Editing Battle of Calth (section)

==The battle==
[[File:Guilliman's ALIVE by Emwattnot.jpg|thumb|300px|right|[[Rape|This is what you get for not double-checking that the Primarch's dead.]]]]
As the orbital defense network was helpless and the Ultramarines fleet was fighting for survival, the Word Bearers vessels could bombard Calth with impunity, which they did. After Guilliman put two and two together and realized this was a deliberately planned attack, he angrily phoned up Lorgar, promising to kill him and every one of his sons. Lorgar, laughing his ass off, summoned a swarm of daemons onto the ''[[Macragge's Honour]]'' which tossed Guilliman (who wasn't wearing a helmet) and his bridge crew into the void. The casualties included nearly all of the Ultramarines' senior commanders and the entire bridge staff.

On the ground, tens of thousands of Ultramarines and Imperial Army soldiers were cut down before they realized what was happening. The Word Bearers and their auxiliary units swept across the planet, exterminating everyone in their path, whether civilian or military. The loyalists who weren't killed in the initial attack struggled to rally in the face of this tremendous backstab. Their efforts were rendered nearly impossible by the loss of the planetary vox network and Mechanicum noosphere, which cut them off from the fleet and each other. Just eleven hours into the battle, the Ultramarine commanders estimated that over 100,000 legionaries were dead, leaving them severely outnumbered by the Word Bearers.

Nevertheless, several large battle groups led by a mix of Ultramarines, Army officers, and skitarii were able to begin fighting back against the Word Bearers. Their efforts eventually centered around the governor's palace at Leptius Numinus, where Mechanicum magos Meer Edv Tawren was able to activate an antique data-engine that let them reestablish vox communications. They also discovered the existence of a killcode created by Calth's ranking Mechanicum server before his death in the initial attack that would allow them to clear the scrapcode from the noosphere and retake control of the orbital weapons grid. Led by Captains [[Remus Ventanus]] and Lyros Sydance, the Ultramarines stormed a civilian spaceport in the city of Lanshear that possessed a data-engine capable of operating the weapons grid, while a small group remained at Leptius Numinus to coordinate the loyalist forces for as long as possible. The Word Bearers, having noticed what was going on, eventually overran Leptius Numinus and counterattacked Lanshear in overwhelming numbers. The Ultramarines were on the verge of being destroyed when reinforcements showed up from all over the planet, vectored there by a junior magos who had remained behind at Leptius Numinus. The loyalists held the Word Bearers back long enough for Tawren to successfully deploy the killcode and seize control of the weapons grid. She immediately demolished the Word Bearers' forces on the ground and in orbit.

Whilst all this was happening, [[Aeonid Thiel]], an Ultramarines sergeant who was under censure for planning and simulating Astartes vs. Astartes combat situations, went into action. He assembled a group of Ultramarines, Army troops, and lower-decks crew and armed them with weapons from Guilliman's personal collection, then led them to retake ''Macragge's Honour'' from the daemonic forces that Lorgar had summoned. They managed to clear most of the ship after about ten hours of vicious fighting, picking up more Space Marines and human crew along the way. Thiel eventually found Guilliman on the outside of the ship, still not wearing a helmet, killing Word Bearer boarding parties with his bare hands.

While the Ultramarines were still in a bad spot, they had rallied and were fighting back with a ferocity that startled the Word Bearers. [[Kor Phaeron]] boarded the Zetsun Verid shipyard and used it to reactivate some of the orbital defense platforms. After trashing everything else he could hit in the Veridian system, Phaeron ordered the grid to begin firing into Calth's sun. Magos Tawren was able to stop him with the killcode, but not before lethal damage had been inflicted on the star, corrupting it so it would produce massive amounts of radiation.

Guilliman led an attack on Zetsun Verid, where he and Kor Phaeron confronted each other. The latter managed to wound the Ultramarines primarch with his athame and tried to corrupt him as Erebus had done to Horus, but Guilliman told him to fuck off with that Chaos nonsense and ripped one of his hearts out. The Word Bearer, being a little bitch, teleported away with his main forces, allowing the Ultramarines to retake the platform and purge the scrapcode. Guilliman ordered the ''Macragge's Honour'' to pursue the Word Bearers' flagship, the ''Infidus Imperator''. The latter was destroyed after a vicious void battle.

With the Word Bearers' fleet smashed, the orbital weapons grid back in loyalist hands, and lethal levels of radiation now bombarding Calth's surface, Guilliman ordered the evacuation of as many civilians and military personnel as possible. Those who could not be evacuated in time retreated into Calth's underground arcologies. The surviving Word Bearers on the surface had the same idea, and soon the two sides were engaging in a brutal series of close-quarters battles in the Calth tunnel networks. This would become known as the [[Underworld War]].