, through the powerless city streets.

Talaska Yones stared out into the dark Halfusian night, safe and secure within the Indomitable Iron. She could see nothing through the smoke and the dust and the fire. Even with the straining sensors of the Leman Russ’s auspex equipment, there was little to see. They passed beneath a towering half-cog structure, a sacred symbol to the Halfusian Mechanicus. She quickly made the sign of the cog against her breast.

Were she fully human, she might have cursed, but Talaska Yones had ceased to be fully human two decades ago. The Mechanicus, praises upon them, had excised parts of her brain and body and replaced them with the certainty of the machine. So Talaska Yones did not curse. She only muttered a prayer to the Omnissiah and to the Indomitable Iron’s blessed machine spirit.

The voice of the tank’s commander, Enri Harnold, bubbled at her in machine cant. It was phrased with polite markers, but the message was stern and emotive. ‘What can you see?’

Talaska Yones responded, appending her message with deference and discipline, ‘I see nothing, honoured sire.’

Harnold nodded in satisfaction, a curiously human gesture for a man missing almost sixty percent of his flesh-body. ‘Good,’ the commander of the Divine Right muttered to himself. They were far behind the front lines, far away from the xenos, but it never paid to be too cautious.

The tank trundled off into the night.

Two minutes later it was dead. The first casualty. The first to fall.

Talaska Yones, Commander Harnold, none of them knew what killed them. None of them saw it. None of them heard it.

One second they were alive. The next, they were a smoking ruin.

Four hundred metres to the right, advancing down a parallel street, was the Delta-88B. Adept Gurolf Pryce was using the Delta-88B’s sensors in an attempt to pierce the fog of war, pollution and industry that drifted about his own tank. The atmosphere of Halfus, never clear of industrial pollution, had grown worse since the xenos arrived, since the rioting menials put half the blessed manufactora to the torch.

They passed between two of those manufactora now, massive and imposing in the night, brick structures stamped from the same pattern, prayer banners burning in the breeze.

Adept Pryce cursed. The words he said were gutterspeak, scraps of code, and offensive merely by existence. They betrayed a deeper sense of unease, a deeper sense of emotion and a lack of blessed logic in the adept.

He received admonishment from the tank’s commander, but these were softened by attached signifiers expressing sympathy. ‘Emotive responses are unbecoming to servants of the machine.’

Adept Pryce murmured his apologies and continued to scan the route ahead. Bouncing artefacts jittered and capered on screen, resolving into buildings, or feral menials crouched down side streets.

Pryce watched the screens before him with augmetic eyes, clicking and whirring, while what remained of his brain scanned the rudimentary manifold for possible returns. The system malfunctioned, fuzzing in and out, rife with interference.

Something zipped across the manifold, something small and bowl-shaped and impossibly fast. His eyes did not see the same object. He tagged it and packaged the data for review by the commander.

‘What is…?’ the commander began.

He never finished his question.

Pryce never answered.

Plasma lanced into the Leman Russ, breaking apart the Delta-88B. Pryce, the commander and the crew atomised.

The Theorem was lagging behind. Some stubborn part of the machine-spirit, irritated at being awoken so soon after birth, refused to move at full speed.

Reggis Qerat, noospheric officer of the Theorem, was busy trying to explain the problem to his commanding officer on the battalion command Baneblade, Alpha-01A. He winced as static washed out his aural feeds.

‘The 88B has vanished,’ hissed Treyor Gant, sensorii for the Theorem.

‘Explain,’ demanded Commander Luver Whyatt.

‘It’s just gone, sir,’ Gant replied, aghast at the lack of knowledge. Horror rippled through the tank. The lack of knowledge was both disturbing and terrifying.

Qerat attempted to set aside the conversation, to discard the unwelcome emotions washing through him. He focused on the blessed task assigned to him. He returned to his continued conversation with the officer on the Alpha-01A. Static again washed into his ears, but now Qerat swore he could hear something under it, something that sounded… other.

He was about to warn his commander, to ask for clarification when two shots hit the tank abeam.

The Theorem ceased to exist.

Vre’valel smiled. It was not a smile of gloating, nor a smile of arrogance or even victory. Such things were beneath one devoted to the Tau’va, beneath him, more fitting for the gue’la he hunted.

