Battle Report, told in Short Story Form !!!

To Claim a World…

                The World of Jacobs Hope was a vast industrial world on the Eastern Fringe. It had for many years suffered from intense civil unrest from various religious cults and workers union organization. It however remained within the fold of Imperial Rule due to a strong garrison of loyal imperial troops as a precautionary measure.

                Within a year of the formation of the Pilgrims of Rust, the Traitors had reached Jacobs Hope and begun a vast siege of the planet at large. With the Traitors fleet dueling with orbital defense stations in orbit, thousands of dropships rained down across the main continent. Realizing their chance was finally upon them, the traitors in the midst of the loyalist camps rose up against imperial authority. Still, millions of innocent loyalist civilians were massacred along with traitors by imperial commanders doggedly attempting to maintain control of the attack. Two regiments of the Imperial Guard were diverted to deal with the crisis, the Merkan 76^th and the Mordan 15^th. These forces would play a crucial role in the coming fight.

                After three weeks of intense combat in and around the capital. The call was made that the situation had become to grave for the planetary governor Sevrus Liu, to remain planetside.  As traitor forces swarmed the 11^th company of the Merkans holding the Governors Palace, the 6^th Company, under hot pursuit by the traitorous horde, made way for the spaceport.

                Enforcer Tamp, had been apart of the Pilgrims from the beginning, he’d been there since Rall, since Cyrus. After a dozen brutal wars he was here on Jacobs Hope, chasing a governor of all people.

“Pilgrims advance and claim the prize” he cried as his men swarmed over the bodies of the gas masked imperials they had just overrun. He could see ahead of him the spaceport and in between the sandbags and heavy weapons, the shifting running form of the 65 year old, Sevrus Liu. 

                Tamp, and his men ran forward into the bayonets of the entrenched Merkans, slaughtering their first line with contempt. A great gout of flame roared over his men in a great searing tide, and the flashes of a dozen guns blared around him. When he picked himself up off the ground he brought his pistol up, ready to shot the first coward that tried to run. Shockingly it turned out only hardened men remained, and they were now racing into combat with the next line of infantry. As a shot from one of the Yurien tanks obliterated the hellhound that had murdered his soldiers, he raced forward to join the fight.  Over the next few minutes of close quarters fighting, he had little time to gaze around. Everywhere he looked slaughter took place as Merkan lines were overwhelmed only for their killers to be gunned down by effective and precise lasgun and tank fire. 

Then the Yurien Tankers moved up.

                Tank rounds boomed around him and his surviving men, as the armored might of the pilgrims dueled with the armor of the Merkans around the spaceport. Ripping his bloodied blade from the gut of an unfortunate Merkan private, he looked toward the landing building, only to see the governor and his bodyguards clamoring up the stairs to the blast doors.

With a hellish explosion the building’s façade came clattering down, burying the governor and his guards in rubble. As vendetta gunships’ belonging to the Cyran’s screamed overhead, the Merkans fell back into the underhive. They had won the day, and slaughtered many imperials. But many had let themselves be killed as well.