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Slaughter at Giant's Coffin - Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Slaughter at Giant's Coffin - Extract

EVACUATED

From out of the darkness, they came.

The blunted prow of the battle-barge Heart of Cronus split the veil of reality first, the strange angle of her re-entry a testament to the haste with which she had been hurled into the warp. The great ship juddered and pitched to starboard with the sudden deceleration, even as her escort frigates began to emerge about her. Strike cruisers and destroyers all jostled for the clear void as they tumbled from the empyrean, proximity alarms wailing and countless helmsmen fighting to bring their vessels back under control.

It was shambolic. Frantic.

Mortal voices, strained by emotion, echoed back and forth across the open vox; each shipmaster cursed the apparent ineptitude of his peers as the fleet spread out into what might pass for an operational grouping.

Nonetheless, in the fierce light of the Miral star, their transhuman masters tried to carry themselves with as much dignity as they could muster. To anyone who might have been watching, it was a most unusual sight – that of a mighty Space Marine Chapter humbled and brought low by its foes, its brothers resisting the urge to lash out at one another in despair.

Though there had been many amongst them who had truly believed that such a day would never come, the gaze of the Great Devourer had settled upon the galaxy once more. A new wave of tyranid hive fleets had crept into the Eastern Fringe under the cover of unprecedented human unrest, and with the return of the xenos had come the horrifying realisation that in fact mankind might never truly be rid of them.

And now, Sotha was no more.

Great and noble Sotha. The fortress-monastery at Mount Pharos. All gone – consumed by the foul, living tide of Hive Fleet Kraken.

But, like little more than ghostly shadows of their former selves, the Scythes of the Emperor lived on. They reeled from the death of their home world in a way that few beyond the Adeptus Astartes could ever truly appreciate.

The loss was shameful. It was inexcusable.

It had wounded them more deeply than anything else ever could.

The alert klaxons on the bridge were finally silenced as the Heart of Cronus swung into its high anchor approach. The acrid tang of burned-out circuits hung in the stagnant air, the main filtration system having been one of the many lost to the fire, and the deck plates around the command throne were sticky with retardant foam residue. Ragged and scorched crewmen, most still wearing their emergency breath-masks, blearily clung to their duties.

With a tortured grind of gears, the central blast doors slid open to reveal the strobing darkness of the corridors beyond, and Captain Thracian limped through. His proud, transhuman features were marred by an expression of utter defeat.

‘Fleet Master Zebulon is dead,’ he announced, coldly. ‘My brother-captain’s injuries were too severe. There was nothing they could do.’

Thracian’s black-and-gold power armour was scorched, and his cloak hung in tatters behind him. Each laboured stride sent dull pain shooting up his right side. As he passed the empty throne, he spared it only a single reluctant glance.

‘Shipmaster Devanti’s condition is critical, but he lives.’

The news brought a stunned silence to the human crew. It was not unexpected, but the reality of hearing it from a senior Chapter officer took it from a fearful rumour to stark, inescapable fact. Thracian wondered how many more truths would make that transition in the minutes, hours and days to come, under the circumstances.

He halted before the cracked, static-laced screens of the forward oculus. The left-hand pane was dead. So were the hololithic overlay projectors. ‘Tactical report,’ he called out to no one in particular, tying back the lank strands of his hair. ‘This is not my ship, but I would have a full appraisal of our location and disposition.’

A female serf-lieutenant with a hastily bandaged gash across her forehead stepped forwards, a data-slate in hand. Before the armoured Space Marine, she looked even more fragile and haggard, but her manner was firm.

‘We have arrived at the Miral System, my lord, as per Captain Zebulon’s original order. Seems we gave the local monitor patrols quite a scare – they weren’t expecting us, and our dispersal pattern was… a little sloppy. As a formality, they’re relaying our ident-codes to the Militarum outpost on the second planet now, for verification. We’re updating our horologs to the local mean time, although that loses us something like nine weeks, even after relativity adjustment.’

‘And how many ships made the jump with us?’

‘Information is still sketchy. We estimate no more than twenty-five vessels, based on the faint carrier signal transmissions from beyond the system-edge. About a third of them are apparently drifting without power, or have zero vox-capability after making the translation.’

Thracian furrowed his brow, prickling the superficial burns on the side of his face. ‘Only twenty-five. Less than a quarter of the Chapter fleet.’

The lieutenant nodded wearily, scrolling through the numbers. ‘Aye, lord. We had visual contact with at least another twelve before we entered the warp, but they are presently unaccounted for. It’s possible that…’ She sniffed, wiping dried blood from her top lip. ‘It’s possible that some may yet find their way here, but without long-range comms we’ll never know where the rest might end up.’

