nachmund crusade

The Second Battle of Aerodrome X-32

Andy, , Leave a comment

D-Day + 2, 14:22 Local

Battlegroup Vanguard – 88th Aurean Dragoons

“GUNNER: HE, SAME TARGET!”

“IDENT!”

“UP!”

“ON THE WAY!”

A woosh of a 130mm recoiling battle cannon next to his head confirmed the end of Sergeant Vraden’s command sequence. The twenty-two seasons old tank commander kept huddled over his Leman Russ’ commander’s sight. He repeatedly and nervously hammered his right foot into the ground to channel his mixture of fear and adrenaline rather than vomiting out a scream of panic to his crew.

Through his cracked telescopic lens he watched as most of the cultist horde disappeared in a burst of earth and shell. The few stragglers that remained were picked off by his sponson gunners: cut in half by a lascannon bolt, incinerated in a burst of melta-fire, or simply felled in a far less cinematic but more effective spray of hard rounds from the tank’s co-axial heavy stubber.

“Target destroyed,” he announced to his crew. A mixture of relief and praises/curses to the Emperor washed over them as the adrenaline and immediate fear seemed to subside. 

Vraden remained silent. He knew he needed to remain a stoic rock to inspire confidence in his command. He also knew that if he opened his mouth too quickly he might throw up – the last vestiges of the swinging hormones coming from a solid hour of near death experiences. 

Once composed, he ordered his crew to take position in the center square. Vraden checked his aft cameras and saw a squad of cavalry scouts in cameloline cloaks pace behind hill; it was probably Captain Sharpe and his cadre. Comms had been spotty at best throughout the engagement, but with no response from the other sectors in the last ten minutes there was a decent chance Vraden’s tank and Sharpe were the last defenders alive. 

A loud ring in his headset broke him out of these miserable thoughts. Vraden switched his vox set to his local channel. “5-actual,” alerted Sharpe over the telephone set in the back of his vehicle, “sitrep on higher’s response? Your vox is definitely better than mine.”

Vraden switched channels and called back to the telephone set: “Yes sir, sending traffic again.” With a few snaps he switched over to the command net and tried again to raise their command. 

“Break. Break. Fortress this is Vanguard 5. How copy?”

Surprisingly something other than static broke through a response. “Fortress copies, Vanguard 5. We’ve been receiving your comms piecemeal but confirming your request. Wait one.”  

Vraden pumped his fist in glee and switched back to Sharpe. “Sir I’ve been able to raise higher on my vox. Feel free to take the mic if you’d like.” He threw a sequence of levers and the hatch above him opened up, sending a woosh of smoke-filled air into the cabin of the tank. 

Sharpe appeared above him, removed his helmet, and took Vraden’s headset. “Fortress this is Assassin Actual via Vanguard 5. We’re holding Sector Gamma but we need immediate assistance. Scramble 5 Commando QRF to this position. How copy?”

A burst of static filled the tank’s loudspeakers, then was cut as their command responded.

“Fortress copies, Assassin. Denied. 5 Commando QRF unavailable due to tasking.”

A light bell resounded through the tank as Captain Sharpe slammed his bolt pistol on the side armor in rage. “DAMN IT FORTRESS. THE FETH DO YOU MEAN THE QUICK REACTION FORCE IS ALREADY TASKED? I TASKED THEM PRECISELY FOR THIS-”

The radio interrupted him. “-I’m sorry, Captain. But your orders were overridden. QRF was priority tasked by Vermillion.”

Sharpe and Vraden exchanged looks of anger and betrayal. The fething Inquisition. Shaking with rage, Sharpe ran his gloved hands through his hair before he responded. 

“Okay Fortress. If Vermillion wants to take our QRF how are we supposed to hold off this counter-attack? I’ve just got a tank and my command squad left, and by last report we’ve still got Heretic Astartes in our zone. Where are our reinforcements?”

“Fortress copies, Actual. Reinforcements are 30 mikes. Rerouting grid QRF and fast air to your position. ETA: 5 mikes.”

Well that’s at least something. Their grid square had a tasking of Valks and a squad of grenadiers ready to support troops in contact. It wasn’t the QRF Sharpe wanted, but it was far better than nothing. Sharpe responded back, “Assassin copies, Fortress. We’ll take position around the square and mark friendlies with green-”

“-Break, break. Fortress to Assassin: ISR reports enemy activity in your sector. Heretic Astartes enroute to your position in-”

Vraden and Sharpe didn’t need to hear the rest. 

The unholy scream of daemon-touched jetpacks and infernal laughter filled the soot-filled air. A thick curtain of smoke at the edge of the square parted, and a squad of raptors landed in a burst of flames and bolter fire. As rounds detonated around them, Sharpe threw the handset back in the tank and Vraden quickly slammed shut his top hatch.

