Disclaimer: I, once again, do not own Code Geass or Warhammer 40k.
A/N: Well...uh...please don't hurt me? Real life kinda happened, but this chapter is out now, and the next one should not take as long! Hopefully...
Chapter Thirty-One: Metal Monsters, Part VI
Black Knights Dreadnought New Delhi, Dark Side of Phobos
Operation Desert Goliath H-Hour Plus Two
The noise level within any of the New Delhi's four hangar bays would have deafened anyone foolish enough to venture inside without heavy-duty hearing protection. Dozens of Excaliburs taxied into launch positions, sometimes avoiding collision by scant centimeters. Hundreds of Knightmare-suited technicians scrambled between the attack craft, some pushing ammunition trolleys laden with FLEIJA warheads and other assisting the pilots in last-minute preflight checks.
"Once we emerge from tactical jump, we're going to have ninety-six seconds to launch every Excalibur in this bay! Get 'em into the air at all costs!"
Alarm klaxons blared and the launch bay was bathed in red light as the armored shutters protecting the launch bays slid shut. A computerized female voice advised all personnel to prepare for jump.
"Attention, all Excalibur pilots, gain as much altitude and distance as you can the moment you clear the launch bay! Reassemble into your squadrons once you have reached minimum safe distance!"
"Attention all hands, t-minus thirty seconds to jump. Secure your stations."
Ecclesiarch's Audience Chamber
Ecclesiarchal Palace, Holy Terra
The sight of intruders punching through the Ecclesiarchal Palace's defenses with such contemptible ease shook even the highest Cardinals. Lesser servants of the Emperor would have abandoned their faith long ago, but the ruling body of the Adeptus Ministorum could afford to show no such weakness in such dark times. The Ecclesiarch himself sat at his throne, surrounded by the Cardinals Palatine, while the remaining Cardinals Terran were seated at the perimeter of the chamber. Hymns issued forth from ceiling-mounted speakers as the highest-ranking members of the Ecclesiarchy pronounced blessings on their defenders below.
The highest-ranking members of the Convent Prioris of the Adepta Sororitas were arrayed around the entrance of the chamber, forming a wall with their power armor and faith. The Prioress herself—Agrippa Laelia—stood at the center of the formation while her command squad flanked her. Not a single bolter was seen: no blood would be spilt within the Ecclesiarch's chambers. Holy promethium would incinerate the sinners.
"Sisters, in the name of the Emperor, burn these blasphemers!" Agrippa roared as the doors slowly swung open.
"How your zeal blinds you," the armored titan sadly muttered as he forced his way inside.
The ancient Knightmare extended its hand as gouts of flame and streams of superheated air converged upon its form. The promethium and melta blasts vanished in a flash, yet the Sisters continued firing. Each whispered prayers to the Emperor as their flamer tanks ran dry and their melta barrels melted. Still, the Shinkirou calmly intercepted each assault without so much as moving or even flinching.
"Let us see their sorcery stand before our blades!" the Prioress proclaimed as she holstered her inferno pistol and held the Brazier of Holy Fire aloft. Blessed weapons appear in the hands of her sisters as she gave the order to charge.
"That's as close as you're allowed to get," a new voice announced.
Agrippa abruptly became aware of a man in a parade ground uniform standing before her. The Prioress tightened her grip on the Brazier and pressed forward. Even if the apparition before her was not another product of the blasphemer's witchcraft, only a fool would stand before a charging Sister in power armor. She raised her weapon high and swung downwards, intent on ending the newcomer's life with a single blow. Even to her battle-trained eyes, Agrippa could not fathom when her opponent had raised his hand and stopped her attack with but a single finger.
"Be thankful that your Emperor has given us of Squad Zero strict orders to not kill you."
Each fist struck like a hammerblow, cracking and eventually shattering the Prioress' cuirass. A lightning-fast strike to the forearm robbed the limb of all feeling, and the Brazier tumbled to the ground. His brief disappearance from Agrippa' sight coincided with the Sororitas losing her balance, and the Psychic Special Warfare Operative guided her to the ground, dropping a knee onto her shoulder and twisting her arm painfully. From her vantage point on the ground, Prioress Laelia could see the members of her command squad either groaning in pain or sprawled out unconscious along the floor. Three others—two men and a woman—clad in the same uniform as her assailant pinned the few remaining conscious Sororitas to the ground.
