AN IRON LEGION

Siege-Sergeant Ferrus grinned beneath his helmet as he watched the artillery bombardment, chunks of stone raining down from the walls. Ten more days, he estimated, and the fortress would fall, the last bastion on this world of resistance to the Imperial Truth.

He ran over the details of the last few days in his mind. The Imperial Army’s push on the northern salient had been defeated by the enemy’s artillery, followed by the fall of the Tor. It stood on a hill over the battlefield, offering a prime position to rain artillery down on the enemy defenders. And it was a bloody field, strewn with corpses and wreckage, as it had been for weeks. The ground was a choking quagmire of mud, churned endlessly by the constant shelling.

The gates of the fortress loomed over him, immense and terrible. The Christo Bastion, as the locals had called it, stood high in a field of wreckage, its immense walls and the trench system around it offering the only shelter in this wasteland of war.

Ferrus hoped only that this would end soon.

+++

Stealth Sergeant Trajan grinned as his men slipped through the dark of the night, watching as they advanced silently and stealthily. He remembered the dictates of Alpharius well – see, but don’t be seen. Watch, but don’t be watched. The Iron Warriors in the pass leading up to the Christo Bastion were fools – they didn’t understand the virtues of stealth.

The mountains, the bastion’s strength, were also its greatest weakness, for there were no defences facing the mountainsides. Why batter uselessly at a rock when you could destroy it with a single swift strike?

His agents within the bastion had fed him its only, glaring weakness – the mountains. No normal human or equipment could go up the high cliffs, but Space Marines could easily climb up the sheer heights. And a single Space Marine was worth a whole army.
Trajan easily climbed back down, going onto the walls. There were no guards here – another glaring weakness. The fools had only posted guards and security monitors on the side facing the valley. Short-sighted, but understandable, considering that they were less than Space Marines, and certainly less than Alpha Legionnaires.

The few guards patrolling were easily taken out, shot by bolters and killed with pathetic ease. Trajan couldn’t help but laugh – it was as if they were assaulting an undefended outpost – no fun at all. Nobody seemed to notice that the guards were dead, leaving Trajan until dawn to carry out his objective.

Timed explosives were carefully placed on the anti-air guns, and on the artillery batteries. The detonation would devastate the citadel, leaving it undefended and allowing the Iron Warriors to crush it. At least, that was the plan. Then the soldiers came.

They rushed up the stairs, pouring up, red lights shining and klaxons wailing desperately. Searchlights hunted for enemy aircraft, but there were none to be found. The gunships had already left.

Trajan fired his bolter, every shot hitting home, the helmet display and auto-reactive armour compensating for any inaccuracy. Thermal-vision sensors, X-ray sights, low-light sensors, battle maps, all were available at a thought. Trajan wondered how the Imperial Army compensated for this, then dismissed the thought nigh-instantly. He was Astartes, and battle was being fought.

Puny stub-bullets bounced off his armour, met with a hail of bolter fire that blew men apart. He aimed instinctively, tactical training summoned instinctively from the deepest recesses of his mind. He was in his element.

Then, a thought passed through his mind, and he realised that the explosives would likely detonate in seconds. He didn’t care, he was prepared to die. Then white light filled his vision and everything became pain.

+++

The detonation was immense, a rolling thunder that took the Iron Warriors off their guard. Stores of ammunition and explosives were caught up in the explosion, shattering the walls and breaching them in many places. Shards of stone rained down onto the tortured earth, creating craters in many places and fatally disrupting the trenches. Within minutes, Christo Bastion had fallen, and with it the world of Jormungard.

+++

Siege-Captain Ferrus was bitter. The Iron Warriors had not received their due, and so had the Alpha Legion. Entire squads of Astartes had died claiming it, and now the Imperial Fists, who hadn’t even been there during the battle, had claimed the victory.
Now he had been promoted to Siege- Captain, but his hatred had not yet subsided.

But soon it would be repaid. Perturabo, his blessed Primarch, had received a supply of Virus Bombs from Lion El’Johnson of Caliban. They were to go to some backwater world called Isstvan and put them to use. The loyalists that revered the False Emperor would soon suffer greatly. Yes, and the Warmaster wanted an audience with him.