Badab War - Invasion of Pireaus (911.M41): Lord High Commander Carab Culln, having waited as long as he thought was strategically advantageous to gather his forces for a heavy assault, put his plans for the invasion and conquest of the Piraeus System on the edge of the Badab System into action. The Piraeus System had been identified as the key to the subsequent attack on the central Badab System due in no small part to the relatively stable Warp route between the two regions.A plan long in fruition, Culln had already set up a series of secondary fronts at Isin and Decaballus, where raids and hit-and-run actions by his own Red Scorpions Chapter along with the Minotaurs and Exorcists had destabilised much of the region and forced the Tyrant of Badab's armies to spread their outer defences thinly.The initial attack would occur with an Imperial Navy assault to interdict the industrial world of Piraeus V (also known locally as Yarrow Station), with a direct Space Marine assault against the lunar colonies on the second moon of Piraeus' dominant gas giant Kritias. This attack was to be conducted by the combined forces of the Exorcists and the Red Scorpions Chapters, their strike force amounting to an effective strength of 6 Space Marine companies.The majority of the Space Marine contingent was made up of fresh reinforcements of the Exorcists Chapter who Lord Commander Culln had kept in reserve for this closing stage of the war, although overall tactical command of the assault was taken up by Culln himself.From the start, the invasion of the Piraeus System was subject to reversal and unexpected calamity. As the Loyalist invasion fleet left the Larsa System one of the Imperial Navy cruisers attached to the force, the Spear of Mendoza, suffered a catastrophic Geller Field failure, hurling all onboard screaming to their doom in the Immaterium.Several other ships were either damaged or scattered, due to unexpected turbulence in the usually stable Warp route. This forced the ill-fated fleet to arrive piecemeal at the target system's edge, further out than had been planned. The Loyalist starships were forced to reassemble and operate at maximum thruster burn for a number of solar days to reach the inner worlds of Pireaus, after which time all element of surprise had been lost.The Loyalist fleet had little choice but to press the attack. The bulk of the Imperial Naval ships led by the Retribution-class Battleship Throne of Blood broke off to engage the defence fleet and bombard Piraeus V, while the Space Marines strike force diverted to assault the moon of Kritias Secundus. A flotillas of planetary assault craft ferrying Astra Militarum and Inquisitorial forces formed a rear echelon intended to consolidate and exploit a successful Astartes attack.Initial enemy resistance in space proved insufficient to slow the attack down even though the Imperial forces sporadically encountered minefields that were breached or bypassed without loss. The Secessionist armada around Pireaus V stood little chance of long-delaying, let alone preventing, the Loyalist force assembled by Lord High Commander Culln from their inevitable assault.The fighting above Piraeus V proved particularly fierce, as the defence ships flung themselves almost suicidally against their attackers. The Imperial Navy ships however were prevented from achieving their secondary objective of close bombardment of Pireaus V as ground fire from massive emplacements of Macrocannon and Defence Laser batteries on the surface, unpredicted in strength and ferocity, forced the Naval ships back.Elsewhere, in orbit of Kritias Secundus, despite strong resistance greater success was found by the Loyalists, and between them the combined might of the Red Scorpions' Sword of Ordon and the Exorcists' Redeemer smashed aside the moon's asteroid forts in short order. Landing zones in the vicinity of the lunar colonies' main citadels and generatora stations were quickly identified and subjected to preliminary bombardment before a full-scale planetstrike was initiated via Thunderhawk and Drop Pod assault.On landing, the Red Scorpions and Exorcists were immediately met head on by the mortal auxilia of the Tyrant's Legion in a strong counter-offensive, their enemy's numbers increased several fold by indentured workers, driven on by the use of explosive-collars and armed with little more than sharpened tools and crude promethium bombs.Though the assaulting Space Marines killed the Tyrant's Legion auxilia and their slave-worker allies in droves, their numbers slowed the transhuman attackers down, preventing them from spreading out to assault their individual targets as planned. It was at this point, when the bulk of the Red Scorpions and Exorcists Chapters