His drones surged ahead searching, reporting. In truth he did not need them. The gue’la made no attempt to hide their passage.

Two had already fallen by his hand. Destroyed in the name of the Greater Good, cast down for their rejection and their slavish adherence to a doctrine of intolerance.

Their machines, their ‘tanks’ to use the humans’ ugly tongue, were brutal things. They were creations of arrogance and brawn, little different than the ramshackle machines constructed by the be’gel. They were rattling vehicles of stark lines, dark colours and belligerent intent, nothing like the clean, sweeping curves of a Fire Caste machine, proud with the colours of Fal’shia and the Tau Empire.

Gue’la scattered before him, falling upon their knees at the sight of him and his machine. Screeches broadcast across the communications network, the signature of hunting kroot while the more clipped and professional tones of advancing fire warrior stealth teams kept him abreast of the greater battle abroad. Other voices were noticeable for their absence, as was only proper.

The drones chattered at him as they scouted, providing a detailed map of the surrounding region and the approaching armour column. Vre’valel’s eyes narrowed in concentration as he adapted his plan, his kauyon, to the situation at hand. He issued fresh orders.

He smiled his lipless smile, blue flesh crinkling at the motion.

‘Theorem, be advised you are falling behind. Increase speed and join the line.’ Yuriah Kelt, commanding officer aboard the Alpha-01A, was sick of saying that, sick of hearing Qerat’s worthless apologies. Annoyance, so strong it overwhelmed his emotional dampeners, surged through his systems.

Then the feed to the Theorem vanished. There was no explanation, no report, no hint. Kelt’s irritation grew. Then he noticed something that washed away his annoyance with apprehension.

Two other machines were missing. Kelt tried raising the Indomitable Iron and the Delta-88B on the vox. No responses.

Kelt apprised the tank regiment’s commander, Magos Philis Hurosse, of the situation. Hurosse, arrogance flushing through the noosphere, ordered the Alpha-01A to continue its course. The xenos could not possibly harm such a mighty machine, a Baneblade in the service of the Omnissiah. It was a massive thing, crafted in now defunct forges by Halfusian tech-priests long dead. The 01A rumbled down no particular street, no particular path. It had no need for roads. It made its own. They felt ashamed for punching through the blessed forges, for bringing harm to the planet’s function. They could only pray to the Omnissiah that He would forgive them this sin.

Something akin to pandemonium swept through the Alpha-01A, flooding its systems and crew. Tanks were dropping, blessed machines, holy in the eyes of the Omnissiah and His faithful, dead and destroyed without warning, without response.

Outrage and chaos. The tank commander, the battalion head, senior enginseers all were shouting in Lingua Technis and Gothic. They were not afraid for their own safety. Their lives were sacrosanct, protected by the Emperor and the Omnissiah. What brought them to outrage, what brought them to fear, was failure. The deaths of so many blessed machines smacked of failure, smacked of a task left unfinished.

The lights and smoke censers swung and swayed, casting crazed shadows through the hazy interior. Yuriah Kelt frantically searched for the Theorem and found no sign of the tank. The machine was dead. He felt this with the deep certainty of instinct and therefore reviled the feeling. He cycled through the Leman Russ displayed on the auspex.

Two more tanks, two more blessed machines, disappeared from the display before Kelt. The Machine Triumphant and the Delta-86F, mighty Leman Russ tanks, the pinnacle of Imperial and Mechanicus perfection, dead and gone.

Magos Hurosse thundered into the vox demanding something, anything, some small hint that he had control of this situation. He received no response.

Tense minutes passed, tense minutes in which another Leman Russ died. Kelt heard it die this time. Heard it die with his flesh ears. All aboard the Alpha-01A did. The lights flickered in sympathetic loss, the machine spirit manifesting the sympathetic pain. Feedback screeched through aural plugs. Static danced along the interior. Pain, electric hot, flooded the crew’s systems. The thing, whatever hunted them, whatever dared challenge the might of the Imperium and the Mechanicus, was close.

Kelt raged, as close to apoplexy as it was possible for a servant blessed by the Omnissiah with extensive augmetics to be. His binaric cants were clipped things, appended with the most urgent and forceful signifiers. Kelt could feel his rage bleeding into the manifold and it affected others within the Baneblade as well. Underlying the rage, underlying that heady emotion, was something deeper, more primal. Kelt realised with a start what it was, for he felt it too. He felt it seeping into the manifold from all in the Baneblade.