With his green-haired accomplice—her hand at the hilt of her saber—at his side, Lelouch Lamperogue strode towards the Ecclesiarch and his assembled Cardinals. The silence within the chamber only magnified his thundering footfalls as he carefully stepped around the subdued Sisters. Several Cardinals sank into their seats, and even the Ecclesiarch seemed tiny compared to the disguised Emperor of Mankind. He stopped behind the podium at the chamber's center and gave each of the gathered clergymen a withering glare that they felt even through his helmet. He turned towards CC and gave her only a brief nod. The immortal witch visibly relaxed, her hand releasing the saber at her side and returning back into the folds of her robe.
Reaching around the back of his neck, Lelouch undid the hermetic seals of his armor with surprising dexterity. With a hiss of recycle air, the last seal popped loose. He paused for a second, both for dramatic effect and to meticulously undo the psychic wards he had placed around himself to prevent his subjects from recognizing him. With a tug, the Shinkirou's helmet came free and the Emperor's light flooded the room. The Sisters averted their eyes, with only the Psychic Special Warfare operatives pinning them to the floor preventing them from throwing themselves at Lelouch's feet and begging forgiveness.
"Now, if you'd be so kind as to tell me what you have done to my Imperium?" Lelouch coolly demanded of the Ecclesiarch as the temperature in the chamber dropped several degrees.
Black Knights Attack Craft Callsign: Fenrir Leader
Skies Above Argyre Planitia
"Those Imperial pilots are getting ripped apart down there! Fenrir Squadron, weapons free!"
In a move considered utterly suicidal by any less-experienced pilot, Fenrir Leader angled her nose almost vertically downwards and switched off her gravitric drives. Gravity wasted no time in asserting itself, and nearly ten tonnes of Knightmare and Excalibur screamed towards the Martian surface with guns blazing. Five more Fenrir Squadron pilots followed suit, their combine firepower shredding through the closely-packed enemy formations. So preoccupied were the Chaos fighter pilots with the Imperial Thunderbolts before them that they lost a dozen Swiftdeaths to the hadron barrage before noticing the Black Knights.
"Fenrir Two," Fenrir Leader glanced at her squadron uplink, "You have the second wing."
"Acknowledged," Fenrir Two's voice broke through the static, "I have the second wing."
Fenrir Leader slammed open her Excalibur's throttle and full-reversed its gravitric drives, the sudden deceleration nearly causing her to black out. The attack craft's frame creaked in protest as inertia swung its tail around, and the woman could swear that the forces would tear her Knightmare free of its mountings. Aiming her nose at a particularly thick concentration of Chaos fighters, Fenrir Leader gunned her gravitric drives and brushed aside an enemy squadron with her craft's sonic booms. Five more Excaliburs screamed through the scattered formation to form up with their wing leader, reducing the Swiftdeaths to flaming wreckage as the fighters spun out of control and collided with one another.
"The Warp storm's residual effects are still interfering with our instruments! Watch you fire!"
Autogun shells, lascannon bolts, and even the occasional air-to-air missile peppered the Black Knights' hadron fields as they fell into formation between a group of Thunderbolts and their Swiftdeath pursuers. The envy of the Imperial pilots, despite the blank flight helmets that hid their faces, was palpable to Fenrir Leader as she yawed her craft a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Flying backwards as naturally as any other craft flew forwards, the Excaliburs exacted a frightening toll on the pursuing Chaos forces with hadron bolts and FLEIJA warheads. Giving the enemy pilots no time to recover, the Black Knights fighter wing accelerated forward and bludgeoned their way through the surviving Swiftdeaths as the second Fenrir wing attacked from above.
"Emergency flash: dreadnoughts incoming! Break! Break!"
It served as a testament to their discipline that not a single Fenrir pilot stopped to question the message. They simply gunned their engines, paying their former opponents no heed as they cleared a kilometers-wide swathe of sky. The Imperial pilots quickly took the hint and engaged afterburners as the first sickly-green rift appeared in the sky.
The sonic booms of the New Delhi and a dozen Yggdrasil-class dreadnoughts jumping into the lower Martian atmosphere annihilated huge swathes of Peturabo's siege lines. The kilometer-long warships screamed through the atmosphere, their bellies glowing bright red as they unleashed salvo after salvo upon the enemy below. FLEIJA warheads and hadron beams pounded not only the Iron Warriors siege lines but also Chaos forces undertaking offensives outside the Argyre Planitia impact basin itself. Scattered anti-aircraft fire and confused aerial interceptors mounted an ineffective defense against the Black Knights speartip, the missiles and bolts and shells and the occasional unlucky Chaos aircraft splashing uselessly against the dreadnoughts' hadron fields.
