 By the second year of the war, the Siege of Wrax had settled firmly into a pattern repeated ad nauseam across the hundreds of kilometers of trenches that formed the opposing front lines. Days became indistinguishable, the morning symphony of artillery fire giving way to the cacophony of raids across no man's land, and the screams of the dying they claimed. The differentiation and tracking of linear chronology became the sole concern of the command echelon and NCO corps. For the Kreeg of the Line, the only marking of the passage of any particular day, was the hour their watch shifts ended, or the amount of time they had to offer prayers to the god emperor before they were to go over the lips of their trenches and unto the teeth of the enemy's guns. All was, however, going according to nominal plan. None on the imperial side had expected a quick resolution to the conflict, after all. There were still many, many more years of this, accounted, planned, and accommodated for. Should a disruption to the status quo as it stood occur, both sides would have to move quickly to capitalize on it. And as fate would have it, such an occurrence was about to emerge. So then, that this is a further record in that chronicle of that calamitous conflict, the Siege of Raks. On the Grey Dawn of 897-814-M41, the 261st Lion Regiment of the Death Corps were ordered to conduct a probing attack upon enemy lines in sector 45-49. The 30th Lion Corps, of which the 261st was a part, had been conducting a series of such operations in anticipation of an upcoming offensive, having spent the prior six months in a period of relative inactivity, at least compared to the initial bludding the Corps had received in the war's opening engagements. Time enough had passed that the initial losses of manpower and material had been replenished from Krieg itself, and command had repositioned the might of the 19th Bombard Corps in order to support any future attacks. The 9th Company of the Lion Regiment were selected for what would be the most challenging part of the offensive, an assault on the enemy's strong point designated by Imperial strategos as Fort A-453. A fortified section of line consisting of a series of interlinked bunkers and pillboxes, the fort had had its main weapons battery, an earth shaker bombard, destroyed by Imperial artillery. However, it was still a locus of power projection for the Vraxian militia, commanding a sizable portion of no man's land within the killing fields of its heavy bolter emplacements, all situated atop a network of reinforced personnel shelters that connected to garrison and ammunition supply tunnels running a half mile back towards the safety of militia held territory. Despite the wastes being full of strong points just like it, its capture was essential for any Imperial attempt at gaining ground, and its loss would be a severe blow to the militia in that sector. A previous attack had been easily repulsed, leading to months of Imperial shelling that, aside from destroying the aforementioned battery, had done little to diminish its capabilities to resist any advance. While the reasoning of the strategos are not committed to most Imperial records for so granular a part of the overall siege, it is likely enough to suppose that the probing attack was just that, an attempt to ascertain how much the capabilities of the fort had degraded, if at all, since the initial assault upon it, and that the cost in the lives of the Kreeg was nominally worth the intelligence that it would gather. Forward preparations were already underway, with the 9th Company excavating an assault trench out into No Man's Land under the cover of routine bombardments. By its completion, it would ensure that the Kreeg would only have to cover around 275 meters of open ground to reach the comparative safety of Fort A453's outer anti-tank ditches. Break of day had not even arrived, when the Imperial guns took up their rapport, bringing a dawn in fire to sector 4549, as their preliminary bombardment fell upon the Vraxian positions. The 9th Company, under the command of Captain Tyborg, gathered in the forward trench positions, under the watchful eye of higher ranking officers, safely ensconced in secure dugouts much further back behind the lines. Tyborg, in typical Kreeg line officer fashion, was first over the top. The first hundred meters or so that the Kreeg charge was covering was quite successful. The just ceased bombardment had clogged No Man's Land with thick smoke, obscuring the Imperial advance as it moved closer and closer to the razor wire barricades. But the peace would of course not last. Vraxian heavy bolters began to bark, and guardsmen began to die. Tyborg and his forward squads had reached the razor wire lines, however, and crawling upon their bellies through the clogging ash mud, succeeded in breaking through to the anti-tank ditches beyond, even as the Kreeg following them in No Man's Land were scythe down by a hail of explosive rounds from the fort. Tyborg's breach in the line did, however, allow the advance to continue. Even as casualties mounted, the Kreeg were flooding into the ditches, only for a new hazard to present itself. Landmines. The defenders had prepared for just this eventuality, of course, and the ninth company were now effectively trapped. Captain Tyborg, presented with what was effectively suicide and suicide, conducted himself by his Imperial programming, leading his Kreeg towards a death that would hopefully lead to more enemy casualties. Heedless of losses, and again leading from the front, the captain charged up the lip of the slope beyond the tank ditch, landmines taking out dozens of Imperial servicemen as he did so. It was not until Tyborg reached the top of the trench that his almost miraculous luck finally gave out. He was injured by a flying shard of human bone from the Kreeg next to him, who was obliterated in totality by a landmine. Nevertheless, the captain continued to lead, as by now the Kreeg