The feeling was dread.

Fear made the gue’la weak. Fear made them uncertain, made them commit mistakes. ‘Cull the herd’ demanded the doctrine of the ancient progenitors of the fire caste on T’au, his ancestors. Set the prey to running, to hunkering down. The Imperials reacted exactly as he expected. Tanks were beginning to clump together, beginning to form frightened clusters as they advanced.

This new machine, his new warsuit, was perfect for this purpose, perfect for this hunt.

The guns, his guns, whined as they spooled down.

He stepped over the burning wreckage of the dead gue’la tank. A massive carving, shaped like a human skull, half-machine, half-bone glared down at him, a mark of gue’la superstition.

He could hear his next target rumbling away, streets down, plumes of smoke spitting up from primitive engines.

Vre’valel smiled again. He smiled as he killed, smiled at a task accomplished well, at the advancement of the Greater Good.

Kelt whispered hushed orders into the vox. He urged the Leman Russ commanders to cluster together, to seek safety in numbers.

Even as he did so, he watched tank signifiers wink out, lost on the auspex. The Yllcos Device, STC 1186, Pride of Land, Halfusian Pattern YY245, Glory of Mars all died impotent. None sighted their killer. None fired back in anger. Forty-eight machines remained.

They caught the first sight of the predator hunting them three minutes later.

A junior tech-adept approached Kelt, mumbling honorifics in Lingua Technis, clutching a pict in sweaty palms. Kelt snatched it with an extended mechadendrite.

‘Is this confirmed?’ Kelt demanded, staring wide-eyed at the printout.

The tech-adept responded, affronted, before remembering whom it addressed. ‘The machine is certain. There was no interference.’

Kelt inloaded the data onto the noosphere.

With part of his brain, Kelt analysed the data, parsing it, applying blessed logic to the image. The rest of his brain was dedicated towards keeping the battalion moving to the front line.

Thunder rumbled outside. Thunder or something else dying.

Kelt flinched and what remained of his organic features grew pale. Unbidden, the object captured by the pict emerged into his consciousness.

It was tall, tall and vaguely humanoid. The smoke curled around it like a diaphanous robe, revealing and concealing in the same moment. The sight was horribly intimate. Flashes of light split up the smoke from various points on the humanoid shape. The thunder of guns, so many guns, so many weapons. The humanoid shape should have been reassuring, should have been comforting, but the figure was not squat. This was no Adeptus Astartes dreadnought, no blessed machine crafted by loving human hands.

What he could see of the thing was all clean lines, rounded intersections and malign otherness. The machine, the enemy, the predator that stalked them, had penetrated their lines, moving past the front, striking deep into the manufactorum districts. It was blunting their advance, keeping them from moving forward. What’s more, it was picking them off, killing them, denying them their duty.

The dread afflicting the manifold intensified as Magos Hurosse, safe in the main spire, made his own identifications and conclusions.

The tech-priests redoubled their prayers.

The prayers were reassuring. The twinned tongues of Lingua Technis and High Gothic curled serpentine around each other, drifting through the vox, drifting over the tank’s speakers. They provided a comforting counterpoint to the hammering bangs coming from outside.

They sounded like drums, like rage and anger.

Commander Eryn Berthick, hunched over his station, was half blind. Fire flared. Lightning stabbed. Faces howled in the outer pict viewers.

He could not see their companion, the Delta-66Z, through the thronging menials in Citizen’s Recreational Location 867-AF. His only hint that it was there was the constant vox burbling of Lingua Technis coming from his counterpart in the 66Z.

‘Desist and disperse,’ he announced. His voice was calm, despite his inner turmoil.

The menials ignored him.

‘Folly of Innovation, Why have you stopped?’ whispered that machine-brained bastard, Kelt, in the clipped professional tones of an experienced enginseer. The man had abandoned too much of his humanity to the purity of the machine. While Berthick aspired to such heights, he could not help but loathe the man for his callousness, for his logic. Some day, Omnissiah willing, Berthick would be the same. For now, though, he retained some connection to his humanity.