As the Yggdrasil-class warships dove deeper into the Martian atmosphere, their flight decks disgorged Excaliburs by the squadron. Hundreds of the fast and deadly attack craft joined the close-fought war in the skies, quickly tipping it towards the allied forces' favor. Orbital Planetary Assault Wings silently dropped into strategic locations within the forge complex itself, the relatively-tiny Cherub Knightmares slipping past the aerial chaos unnoticed. As the dreadnoughts' massive silhouettes fell over the forge complex itself, the dagger-shaped warships disappeared in flashes of sickly green.
As the Iron Warriors struggled to restore order amongst their slave-soldier legions, an armored spearhead drove into their northern lines.
Nereidum Montes
Surface of Mars
Even before the New Delhi's bombardment ceased, dozens of Rhinoptera Missile Destroyers braved the savage skies above the Argyre quadrangle. Ion burst cannons and penta-barreled rotary railguns laid down a curtain of fire as the ray-shaped craft rapidly bled speed and altitude until they flew at a snail's pace mere meters above the ground. Armored deployment hatches slid open, disgorging squadrons of drones. As the small but deadly AI-guided discs harassed the enemy's few remaining anti-aircraft defenses, battlesuits and skimmers detached from their holding racks and plunged towards the crimson sands below. The battlesuits' retro-rockets created an enormous dust cloud that concealed themselves, the Rhinopteras, and the hundreds of Fire Warriors fast-roping down.
Before the dust had a chance to fully settle, the Fire Warriors had already fallen into immaculate firing lines. A drawn-out rip followed by a sharp crack signaled their first volley, the long streams of plasma literally cutting through the poorly-armored Chaos slave-soldiers. The closest trenches abandoned any attempts to turn their support weapons around and outright routed, yet the Tau offered no quarter: the Shas'la ordered the second volley into the backs of the retreating cultists. Crisis suits descended from above, roasting many with their jets and even more with gouts of white-hit plasma.
"Press the advantage! All Fire Warrior teams, maintain formation and fire at will!"
Just as many slave-soldiers fell to the bolters of Iron Warriors struggling to restore order as to the Tau ion rifles. One of the Rhinopteras remained half a kilometer out, serving as a firing platform for Pathfinder snipers to take out officers, Space Marines, and anyone else that seemed on the verge of rallying the enemy forces. A guttural roar filled the air as Kroot carnivore squads effortlessly scythed through the remaining cannon fodder, and the trenches devolved into a bayonet-to-bayonet bloodbath as hardened veterans rushed forward to defend the siege weaponry. The ground shook as Fusillade battlesuits pounded the fortifications with railguns and missiles.
It spoke much to the discipline of the Fire Warriors that none so much as flinched when Chaos armor began cresting the nearby ridge. None fell out of line or even so much as reacted when a shell found its mark, punching through the thick frontal iridium armor of a Crisis suit and reducing it to twisted scrap. Pathfinder railguns quickly switched over to targeting anything that resembled a rangefinder or a spotter, severely reducing the accuracy of the mortar volleys that preceded the armored assault. With the sheer number of shells fired, some inevitably found their mark, and the Fire Warriors simply moved their dead aside and stepped forward to replace the gaps in their lines.
"Draw the Fusillades and the Fire Warriors back! I want Crisis teams pressing the enemy tanks!"
Robbed of a stable firing platform when they uprooted, the Fusillades nevertheless provided inaccurate but deadly salvos to cover the retreating Fire Warriors. The ion rifle volleys never ceased as specialized tank-hunting Crisis suits roared overhead and fell upon the unprepared Chaos armor. Several Tau pilot used enemy tanks as impromptu landing pads, using their battlesuits' mass to crash through the lightly-protected tops and crushing the crews within. As the Crisis suits ravaged the Iron Warriors armored formations, stealthsuit teams crept forward and set explosives at strategic points along the fortifications.
Though the Crisis suit pilots fought ferociously, they were slowly crushed under the weight of numbers. As Chaos forces finally recovered from the dual shocks of the Black Knights' aerial bombardment and the Tau assault, wave after wave of slave-soldiers and armored vehicles began pouring in to reinforce the failing flank. The Fire Warriors finally routed as an assault line of Hellhounds rammed through the melee, crushing cultists and Tau and Kroot alike under their treads, and doused the firing lines with white-hot promethium as return fire uselessly bounced off their armor.
