Hiding his identity would only take him so far. The remnants of the Iron Hands were so scattered and few that each battle brother in each contingent knew each other. Their eidetic memories would know the gait of each of their fellow warriors, their augmetic enhancements, even the location of nicks and dents in their armour, probably even chips in the armour's paint.
The Legion had not gone to great lengths to conceal his identity, no parts were removed and replaced to fit in. A specific warrior was not known and could not be identified prior to the infiltration. The Warp Runners attack on the Tiger Eyes in the Yrevendi Desert had allowed the loyalists to intercede in the traitor thrust at Houlson. The massive walls of the capital city would have been difficult to breach without a demi-Legio of Astorum titans to protect it. With them there the attack would be a major battle and it was one that the traitor forces had neither the time nor the resources to conduct.
He hoped that the combined Audax and Furreans forces converging on the city would be enough to distract the Iron Hands for long enough. His walk was practiced unconcern as he moved towards Gate Bastion 17. The doors slid open to admit him and he stepped through. As expected the Iron Hands were all seeing to the various tasks that encompassed the garrison as the enemy came in. They were monitoring air defense artillery and coordinating a sally from the gate in case the battles should allow it.
The thunder of guns could be heard as the two forces engaged each other outside the wall.
He moved quickly towards the cogitator bank recording and reporting the status of the city's void shields. Two mortals and four servitors were monitoring the situation and redirecting energy to sectors that were most under threat. The servitors dispassionately carried out their tasks while the two mortals frantically and repeatedly struck at buttons that would, when recharged, raise fallen void shields.
He was fifteen paces from them when he heard a name ring across the room.
"Callaxus! What are you doing here?"
He half turned at the sound, then remembered that Callaxus was the name of the Astarte whose armour he wore.
"Wait, you're not Callaxus!"
Pulling his bolt pistol he turned and fired at the Iron Hand walking into the Bastion room. The marine had almost no time to react, even still he managed to just shift his head enough that the bolt only caught the side of his helmet. It didn't save him, the bolt glanced off the helmet and detonated against the armour's power pack. The explosion tore off the back of the helmet ripping through the spine of the marine and sending shrapnel into the brain stem.
Almost drowned out by the report of the weapon and the sound of the explosion was what he had yelled as he fired.
"Hydra Dominatus!"
There were too many targets for him to engage them in any way that would make his mission an escapable success now. He spun around again firining a round into one of the mortals at the consol. The round entered the woman's back, just above her shoulder blades and went down through her fired as it was from someone much taller. It started to protrude from between her breasts when the round exploded sending meat and bone shrapnel into her colleague and blasting him from his feet. The blast was enough to cause a head injury from which he would not recover, his fall to the ground resulted in a second head injury that would have also been fatal.
The first bolt hit him behind his knee and blasted the knee pad from his armour with enough force that when it hit the servitor in front of him the creature stopped moving.
He started to turn around as the second round struck his power pack causing him to spin back in the other direction and blasting the equipment into junk.
His bolt pistol pushed another round out before a third bolt hit it blasting it apart. His round detonated against a targeting servitor.
A fourth round hit his left vambrace as he moved it in front of his face. His arm suddenly ended at the elbow.
Before he was unable to do so, he bit down hard on his upper left canine tooth . It sent a jolt of electricity to both his hearts that stopped their motion. When this happened that caused the device that had been implanted in him in place of his progenitor gland to arm.
A fifth bolt hit his chest plate but the shot was from the side and the detonation blasted him back into the cogitator behind him.
Two seconds later the device exploded and the gate bastion was consumed in a massive explosion that tore through power cables, damaged the gate and most importantly took the void shields in this sector down.
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The force of Tiger Eyes approaching their position was not going to be strong enough to even engage his forces on an equal footing, they didn't stand a chance against his forces and the walls of Houlson.
Princeps Quor Sorris looked with disdain at the approaching yellow-hued enemy. The flame patterns that had once been carefully and semetrically painted onto the armour of their titans now was thrown down in random flame patterns. The degeneration of their heraldry matched the degeneration of the crews' minds, Sorris thought. The counter attacks of the Furreans titan at Yrevendi had been uncoordinated at best, they could have been described as bestial.