were both bottled in their landing zones, that the Astral Claws' sprung their trap.Previously silent and long-concealed ground batteries fired from the depths of the alien forests that covered the moon, striking down Thunderhawks and landing craft and ripping into the Space Marine warships in close orbit above. From within the moon's citadels cannons and mortars thundered afresh, pelting the Loyalist Space Marines with missile and shell, indiscriminately targeting the battles where their own forces were engaged at close quarters with the Loyalists.This was only a heralding barrage however, and from concealed bunkers, scores of Land Raider tanks and Rhino transports bearing the insignia of the Tyrant of Badab roared forth -- the near-Chapter strength of the Astral Claws with their master, Lufgt Huron, leading at the fore. Lord High Commander Culln and those Space Marines that stood with him were caught between a crossfire from above and the Tyrant below.The Tyrant had long ago divined the importance of the Piraeus System as a keystone in the Badab Sector's defence and drew his own plans accordingly. The presence of a concentration of Astral Claws on Kritias, and the secret upgrading and cunning deployment of its defences had not been the whole of the Tyrant's strategy either, and within a solar hour of the hidden guns on Kritias Secundus opening fire and cutting off the Loyalist spearhead from its supporting ships, the Tyrant's own war fleet ripped into realspace at the edge of the inner Piraeus System.What was to follow was to be one of the largest and the last major fleet engagement of the Badab War. With the final remaining operable battle barge in the Astral Claws fleet, the mighty and storied Seraph of Judgment, the Secessionist armada represented the last excise of their once vaunted naval power.Outgunned, the senior Imperial Navy admiral realised that the tactical situation had suddenly shifted and quickly ascertained that if the Tyrant's fleet could take on the two Loyalist forces (both of which had already sustained damage and expended considerable stocks of their ordnance) separately, they might yet attain a crushing victory. But if fought simultaneously, the Loyalists would be far more evenly matched against them.With communications with the ongoing ground war impossible, it was with a heavy heart that Captain Waite Ryder, the Exorcists' Master of the Fleet, reluctantly agreed with the vice-admiral's dire assessment of the situation and complied with his plan of feigned retreat and rendezvous. With their enemies seemingly in full-flight before them the Secessionist fleet ravaged into the inner system at full speed, striking at targets of opportunity such as the ungainly Loyalist rear echelon transports. Thousands of the embarked troops aboard these Imperial transports died as a result.On the planet's surface, savage fighting raged on as the Loyalists and Secessionists clashed without mercy. The Astral Claws came on in savage and bitter fury as the Red Scorpions met them with righteous hatred of their own, while the Exorcists displayed their usual unnerving calm in the face of overwhelming force. Lord High Commander Culln stood at the fore, at his side was Sevrin Loth, Chief Librarian of the Chapter.Lufgt Huron struck the Exorcists' battle line ferociously, smashing aside Space Marines with contemptuous ease. The Tyrant's blood-spattered personal guard poured into the breach behind him, forming a murderous wedge as the Tyrant strove to reach his true and chosen enemy; Carab Culln. Captain Silas Alberec, commander of the Exorcists forces, led a counter-assault force of his Chapter's elite Enochian Guard to confront the Tyrant head-on in an attempt to blunt his attack, and prevent the momentum of the battle from shifting at a critical juncture.Instead of being matched with the Tyrant, Silas Alberec found himself in a duel with Ancient Kleitor, one of the most feared and infamous of the Astral Claws' Dreadnoughts. The Exorcists captain suffered terrible wounds which crushed and crippled his Terminator Armour before he was able to disable the Dreadnought's motive systems with his master-crafted relic mace, The Hellslayer, felling the great metal beast.As the battle continued to rage the two Chapter Masters at last found each other, and Carab Culln and Lufgt Huron matched their skills in personal combat. The Tyrant of Badab charged the Red Scorpion Chapter Master in a fury, bellowing his rage and blaspheming the Emperor bitterly, while Culln fought in grim silence, concentrating on countering the frenzied blows of the Tyrant's relic Lightning Claw known as the Ghost Razors with the ancient heirloom of his Chapter, the Blade of the Scorpion. Soon Culln was covered