[Gaunt's Ghosts] - Fall of Malvolion by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Tyranids Warhammer 40K
Published: 2012-01-22T09:17:49+00:00

The evac convoy was two hours out from 132/5 when they saw the change in weather patterns a hundred kilometres ahead. A dark stain, like a wash of thunderheads, was bruising the distance, widening with every passing moment.

From the cab of unit 177, Grauss saw the blue skies fill with dark-bellied clouds. His guts tightened. Around the black stain in the distance, the weather was being tormented in an ever-expanding radius. Frothing clouds whirled cyclonically like blast ripples from the ominous darkness. Drizzles of rain, thick with dingy fluid and what seemed like seed-pods, pelted down. The two kilometre long convoy switched on their headlights almost as one, and wipers began to beat.

"What the hell is this?" asked Trooper Femlyn, riding shotgun next to Grauss, an autogun across his lap.

"Turn West! Turn West!" Colonel Tiegl's voice rattled over the inter-vehicle com. The convoy, ungainly and slow to respond, shunted and churned as it tried to make the new heading.

The air was sweet and hot, Grauss realised. It smelled like the pump station hot-house.

Two trucks overturned on the trackway, slumping into ruts as they tried to turn. Another three broke axles and were stranded. Tiegl left them and their screaming occupants behind.

"Nacine Plain has gone!" he yelled into his vox-horn. "Our only hope is the main hive at Malvo Height! Turn West!"

Grauss looked at his chart-plate. Malvo Height was a thousand kilometres away to the West.

They'd never reach it. Never.

He put his foot down anyway.

Grizmund's armour was running hard from the filth storm that expanded ever outwards from the Nacine Plain. All hope of reaching the evac convoy from 132/5 was gone. All hope was gone. Period.

He turned his vehicles to meet the onrush. It was a slow business, because the torrential rain had turned the dry, stony fields to mud and tangles of vegetation were growing up out of it even as he watched. In the space of fifteen minutes a dry, arid upland had turned into a mossy, fern-filled swamp. Another hour, and it would be a thick, impenetrable jungle of creepers and moulds, spilling outwards and consuming the dry land.

Grizmund didn't have an hour, and would never see that floral conquest. His tank guns roared up into the dense packs of flying things that swooped from the staining sky. Burning, membranous creatures dropped to the ground or were annihilated in the air.

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