Difference between revisions of "Battle for Magna-Distillery Omicron-38a"

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Battle for Magna-Distillery Omicron-38a
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Campaign Detail

Date Commenced: 499.011.M31
Date Concluded:
Outcome: Ongoing
Sub-Sector: Savage Reach
System: Johannes-Walker System
Location: Walkers Gambit

Forces involved in the Campaign:

Campaign Summary

As the Omega-Celia conflict waned and forces retreated or stormed forth from their respective battles, the armies of both traitors and loyalists spread out again to either retreat and entrench or push forward with a victorious momentum.

This was how the Heresy came to the Johannes-Walker System. Given that the traitors fared worse than their loyalist brethren, it was Traitor forces falling back to the predominantly Traitor Mechaniccum held sector. Given how much the Smirinoff Oligarchy relied upon Mechanicum expertise to keep their Magna-Distillerys functioning at full capacity, when half of Mars sided with Kelbor-Hal, they opted to throw their lot in with the separatists.

After falling from the warp the Traitor forces moved straight for Walker’s Gambit, to lick their wounds and requisition what meagre warstocks the Oligarchy held nominally for self defence. The traitor leadership opted for the Magna-Distillery Omicron-38a as their head of operations, given its large barley and wheat fields that could be turned into impromptu landing pads and marshalling grounds for their forces.

The traitor forces wasted no time in preparing Omicron-38a for defence from any possible loyalist reprisals. This was to prove prudent as within no more than a standard Terran month, reports of activity coming from the system’s Mandeville point started to filter in from picket ships left for just such a reason.

These lone picket ships quickly made haste to join the rest of the Traitor flotilla orbiting Prost.

The loyalists pressed straight forward into the system once their fleet had fully broken from the warp and mustered. Their fleet was at least half again as large as the ad-hoc collection of traitor vessels that were laying in wait around the dockyards of Prost.

The loyalists moved into the system at full flank-speed. Instead of stopping around Walker’s Gambit and launching a fully supported and staged planetfall they simply left their massive landing barques, mass conveyancers and smaller assorted Legion landing ships to affect the invasion. The rest of the fleet simply slingshotted around Walker’s Gambit and used the increased velocity to hasten toward Prost where they could force a decisive engagement with the traitor fleet.

It would be a fortnight or more before which ever victorious force would be able to return to from Prost. This meant the ground war on Walker’s Gambit, and more importantly on Magna-Distillery Omicron-38a would need to be quick, brutal and decisive as neither of the arrayed combatants could afford to hold up their returning fleets given the fluid nature of warfare within the sector at that moment.

Initial lance and bombardment strikes from the Legion ships upon Artois met with little success, although not a military installation, the Magna-Distillery was equipped with formidable voidshiels and a handful of gargantuan laser batteries that were more akin to mining devices than sub-orbital defense weaponry. This was due to the fact that while the Magna-Distilleries could move at an astonishing pace of one kilometre an hour. But if they were ever under threat from large falling debris they would not be able to get out of the way. Thus the large lasers were designed to shear chunks off of any falling meteorites or asteroids to lessen their impact, allowing the void shields to more easily take the brunt of the strikes. While these lasers where no true threat to the bombarding ships, they were powerful enough to cause strain on the ships void shields. The captains of these ships, given the relative lack of damage their bombardments were achieving on the Magna-Distillery, opted to retreat to a safe distance and act as surveillance for the ground forces.

The loyalists marshalled their forces a meagre dozen kilometres from the slowly retreating Magna-Distillery. While its rate of movement was quite low, it was enough that Loyalist staging grounds would be required to move each day lest they be of no use.

The attack on Magna-Distillery Omicron-38a begun on the morning following 48 hours of staging and mustering of the loyalist forces.

While the Magna-Distilleries where land based, moving cities, the bulk of ‘habitable’ areas where over 100 metres off the ground, giving their immense, crab like legs, plenty of room to manoeuvre over any low hillocks and terrain. For a normal Astartes and Imperial army planetfall this would of been quite easy to overcome, simply land on the areas of the Magna Distillery deemed safe from enemy combatants from orbital (or sub orbital) artillery. But due to the ad-hoc nature of the attack and lack of fleet support, teleportation chambers and large-scale drop-pod facilities their approach was going to have to be different.

Assault Marine squads where released by Thunderhawk passes on the outer crop areas of the massive construct, in an attempt to create safe landing points for Thunderhawks, Stormbirds and other imperial army fliers to drop more heavily armed and armoured forces. This for the first hours of the morning was met with little success as the crops and fields had been turned into intricate trench works by the traitor forces.

Limited Terminator forces were teleported in from the orbiting Legion ships, these with a heavier use of Assault Marines and close air supported allowed a few toe-holds to be gleaned on outer areas of the Magna-Distillery. It was from these toe-holds that finally armoured units where air-dropped and made available to broaden the landing areas so the Loyalists could finally reinforce enmasse and start to attempt push into the outer warehouse districts of the Magna-Distillery. It was from here that the battle was truly joined.

Thus is how the ground battles began for Omicron-38a.

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