"All forces, fall back! Fall back!"
"This is Ius Imperatoris Wing to the Tau commander. We've opened a corridor through the enemy fighter screen and are patched into your Markerlight network. Just tell us where you want us."
The enemy armor evaporated gratifyingly quickly under the sustained bombardment of several dozen Vulture gunships. Cultists were roasted alive by the hundreds as Hellfury missiles covered vast swathes of the Martian surface in flames. The staccato pops of lasrifle charge packs and autogun magazines cooking off were nearly drowned out by the deafening booms of Hellhound promethium tanks detonating. Hunter-Killer Missiles and dumbfire rockets reduced tanks to twisted scrap, and 1,500-kilogram bombs pounded the trenches.
The dust had not even begun to settle when the Tau found themselves amongst thousands of allied infantry advancing behind a spearhead of armored vehicles. Artillery rumbled in the distance and hundreds of tanks formed into firing lines, raining shells upon the third wave of Chaos forces.
Argyre Planitia Forge, Surface of Mars
Operation Desert Goliath H-Hour Plus Ten
The battle had lasted forty hours when the exhaustion finally overtook the combat stims. By the hundredth hour, her second wind had run out and every muscle in her body screamed for rest. On the fifth day, Battle Sister Aureliana Verginia simply stopped counting. Time had lost all meaning to the handful of Sororitas and Skitarii huddled within the bombed-out hab block. The forge workers had long since exhausted their supply of firefighting foam, and vast swathes of the complex were simply left to burn as the survivors struggled to keep the flames from reaching the precious workshops.
Thick smoke blocked out the sun, leaving Aureliana and her comrades with only the tempo of the fighting with which to count the days. They fought in shifts, the Sisters manning the mortars and watching the rubble- and corpse-strewn square below while the Skitarii rested, and visa-versa. By day, the slave-soldiers of Chaos riddled the hab block with stubber fire and mortar shells, gathering enough forces every few hours for a head-on assault. By night, cultists paraded the tortured and violated bodies of the defenders unfortunate enough to be taken alive. Every few shifts, one of the forge workers' makeshift armored trolleys would arrive with rations and additional ammunition, though less and less of each arrived with each subsequent shipment.
Though some hearing had finally begun to return to her, Aureliana was awoken by the hab block shaking under mortar bombardment rather than the sound of shells detonating. As she scrambled about, rubbing sleep from her eyes and haphazardly pulling on her flak armor, telltale heaviness settled over her. A quick glance at the sky through one of numerous holes blasted into the roof confirmed her suspicions: another wave of drop pods had entered the lower atmosphere.
Looks like a big push. Infantry, armored vehicles, and word on the vox is that the Iron Warriors have landed another artillery regiment. Whatever's going on in the basin's got them spooked, a Skitarii mouthed to Aureliana as she took her spot against the wall.
Lasbolts peppered the scarred rockcrete as the first wave of cultists entered the square. Having almost exclusively fought slave fodder over the past month, Aureliana was initially caught off-guard by the disciplined volleys of renegade Guardsmen. Unlike their predecessors, who blindly rushed as a dense horde towards the defenders' guns, the new arrivals stayed low and advanced in small groups. They moved between pieces of cover in five-man fire teams while the others laid down a withering hail of suppressive fire.
Aureliana lay on her stomach and slowly shimmied along the ground as the deadly cherry-red lances flew overhead. The Sororitas threw an arm up to protect her face as a grenade slammed into the crumbling wall, peppering her with rockcrete shrapnel. Several meters away, one of her squadmates sprang out of cover and snapped off two shots before the sheer volume of return fire forced her back down. The number of lasbolts fired in Aureliana's general direction sharply decreased as a result, and the Battle Sister seized the chance to rise to a kneeling position and shoulder her lasrifle.
The traitorous Guardsmen had already advanced halfway down the square, and more were pouring in with each second. Aureliana's first lasbolt caught a straggler in the throat, dropping the man instantly. She managed one more shot, hitting an enemy in the chest, before the lasbolts began landing uncomfortably close. She growled in frustration as the Guardsman's flak armor absorbed the bolt, leaving him winded but alive.
Something hard and round landed near Aureliana, rolling along the ground and tapping her elbow. The Sororitas' eyes widened in horror as her gaze settled on a fragmentation grenade resting against her arm. She slammed her flak helmet over the deadly device mere fractions of a second before it detonated.
