The Hunt of X91-Delta

The Hunt of X91-Delta

Perhaps one of the most lauded victories of the VIIIth Legion, the Kraken Lords, is their triumph at X91-Delta, the victory of their namesake. Though the event was a great gathering of the legion’s forces, it was not a war they’d come to wage.

It was a hunt.

## Story

The grounds of their hunt was the orbit of X91-Delta, a neutron star which had obliterated the celestial objects once held in its gravitic grasp. The collapse and resulting shockwave had sundered numerous planets and moons, reducing the system to a turbulent veil of cold green gasses and frozen icy rock, the brooding clouds curling menacingly in an irregular gravitational pattern around the star’s superdense core. Far more interesting to the Imperium than this fairly average astral phenomenon were the raw materials unearthed during the cataclysmic collapse. Extensive surveys confirmed the abundance of metals, gasses, and minerals encased within the frozen chunks of long dead planets, and a great deal of haste was made by the Imperium in securing the system for its sheer value in resources. Piece by piece a great colonial mining facility was constructed on the outer edges of the cloud, shipped in by industrial mechanicum cruisers, guiding the enormous segments through the seas of the immaterium like stellar tugboats. In true Imperial fashion, a vast network of colonies, factoriums, shipyards, and warehouses was constructed in stoic defiance to nature’s cosmic fury, constantly abuzz with machinery, transports, and smokey fire. Slowly but surely they began their industrial conquest of the system. Response systems, defence batteries, and armed escorts all on high alert for any possible contention to their claim.

It came without warning, slipping by scouts, mining vessels, and station sensors, drifting as an asteroid on a trajectory to pass the station, considered too large for collection and tagged for excavation and demolition at a later date. Unfurling from around itself tendrils of rock and ice, the kraken revealed itself. Stone strewn cephalopod arms easily over two dozen kilometres in length, stretched out towards a section of the station and began entangling around it. Segments and habitation pods crumpled and burning atmosphere vented as the bouldered hide of the ancient beast’s limbs ground and twisted as they coiled, pulling the monster toward its prey. Imperial ships and defences harried the beast with ship to ship torpedoes, which blew out harmless chunks, and las cannon beams, which raked painlessly across it’s rocky hide. But they were ultimately unable to employ the prow lances and macro cannons needed to harm it. Their fear of bringing excessive ruin and death down upon the already wounded station staying the order to obliterate the immobile beast. Enraged by the disturbance of it’s feeding the kraken raised its appendages and ensnared several of the aggressors, plucking the ships from the void and thrashing them with even greater violence. Detaching itself from the station it delved back into the depths of the asteroid field, not with the haste of a foiled predator, but the lazy contentment of a beast abandoning a carcass, the mauled Imperial vessels trailing behind it in the tangle of its arms.

The VIIIth Legion were mid warp transit when their astropathic choir began to scream. It was a broad beacon of distress, a call for aid, a monster to slay. The Primarch Nautis Soltair, King of Osyris, and XVIth son of the Emperor, heeded their call. Recently bought into the realm of the Imperium and united with his legion from the frozen backwater of his origin, he was eager to prove himself, as too were the VIIIth legion. Unfortunately the Grey Harbingers had earned themselves a reputation thus far as a callus and reckless legion, a reputation that was in truth not undeserved. It was their hope after the reunification with their primarch, and serving and learning under his superhuman tutelage, that their time for glory would come. Indeed, Nautis planned on testing his legion, and a hunt was a perfect rite of passage for them.
Re-plotting their course the legion made a direct line for the coordinates encoded in the signal’s message. Nautis declared that a response confirmation was in order, and broadcast his words not only to those seeking aid, but upon the same general waves as the beacon had come so that all might hear it, and know.

“We are the Eighth Legion, the Grey Harbingers, and we have heard your screams echoing across the pitch dark of endless night. I am Nautis Soltair, the Tempest Lord, and I come to kill your monster!”

He had no fear of warp travel, he had no fear at all. But Nautis grit his teeth as he always did when the warp burst into realspace, nonlight and extraspectral colour bleeding into the wound inflicted upon existence, dissolving into it and disappearing as a droplet of blood in a lake. The 11th expeditionary fleet, flagshipped by the Gloriana class battleship the Yormundr, spilled into void above X91-Delta. As the Immaterium re-knit itself back out of existence the Primarch’s jaw unclenched, his attention now fully on the immediate situation. The kraken had returned to wreak holy havoc on the station and it’s defenders, no longer seeking to feed, but fully enraged by the Imperial’s aggression toward its intent to graze upon the station’s hull and infrastructure. Lance batteries charging, as soon as their fleet was within range of the beast the cruisers and battleships of the VIIIth legion opened fire. Nautis, who’d been watching the conflict on approach, noted the care and tact taken by the defence vessels, and their insistent use of small weapons fire. Nautis was no fool, he was a Primarch and Warrior King of Osyris, and his priorities were a dimension apart from that of mortal men. He ordered a ceasefire of all main batteries and macroweapons, much to the chagrin of First Chieftain Mallius Hargrave, and to the relief of the defenders.