Glancing up at the crazed oculus, Thracian lowered his voice a little. ‘And what of the xenos hive ships? Could they have followed us?’

‘Highly unlikely, my lord, although we do have reports from the Dromea Bathos, the Pale Rider and the strike cruiser Atreides of continued action against tyranid boarders.’ The lieutenant paused for a moment, then continued. ‘Forgive my boldness, but Brother-Codicier Spiridonas might be better able to advise you on the matter of further pursuit.’

‘Aye. Perhaps.’

A few muted cries of alarm went up across the bridge. Out beyond the viewports, two of the stricken Chapter vessels – by their markings, the Ionia and the listing, battle-scarred destroyer Light of the Pharos – had drifted too close together. Thracian watched as the Pharos collided with the other ship, its dorsal ridge tearing a hole in her flank and spilling debris and flash-frozen atmosphere into the void. Other vessels close to the impact began to pull away, their shipmasters wary of being drawn into a cascading wreckage storm.

Cursing, he returned his attention to the fragile-looking lieutenant.

‘What is your name and rank designation?’

She straightened a little, although Thracian noted that she stopped short of actually standing to attention.

‘Hannelore, my lord. Serf-lieutenant, second class.’

‘You know this ship, Lieutenant Hannelore. Take me to the Navigator chambers.’

The undercroft spaces of the Pale Rider had become a charnel house. The stench of slaughter was heavy in the air, carrying with it the acidic reek of xenos bio-weapon discharge and other, even less wholesome smells. The ship had suffered badly at the teeth and claws of the invaders, though her crew were exceedingly lucky to be counted among those who had managed to flee the death of Sotha.

It was not clean fighting. It was cramped, and chaotic, and far too many had died, for so little gain. Fatigue dragging at his limbs, Culmonios shook the blood and ragged flesh from the teeth of his chainsword before whirling around to hack into another of the scuttling beasts as it leapt for him.

‘Brother,’ came a heaving, breathless voice over the short-range vox, ‘this is Nimeon. We have them contained. Port side, compartment nine.’

Culmonios battered the creature down, wrenching the gun-analogue from its forelimbs and ramming it over and over into the thing’s screeching face. His own pistol had long since run dry. There had, simply, been too many of them.

He threw the bio-weapon aside and grabbed the tyranid creature by the throat. It thrashed and snapped at him, until he broke its spine over his knee.

Hauling himself back to his feet with a wordless cry of exertion, took a splattering hit to the breastplate as he charged the last of their numbers, though the corrosive, organic projectile – whatever it was – did not pierce the ceramite. The pair of skulking creatures hissed at him as he closed the distance, trying to scramble away over the mounds of their dead kin, but Culmonios would not be denied. He slammed bodily into the first, sending it sprawling to the deck where he shattered its chitin-crested skull beneath his armoured heel.

With a bestial shriek the last creature tried to raise its weapon, but Culmonios grabbed its open jaw and sheathed his chainsword in its gullet with one savage thrust. The tyranid twitched as it died, gagging on the razor-sharp teeth of the blade.

‘Culmonios, are you receiving? Unknown hostiles were reported mass–’

‘Hunter-slayers,’ he growled. His twin heartbeats thundered in his ears. ‘Forty-plus confirmed kills. This deck is cleansed.’

‘Deck seventeen cleansed, aye. Heading to your position now. Are the others still with you?’

‘Negative. They are all gone.’

He ripped the chainsword free, and let the alien corpse crash to the deck. The blade rattled disappointingly, the mechanism evidently fouled by overuse in the past few hours, but Culmonios could only stare down at the steaming bone-case of the tyranid’s fallen weapon.

The damned thing had an eye. It stared back at him, the slit-pupil responding reflexively to the erratic flicker of the lumens overhead.

Disgust rose in his gorge. Disgust, and rage, and sorrow.

‘You vile, unworthy abominations,’ he muttered behind his helm visor. ‘How did your misbegotten kind ever take the home world?’

There was something in that vacant, alien gaze. Something that was not merely a weapon, not merely a tool. Culmonios gritted his teeth and, with one thumb, gouged out the eye and crushed it in the palm of his gauntlet.

He came up slowly, his hands trembling. Casting about the compartment, he took in the nightmarish scene that lay all around. A tableau of dead faces and spilled blood. Here and there, the bulky silhouette of a fallen Chapter brother. Spent bolter casings. Arcs of red splattered across the bulkheads, in some places right up to the vaulted ceiling. The deck plates were slick with gore, the remains of human and xenos alike hopelessly mingled.

It would all have to be disposed of. Ejected into the void, most likely, or scoured with flame. It was an undignified end for those Imperial citizens who had already died such a poor death.