‘Labour menials, honoured sire. We are swamped by labour menials,’ Berthick said, trying to sound contrite. They were everywhere, thronging the open spaces, mouths wide, voices loud, screaming for rights, screaming for the dissolution of their oppression.

Kelt’s response was a non-verbal scree of nonsense data, the Lingua Technis equivalent of a derisive snort.

‘You will advance,’ Kelt ordered.

Berthick canted his compliance. Their progress was slow at first.

‘Desist and disperse,’ the commander tried once more. Again he failed.

He nodded to one of his subordinates and the bass roar of side-mounted bolter sponsons commenced. The tank rocked as it ground over menials too slow to scatter out of the way.

He could hear the Delta-66Z doing the same.

Berthick, ridden with guilt at the wanton slaughter, began to relay recorded tech-prayers.

He was still praying, still broadcasting, still killing, when something thudded into the Folly of Innovation from the back.

The Leman Russ lurched forward, treads screeching as they failed to latch on to the rockcrete surface of the road. Crew flew from their seats, interface sockets spurting oil and blood as they were violently disconnected. Sparks flew as machine systems failed. The machine spirit growled from the engine, then coughed, wheezed and sputtered out.

The screen blinked at him in angry red letters.

Rear armour hit.

Eryn Berthick felt blood and oil dribble down his face, smelled the rich fluid in his nose, tasted it on the air with multiple inbuilt sensors.

‘Dead. We’re all dead,’ someone moaned, half wailing with despair and fear.

Berthick dragged himself forward, his mechanical legs broken and unresponsive. He was searching, hoping, praying, that some function yet remained within the Folly of Innovation. The power flickered.

He could hear a fierce whining sound from outside. Heavy footfalls thumped into the ground. Something came close, some cursed thing.

The commander’s hands stretched before a console. He wept as he failed to reach.

The screen before him flickered as outer pict-viewers cycled through default modes. They saw nothing and transmitted nothing.

Berthick screamed with effort as he felt his life fade out.

Finally, he reached the console.

He shook as he typed, as he ordered the machine to perform its holy purpose.

The pict-viewers outside ceased their trembling and began to function.

They were still transmitting a minute later when the xenos machine outside opened fire and terminated the Folly of Innovation.

Kelt watched as the enemy machine killed the Folly of Innovation, screens flickering as the machine spirit processed the images. It stood, staring down at the outer picters, its own inscrutable lenses clicking and whirring. It took one step forward, flames backlighting it. The tiny head cocked to the side as if puzzled. Muzzle flare distorted the image, but the looming xenos machine was the same deep red as the previous image. If there were differences in between this machine and the one in the pict before, Kelt did not notice them. Logic dictated that they must be the same. He searched for some inkling of humanity, some anthropomorphic quality that would make it familiar.

There was nothing. The machine was so different, so other, so xenos, that it nearly broke the Mechanicus adept’s mind.

But Kelt smiled. Something akin to joy spread through the manifold. They had spotted the machine, the picts clear as they could be amid the night and the fire. What was more important, however, is that they now knew where it was.

The bait was set. The kauyon, his hunt, his mission, neared completion. The gue’la had proved easy to predict.

They believed him to be in a gathering space, a square portion of the city devoid of buildings. He could hear their chatter over their crude communications networks. He paid no attention to the words. He listened only to their tone, to their panic.

They tried to hide it beneath crowing victory calls. They thought him cornered. They thought him easy to kill. They were wrong.

Vre’valel would teach them the error of their ways, the price of rejecting the Greater Good.

His treads were heavy, for this machine lacked the perfect subtlety of a stealth suit. He had no need for stealth now. He wanted the gue’la to know that he was near, to know that death claimed them. Each beat of their hearts would be a gasping thump declaring that the extent of their mistake was known.

There was no real passion behind this. Fear was merely another tool of the hunt. There was no hatred felt for the gue’la, only sadness, only a peculiar form of regret. To reject the Tau’va was madness, madness bred from wilful ignorance.

But it was not his role to question. His shas’o had spoken. The gue’la were dead. Their world belonged to the Tau Empire.

All that remained was to teach them this.

The Halfusian Pattern 436 was the first to enter Citizen’s Recreational Location 867-AF. It was the first to die. The xenos machine fired once. The accuracy was stunning. Bright plasma, painfully blue and white, lanced straight up the 436’s gun barrel and immolated the crew within.