The kraken had been struck a wound, and the legion likely would have killed it but for the Primarch’s command. It fled once more into the asteroid field, with evident haste this time, a trail of spinning debris and carnage in its wake. First Chief Hargrave could not resist the temptation to confront his Lord about the foolishness apparent in his choice. “Is this to be the honour of the VIIIth, Kroyl ov Osyr?” Calling the Primarch by his home-born title as King of Osyris “Ha! When you capitulate to the baying of the weak all you’ll get is meagre praise in the end! Now there is a beast on the loose when we shoul-” Nautis angrily swatted is second in command with an open palm at this questioning of his dominance, bringing the grizzled veteran to a knee in spite of his terminator armour. “I do not care for the baying of the weak, nor meagre praise, Mallius. They might remember the VIIIth coming to their aid, but who else? No, this is far more important than overwhelming force, or any parting appreciation. This is a hunt! One to be remembered for as long as the legion lives.”

It was the Tempest Lord’s first experience piloting battleships and swarms of strike cruisers through such a dangerous environment of the endless night, however, he found the experience to be none too dissimilar from captaining ships through the turbulent, ice-burg laden waters of Osyris. Albeit with an additional spatial dimension to account for. He lead them on a winding path through the system in pursuit of the beast. There, a rock tumbling out of place, and there, stray debris. Eventually vox chatter dropped to near silent across the entire fleet, the astartes of the VIIIth beginning to see as their Primarch did, their usual raucous and bellicose mannerisms giving way to predatory silence and hunter instinct. It was a taut calmness with the underlying threat of violence, like an arrow nocked and drawn, waiting for release. It was a quiet that focused the legion’s killer instinct, rather than the usual unstable restlessness, seeking to explode into aggression.

Eventually static burst through the vox followed by shouts of alarm, rending the silence. An outlying formation of cruisers had made unexpected contact and come under attack. Hololith projectors displayed the vessels rolling in space, tendrils binding two of them close to the unmistakable form of a kraken, while the others ships were being battered and lashed. Mallius prepared to order the cruisers still free to fire upon their foe, sacrificing their fellows in the process and bidding them a worthy death, but Nautis stayed the order. “Why Lord!? I do not understand, our prey is here! The strong live and the weak perish, it is the way of things.” Nautis chuckled with the boom of distant thunder “You are right, Mallius, but also wrong. Impatience has clouded how you see things, how you experience things. Look again...” the Primarch gestured at the monitors.

Though the beast dwarfed the cruisers, it was a far-cry in scale from the monster they’d driven from the mining colony. This was not their prey, an infant perhaps? Regardless, it held two of their ships in its deadly clutches. The kraken drew in the captured cruisers who’d powered down their impulse engines and stopped struggling. It ceased its constrictions as it began to gnaw on the ship’s armour, sparing the two vessels a potential broken spine in exchange for a scarred hull. Instead of attempting to struggle free, they spilled the contents of their hangers and embarkation decks out onto the kraken’s underside. Land raiders, and terminator heavy infantry formed up and marched across the beasts surface. Meanwhile fireraptors and the cruisers still afforded their freedom harried the creature from afar. Its tendrils which would otherwise be busy raking at the invading force on its hide, stretched up to lash and grasp at the circling ships, but they remained tantalisingly out of range. Uncontested, the land raiders deployed troops at the base of tentacles which still ensnared their vessels, and began to lay charges.

Retreating back to their ships, the astartes of the cruisers Nocte Perfuro, and the newly refurbished Kjor’unger, braced for detonation. With a crack that sent a visible shockwave rippling through the ice-crystal cloud, the kraken was rent from several of its arms. There was no blood, but the growing space between the now freed and fleeing cruisers and the stunned and injured kraken was strewn with the rocky remnants of its hide, and the sodden, earthy hunks of its meat. An outstretched tentacle still leashed the Nocte Perfuro to the wounded creature, but the colossal reach of its arms allowed the cruiser distance enough to turn and deliver a full broadside into the kraken’s screaming maw. The beast was dead, but the 11th expeditionary fleet turned away, and the party pressed on. Resuming the hunt for their true prey.

A great blizzard roiled up before them, a stellar storm-wall ringing the star system amidst the frozen asteroid field. The darkened plumes of ice and gasses looming like some fabled eldritch nightmare of olden tales, shocks of lightning cascading across it’s edges as thick clouds ripped open with the jagged impression of teeth and claws. The Tempest Lord, unperturbed by the sheer display of natural fury, led the VIIIth legion forward into the storm. His Gloriana class battleship Yormundr, at the fore of their expedition. Through the nebulous, icy hurricane of electrochemical and gravitational turbulence, Nautis plied his years on the seas of Osyris and, combined with his Primarch intuition, navigated a path through the storm.

