Battle of Ghodba
The Battle of Ghodba was a battle between the Imperium and Tyranids in 343.M41.[1]
Overview
When Hive Fleet Moloch invaded the weapons testing planet of Ghodba, the Tyranids found that the planet had a vicious bite of its own. Everything from unclassified super-heavy war engines to gatling Macrocannons was employed by the Tech-Priest Enginseers that supervised the planet’s defences, with entire phalanxes of Baneblades and Shadowswords leading each charge against Moloch’s many leader-beasts. Yet though Ghodba’s surface was soon thick with Tyranid corpses, reinforcements could not reach the planet for months at best. The war of attrition started to tip in favour of the xenos invaders. The last Steel Fury squadron, the Swords of Ghodba, was crippled by sustained Bio-cannon fire and swiftly overrun by numberless gaunts. Its crew commended their souls to the Emperor, taking up their laspistols and autoguns and preparing for a last stand. Upon throwing open the hatches of their mobile fortresses, the crew of the Swords were stunned to see squad after squad of black-clad Space Marines forming a cordon around their tanks, the relentless pounding of their bolters and the billowing flames of their heavy weapons blasting back the Hormagaunts scuttling around them.[1]
The crew bailed out, their saviours maintaining the cordon around them as they fought across three miles of corpse-strewn battleground to reach a squadron of Doomhammers, whose crew had been slain by Lictor attacks. With the assassin-beasts blasted apart by pinpoint volleys from their Astartes escort, the crew of the Swords quickly familiarised themselves with the weapon suites of the Doomhammers and rejoined the fight. The introduction of three more super-heavy tanks and almost a hundred Space Marines tipped fate in favour of the Imperium. The invading swarm was shattered, dispersed, and hunted to extinction, forcing the rest of Hive Fleet Moloch to seek its prey elsewhere.[1]
Sources
- 1: Codex: Legion of the Damned (E-Book) — A Legion Lost