Two other tanks entered from different side streets, guns already firing, machine prayers broadcast loud from external voxes. Third off the Line and Machined Glory joined them, their own guns speaking, their own voxes transmitting the same holy prayers.

The xenos machine stood unmoved, undaunted. Plasma streamed from mounted guns while drones rotated in complex configurations before it. Each shot from the Leman Russ impacted against a shimmering shield.

Each shot was answered by the warsuit.

It wheeled and turned, killing everything it faced.

Leman Russ tanks were reduced to burning scrap metal.

Kelt, minutes away in the Alpha-01A, listened, watched and trembled.

He screamed from his command throne, reverting to the flesh-voice of his youth, stress overwhelming his augmented brain. ‘Kill it!’

Kelt fed tanks into the square piecemeal, trying to overwhelm the xenos battlesuit, following the orders of the regimental command magos.

He was sending them like grox to the slaughter.

Options appeared on the manifold, suggested logic parameters, detailed plans for similar situations. Kelt watched as Hurosse dismissed them all one by one. The magos inloaded only rage, shunting all true logic.

The battalion converged on the square, engines rumbling, treads screeching, turrets thundering, machines dying.

‘How much longer until we kill the damn thing? How many more minutes until we hit the square?’ Kelt demanded, flesh-voice quivering.

‘Two minutes, honoured sire,’ came the reply from a robed enginseer.

Kelt nodded, his command throne gripped tight with metal hands.

Kelt dedicated part of his vocal functions to whisper benedictions to the Omnissiah, praying for more speed, praying for victory, praying for death.

With swift haptic commands, Yuriah Kelt, sent more men and more machines to their deaths.

The test had begun. This was it, the climax of his kauyon.

This was what the hunters called the Rai’kor Kau’va, the Moment of Perfect Patience. The moment of exposure, of endurance. The hunt lived or died here.

More of the gue’la machines challenged him. More of the gue’la machines died. But with every second, their numbers grew. With every second he stood more chance to be hit, to be slowed down.

Vre’valel’s smile became a grimace. His accompanying drones chattered at him, their intelligences excited.

What they reported did little to ease Vre’valel’s mind, to ease the tension of the moment.

He blinked to shield his eyes from another tank’s death, railgun discharge ringing.

Another.

The tank flew backwards, burning, splintering, dying. It erupted in a mushroom cloud of flame and dirty smoke.

Another.

The gue’la vehicle ceased all forward momentum. Smoke, dark and greasy pouring out of interior compartments.

Another.

The cannon rotated on his left arm, spitting death, plunking into the gue’la machine. The human tank blazed with fire as fuel tanks combusted.

Each dying, each exploding in a dozen different permutations.

Some died with screams, others with deafening sounds. Some merely froze, smoke emerging from ports in the hull. But what mattered was that each was dead. Each was silenced.

This was a challenge the gue’la could not ignore, not while he stood before him, the object of their wrath, of their emotion. Missiles thudded down into them, killing them. The gue’la did not note the direction they came from, only the destruction they wrought.

The capacity of the Riptide battlesuit for destruction was prodigious, its tactical applications perfect for this moment. The height, the sheer promise of such a machine was almost intoxicating. It was graceful in a way that could not be equalled. The majesty, the righteousness, of the Tau’va spoke through his will.

Vre’valel grimaced, but the smile lurked beneath, waiting to emerge.

The bait had been taken. The kauyon was ready.

The gue’la machines died, but the true prize, the true purpose of this hunt was almost within sight.

The faster Leman Russ tanks rushed forward, pushed in to face the warsuit, to bring it down. They were failing. They were dying.

Kelt was drooling now. The magos’s eyes twitched. The only sign of continued intellect was his presence on the manifold, the continued hissed cants directed to the crew.

Kelt could not stop shaking, irritation flashing through his mind at the frailty of his human psyche.

Dread consumed the manifold. It was a living thing, a growing thing, spreading like infection. Corrupted data corroded the manifold in its wake.

Five tanks, five glorious machines remained. They were the Machine’s First Law, Alpha-45X, Forgefire, the Standard Pattern, and of course the Alpha-01A. The other tank commanders chattered at him, nagging, seeking his attention. Kelt could give them no response. They were afraid. Their armour was vulnerable. Yuriah Kelt felt glad that he sat within the 01A, its armour proof of the manifest destiny of man and the benevolence of the Omnissiah.

