The Dark Eldar fleet on the Void Battlefield was headed for defeat.
The Black Thorn Conspiracy's tactics were arrogant.
They had used their superior mobility to break through the expeditionary fleet's defenses, staking everything on a boarding decapitation strike.
Such madness was like gambling.
If they won, they could feast to their hearts' content and harvest a leaderless fleet.
If the boarding operation failed, they would be wiped out to the last ship.
The expeditionary force had far more warships than the Dark Eldar.
After their boarding decapitation strike failed and their own flagship—the Black Thorn—was counter-boarded by the humans,
the ships found themselves surrounded, enemies on all sides, unable even to flee.
Missiles and beams filled the void, turning it into a bloody slaughterhouse.
Void mines scattered through space floated silently in the darkness, cutting off the Dark Eldar fleet's escape routes.
The moment they came into contact, they would trigger a chain detonation. Their power was terrifying, easily destroying a warship's heavy armor.
One Spirit-bone Warship accidentally hit a mine while trying to escape, crippling its engines.
The expeditionary fleet seized the opportunity and unleashed shells and Lances of Light upon that Spirit-bone Warship.
The Spirit-bone Warship endured the bombardment for a full twenty seconds.
As flames across its hull converged into a massive pillar of fire and erupted outward, its keel snapped.
A second later, the Spirit-bone Warship's reactor exploded.
A miniature sun enveloped the entire vessel in a perfectly formed yellow sphere.
Observation windows on nearby ships had to activate their light-filtering protocols to block out the glare.
They also maneuvered away from the debris flung out by the Spirit-bone Warship's explosion.
The other Spirit-bone Warships were likewise surrounded by the Imperial fleet with overwhelming force and had nowhere to run.
The Black Thorn hung motionless