The ventral hull zones were where the fighting had been thickest, but the short-range vox was filled with reports from his surviving battle-brothers and the frigate’s serf security teams as they drove the last xenos creatures back to the outer compartments. Culmonios gathered that the fleet – if it could be considered such – had made the jump back to real space, but the translation had not even registered upon his weary senses. For him, the past hours had been filled with naught but slaughter, and the frenzied cries of the alien attackers.

He trudged back to his most prized kill, letting his chainsword clatter to the deck as he went.

The hulking corpse of a full-grown tyranid warrior lay crumpled over a handful of its lesser cousins, its spilled innards cooling, its eyes glassy and black. The beast had claimed three of his battle-brothers before he had struck it down; Gordani’s empty helm was still gripped in its claws. Culmonios knelt beside the fallen monstrosity, which in life had stood easily half as tall again as an armoured Space Marine.

‘They don’t look so big when they’re on their backs,’ came Brother Nimeon’s voice from across the compartment. Culmonios had not heard him forcing his way through the barricaded entrance, though the warrior now picked gingerly through the carnage, sweeping the lamp of his bolter left and right. ‘Oh, Holy Terra – this was another one of the refugee holds.’

Culmonios nodded solemnly. The xenos boarding parties seemed to have been drawn to the least-protected parts of the ship, like predators seeking out the weakest members of the herd.

And they had fed well. The Scythes had arrived too late.

Drawing his combat blade, Culmonios wrenched the tyranid’s head up and began to saw at the corded sinews of its neck.

‘Brother, what are you doing?’ asked Nimeon.

Culmonios did not look up. A righteous fury burned in his hearts. ‘This was the greatest of them,’ he muttered. ‘It shall serve as a warning to those that follow.’

‘I do not think the xenos can be cowed by a gibbet.’

‘Who said anything about a gibbet? This is a trophy.’

With a meaty snap, he twisted the beast’s crested skull free and let the body fall away. As he rose, he hefted the crest like a shield, testing its weight. Bloody ropes of drool still hung from the creature’s slack jaws.

Nimeon removed his helm, repulsion written clearly upon his face, but Culmonios met his gaze unwaveringly.

‘They have taken everything from us, brother, and so shall I take from them as I damn well please.’ He did not bother to clean the blood from his knife, and it slid wetly back into the sheath at his hip. ‘We will have our vengeance upon the Kraken, one foul beast at a time.’

Spiridonas lay amidst the tangled cables of the control blister, his muscular chest heaving. His bare arms and hands were wound up in the psi-conductive mechanism, and a crystalline hood had been forced over his broad skull, though the webbing had evidently torn as a result. His eyes were screwed closed, and had been for a good while.

Brother Machaon knelt beside him, one gauntleted hand upon the Librarian’s shoulder.

‘Who was with him during the voyage?’

The two armoured serfs at his back shuffled warily, their lascarbines clutched in unsteady hands. ‘No one, my lord,’ one of them replied. ‘He ordered us all to leave, after the…’

His words trailed off, and he nodded to the four bodies that lay beneath a bloody tarpaulin beside the entrance hatch.

‘There were rumours, my lord, from when the xenos attacked. Madness. Murder. He said he did not need the distraction of mortal minds nearby.’

Machaon frowned. ‘Someone should have been with him.’

He selected a muscle relaxant dosage from his narthecium, and slid the needle into Spiridonas’ taut forearm. The Librarian sagged a little, though he continued to grind his teeth as he gasped down each laboured breath.

The second human stiffened, and put a finger to the vox-bead in his ear. ‘My lord Apothecary – Captain Thracian is demanding entrance to the Navigator chambers. How should I respond?’

‘Let him in.’

After a few moments, the hatchway mechanism was unlocked and the doors slid open. Thracian, though clearly having been wounded in the evacuation, still managed to carry himself with the prideful gait of a true-blooded Sothan. A young female officer followed in his wake, looking distinctly uncomfortable as the two of them made their way past the covered bodies. Beneath her bloody field dressing, Machaon recognised her as the replacement executive officer appointed by Shipmaster Devanti after the orbital attack.

‘Captain,’ he said with a slight incline of his head, but remaining at Spiridonas’ side. ‘I trust you know of Zebulon’s passing?’

‘I do. I was with him.’

‘My condolences, then. He was a worthy hero of the Chapter.’

Thracian nodded in acknowledgement, coming to stand over Machaon and the insensible Librarian. ‘He looks bad.’

Machaon consulted his medicae auspex. ‘He has not fared well. The exertion has darkened his thoughts.’

‘How so? Is the mind of a Librarian not trained to channel the aether?’