Ecclesiarch's Audience Chamber
Ecclesiarchal Palace, Holy Terra
Lelouch's gaze flickered between the assembled clergymen, never focusing on one for more than a few seconds at once, yet managing to keep some of the Imperium's most powerful men rooted to their seats in fear. As the hours ticked by, none dared so much as shift in their seats or stretched fatigued muscles as the Emperor posed question after question. The green-haired woman stood passively at his side, quietly glaring at any foolish enough to try and speak out of turn. No less than six times, the Ecclesiarch had poised to launch into a fiery sermon, only to be intimidated into silence by cold golden eyes. For the entire eight hours, the only movement had been Squad Zero shifting from their positions to secure the subdued Sisters. The women now knelt in a corner, stripped of their armor and weapons and their hands zip-tied behind their backs.
"I've heard enough," Lelouch interrupted the Ecclesiarch, his tone utterly calm yet laced with contempt.
Though the Emperor scarcely thought it possible, the highest clergymen of the Adeptus Ministorum sank even deeper into their seats as he stepped off the dais. The oppressive heaviness that hung in the air quickly turned from metaphorical to physical when he released a carefully-controlled burst of power. The Psykers of Squad Zero collapsed to their knees, and not even CC could remain standing. The Ecclesiarch and his Cardinals remained in their positions of forced supplication as Lelouch slowly rose into the air. His eyes became pits of Warp fire and the very air around him cackled.
"Have you learned nothing? You claim to serve my will, yet you mold my Imperium into the very thing I sought to destroy?" Lelouch bellowed as he floated face-to-face with the Ecclesiarch, "I ordered Monarchia burned and the Word Bearers to kneel in its ashes as a warning to all those who thought me a divine figure! And, yet, here stand, replacing the science and reason I sought to bring to the galaxy with the very fear and superstition my Imperial Truth sought to stamp out?"
Warp-fueled fires erupted throughout the chambers, turning the rich tapestries and ornate icons that lined the walls into piles of coarse ash.
"You face enemies who draw their power from emotion and belief! The first is unavoidable, and you have fed them the second in nigh-unlimited quantities!" Lelouch's voice grew lower and calmer with each word, "The more powerful you believe those dark powers behind the veil of reality to be, the more powerful they become! How many 'good Imperial citizens' lived and died in utter fear of them? Acknowledge they exist, recognize their power, but do not think them to be gods!"
Lelouch's power slowly receded from the room, its finery now completely replaced by piles of ash, yet none of the clergymen dared rise.
"Yet, I must acknowledge that your Ecclesiarchy united humanity in its darkest hour. When Terra is finally secure once again, you may retire in peace," Lelouch's tone chilled even CC, "I hereby proclaim the Adeptus Ministorum and the Imperial Inquisition disbanded. Effective immediately, consider yourselves stripped of all titles, privileges, and authority."
Pavilion 33-45-Delta
Argyre Planitia Forge, Surface of Mars
"Contact!" barked Lieutenant Scotty MacCance, "Look alive, men!"
One hundred and twenty OPAW troopers had expertly concealed themselves amongst the rubble and bombed-out hab blocks. They had dropped separately into strategic pockets around the forge complex, hitting isolated troop pockets before quickly fading into the numerous alleyways and underground tunnels. When a large enemy armored column was spotted by recon units, squads from four different wings had combined resources and manpower for the sole purpose of knocking it out.
Scotty unfolded his FLEIJA launcher and hefted it over his shoulder, his crosshairs trained on the lead Leman Russ. The enemy clearly did not even consider the possibility of an ambush: a dozen traitor Guardsmen were perched atop the hulls of each vehicle, each tank's gunner and commander stood up through open hatches, and their pintle-mounted weapons were locked in backwards-facing positions. The rest of Lieutenant MacCance's squad shimmied forward on their stomachs, lining up anyone wearing rank insignia in their sights. The largest struggle was choosing a single target amongst the myriad choices.
"This is Ness to MacCance. I've got the rear vehicle in my sights."
"Roger that, Ness. Synchronizing chronometers now. The time is 1120 hours, thirty-four seconds in three. Two. One. Mark."
The floors of the crumbling hab-block shook as the tank column passed underneath, and roaring of a dozen Leman Russ engines would have deafened the OPAW troopers were it not for their Knightmares' aural filters. Scotty detached a FLEIJA warhead from its storage rack and rammed it home with a satisfying thunk.
"Prepare to fire in ten seconds."
The Lieutenant took a deep breath to slow his heartbeat and steady his hands. Though modern Knightmares automatically compensated for minute body movements, neither Scotty nor any other self-respecting Black Knight would take that fact as an excuse for sloppy shooting.
