Merek Grimaldus - The Second Mannheim Siege: Arranging for an Imperial Navy shuttle, both Grimaldus and Cyneric deployed to the surface of Armageddon. Dawn was less than a solar hour away as they broke cloud cover above the Lions' ruined fortress stronghold. Grimaldus wondered if the Lions would have already left their fallen fortress by the time they arrived, marching towards their last stand.Besides the remaining four dust-blasted and paint-stripped Thunderhawks possessed by the Lions resting upon the wide rooftop platform, dozens of inelegant, blocky troop landers had joined them there. Struggling to locate an unmarked, untaken patch of ground, Grimaldus ordered the shuttle to break off its descent, as both he and Cyneric jumped from the ship's rear bay.The pair of Black Templars descended from the sky to the ground by utlising their Jump Packs. Pride Leader Dubaku was taken aback by the return of the Black Templars. Grimaldus replied that he thought that the Lions might appreciate the extra bodies.The reclusiarch was greeted by General Kyranov of the Armageddon Steel Legion, the acting commander of the Imperial military forces at Helsreach. Within the solar hour a war council was called, ordained before a battalion of revving tanks. The plan was simple -- they would march into the Mannheim Gap, and they would destroy anything that moved or breathed.Dubaku stood with Grimaldus at the heart of the impromptu conclave, his anger a palpable thing. He directed his ire at the reclusiarch, who he felt had overstepped his authority. The pride leader didn't appreciate these interlopers who threatened to interfere with their personal vendetta and their glorious last stand.He argued with Grimaldus that this was the Celestial Lions' fight and no one else's. Dubaku warned Grimaldus that when the time came, when they confronted the Ork Warlord responsible for so many of his battle-brothers' deaths, it would be a Lion's blade that killed the creature. Grimaldus vowed grimly that it would be so.And so, the forces gathered from Helsreach marched in long, armoured columns towards the Mannheim Gap. Every hope they possessed that Mannheim would be near devoid of Ork Titans was crushed before the first Steel Legion soldier had set foot on the loose rock slopes leading down into the canyon.The enemy was present in grotesque force. Great sockets in the rigging and stanchions along the canyon walls marked the absence of several Gargants, but many more were undergoing repair or reawakening after fighting in recent battles. The ravine was choked by multitudes of Orks going about their work, and thousands of mouldering corpses piled up into a sea of decaying organic matter.Gold armour, darkened and soiled by waste, showed among the barricades of the looted dead. The dead Celestial Lions had been heaped in undignified repose with their xenos murderers, and their ceramite -- useless to the junkyard heresy that constituted Greenskin technology -- was left to encase the rotting warriors amidst their flesh cairns.The Imperial force advanced over the sea of the disrespected dead, for tearing the barricades down was not an option. The Guardsmen climbed and waded through the sea of bodies or rode on the hulls of their tanks.Above the advance rode the gunship fleet, all flanking the four remaining Thunderhawks in the Celestial Lions' arsenal. The moment they streaked through the ravine's trench, cannonfire began to bring them down in tumbling fireballs.The Steel Legion did not baulk at the sight of such a vast enemy horde. They ploughed into the enemy's disarrayed ranks, slaughtering them to make room on fields of their bodies for the gunships to land.The first hours of the battle were unremarkable only for their ferocity. The Imperial Guard's massed cannonades devastated the Greenskin war machines. In reply, the Orks butchered the Guard at every point along the advance where it fell to men and women with bayonets to hold the line. As was so often the way of the Astra Militarum, they had the stronger steel, but the enemy had the stronger flesh.In such a grinding lock of armies, winning and losing was relative. The Imperial force pushed deep into the canyon as hundreds of men and women fell face down into the dirt. Behind the Space Marines lay a graveyard of tanks, practically all their own, all lost to enemy cannonfire.Lining the canyon's walls were the burning metal corpses of towering god-constructs, holed by missiles and tank shells, melting to slag in the flames of the Imperial Guard's bombardment. Stubber fire rattled against their ceramite harmlessly, but scythed Guardsmen down in droves.Still the Imperials advanced, sloshing through a rising torrent of blood. It was knee-deep on most of the humans, turning all advancement into a sweating wade through filth.Soon the pivotal moment of the battle came upon Grimaldus, as it had so many times before, his heraldry often drawing enemy commanders to him as often as he fought his way to them. It happened again at Mannheim, though he tried to avoid it.The largest of the Orks, doubtless hunting the reclusiarch by heraldry, launched itself at Grimaldus from behind. It was a thing of blunt fangs, sinewy muscle and hammering limbs -- larger than Grimaldus, and both stronger and faster than him. A Celestial Lion called out to the reclusiarch, reminding him that the Ork Warlord was the pride leader's kill.Grimaldus faced off against the massive beast, swinging