Hunting of the Ak'Haireth
The Hunting of the Ak'Haireth was a campaign waged by the Alpha Legion during the Great Crusade.[1]
Overview
The campaign was a genocidal operation against the Ak'Haireth, a fungoid predatory parasitic lifeform whose sentience was only acquired from operating as psychically interwoven gestalt blooms, and whose existence was fuelled by the slow and agonizingly painful siphoning of nutrition from living animals. The Ak'Haireth, or 'Bone Drinkers', had been subject to extermination campaigns by the Space Wolves and Night Lords already, but the stubborn aliens endured. By 986.M30, reports that the Ak'Haireth were again dangerously growing in strength near Olmec drew concern in the fledgling Imperium. The Alpha Legion, only just reunited with their Primarch Alpharius, was assigned to the xenocide.[1]
Alpharius divided much of his fleet into hunter-killer squadrons to hunt down the Ak'Haireth-infested ships across the void near Olmec, then analyzed previous patterns of infestation and quickly reasoned that some fearful human civilization were giving up their own as tribute to the aliens. The Alpha Legion used these traitors to their advantage, penetrating these conspiratorial circles with their own agents and gathering intelligence. These insider agents were able to move the alien blooms into large concentrations which were then annihilated by the Legion's Cyclonic Torpedoes while the infested ships were boarded and the aliens wiped out in close combat.[1]
The Legion then laid a brutal punishment on the alien collaborators, slaying all of their rulers and poisoning their water or destabilizing their seismic patterns. But despite the Legion's vengeance the Ak'Haireth managed to barely avoid extinction, but Alpharius had foreseen this and in cooperation with the Magos Biologis of the Adeptus Mechanicus a deadly biological weapon was created. Alpharius infected human inhabitants of worlds he surmised would be targeted by the aliens. 7% of humans infected with the virus died, but the Ak'Haireth species was caught unawares and finally driven to extinction.[1]
See also
Sources
- 1: The Horus Heresy Book Three - Extermination, pgs. 102–103