had accomplished far, far more than any previous assault on this position had done. They were within striking distance of the outer pillboxes. The militia defenders of the fort had by now fully awoken and under an Imperial attack that had managed to catch them surprisingly on wares. Tyborg's advance had also managed to claim far more ground that the defenders would have relied upon to winnow the attackers' numbers down to more manageable quantities. The reserves raced towards forward positions which even now were breaking out in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Others fled entirely, believing the fort to already be lost. All was the chaos and confusion of close quarters fighting. Worsened, as out in no man's land and within the inner ditches, Vraxian quadlauncher batteries rained fire down in the melees, indiscriminately killing both sides in an effort to stymie the tide of Kreeg. Tyborg was again wounded now by grenade shrapnel, likely from one of his own men's attempts to force a breach in one of the pillboxes. Bleeding severely, he was nevertheless aware that the foothold the Kreeg possessed was tenuous and in need of reinforcements. Having lost his Voxcaster to a landmine, the only option for communication was a runner, whom Tyborg summoned to deliver a missive to Imperial lines. The ninth company within wire, enemy growing in strength, will hold if reinforced. For a full Vraxian hour, the bloodied ninth company held their breach head against the militia, even going so far as to make forward advances through the fort towards its central bunker. Capturing the entrance to the fort's personnel tunnel, Tyborg ordered an assault in force to purge the enemy within, a bayonet charge straight into the militia's hastily assembled barricades, that saw him sustain a third injury, a shot to the head that by all rights would have slain him, but was turned aside by his helmet. The assault and the advance into the subterranean network was perfectly timed, if accidentally. Outside, the fort was suddenly subjected to a punishing barrage from Vraxian heavy artillery miles away. Precited, the guns had received word that the fort was lost, and the militia now sought to deny the Imperials any gains that they had made. The captain's assault squads, numbering at this point some forty men, were sheltered underground. The Kreeg on the surface, however, were obliterated. The bombardment had ended the surface battle, and as the Vraxian gun sustained their fire, it drove what stragglers remained unpolverized underground. The enemy was, of course, fully aware of the Kreeg's positions, and the gallery in which Tyborg and his company were now trapped became a blood-soaked killing field. Night began to fall, and with no sign of reinforcements, the Kreeg reckoned with their deaths, as the runner had clearly been killed on his way to deliver Tyborg's missive to command. This was, however, incorrect. The man had made it, though it had taken him several hours of crawling under the hail of enemy fire to accomplish the feat. Presenting the missive to the general of the line, the Imperial elements immediately sought to capitalize on a breakthrough opportunity like none they had encountered through these last two grinding years. Grenadier regiments were hurriedly summoned to reinforce the besieged Tyborg, and artillery batteries were also recited to curtain off the overland routes the enemy may use to relieve the fort or attempt to stymie any advance. All across the line occupied by the 19th Regiment, squads were prepared for immediate diversionary attacks to place the Varaxian militia under as much pressure as possible and tie down any of their reinforcements. The Grenadier regiments were unable to move in force until the breaking of the second day, and, additionally, were also forced to move towards the fort while the structure was still under heavy artillery bombardment. All the while, Tyborg's men had managed against all odds to hold their subterranean gallery against the militia assaults. The tunnel had been turned into a smoke-clogged hellhole, and the Imperial guardsmen were protected only from the lethal fumes by virtue of their Kreeg issue respirators. Ammunition was looted from the enemy, all of it mercifully Imperial standard issue sequestered from the Varax weapon dumps. The dead were utilized to form barricades of bleeding, necrotizing flesh. The day was one of, unsurprisingly, grinding attrition, whittling down the men under Tyborg's command to Amir-16. By the coming of the night, forward Grenadier squads had managed to clear and occupy the remaining surface structures, and were now battling to gain access to the tunnel network. On the third day, the situation proved tenuous enough for the regiment's command echelon to deem armoured support necessary. Seconded from the 61st Tank Regiment, squadrons of Limanrus mainline battle tanks, supported by a bane-blade super-heavy, were released for the offensive. Atlas excavator vehicles ranged ahead of the armoured column to fill in the anti-tank ditches that surrounded the fort, four of them being lost to the process. However, the armoured column ground razor wire cordons under their treads, allowing a full advance in force of the remaining Grenadier platoons and supporting infantry squads. Elsewhere, the full mobilization of the 30th line corps had already been ordered. Imperial command was seemingly wasting no opportunity that it saw, regardless of potential casualty risks. Underground, it would not be until nightfall that Captain Tyborg, miraculously alive, wounded in both his legs, his right arm, his abdomen, and his head, staggered above ground with just eight of his original assault force, all into the security of areas now thoroughly under Kreeg control. Fort A453 had fallen into Imperial hands. While merely one part in an obviously vast network of Raxian defences, the capture of this fortification was a galvanizing moment in those early days of the