his Crozius maul at the foul creature, but the powerful Greenskin moved as if immune to everything thrown against it.Las-fire lanced off the creature, going ignored against its armour, and equally ignored as the volleys scored fingertip-sized holes in its flesh. Celestial Lions charged the creature but the hulking warlord countered their feeble assaults with a sweep of his mighty mangling claw.As Grimaldus was driven to his knees and eventually struck to the ground, Dubaku finally came between the two combatants with a leap and a roar. He held his hand back, bidding Grimaldus to remain away. The reclusiarch had to force himself to obey, something he would never have countenanced in any other circumstance. But they had fought this battle for a bloodline's pride, and here was the moment of reckoning.Dubaku beat his blade against his chestplate, staring at the Greenskin lord in its powered suit of tank armour scrap. Despite the cacophony of battle that raged all around them, Grimaldus could hear the Celestial Lion's words as clearly as if they had left his own mouth: "In whatever underworld your foul breed believes, you shall tell your pig-blooded ancestors that you died to the blade of Ekene of Elysium, Lion of the Emperor."No one knew it then, but at that moment, the pride leader was the last Lion still standing. Dubaku attacked, his chainsword worthless against the beast's claw. He had just as little hope of parrying the creature's cudgel with his Combat Knife.So what he lacked in strength, he poured into speed -- never blocking, always dodging. The battle did not pause around the two combatants. Soon both the pride leader and the Ork Warlord were bleeding from a score of wounds.The chainsword had found its way through armour joints and plunged into soft tissue; the Power Claw had mangled the Celestial Lion's armour each time it fell. Soon, Dubaku was backing away. Fighting such a beast was no task for one warrior alone, no matter the pleasure of pride.Then came a thunderclap of noise as a massive electrical burst turned the air to charged static. Orks and men in their droves cried out in pain at the sonic boom. The orbital shield was no longer functioning.Somehow at some point in the hours of melee, while the reclusiarch fought with the Lions, the Steel Legion had laid explosives at the base of the Void Shield reactor. The Emperor alone knew when, where, and how.No sooner had the shield imploded, spitting its static charge in all directions, than a powerful and priority channel vox-rune chimed loudly in the reclusiarch's retinal display. Grimaldus activated it as he watched the pride leader and the Ork lord stagger around each other, wounded animals too proud to die.Soon Grimaldus heard a familiar voice -- it was High Marshal Helbrecht. He informed the Chaplain that the Black Templars were ready to reinforce their position. All he had to do was give the word. Grimaldus informed the high marshal that it was time to blacken the sky.At that moment the severely wounded Celestial Lion was down before Grimaldus could reach him. The beast clutched Dubaku's arm in its mangling claw, crushing it at the biceps before ripping it free. The pride leader retaliated by ramming his chainsword in an awkward thrust into the creature's throat.Deflected by armour, it barely bit. His assault came at the cost of his leg, as the iron claw scissored through the limb at the knee, dropping him on his back into the slime.Grimaldus was on the beast's back a heartbeat later, securing himself by digging into the creature's armour with his boots as he wrapped his severed weapon chain around its bleeding, sweating throat. The chain garrotted taut, cracking sinew in the beast's throat. The iron claw battered at the reclusiarch, shearing chunks of ceramite away.It staggered without toppling, gasped without truly suffocating. Even this -- even strangling it with his last remaining weapon -- could not kill it.All Grimaldus could do was buy Dubaku the moments he needed to crawl free, which he quickly did. And Cyneric was waiting, a bolter in his remaining hand. The mutilated Celestial Lion reached up for it, clutching it one-handed in a pistol grip, and aimed it up as he lay back in the sludge.Grimaldus dropped back, not completely, but enough to pull the chain tighter, adding his weight to his strength, and wrenching the beast's head back to bare its throat.The bolter sang once, and the kick of something heavy struck near the chain. With a muffled burst, the Ork's head came free, tumbling back over its shoulders and landing with the Chaplain in the filth. The armoured body stood there without anything existing above its neck -- still too stubborn, too strong, to fall.Once he got to his feet, Grimaldus reclaimed his maul from the fallen beast. Then he tossed the thing's slack-jawed head to Dubaku where he lay. The battle continued to rage, as the men and women Grimaldus had led there fought their way further down the canyon.Dubaku looked up at the darkening sky as the Black Templars descended in a massive Drop Pod assault upon the Mannheim Gap. The Lion's only reaction was to rise as best he could, and pull his helmet clear.He ordered the reclusiarch to help him stand. He didn't want to meet the high marshal on his back. Cyneric and Grimaldus hauled Dubaku up between them.While they did so, the Guard's vox link erupted in cheers, as High Marsal Helbrecht blackened the sky with Templar Drop Pods.