The smaller machines clustered around the Baneblade like juvenile bovine around their mother. The arterial they advanced down, the largest road that entered the square, trembled beneath their combined treads.

Kelt could see the flashing ahead, the smoke drifting from the battle. Five hundred metres until entry.

Three hundred.

One hundred.

The Standard Pattern entered first, almost cautious, fearful. The xenos machine made no movement, just stood. Its very existence was a naked affront to the sacred machines of the Omnissiah and His ordained servants, the Adeptus Mechanicus.

The 45X followed close, edging into the square, shouldering aside the burning wreck of the Folly of Innovation.

Kelt was silent aboard the Alpha-01A, suddenly unwilling to open fire.

The other two escort tanks rolled in, forming up, two to a side with a gap in the middle.

The Alpha-01A did not so much as slide into the gap as conquer it, dominating the space. It sat there, full of menace, full of threat, bristling with killing power.

Silence owned the interior of the Baneblade, of each of the Imperial machines. The smell of sweat, the significance of every movement, every sight, every sensory input, each of these took on new meanings.

Everyone within stared at Kelt as the magos twitched. Everyone in the Baneblade waited with hushed breath, sweat trickling, the ritual smoke oppressive and cloying.

Finally Kelt made some small movement, a slight twitch of his hand. Accompanying it was a quiet order on the manifold, a series of numbers in Lingua Technis.

All the remaining tanks opened fire.

The moment arrived.

The Rai’kor Kau’va was ended. The Moment of Perfect Patience passed, the near-climax of the mon’wern’a. Now was the time of the true hunt, the trap to be sprung. The gue’la had taken his bait.

Vre’valel gritted his teeth as his Riptide rocked backwards. One foot splayed behind him, granting him balance.

He was forced back. A shell broke through the whirling drones, impacting against the suit’s shoulder. The concussive force rippled through the suit’s systems, pain sympathetically lancing into his own shoulder.

One step back.

A missile flared from the back of the large gue’la machine. One of the shield drones, chattering rudimentary messages to its fellows, intercepted the missile. The ensuing explosion blinded Vre’valel for a microsecond.

Two steps.

Another tank round broke through. Wrenching metal sounded loud, screeching. Vre’valel grunted a single exhalation, an expression of pain.

Two shield drones exploded. The kinetic impacts taxed the shield to its limit, blowing out drones. The shield was dangerously close to failing.

He twisted at the waist, attempting to minimise his profile, attempting to manoeuvre. The suit warned him, warned him of the rate of fire, of the number of seconds it could sustain this bombardment. He did not have much time left.

Another of the shield drones died in a storm of sparks.

Vre’valel transmitted a single word. The word was simple, as simple an order as Vre’valel had ever issued. ‘Come,’ he said through a grimace.

He received no acknowledgment. There was no need for one.

Smoke, vapours given off by the crude propellants in the gue’la armour, obscured the square, left it coated in a blanket of greasy grey.

He returned no fire. He merely waited the attack out, waited for the gue’la fire to slacken as he knew it would. Their sensors were crude things, easily disrupted by adverse conditions.

The thunder of guns slowed and then ceased. Gue’la tank commanders were trying to find him, to see if he was dead, to ascertain the efficacy of their own craft. They waited for the smoke to clear.

Shas’vre Fal’shia Bas’reh Valel did not.

Fire flared as missiles deployed, trailing brightness through the thick grey smoke. Five missiles, crafted by the genius of the Earth caste, guided by the perfect technology of the Tau’va, lanced towards the gue’la machines.

He could hear them screaming. Two desperately tried to break away, to run, to survive this doom that came for them. Their treads squealed as they reversed.

It availed them nothing.

The missiles altered their course and struck down with clamorous fury.

This was a nightmare. This was the doom waiting for servants of the machine who failed in their function. This was punishment made manifest.

The air reeked. It stank of fear and panic and dread.

They were dead, killed by the xenos machine.

Kelt uncontrollably trembled, shook, moaned.