"Firing in five."
Scotty slipped his finger beneath the launcher's trigger guard and pressed lightly on the firing stud, stopping as soon as he felt resistance.
"Four. Thr-"
A missile corkscrewed through the air and slammed into the lead tank, tracking it and putting the sixty-tonne vehicle into a brief spin. With a screech of tortured metal, the other track tore off as the Leman Russ came to a stop perpendicular to the armored column's path. The tank immediately behind abruptly slammed its brakes, sending several Guardsmen flying forward and dashing their skulls against the stricken vehicle. Lieutenant McCance assumed that the distant boom was the rear tank's ammunition rack exploding.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" Scotty barked as several of his troopers made to rise into crouching positions.
The distinctive whine of Sentinels' leg servos announced several of the light reconnaissance walkers rising from their hiding places atop adjacent buildings. Several jumped into the street below, roasting the surviving infantry with long streams of promethium. The others remained on their perches, picking off the surviving enemy vehicles one by one with carefully-placed lascannon bolts and bursts of heavy bolter shells. The flames had barely started to die down when infantry flooded into the pavilion.
"Catachans…" one of the troopers whispered.
The heavily-muscled jungle fighters were every bit as home amidst the concrete as they were amidst the trees, tearing through the disorganized survivors with ease. Many eschewed use of their lascarbines, choosing to rend flak armor and flesh alike with their razor-sharp combat knives. Some clambered atop the surviving tanks, dropping frag grenades down crew hatches and attaching melta bombs to engine compartments. Snipers promptly dispatched any officer who recovered their wits enough to try and rally the survivors.
To call the return fire "disorganized" would do it far too much credit, yet its sheer volume ensured the Catachans did not melt back into the sewers and alleys unscathed. Lieutenant McCance watched as one of the Guardsmen stumbled, having taken a lasbolt to the bicep, and was instantly set upon by a horde of rabid cultists that literally ripped him apart. He winced as one of the traitor Guardsmen primed an entire bandolier of krak grenades and dove under a Sentinel, sending the walker crashing to the ground. The pilot was dragged out of the cockpit and beaten to death, but not before she used her combat knife to cut several opponents.
As quickly as they appeared, the Catachans withdrew. Sentinels dropped down through the crumbling buildings into the maze of maintenance shafts below the streets. The infantry followed close behind, stopping only to incinerate their dead with quick bursts of promethium.
Nereidum Montes, Surface of Mars
Operation Desert Goliath D-Day Plus Two
The Tau had originally intended to launch a lightning-fast strike to further destabilize and demoralize Peturabo's northern flank. The arrival of allied forces had turned the raid into a full-blown offensive. The armored spear-tip quickly punched through the first belt of trenches, and reinforcements poured into the region to help widen the wound. Within forty hours, despite dense anti-tank emplacements and repeated counterattacks by Iron Warriors armored units, allied forces had advanced thirty kilometers and punched through the second belt of siege units. News of massive Chaos reinforcements force-marching to the front finally halted the advance, and the survivors hurriedly dug trenches and anti-tank traps in preparation for the inevitable counterattack.
The attack began less than six hours later.
The trench—if such a hastily-dug fortification even deserved so grandiose of a title—was just deep enough for two Guardsmen to run past one another. Soldiers of all races stood shoulder-to-shoulder, hosing the advancing hordes down with lasbolts, plasma, and shurikens. Tanks were dug in behind the infantry, hulling down behind hastily-erected earthwork berms for a little protection against the incoming shellfire.
The Iron Warriors attacked in massive waves: hundreds of Leman Russ tanks forming a plasteel wall and the infantry advancing behind. Their 120mm smoothbore main guns fired as fast as their loaders could ram the next shell home, sacrificing accuracy for sheer density of outgoing fire as they closed the distance. Corpses and burnt-out hulks littered the battlefield, testament of a dozen failed charges, but the Iron Warriors simply stepped around and over their dead.
"Mortars to the center! Drive that armor back!"
The staccato pops of anti-infantry mortars were punctuated by the deep booms of their anti-armor counterparts. As the smoothbore weapons lobbed volley after volley of high-explosive death at the advancing Iron Warriors, Corporal Lim Wu and her fellow Guardsmen had to practically scream into their vox beads to be heard. Shells that fell short threw up spouts of well-pulverized soil that obstructed the defenders' vision, but the enemy slave-soldiers were packed so densely behind their armored spearhead that aiming proved hardly necessary. A fast-approaching Leman Russ burst into flames as its engine compartment took a direct hit, stopping just short of the forward anti-tank ditches.