“CONTACT FRONT,” Vraden screamed into the tank as the adrenaline surged back and he rushed to put on his headset. “GUNNER: HEAT, INFANTRY”

The tank crew began affirming his firing order. In the chaos, Vraden noted to himself that if they survived this he was going to have a lot of questions in the debrief.

The Nachmund Crusade: The Battle of Aerodrome X-32

Andy, , Leave a comment


D-Day, 10:05 Local

Battlegroup Vanguard – 88th Aurean Dragoons

Lieutenant-Commissar Glyndwyr’s pathfinders executed a textbook breach of the Aerodrome’s command bunker. 

With explosive satchels they blew open a weakened exterior wall, avoiding the fatal funnel of the front door. While the dust was still settling from the explosion two flame-troopers filled the inside with blazing promethium. And as the traitors inside displaced from the flames they were met with a dozen hand grenades, which blew puffs of the still-ablaze promethium gel out like bubbles from a volcano. 

This would have been enough to kill a platoon of men. Unfortunately they were not facing men. They were facing the apostates of the Emperor’s Children. So Glyndwyr gave the order he knew his men dreaded:

“Fix bayonets,” he roared as he drew his master-crafted Carthaen powerblade Dawnbreaker.

His pathfinders slashed out their Aurean sword-bayonets and locked them to the muzzles of their L39 las rifles. He admired their courage; charging into a flaming building to engage Heretic Astartes in close combat was seemingly suicidal. But the Aureans had centuries of experience fighting the Traitor Legions. They knew the cost of letting the Ruinous Powers take Sangua Terra. 

And as a few looked to Glyndwyr’s sidearm, he imagined they also knew the cost of not following his orders. 

Glyndwyr nodded to his squad. He grabbed two by the webbing, shaking their gear tight and looking deep into the black glass of each’s combat helm before regarding the rest of the squad.

“Your names are already on the Hallowed Wall,” he shouted in Aurean out of respect. “Let’s earn that honor. Let’s write our stories. Let’s give those bastards steel.” 

Glyndwyr switched back to Gothic. “Fireteam Alpha forms a palisade push. Bravo, fan out and secure.” He pulled his plasma pistol and turned to the burning entrance. “I’ll see you on the other side!” 

He leapt through billowing black smoke into hell itself. The inside of the bunker was a raging inferno. Shards of frag had embedded into the flaming walls, melting into black teeth that grinned maliciously in the light of the lit promethium. 

He was met by three Emperor’s Children: all in power armor scarred and torn by their assault. They drew their chainswords and combat knives, and charged him in profane screams of excitement and rage. Glyndwyr shot the closest in the face with his plasma pistol: a bright red flash in the flickering light of the flames that faded to find a charged mass of pink and black fall in a clumsy collapse of suddenly-lifeless limbs.

Glyndwyr knew he’d only get one shot off. The second legionnaire bore down on him, swinging a chainsword nearly the size of the commissar down onto his head. 


In response, Glyndwyr raised his blade into Vaugh-gahl: the Eagle’s stance. A lifetime of painful training in the Carthaen sword arts meant that he had seen almost everything one could see in a duel. This was no exception, and as a young and underfed orphan at the Schola Progenium he often duelled stronger boys with edged weapons. He knew how to turn a bigger opponent’s strength against him.

He met the chainsword in a parry, feeling the force of what felt like a speeding car slam into his blade. Gwendlyn let the force guide Dawnbreaker, coaxing his foe’s strength and bidding its path into a swirling riposte that circled back down onto the Chaos Space marine. Gwendlyr’s blade slashed through the Marine’s thick arms – literally disarming him in a flash of crackling light and sparks. 

The armless Traitor Marine looked at him confused. Glyndwyr planted his feet and charged his foe, returning the expression by thrusting Dawnbreaker through the Traitor’s two hearts. He leapt onto its body as it fell, standing triumphant on top of his gigantic foe and drawing his blade out in a fountain of gore. 

The last Astartes charged Glyndwhyr with his hooked combat knife. But his charge was cut short by six pathfinders who speared him from the side and thrust him into a nearby wall. As they unloaded their mags at point-blank range, the remaining fireteam joined them – screaming obscenities and mag-dumping their las rifles in a mad hurricane of las bolts and rage. 

Glyndwyr gave himself a moment to proudly regard his squad’s kill before he completed their mission. Moving to the large cogitator at the end of the room, he slapped a series of quick commands and deactivated a large red warning rune that rose in response. 

“Hunter 1-1 to all stations,” Glyndwyr announced into his helmet’s voxbead after keying the command channel. “I pass Clear Skies.”

