Description

Execution Hour is Gordon Rennie's 2001 novel set during the Gothic War, the vast naval conflict between the Imperium and Abaddon's forces, following Captain Leoten Semper and the crew of the Imperial cruiser Lord Solar Macharius. As the Black Crusade tears through the Gothic Sector, the Imperial Navy is forced into a desperate struggle to contain the Chaos fleet, with Semper and his inexperienced crew thrown into the fighting aboard a warship thousands of lives depend upon. The Macharius faces increasingly powerful Chaos warships as Imperial forces attempt to hold the sector against Abaddon's advance, including the terrifying Planet Killer, while Semper must learn to command under the pressure of a war in which entire worlds and fleets can be sacrificed for strategic advantage. Based on the Battlefleet Gothic tabletop game, the novel offers an unusually focused view of the Imperial Navy, combining fleet-scale warfare with the claustrophobic reality of life aboard a vast warship and the personal struggles of the people fighting within it.