Somewhat surprised by the frankness of the question, and conscious of his patient’s current lack of dignity, Machaon gestured to the serf guards and the lieutenant. ‘Leave us. All of you. Bar and lock the doors. No one is to enter these chambers without my authorisation.’

The first guard looked to Thracian for confirmation, but the captain simply stared back at him, blankly. ‘Yes, my lord Apothecary,’ he mumbled.

He doesn’t know, Machaon realised. Young Thracian doesn’t yet understand the weight of the duty that may now fall to him.

Beyond the Navigator chambers, throughout the Heart of Cronus and across the scattered fleet, the Scythes of the Emperor and their Chapter thralls were in need of leadership.

And if not Thracian, who else?

Seemingly almost as an afterthought as the serfs made their way out of the chamber, the captain addressed the lieutenant. ‘Hannelore, send shuttles with repair crews to those ships still without communications. We need headcounts on the survivors, and a complete inventory of supplies. Anything and everything that the shipmasters managed to bring aboard their vessels before the jump.’

‘Yes, Captain Thracian,’ she replied.

No salute, Machaon noted as she left. When they were alone and the hatchway was sealed once more, he turned his attentions back to Spiridonas.

‘You ask if a Librarian should not be more than capable of navigating a ship through the warp, brother-captain. Yes, it is quite possible – though not bred for it like the houses of the Navis Nobilite, a trained battle-psyker might use his sight to give a vague heading, once his vessel was under way.’ He delicately ran two fingers of his gauntlet over the torn webbing of Spiridonas’ hood. ‘In truth, I doubt any but a member of the Librarius could have brought us here from Sotha.’

Thracian’s eyes followed the psi-conductor cabling up to the ports in the ceiling, then back to Spiridonas. ‘How so?’

Grimly, Machaon pointed to the bloody tarpaulin by the door.

‘The xenos are insidious foes, my lord. The mere presence of their hive fleets shrouds our psykers’ connection to the warp, and conjures terrors in the minds of those who would gaze into the abyss regardless. From what I have seen so far, the beasts of the Kraken cast a shadow far greater and far darker than any previously encountered by the Imperium. A Space Marine’s mind is more resistant to it, but by no means immune.’

Narrowing those golden eyes of his, Thracian grunted in understanding. ‘I see the truth of it. This is how they crippled our fleet, then – we had not the sight of our Navigators to guide us away, nor the minds of our astropaths to call for help.’

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only sounds in the chamber were the crackle of dead systems, and the Librarian’s laboured breathing.

At length, Machaon rose. ‘Captain, I sense an unasked question in your silence. Why did you come here?’

When he replied, Thracian spoke quietly, though Machaon was unsure who exactly he thought might overhear them. ‘I would speak to Spiridonas,’ he said. ‘My question is for him.’

‘A wasted journey then, my lord. I do not believe he even knows we are here. I do not care to imagine what alien nightmares he might have glimpsed, to bring him to this state.’

Carefully, Thracian drew his tattered cloak aside and crouched before the control blister, his armour growling in protest and the movement clearly paining his injuries. Machaon’s trained eye spotted heavy machine scraping in the ceramite, as well as buckling to several of the joints – the captain had evidently been crushed by something during the course of the evacuation. He was doing well, considering.

Thracian removed his gauntlets and leaned in towards the Librarian.

‘Brother Spiridonas, can you hear me?’

There was no response. He glanced back at Machaon. The Apothecary shrugged.

‘Brother Spiridonas,’ Thracian said again, raising his voice. ‘Have we escaped them? Will the tyranids follow us here?’

Machaon saw him place a hand upon the Codicier’s straining arm. Spiridonas’ eyes snapped open at the contact.

The Librarian screamed.

It was a sound of indescribable, maddened panic.

In an anonymous cargo hold, aboard a silently drifting frigate out beyond the edge of the Miral System, a lone Chapter brother stumbled out from between two grubby transit containers, and fell to his knees upon the deck.

His bare hands trembled. The enormity, the horror of it all, had shaken him to the core.

There was blood. His forearms were spattered with it. He dropped his broken falx blade and laughed, tears stinging his eyes.

I had to be sure, he convinced himself.

He ran his hands over his scalp, leaving sticky red smears behind.

His name was Brother Hadrios. For now, that was the only truth that he was willing to believe. His desperate laughter echoed again in the gloomy hold.

They would be coming for him soon. He had to move quickly.

Click here to buy Slaughter at Giant's Coffin.

In memory of Grandma Pat, who always ‘borrowed’ my books.
I’m still convinced she was playing Hero Quest in secret.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Roman Tishenin.
Internal illustrations by Neil Hodgson, Jon Sullivan and Tomasz Gut.

Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-561-6

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