"Where's that air support?" a nearby Lieutenant screamed into the vox.
"They've just scrambled Excaliburs! ETA five minutes!" a voice Lim didn't recognize reported.
The rest of the conversation was drowned out by a deafening bang accompanied by a wave of intense heat washing over Lim and her neighbors. The first few times the Tau "Mako" main battle tank dug in several meters behind her had fired its main gun, Lim had nearly passed out from the sound and the swelter. Over the next several hours, Lim had come to appreciate the tri-barreled railgun that could punch an iridium slug straight through a Leman Russ. She had even learned to listen for the distinct thunk-thunk of its recoil mechanism rotating the overheated barrel away and its now-cooled neighbor into place.
The weapons fire only intensified as the enemy armor reached the anti-tank ditches. They were dug far too hastily and proved too narrow in many areas, but several Leman Russ tanks pitched forward and buried their noses into the soil nonetheless. Thrown melta bombs and krak missiles put the stricken vehicles out of commission for good. Others went up in flames as several brave souls scrambled out of their hiding spots in the floor of the ditch and attached explosive charges to the tanks' vulnerable bellies.
"We need somebody on that lascannon, now!"
Lim quickly left her spot on the line, ducking down and running behind her comrades towards the emplaced heavy weapon. Corporal Wu muttered a quick prayer on behalf of the former crew as she shoved their shrapnel-ridden bodies aside. Peering through the optics, which the frag grenade had somehow spared, she reached for the crank to adjust her aim. Panic rose in the Guardswoman's throat as the handle refused to turn, and her heart sank when visual inspection showed several pieces of shrapnel embedded in the gears.
"They're almost on us! Where's that lascannon?"
Lim was prepared to scream a reply when a massive mechanical hand gripped her shoulder. Her heart skipped a beat as she whirled around, bayonet at the ready, to find herself face-to-faceplate with a Knightmare.
"Come on! We'll aim it manually!" the Black Knights militiaman announced as he sheared the lascannon from its base with a swipe of a hadron blade and lifted it as though it were a toy.
Sighting the nearest Leman Russ, Lim called out fine adjustments that the Black Knight carried out with unnerving accuracy. Lining up the tank's thin lower glacis in her crosshairs, Wu squeezed the trigger with only a dozen meters to spare. She allowed herself a relieved chuckle as the lance punched through the armor, leaving a smoking hole. The plasteel titan slowed, and then ground to a halt.
"Watch out!"
The warning almost came too late as a Chaos Space Marine stormed over the lip of the trench and bull-rushed the Black Knight. Most would run away from a charging Astartes, but the militiaman calmly propped the lascannon against the trench wall, took a step forward, and clotheslined the Iron Warrior. In a blur of motion, the Knightmare hooked a foot behind its opponent's ankle and bought him down. A hadron blade ignited, and the Black Knight stabbed the stunned Astartes through both hearts and then several dozen more times for good measure.
"Macharius!"
Anti-tank ordnance uselessly bounced off the heavy tank's thick frontal armor as its Vulcan mega-bolters spun up. A hail of high-explosive death ripped through the trenches, turning infantry into fine puffs of reddish mist. Entire swathes of the defensive line routed, the soldiers scattering as Leman Russ tanks rolled over the trenches. Frantic hand-to-hand combat broke out as the infantry advancing behind the plasteel phalanx descended upon the surviving defenders.
"All anti-armor weapons to the center! Take that monster out!"
Black Knights Attack Craft Callsign: Marauder Leader
Skies Above Nereidum Montes
The thousands of aircraft clashing over Nereidum Montes formed a great plasteel cloud that blotted out the skies. Dogfighting over the forward allied trenches in particular had grown so fierce that only veteran Excalibur squadrons dared launch strafing runs. Aircraft any slower or less durable were near-instantly shredded by the thick anti-aircraft barrage or the by crossfire from allied and enemy fighters alike.
"Looks like Peturabo's bringing out the big guns now," Marauder Three whistled, "An assault line of Macharius tanks is tearing up their center, and renewed armored assaults all along the line."
"Clear the channel!" Marauder Leader barked, "All units, decelerate to attack velocity!"
