They died.
As was their purpose.
There was no shortage of targets for the defenders. What became a stream had now become a torrent of bodies rushing forward, stemmed only by Mandalorian fury and firepower. Bodies toppled and sprawled onto the pure white snow, polluting it with their tainted blood. The Mandalorian rocket barrage tossed burning figures dozens of meters high while heavy repeater blasters turned torsos into pink mist. Artillery shells made it rain gore.
Hundreds if not a thousand had already perished in the span of a few short minutes as the onrushing tide attempted to close the gap, uncaring to the casualties they endured. Roused to berserker fury, some of the attackers had ripped off their bandages and grotesque iron masks to reveal the repentance scars cut into their faces and scalps. The death all around them did not phase them, no, it elated them.
This was their chance. This was their redemption and through their redemption, they would be granted paradise and a seat alongside their twisted God.
Maybe the Redeemers would have reached the Saxon lines. Maybe they would have inflicted casualties with trench axes and bayonets.
But it was not to be. Flanking fire slaughtered the flame troopers charging up the flanks, eliminating the Redeemer's only chance of suppressing the Mandalorian positions. Maybe a few dozen of them could have made it if not for the Recluse. The few hundred that were still left were incinerated before their ashes were sent away like chaff on the wind.
In a few short minutes, three thousand were dead. The crippled wounded who had somehow managed to survive the barrage moaned as they tried to crawl towards the Mandalorians. Such was their dedication to the Warmaster, their prophet, that they would spend their last breaths trying to choke it out of His enemies.
The Chaos Pact had gotten everything they wanted.
High up in Orbit, Pact Tactical Staff processed the collected information from the deaths of their comrades. Recon by fire in the most one-sided sense of the term.
"Estimated minimum of at least two hundred Mandalorians with heavy emplaced weaponry all with airborne capabilities. Recommend that anti-air assets be reinforced." a Pact tactical analyzer read out the data scrolling on his terminals. His skull was half exposed to allow room for the brutish cybernetics that enabled him to process the information into comprehensible words. "Tube artillery battery and multiple MLRS, approximately five. Forwarding information to the 82nd for counter-fire. At least two hostile corvettes provide supporting fire. They do not show up on any records."
"Progress on the 82nd?" The
Cherubim barked, his grating voice filtered through the Vocabulator lodged in his throat.
"Ahead of schedule, my Lord. The deaths of the Redeemers have distracted the enemy fire. Praise be!" the analyzer gurgled.
Their landers came screaming in much further behind the landing zone that the Redeemers had used. It was slower than their commander, Archcommanderim Enoch Lo'lumin, would have preferred. Already he had lost three dropships and one heavy lander to
Celt Saxon
's anti-air missiles. Even assuming abnormal survival rates that was nearly a hundred of his men gone and the battle hadn't begun yet.
"Whoever these Mandalorians are," he muttered as the ramp dropped, his command staff rushing out to begin setting a headquarters, "they at least know their ways of war well."
"It hardly matters," Arlurk Sephuneuth, his second in Command, sneered with her lipless acid-scarred face, "They fight well. So do we. In the Warmaster's name, they shall be overcome."
"In the Warmaster's name." Enoch repeated with a nod, "But caution, Sephuneuth, we must not underestimate them. After all the Warmaster in the early days of Reunification had His foes laugh upon sight of Him and his twelve Apostles. And yet we now stand among the stars while their laughter is muffled under six layers of dirt. I have heard stories about these Mandalorians and their strange culture... it is not too dissimilar to ours."
Around the pair, most of the staging ground had been finished. War tents had been set up and supply depots established. Anti-air in the form of captured
AT-AAs had been set up to guard against the Mandalorian flyers but part of Enoch feared that they weren't enough.
"Then let us place both our cultures into the forges of war. We shall see who emerges keener," she said.
Above them, the rest of the dropships continued to land. The 82nd "Screaming Demons" Voidborne Division was one of the Chaos Pact's more well-trained units. Founded soon after reunification, they had been the first Pact boots on an alien planet after Herodor's isolation and the first boots to crush the skulls of its pathetic inhabitants. Ever since they had been the principal vanguard force for the Pact's rapid expansion across the sparsely populated neighboring star systems though most of the combat they saw had been skirmishes, albeit bloody ones.
This would be their first taste of true combat and only time would tell if they truly deserved their nickname.
As the last Redeemer perished under Mandalorian fire, a furious
artillery barrage from the 82nd slapped
Aloy Vizsla
forces near the bunker in the face and where they believed
Celt Saxon
's artillery to be. Orange flashes of fire, hot and rasping, lit up the area as shells struck and burst. Snow evaporated and provided a thick mist that covered the area for several hundred meters.
"In the Warmaster's name," bellowed a voice within the mist,
"LET NONE SURVIVE!"
And out of the rapidly disappearing steam came six companies of the 82nd - nearly a thousand men - screaming at the top of their lungs. They did not attack like the Reedmers whose corpses they now trampled with their boots.
These were not mindlessly berserkers anymore, these were
soldiers: decently
armored and well-armed with
blaster rifles and
repeater weaponry. They split and spread out into fire teams that each tried their best to provide covering fire for the other to advance under. Where one fell another would take his place uncaring for the losses around him. They did not flinch, hesitate, or feel fear for decades of religious indoctrination had told them that this suffering was only temporary and that Paradise was eternal.
Behind them rolled six
Mors Ferro Heavy Battle Tanks, their 240mm main guns roaring and heavy blasters roaring to provide suppression. Their tank threads crushed their dead comrades beneath into red smears on the already polluted snow.
"Perhaps I was wrong about these Mandalorians..." Enoch said as he observed the battle through his micro-binocs.
Darth Malum of House Marr
Marcus Dinn
Hilal Vizsla
Athena Saxon
Allyson Locke