siege. Imperial command echelons were well aware of the significance it represented, not only for the simple progress of the campaign, but as a psychological coup too. The 30th line corps was ordered to push the enemy, and hard. Armour and infantry were poured into the breach in the Raxian lines forced at A453, forcing the militia to deprive surrounding line sectors of manpower, leaving them exposed to yet further breaches. This was trench warfare in one of its purest expressions, an event precipitating a cascading series of other events, as logistics rushed to spread whatever it needed to across however large a field, desperately struggling to keep all the pieces moving and give as little ground as possible. For the death corps in this sector, two years of static attrition had in three days transformed now into open ground warfare, armoured personnel carriers, supplementing tanks, supporting infantry divisions, all in a mad rush to capture as much of Raxian's ashen wastes as they possibly could. The van Meersland was transformed, littered now with the still burning carcasses of the machines and the scattered bodies of Kreeg and militia alike. The offensive ground on eastwards, the 30th line now being joined by the 8th assault corps, as it brought imperial fury to enemy trenches from behind, crushing outflank manoeuvres that further threw the militia into disarray. Positions were abandoned and rapidly. The Raxian militia knew that the first line was destined to fail eventually, and the second was there, ready and waiting for occupation. It was a well-timed move. The 12th line corps of the Kreeg were now supplementing the grand imperial offensive, adding to the tide of bodies pouring through the initial breach head and swarming outer trench lines, who were now fully occupied only by suicidal rearguard units. In the Saritama Hills, the 34th line corps forced a second breach in the outer lines, deploying their cavalry units to harass retreating militia divisions. Within 10 days of open fighting, the Kreeg had finally achieved what two years had bought in blood and bodies and steel. As the cost of the offensive was being counted, so too were the gains. The Raxian militia had abandoned not only now its entire outer defensive line, but the northernmost spur of the second defensive line. Those strategicos saying the gains noted that this would have, under present imperial deployments, been untenable as a defensive position for the militia, with the 1st and 30th corps completely outflanking it by the end of their 10-day push. The light resistance encountered by the 1st in particular was an opportunity command could not pass up, given the spectacular gains of the past two weeks, and the corps was ordered to push forward, despite the losses being incurred by rearguards, sniper fire, and artillery bombardments. Swinging eastwards, the 1st targeted the region known as Hab Zone 1, which, given its now southeasterly alignment, would allow it to effectively encircle the second defense line in that zone. The most enthusiastic amongst the command echelons wondered aloud if the emperor's fortune had truly now been bestowed upon the Kreeg, and that the 1st were truly carrying his wrath further than any imperial unit had so far. The line corps appeared to have entirely shifted the dynamic of the northern front of the siege, transforming the static warfare of the trenches into a furious overland rush. However, the enemy would soon shift its own paradigm. At 255815 M41, the militia of Raks launched what would mark its own 1st push of the war, after two years of entirely defensive actions. Hab Zone 1, towards which the 1st corps were pushing hard, was serving as a muster point for a massive armoured column. All manner of astromilitarium vehicles were represented, not merely the Lehmann rust tanks of the line, but armoured personnel carriers, the chimeras, self-propelled artillery pieces such as the basilisks and griffins. Centuries unbeknownst to imperial forces were now planning a substantial push into the Kreeg infantry divisions, aiming to inflict as much harm as possible and punish the advance. It was upon the heads of the 19th Regiment that the hammer would fall. Throughout the night prior, sentries had reported enemy vehicular movements, and the Kreeg, responding with artillery batteries, could do little in the way of substantial gains. This was also scattershot on precisely what was happening. Forward field trenches, little more than shallow ditches, were hastily constructed, but these would prove completely ineffectual against the storm that broke at dawn. Hundreds of armoured vehicles fell upon the 19th Regiment out of the wastes, attacking with the fury that the militia had seldom displayed. Chimera transports, disgorged cultist squads that overwhelmed the forward positions with bayonet charges, while Lemanruss formations pounded other trenches into bloody mulch, treads crushing the corpses of the Kreeg underneath as they powered deeper into imperial lines. This was slaughter. The death corps was caught in the open, effectively mid-maneuver, deprived of their trenches and emplacements and supporting infrastructure. While the resistance they offered was no doubt admirable under the circumstances, such was the scale of the counter-offensive that nothing could be done. Colonel Adal, the officer in charge of the 19th Regiment, was unable to obtain anything approximating reinforcements. The scale of the imperial push had left the Kreeg unit somewhat fragile, as different divisions of different corps were in the process of solidifying what was still a very fluid front line. Adal was ordered, also under no uncertain circumstances, to die before retreating. All the Colonel could hope to do was co-olate his forces around his own command post, the rearmost static ground yet held, and punish the enemy wherever possible. This newly centered Kreeg resistance, coupled with the insane rush of the militia, devolved the situation