Marauder Leader's hadron fields turned near-opaque crimson as they struggled to dissipate dozens of air-to-air missiles and lascannon bolts. His vision swam as he put his craft into a steep dive while rapidly bleeding off velocity. The move did not go unnoticed, and dozens of Chaos fighters broke from the main engagement to prey upon the now-vulnerable Excaliburs. Allied squadrons scrambled to intercept, peeling off the majority of Marauder Squadron's would-be attackers.
"Pick your targets and weapons free!"
Dozens of crosshairs suddenly appeared on Marauder Leader's heads-up display as information passed at mind-boggling speeds through the squadron uplink. Several adjusted positions as pilots made last-minute adjustments to ensure each FLEIJA inflicted maximum damage. A number abruptly disappeared as Marauder Seven went down in flames, with only a pulsing lifesign indicating that the pilot had safely detached.
Marauder Leader felt his craft lightening imperceptibly as sixteen missiles detached from their pylons. He mentally inserted the subdued whoosh as their motors ignited and sent them hurtling at the ground below. Vast swathes of Chaos armor vanished as nearly two hundred FLEIJA warheads detonated near-simultaneously. Long streams of hadron bolts made life miserable for the rear-echelon forces during the few moments before the Excaliburs pulled up.
"Looks like we've got their attention now," Marauder Two chuckled, "Twenty bandits on our six and gaining fast."
"Let's see if they can keep up with us, then," Marauder Leader smirked as he surveyed the airspace before him, "We'll lose them in the buildings."
Marauder Leader nearly blacked out as he gunned his drives and peeled away. The squadron formation burst apart with practiced precision as they screamed past the Iron Warriors siege lines and towards the forge complex. The more daring pilots dove until their bellies barely cleared the street surfaces, where a single mistimed blink would spell fiery death. The more conservative ones flew marginally higher, so only the tallest towers posed a collision risk. Their Chaos counterparts proved sloppy and disorganized in comparison: some Excaliburs were pursued by a dozen Swiftdeaths, while others were left alone entirely.
Some of the enemy wondered if Marauder Squadron had gone mad and broke off the pursuit entirely. Others assumed holding patterns over the Argyre Planitia forge complex, prepared to pounce upon the Black Knights as they emerged from the labyrinth below. A foolhardy few followed the Excaliburs through the buildings. As the Chaos pilots lacked their counterparts' reflexes, the Swiftdeaths quickly became dark smears on streets and the sides of hab blocks.
"Looks like the rest of 'em are bugging out," Marauder Leader commented, "When we emerge from the buildings, drop your remaining ordnance onto any enemy forces you can find, then we'll rendezvous back at-all units, pull up! Pu-"
Marauder Leader, the surviving Marauder pilots, and a sizable portion of the Argyre Planitia forge complex's outskirts were obliterated with a single blast of a Hellstorm cannon.
Combine Forward Operations Center
Operation Desert Goliath D-Day Plus Four
"Allied forces in the Nereidum Montes region have sustained heavy casualties, but their lines are still holding," Field Marshal Schwer concluded.
"Field Marshal," Nunnally folded her hands before her, "I've read the reports on the forces you've allocated to this assault…"
"Two million infantry and five thousand armored vehicles, with a quarter-million guns and four thousand aircraft in support," Nikola recited.
"Yes," Nunnally nodded, "And if the numbers Intelligence estimates for Peturabo's forces are accurate, that's not enough to do anything more than slow the Iron Warriors down for a few more days."
"No, it's not," the Field Marshal replied, giving the governor no time to voice her objections before he continued, "However, it's enough to convince Peturabo that the attack is genuine. He's dedicated almost his entire mobile reserve to the counterattack, leaving his center and southern flanks stretched thin."
Nunnally's eyes widened as the truth dawned upon her.
"In the meantime, we've been moving the rest of our forces into position during nighttime to hide them from enemy reconnaissance efforts," Nikola forged ahead, "Come dawn, they will launch an attack on the enemy's southern flank. With the reinforcements inbound from Terra, they should achieve a breakthrough before Peturabo can redistribute their forces."
"I…see," Nunnally acknowledged, "If there is nothing else, Field Marshal, I believe it would be wise for both of us to rest before dawn tomorrow."
"There is one last matter, Governor. Strictly confidential for the time being, so we don't cause a panic," Nikola's voice dropped to a harsh whisper as his faceplate slid open, "Sensor technicians aboard the Ikaruga have detected several large objects—at least a kilometer across—moving out of the asteroid belt. They ran the numbers and concluded that they will reach Martian orbit in forty-eight hours."
A/N: And the Metal Monsters arc nears it's end!