The Destruction of Huraditus
Huraditus was a thriving hive world which is responsible for the production of a large variety of spare parts that the Imperium needs to keep the war machine of the Imperial Guard in fighting order. Production varies from the humble lasgun power pack, to more complex items like engines for a leman russ battle tank. When Huraditus fell, multiple sectors nearby ended up at a heightened risk of falling to the myriad enemies of the Imperium.
In M400.32 forces from the renegade titan legion Legio Mortis attacked Huraditus. The Legio Mortis deployed several Warlord titans along with eight reaver titans and a compliment of nineteen warhound class scout titans. The sheer overwhelming firepower such a force could bring to bear had the planetary defence force on the back foot from the start. The Legio Mortis obliterated any force they came up against with only minor damage suffered by some of the warhounds.
The Celestial Lions responded to the threat, but could only send one battle company to help. Even the vaunted space marines couldn’t hope to defeat so many enemy titans on their own. At least not in a head on battle. So the commander of the Celestial Lions’ forces chose to adopt a more guerilla style of warfare. The first engagement was with a single warhound titan that was stalking through the rubble of a long abandoned city that had never been rebuilt ever since its destruction during the Horus Heresy.
Using several land speeders as bait, the marines lured the warhound titan into a large plaza area. They had chosen this spot because of the large number of areas they could hide and have multiple firing angles on the titan once it got into the plaza. Once it had ventured close to the centre of the plaza, its wolf like head looking left and right searching for the land speeders it had been chasing, the Celestial Lions sprung their trap. Lascannon beams speared into the titan from every side. The void shields collapsed quickly and the beams of the lascannon fire began to score lines along the titan’s hull. Leaving weeping wounds of melted metal. The titan bellowed in fury at the attack and started unleashing destructive blasts from its plasma blastgun and its mega bolter. One of the predators was stuck by one of the plasma blasts and detonated, its turret flying hundreds of meters away before crashing into some buildings. Several marines were smashed from their positions by the massive rounds of the mega bolter.
Despite the firepower now being unleashed at their positions, the marines maintained their assault on the titan. Its right leg was hit multiple times around the knee and it began to limp as it tried to turn around to attack all of the marines annoying it. It was then that the land speeders it had originally been following flew back in to the plaza. Taking advantage of the fact that it was now distracted by the rest of the Celestial Lion forces, they managed to get in at point blank range and unleashed the fury of their multi meltas upon the rear of the titan. The super heated attacks cutting through the titan’s armour like a lascannon through a gretchin. Suddenly the battle seemed to pause. The titan stumbled forward and let out a pathetic mewl. Then it started to tremble. Suddenly an area on its back grew white hot, then exploded outwards as superheated plasma speared out into the air from its reactor. Shortly after, the whole titan was obliterated in a blinding flash as the damaged reactor went critical.
In the aftermath of the explosion, a massive hole was left in the center of the plaza. But something else was there. The marines investigated and found that there was an underground cavern beneath the plaza. It wasn’t a natural cavern though, and it wasn’t empty. In it they found a large number of damaged tanks in various sizes that dated back to the Great Crusade. The biggest of them were legion Fellblades. There was a problem though. It seemed that this area was more akin to a tank graveyard than anything else. The techmarines postulated that it at one time was probably a repair and salvage depot.
Upon further investigation, the techmarines thought they would actually be able to salvage a few vehicles by cobbling together a few working vehicles using parts from the others. They set to work and managed to produce several working vehicles, just in time to meet the reprisal attack that the Legio Mortis force sent to take out whatever destroyed the warhound. Two more warhounds and a powerful reaver titan arrived first. They unleashed torrents of power laser fire and missiles into the ruins even though they had no idea where their enemy was. Using the tunnels they discovered, the Celestial Lions hid from the furious attack by the titans. They found several egress points where they could leave the tunnels outside of the city ruins. While the warhounds advanced into the ruins, the reaver titan stood guard at the outskirts. Scanning the surroundings. Unfortunately for the Celestial Lions, it detected their force as they emerged from a secret exit from the tunnel network and turned to engage them.
The reaver was seconds away from unleashing a deadly barrage upon the marines as they emerged when it was surrounded by explosions and powerful energy blasts impacted upon its void shields. In spite of the barrage, its void shields held. It started to turn and try and face the new threat when a massive vortex opened up inside its shields. The swirling colours of the warp briefly seeped into reality as the vortex consumed a portion of the reaver titan’s left leg. Already in the middle of turning, the stress caused what was left of the leg to give way and the reaver fell to the ground. The impact caused the earth to shake and many of the ruined buildings in the city nearby, already weakened by thousands of years of neglect, collapsed.
At this point the attackers revealed themselves. A massive phantom titan strode into view, as it did so it poured even more firepower into the downed reaver, making sure it would never rise again. With the phantom came two pairs of revenant titans. Skimming around them came several super heavy Engines of Vaul of the scoprion and cobra patterns. Flitting around them were wave serpents and other lighter Eldar vehicles. But the sight that was even more impressive than this huge display of firepower, was the fleet of aircraft that screamed overhead towards the city. The silhouette of the Eldar’s massive vampire hunters flew past. Surrounding them were smaller craft such as nightwings and the fighters of the Crimson Hunters aspect warriors. They flew on and attacked the lumbering forms of the two warhounds that had entered the city. They managed to cripple then destroy one of the warhounds, but the other managed to escape with little damage. Carrying the news of the new arrivals to its friends.
Even with the aid of the Eldar, the forces of Legio Mortis were still too strong to overcome. The titans managed to reduce all of the industrial structures on Huraditus to nothing more than rubble as well as levelling the two main hives, before withdrawing. The Eldar, having accomplished their primary goal, which remains unknown to the Imperials, also withdrew. The Celestial Lions left a bruised and battered world that would take the Imperium centuries to rebuild and have recorded the shame of the loss in their Chapter’s archives. Every century they mark the loss of so many Imperial lives with a memorial service in the Chapter’s fortress Monastery.
The Imperium is still recovering from this defeat and is rebuilding the infrastructure on Huraditus. It is projected to be back to its original operational capacity by the middle of the 42nd millennium.