This quick fic had been inspired by the one found on Incunabulum, so go check out the original!
The trio of Aquila landers – all Verudian pattern, well known for its swiftness – hovered over the landing pad, its arrival heralded not only by the whine of its engines, but also by the halo of dust that now spread to whip at the observers that waited for it.
A ramp dropped, disgorging the cargo of the lander.
Men. Machines.
The finest of the Imperium's many hunters.
Among them stood sentries, trackers, scouts. Drawn from all around the Imperium's great borders, each was used to seeking their prey, hunting them for days, weeks, perhaps months on end. Every hour of which served to ensure that they could deliver a single slug of metal, perhaps not much larger than the tip of a man's pinky finger (although with a few of them, said pinky was rather large), to a precise location that would turn the tide of war, change the fate of an entire planet, and decide victory or defeat for millions.
"But... will this all be enough?" Asked the man.
"They shall have to be enough." Answered the woman.
At the very least, this ragged bunch of semi-savages and noble hunters were disciplined. Each man and woman and machine of the Imperium catered to their own equipment with the reverence that rivaled the machine priests that walked amongst them, perhaps sulking at their counterparts and the moer unruly ones throwing a few jeers around, but showing nothing in the way of open hostility. A powder keg, sure, but the fuse was still unlit.
The hunt was on.
For days, they scoured this place; it was a floating continent of ice, and every day new cracks were formed, and new holes were to be explored. Sensor stakes were placed far and wide, creating a network of mechanical eyes and ears that picked up even the falling snow and reported it back. Ice warriors were sent into the darkest depths of the glacial caverns, while hunters more quiet hunkered down and hoped their hides would spot the thing they were hunting.
It had taken millennia since the Great Crusade for this place to re-form. Great ice floes had been carved up and taken with the massive colony ships, to supply the water needed for such journeys.
A few centuries ago, the Inquisition had deployed at a base here, on Mother Terra herself. This was their sanctuary for the relics and most holy of items, no longer safe enough to be kept out in the far-flung stars, were now stored here, in this miniature palace set in the middle of an inhospitable ice field.
Something haunted this place. Nobody knew what. Perhaps it was a terror that had been unleashed during the Golden Age of Mankind. Perhaps it was simply a daemon, somehow able to set foot on the most holy of places.
So it would be hunted down.
For days, weeks, months they searched; in this place, the sun would go down for half a cycle at a time. During the depths of this eternal night,the hunters would lay up, pushed to the edges of their endurance (or, in the case of the Valhallan hunters, putting on an extra shirt over their singlets. That was truly a sign of how cold things got out there).
The man sighed. He had awoken this morning, and felt the need to shoot somebody.
Today was the day that marked a year since the beginning of this haunting, where each and every Inquisitor had been visited by this phantom, even in the most secure of rooms, in the most private of places. As they had slept, something had approached. Something had intruded upon the most sacred of grounds, and done so undetected.
He looked at the small, black lump of soiled coal on his bed.
In the distance, the daemon jeered at him in its strange laughter, as others found themselves clutching at the unearthly gifts, sometimes finding them in the socks that had been hung up to dry.
Ho. Ho. Ho.
Merry Christmas!