‘How?’ someone asked, over and over again. Kelt focused on the voice, saw its source: a robed enginseer carved in half by whipsawing cabling. The electrics still sparked in the pool of blood and oil surrounding the dying woman.

Their four escorts were dead, slain without exacting any vengeance.

Yuriah Kelt, tech-priest of the Mechanicus, commanding battalion magos aboard the Alpha-01A, stared without seeing. The man, shocked, aghast, appalled, stumbled to his feet. He didn’t remember falling.

He sucked in a juddering breath.

A console exploded, sparks flaring against the darkness. Bodies lay everywhere while servitors mumbled for now defunct orders.

Fires spat. Pitch flowed. Oil dripped.

Someone gibbered nearby, a scree of numbers and letters; jumbled, senseless, useless data. Kelt stumbled through the crew compartment. Each new blink/click of his eyes bringing with it a new sight of devastation and destruction. He saw the severed head of a tech-adept, still mouthing words, still trying to exload data.

A disembodied arm clutched at a haptic interface, metal fingers still drumming at the keys. Others crawled through the space, alive, bewildered, wounded.

The manifold was a dead thing, collapsed, gone.

Lights strobed.

On.

Off.

On.

Off.

Red and black, throbbing, as insistent as any migraine. Kelt felt a thrum of joy. The Alpha-01A yet lived, its armour proof against the predatory corruption of the xenos, its machine spirit doggedly refusing to succumb.

The lights returned with a start. The air scrubbers kicked in, bringing with it the faint hint of smoke, but the Alpha-01A resumed blessed function.

The tank jerked forward.

Magos Kelt barked out orders in holy machine cant. His voice was assured, steady.

The guns opened up. The Alpha-01A answered again.

Vre’valel weathered the incoming storm. The last gue’la machine thundered towards him, driving through the smoke.

Vre’valel felt no panic, felt no emotion. The mon’wern’a, the killing blow, the end of his kauyon, this was that moment.

Unseen in the barrage, unwitnessed by the gue’la, flew two sets of drones. Their deep red paint was unbattered, unchipped by gue’la guns. They chattered at Vre’valel.

The shas’vre’s smile returned, dry blue flesh crinkling.

Behind the drones, striding down streets that minutes earlier saw the Imperial armour advance, came the rest of his ta’ro’cha, their weaponry still smoking, vapours still sliding off their shoulders.

The Imperial tank fell into stunned silence, guns smoking. The main barrel dipped, almost an acknowledgement of defeat. The tau Riptides dipped their own guns in turn, an acknowledgment of the tenacity of their foe.

They opened fire. The combined might of the Tau’va spoke through their guns. The Alpha-01A died as it was born: in fire.

Vre’t’olku, her heart burning, was the first to speak. Her words were filled with the passion that ruled her, that made her a productive member of the fire caste. ‘Blind fools,’ she said.

Vre’valel said nothing. He waited and observed.

Vre’karayyim, second of the ta’ro’cha, displayed the naiveté of his thoughts, of his race, with his response. He articulated the regret and sadness they felt at the necessity of their war. ‘Why do they resist, shas’vre? Why do they reject the Tau’va?’

Vre’valel waited a moment before responding. He allowed them to ruminate on their thoughts, on the ideas they espoused.

‘Because they are blind,’ he finally answered. ‘They lack patience. They are old. We are young.’

Words hissed across the cadre’s communication network, seeking him, and his ta’ro’cha. They were needed, the orders claimed. Another gue’la armour column had been spotted. Another threat to the hegemony of the Tau’va needed blunting.

Shas’vre Fal’shia Bas’reh Valel strode away from the burning wreck of the gue’la vehicle. He did not wait for the rest of the ta’ro’cha to join. He trusted in their following.

‘Come,’ Vre’valel said. ‘The kauyon begins again.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A lifelong reader and unabashed fan of the Black Library, Joe Parrino is an American writer currently adrift within the United Kingdom. Still mired in the realm of higher education, when he’s not writing papers he’s writing stories and working his fingers and brain into mush. Awed and eager in equal measures, he’s leapt into the realm of writing with gusto. In his off hours, he reads, writes and wanders about the gothic splendour of Edinburgh. ‘The Patient Hunter’ is his first published piece of fiction.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

© Games Workshop Limited 2013. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration by Mark Holmes

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All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78251-062-8

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.