in dozens of bleeding wounds.It was at this point, when the two warriors parted from the exchange of blows that Culln finally spoke, taunting the Tyrant with accusations of his own. Further maddened by these insults, the Tyrant of Badab howled in rage, charging at the Red Scorpion again. But Culln expected the frenzied attack and deftly turned aside, allowing the Tyrant's momentum to take him past. In a blow that would have normally fell even the mightiest of Space Marines, Culln lashed out with the Blade of the Scorpion and slashed deeply into the Tyrant's side, parting his foe's armour in a welter of blood.But the Tyrant shrugged off his opponent's attack and wheeled around, his claws arcing down and the ghostly blades punching through Carab Culln's breastplate. Only through monumental effort was Culln able to fight on through his agony, hurling himself backwards onto the ground before the Tyrant could close his clawed fingers and rip out his heart. The Red Scorpion then slid down a slope of rubble and armoured bodies before the looming Tyrant whose bitter laugh echoed above him. Culln staggered once more to his feet, direly wounded, as the battle continued to rage around him. Then suddenly, a new sun burned the heavens, raining destruction down on all below.Gambling on a dangerous plan to extract the forces stranded below, Captain Ryder bargained that the planetary defences would be half-blinded by the battle raging above them in orbit. The Exorcists' battle barge Redeemer was among the least scathed, its bays filled to capacity with surviving Thunderhawks from across the fleet for the emergency operation. The vast battle barge sliced into Kritias Secundus' thin atmosphere. The ground batteries proved ineffective against her, as the fire striking all around her shields made the Redeemer appear as a terrible blazing sun in the sky and the panicked defense crews failed to quickly respond.Librarian Taloth of the Exorcists was able to lock in on the bright soul of Sevrin Loth in the Warp and the familiar spark of his wounded master Alberec, and so the Redeemer made for its intended target. At this unexpected arrival, the Astral Claws were hurled back amid a storm of dust and debris, and below its sky-blotting bulk, the battlefield where Culln and the Tyrant fought was showered in rubble and flame, parting them before their combat could reach a final conclusion in either's favour.Immediately extraction operations got under way before the enemy could rally to the defence as the Redeemer's guns rent the ground asunder and pulverised the towers of nearby citadels. In a desperate operation lasting near two solar hours almost three in five of the Loyalist Space Marines that had made planet fall were recovered, although most of them were either casualties or bore some fresh wound or scar to mark the furious combat they had seen. Not least of the wounded was Lord Commander Culln, who was taken up in the care of his Chapter's Apothecaries.Above Kritias, battle had once again been joined between the Loyalist and the Secessionist warships. The Secessionists both outnumbered the Loyalists and outgunned them, but the Loyalists, even though many of their vessels were damaged, had the greater number of heavy warships in their line of battle, and were far the greater in quality of skilled and disciplined crew.The rebel fleet came on in a chaotic and ragged attack column, and this was to prove their undoing as the combined Imperial Navy and Adeptus Astartes warships formed into tight formation and crossed laterally in an oblique pass on the enemy column, maximising their broadsides while the Secessionists could not fully bring theirs to bear. The star battle was eventually won for the Loyalists with the death of the Seraph of Judgement but at great cost, and there remained a great deal of bloody fighting to do as the surviving enemy ships were put to flight or captured in a series of brutal boarding assaults.The invasion of Piraeus was over; both sides claimed a victory and both sides tasted defeat. For the Secessionists, the Loyalist invaders had been driven off and not one iota of ground had been surrendered to them, but in doing so they had gambled the last of their once mighty fleet and lost it, and with it any hope of maintaining dominion outside of the Badab System itself.Fatalities on both sides had been appallingly high, and Lord Commander Culln had seen his attacking force blunted and many of his most powerful ships of the line damaged to the extent that might take standard years to repair. The Badab War had arguably been won at Piraeus by the Loyalists but there was one last battle to fight, and that was likely to be the most terrible of all; the final siege of Badab itself.