The wild voyage was not without loses. The Nocte Perfuro, among a number of other ships, succumbed to the storm’s wrath, their fiery orange death plumes swept away immediately after they bloomed. Piercing through the maelstrom in a tight formation, the fleet burst through the other side of the cloud-wall, streams of vapour clinging to them and trailing behind as though unwilling to allow them freedom. By now none save Nautis Soltair knew where in this forsaken system they truly were, the astropaths and navigators still reeling from the psykic strain of the storm. They faced an area devoid of asteroids. Untouched as of yet by Imperial mining efforts, it seemed the beast had spent some time feeding here, perhaps centuries, and most debris in the area were but small fragmentary pieces. Their suspicions were confirmed after rudimentary scans identified the nature of the few objects adrift in the clearing, the shattered fragments of Imperial ships. It seems the VIIIth Legion had found the creature’s lair. Alarms suddenly blared as something else was detected, something else emerging from the storm behind them. It was the void kraken.

Immediately at their back, with arms splayed reaching easily three times the length of the Yormundr and silhouetted in the lightning light of the storm, the sight held the breath of every Astartes who cast his gaze upon it. Nautis grit his teeth once more at the recollection of memories stirred by the potent and disturbing imagery. Memories of Osyr and deep, dark waters. drawing an axe from his belt, the primarch stormed wordlessly from the command bridge, leaving Hargrave in his place. The void kraken was unrelenting. No longer content to feed, nor simply attempting to defend itself, the beast was wounded, cornered, and completely enraged. Countless tendrils sprung out to ensnare and destroy, smashing several ships into each other, and at least two more being flung, spinning back into the roiling maw of the storm-wall. The Yormundr was one of the ensnared, but even in the kraken’s grasp, the blade-tipped prow was down-turned and pointed directly at the beast’s maw. Hargrave gave no hesitation, the motion more akin to instinct than thought, he ordered all thrusters to burn at maximum impulse. Nautis had already left the ship by the time it began to fall. He watched it plummet towards the creature from the stormbird’s viewport, the beasts tendrils bunching up around the ship in a vain attempt to halt its thrust. A fierce grin was painted across the primarch’s face as he watched the bladed prow split clean through the rocky exterior of the beast, gouging a craterous valley between two of its major arms and along the creature’s flank. The Yormundr was free, if somewhat battered, and Nautis ordered the stormbird to move in for the final strike as he prepared his equipment.

Booming across the vox, over the shouts of ship-to-ship communications and the ear-splitting screech of the Kraken’s roar reverberated through the ice cloud, the VIIIth primarch spoke to his legion. “This is the glory of the VIIIth my sons! This is the glory of the hunt! You have followed me far from the honoured lines of battle, but you have more than earned your honour here today! Now I... Nautis Soltair! Lord of Tempests and Primarch of the VIIIth Legion! Shall deliver the killing blow!!”

The Stormbird swooped in low as though preparing to land. Seizing the moment as the void kraken was still stunned by it’s devastating wound, it hovered before one of the beast’s gargantuan yellow eyes. The horizontal slit of its pupil flitting up towards the bird-like silhouette of the craft just in time to see Nautis launch himself from it. There was no time to move, no time to stop him, and nothing between them but space. Nautis thrust with his left arm, a long steel barb of seemingly crude design, and anchored himself to the soft tissue of the beast’s eyeball. It oozed thick ichor.

Holding onto the lodged harpoon so as not to float away, he began hacking and chopping his way through it’s eye. The beast shrieked again as he relentlessly gouged into its weak spot, globules of orange jelly oozing out into space. Its tentacles released the ships in their hold, but with the primarch upon the beast itself, there was no way the fleet could risk taking even a single shot. The legion watched helplessly from a distance as the void kraken pressed tentacles to it’s ruined eye socket, seeing to pry away the invader. But it was too late, Nautis had succeeded and was now working his way through the beast’s colossal brain, his snarling chainaxe chewing its grey matter to a damp paste.

Deep within the monster’s own brain cavity, Nautis came upon a mass of nerves and tissues which could only be it’s cerebral cord. Here the hunter king placed a mass of melta and demolition charges, enough to level a city spire, and set the detonation timer. Bolting back down his gore-slicked path with all the speed of a demi-god, nautis scooped up his harpoon as he approached the exit and made a blind leap from the empty eye socket. Gliding peacefully through silent space for only a moment he thrust the harpoon forward again once more, this time it’s barbed head biting deep into the armoured hull of the stormbird while it roared past. As the transport carried the primarch to safety, the rocky hide covering the kraken’s head turned molten, and then exploded.

The VIIIth Legion would be lauded for this victory until their dying day, and upon them was granted much praise and many gifts. The greatest of which was forged by the citizens of the X91-Delta mining colony, they affixed upon the legion’s flagship a new prow, this one forged from the diamond-hard serrated beak of the great void kraken they’d slain. The effect granting the Yormundr a ferocious maw all of its own. In addition, Nautis Soltair bestowed upon them a new namesake, both in representation of their victory here above X91-Delta, and of their reincarnation as a legion of tempered and honourable warriors. From that glorious day, till darker ones to come, VIIIth Legion would be known as the Kraken Lords.