Slaughter at Giant's Coffin (Space Marine Battles) by L J Goulding

Author:L J Goulding [Goulding, L J]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Games Workshop LTD
Published: 2017-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

HONOUR’S DEATH

The sky over the Coffin was lit by dull flashes. It was not the strobe of death world lightning amidst the growing thunderheads that preceded almost every dawn, but weapons fire from the battle still raging in the void above.

The Honour’s Might had pulled away from near orbit, the chastened shipmaster having learned the lesson of Heloth’s plunge, and speared a second hive ship before it could approach Miral Prime. This new beast was slower, more ponderous, and it had shrugged off the kind of cannon-fire trauma that had holed its cousin to the vacuum. Nonetheless, even as it disgorged swarms of smaller ship-creatures and mycetic spores, the battle-barge pounded at it, over and over, with every weapon that the gunnery officers could bring to bear. Like a carcass hauled over the butcher’s slab, the xenos leviathan was blasted apart by the sheer weight of fire, and its void-brood fell into disarray.

Again, the great battle-barge had rolled away from its headlong charge. Mardelech intended to be more diligent, this time, in mopping up the dregs – he was aware that his every deed would form part of the Chapter’s history, for good or ill. They were, all of them, writing the legend of the Giant’s Coffin with their actions, and he had informed his crew in no uncertain terms that he’d be damned if his own portion of the tale would be allowed to end in defeat.

Ironic, it was, that this was when the tyranids seemed also to begin to learn from their previous follies.

With the flagship mired in combat, it was Culmonios’ auspex operators at the bastion who noticed it first: the remaining hive ships were dividing their strength. Four of them – the fastest, by the look of it – spread out to engage the Honour’s Might as one. The remaining three, the largest and certainly the most ravenous, fell into a far longer and more sinister heading.

They had scented prey in the fleet anchored at Miral II.

Striding at Thorcyra’s side along the bare passageway that led to the upper ramparts, Culmonios listened as the Chapter Master gave his orders over the comm.

‘Signal the Atreides to break picket and reinforce the flagship. Our strike cruisers vastly outpace the xenos vessels in the deep void, but the hive ships on course for Miral Prime are less than three hours from attack range. Break two of them before they arrive, and we’ll deal with the rest of these vermin on the ground.’

Though he kept it to himself, Culmonios knew that the numbers did not add up. Any one hive ship would be enough to overwhelm the local human defenders and devour an entire world within weeks, and yet Thorcyra spoke of four as though they were already as good as destroyed and the day won.

There was no way that this would become the glorious legend that Shipmaster Mardelech imagined. It would be a joyless grind at best.

And indeed, he guessed, at worst.

Before them, the armoured doors to the battlements opened and all such thoughts fell from his mind in an instant.

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