The first salvo of missiles were being exchanged between the two forces now, soon they would be in range for their volcano cannons.
Then two things tore his mind away from the enemy opposite him. An explosion erupted from the city behind him.
"What was that?"
Moderati Calinis replied, "An explosion ripped through Gate Bastion 17 of the wall, the void shields are down in that sector!"
At the same time a rune caught his eye on the display, one of their Warhounds was moving back towards the battleline at top speed.
Before he could call for a report, the Warhound Princeps announced over the Legio vox, "Audax titans approaching!"
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The loyalist fire concentrated on the Eunf Farah. The streaks of apocalypse missiles ended in a cataclysmic explosion that stripped the protective layer of void shields away from the Warlord titan.
The forces of the Tiger Eyes advanced along the line but the Knights of House Durbach pushed ahead of the loyalist lines forcing the traitors to keep a respectful distance.
The Jalil Siad rushed forward to get to grips with the knight armours. As the Reaver advanced the loyalists targeted it inflicting horrific damage on the machine, but still it came on. Void shields were ripped away in the conflagration and even the armour of the titan was left in cooling pools of molten metal in its wake.
The charge of the titan was ferocious and it ripped into a pair of Acastus knights, along with two Cerastus lancers the Furreans titans destroyed the massive knight armours.
Eventually brought low, the titan staggered forward crashing into one of two Warp Runner Warhounds that were pushing up behind the House Durbach knights inflicting massive damage on the smaller titan.
More fire power tore into Eunf Farah but the massive warmachine targeted an entire unit of Cerastus knight lancers and annihilated them as they emerged from cover in pursuit of the Tiger Eyes Warhounds.
But just as the traitor attack stalled the Ember Wolves struck. Their first attacks were carried out at a distance and were largely desultory, but just the presence of two maniples of fresh titans into the battle was enough to pucker loyalist assholes.
In their rush across the battlefield two of the Audax Warhounds lanced a reeling Warp Runner Reaver and dragged it from its feet.
The Tiger eyes were making for the section of the wall where the explosion had left the defenses in ruins. If they made it into the city the havoc that they could unleash would be devastating to the loyalist ability to hold the system.
The Ember Wolves leapt on the left flank of the loyalist line finishing off the last of the House Durbach knights and turning their attention on larger targets.
Three of the scout titans ran down the Warlord holding the Warp Runners left flank. They rushed in danger close and concentrated their fire on the massive loyalist machine. Inside the void shields the Warlord only had its armour to protect it from the savaging it was about to receive.
It would not be enough to save it.
Two burning beams of plasma ripped through the armour, the molten material streamed down the titan like blood from a stuck pig. Then two lasers blasts tore the hole open even further. The final insult came as a hailstorm of bolter rounds ripped through the air, though they were not powerful the damage that had been done ensured that enough of an opportunity existed that even a small round could find some piece of critical machinery to destroy.
The engine staggered backwards and fell, smashing into a section of the wall.
Both traitor Legios converged on the section of wall where the breach was.
It was too little, too late though.
The Iitlaq Alnnar pushed forward, resisting fire from all of the remaining loyalist titans. Shredded armour hung from its housing and rents appeared in the structure of the warmachine as it plodded forwards trying to reach the goal.
Two Warhound titans opposing it were shattered and it was only the Warlord that stood between the traitor reaver and its goal.
The Awqat Alnihaya poured shot after shot into the last of the Warp Runners' reaver titans and the machines engine overloaded. The explosion blinded titans and knights across the battlefield, it cause terrible damage to the loyalist Warbringer behind it.
Suddenly though a shimmer and snap in the air informed everyone that the necessary repairs had been effected and the void shields protecting the wall were starting to come back up.
The traitors reluctantly broke off their attack, pulling back they left devastation in their wake as the loyalist forces had only two badly damaged titans left to defend the wall against the next wave.
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