“Excellent work, Hunter 1-1,” responded the vox. “Fortress this is Vanguard Actual. The last enemy anti-air is down.”

“The skies are ours. Bring the rain.” 

The Nachmund Crusade: A Harsh Landing

Andy,

D-Day, 08:30 Local

Battlegroup Vanguard – 88th Aurean Dragoons

Before the war the Customs House of the Exchequer-General was an unimpressive if not forgettable building. A gray slab tower carved in the High Gothic brutalist style, it nominally housed Sanctus Terra’s Imperial ministry charged with administering the planet’s tithe. 

But the invasion revealed it was more than that. Its parapets had thrown off their angel statues to reveal long-hidden heavy weapon mounts. Onion-shaped bulbs thought to conceal church bells were revealed to be search and tracking auspex positions. And the large square surrounding it – once an open park frequented by pensioners and retirees – had turned into a busy, makeshift landing zone and motor depot for the 88th Aurean Dragoons.

A kilometer underneath the Customs House, behind blast doors guarded by Aurean grenadiers and surrounded by a small group of commissioned and non-commissioned officers, Lord Colonel Erryc Margrave quietly studied a map of the hive city. A bustle of commotion in his command bunker mirrored the activity above, with intelligence staff and administrators trading scripts of papers and voxes to push back the fog of war. A junior intelligence officer stood ready to summarize his report to the colonel. 

“Okay Lieutenant,” Lord Colonel Margrave sighed, “what’s the butcher’s bill?”

“Lord Colonel,” the young officer awkwardly responded, “suffice to say the War Council’s intel on enemy anti-air capabilities were…incomplete.” The officer did so acknowledging the vagary of bruises and a large gash down the Lord Colonel’s right cheek – both highlighting that the Commander of the Aurean 88th had just barely escaped a valkyrie crash an hour ago.

The Lieutenant gestured to a few areas around the customs house: “We’ve secured and successfully activated the defenses of the Customs House, henceforth code-named Fortress. Most of the 88th is spread across three grid squares, with those able making their way here.”

Lord Margrave grimly nodded. “Casualties?”

“Forty KIA or unaccounted for so far,” the Lieutenant responded. “Twice that wounded, unknown the split for combat-ineffective,” the intelligence officer continued. “We’ll know more over the next three hours as some of the errant drops circle back to Fortress and file their AARs.” 

The Lord Colonel swallowed his reaction to a number roughly equivalent to ten percent of his battlegroup. 

Composed, he responded. “I want all After Action Reviews circled to me as fast as they come in. Nothing fluffed. We need to give a realistic picture to higher so we can impress how quickly we’ll need an air corridor to begin CasEvac flights-” 

“-On that sir,” the Lieutenant interjected, “higher is holding all flights and aerial sorties until we can clear some of the local enemy anti-air.” 

The intelligence officer indicated several parts of the map. “Our pathfinders are reporting that these positions contain command and control for the Skyfire batteries that hit our air assaults. We’ll need to either take or destroy these positions before we can get orbital support.” 

“Copy,” Lord Colonel Margrave responded. He turned to the set of officers behind him and selected one through the dull red of the Bunker’s tactical lighting. “Well then Sag,” he called out, “you’re up.”

A thin figure in a weathered dragoon carapace holding a tank commander’s beret at his side stepped forward. His eyes were emotionless cold steel, hammered strong by the experience of previous campaigns. “Ready and willing sir,” responded Major Saggar Enfield. 

“Put together a task force and a mission package on these targets,” ordered the Lord Colonel, “and start rolling on them over the next hour. I know we don’t have much free for you, so pull whatever you can from 5 Commando’s detachment here too.”

Major Enfield nodded to affirm the order, though he couldn’t help but betray a bit of confusion.

5 Commando was a battalion attached to the 88th just before they departed Aurea. Composed of Tempestus Scions trained since birth to serve the Inquisition, they were the ones who initially dropped from orbit to secure the Customs House and activate its defenses. 

Most of them were stationed at a separate floor of the command bunker accessible only to the Lord Colonel and select members of his staff. Clearly, like the Customs House itself, there was more to their mission on Sangua Terra than he knew. 

The Lord Colonel detected the mixture of emotion washing over his Executive Officer’s face. “I’ll get you the clearance to start drawing on their officers. You’ll also need to be briefed on some aspects of their mission on planet.” 

“Very good sir,” Major Enfield responded. Lord Colonel confidently nodded to his XO and the intelligence officer briefing them.

“Well then,” he announced, “let’s retake this world.” He stood back from the table and saluted his men. 

“Aurea endures,” he intoned. 

In a unified shuffle of kit and gear, they returned his salute and shouted back. Aurea endures