into a chaotic mess by the time night fell. Kreeg mortar positions were overrun, only to have them turned on their erstwhile owners. The militia exhausting all ammunition before destroying the field pieces to prevent recapture. But support weapon teams of the Imperials were able to launch attacks on armored pickets, hampering somewhat the tank superiority of the enemy. The night saw merely ineffective, pro-ming attacks launched by both sides. Little in the way of ground was gained, but plenty of blood was sown before the dawn arrived in a similarly brutal fashion. The renewed fighting was now accompanied by a rain of both shells and water. As artillery fire from both sides pounded the wastes, a sudden thunderstorm blew up from an atmospheric squall. Needless to say, the battlefield became an even deeper circle of the inferno. Shells turned the ground into a torped quagmire, churning ash and blood and water into a mud so thick it would even bog down the tanks of the enemy. All of whom continued to advance relentlessly. The Kreeg under a doll threw all possible resistance at the militia. Ultimately though it was for naught, the 19th were broken. Their command post incinerated by hellhound flammer tanks. The corpses of their senior staff sizzling under the rainfall, even as their infantry were crushed under advancing tank battalions. Straglers streamed back towards imperial positions, bringing word through severed communication lines that the enemy had now made their own breakthrough. The conditions of the muddy battleground often made relief efforts impossible. Equipment was abandoned wholesale, a great many artillery pieces previously utilized by the 19th Regiment's gunnery corps fell into enemy hands. The collapse of the 19th had left the flank of the first line corps entirely exposed to the coming enemy offensive, threatening wholesale the gains that the corps had made along the northern spur of the second defense line. The only strategic option available was a large-scale retreat, an abandonment of many of the gains made in favour of occupying the former enemy positions along the first defensive line. This would not be made without the cost in lives. The deathrider cavalry companies of the 19th, what little of them had survived, as well as whatever vehicles could be spared from the 7th Tank Regiment, were gathered to form a suicidal rearguard, hopefully to blunt the enemy offensive. Their lives spent as a coin in a transaction that would allow the first corps time to redeploy and fortify, but only barely. The third day of the counter-attack saw 52 tanks from the 7th Armoured, Liman Russes and Macarius Heavies both sell themselves against the foe, 11 of which made it back to Kreeg Lines in utter disarray. The pattern was similar all across the front. The first corps were thrown into a savage storm where previously they had been the ones steamrolling the enemy. Days of these hopeless rearguard actions continued. With each passing one, the war machines of the militia powered deeper into the lines thrown up by the first. Eventually, at the cost of many men and many machines, the attack was stalled. The momentum of the militia bled away as it approached the now newly drawn Imperial Lines. The tank columns ultimately retreating towards Habs Zone 1. Their work had been accomplished and well. The gains made by the Kreeg were not all lost, the first defensive line of racks had been cracked, but the chance to push even further had now been lost. Of course, yes, several parts of the new Imperial line were themselves now under severe pressure, rather than the ideal reverse. In all, some 80,000 men of the 19th Regiment had been lost or captured, and the first corps had yet to count their own losses. While the enemy had lost a not insignificant quantity of its armoured pool, their losses more than made up for the redrawing of the lines that it had forced. The effect on the Imperial front was seismic, to say the least. All across recently conquered grounds, regiments crashed to a halt as militarium stratigos furiously calculated, with order after order being delivered ordering redeployment or fortification or both. The Kreeg had narrowly avoided a total disaster on the northern front, but the momentum seen not days earlier had utterly evaporated. The enemy, now ensconced within the second defensive line, had also been granted significant time to reinforce their own defenses. The setback was a harsh one indeed, and its effects on the overall siege timetable were yet unknowable. There is an inherent frustration that many may feel hearing this part of the Chronicle. The sheer scale of the calamities inflicted upon loyal Imperial troops, caught in the conflagration of this conflict or depressing to say the least, but the tremendous amount of lives spent for such meager gains, the ability of the enemy a heretic rabble to successfully counter the might of the astral militarium, upsetting even still. This episode is however the very nature of the attritional warfare that the siege so perfectly embodied. A potential breakthrough turning into something altogether more terrible, ground bought at a staggering cost, only to be once more lost to the enemy. It was a pattern that would in years to come replace those early static status quo days on Vrax, as both sides Imperial and Vraxian sought to outmaneuver each other, testing, probing, swarming, dying. This was however still fully within the plan as envisaged by the higher command of the Imperium, and the officers of the core of the Kreeg. This is why the death core had been selected in the first place. It was the nature of the Imperium to spend lives, as our Empire's human resources are our most bountiful crop. The grinding repetition of the siege represents is in many ways a true and horrific expression of the Imperium's core values. Until such a time as I may continue this tale, Ave Imperator, Gloria and Excelsis Terra. 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