Al-Sherar Sector War

This article is about a battle in the /tg/ Heresy project, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40k universe.

In 857.M30, the Fifth Legion fought a sector-wide conflict against the Xenos Empire of the Amatteir. While Gaspard Lumey's Space Marines were sorely tested, they emerged victorious with the aid of allies old and new.

Background

Al-Sherar Sector War
Date	857.M30
Scale	sector
Theatre	Al-Sherar Sector
Status	Decisive Imperial Victory
Belligerents
Amatteir (Xenos)	Fifth Legion
Commanders and Leaders
The Council of Primates	Gaspard Lumey, assisted by Antoine Antonelle
Strength
multiple army groups, at least a dozen cruisers and scores of escorts	hundreds of Fifth Legion Astartes (including Neophytes), Legio Cataegis, 2 Markian Corps, one Army Ciban Chassuers, at least three Armies Ciban Fusiliers, unknown numbers of irregular and partisan formations
Losses
Outcome

Following the Pacification of the Chwiorydd Hardd, Gaspard Lumey returned to Ciban IV to prepare for the conquest of the Al-Sherar Sector. His foremost concern was the slaves liberated from CH-3 and CH-4. The Primarch saw to it that these unfortunates were settled on Ciban and made personal visits to the new citizens. Lumey's concern for the Amatteir's victims was real, but he was also keen to glean insights into his Xenos enemy.

Meanwhile, the officers of Fifth Legion were tasked with mobilising up the military resources of Markian sub-sector. If Lumey was still waiting impatiently for his first cadres of new Space Marines to complete their training, he had reason to smile on the efforts of his auxilia. The lessons learned in the recent campaign were integrated into the nascent Ciban Chasseurs and the moral effect of the conflict was electrifying the Markian Pact.

Light-years away the Amatteir's lotus-eating rulers were drawing plans of their own. Although slow to respond to the loss of their colonies at Chwiorydd Hardd, the Xenos eventually concluded that they were the victims of an attack originating on Ciban IV. Much of the delay had been caused by the puzzle of how a people they'd encountered only two centuries prior had leapt from feudal idiocy to the kind of sophistication required for the Chwiorydd Hardd operation. Once the evidence become incontrovertible, the Council of Primates planned a strike to eliminate Ciban IV before it became a real threat. A dozen cruisers and scores of escort warships were gathered to support army-scale landings on the human world's most heavily-populated regions.

Invasion of Ciban IV

Only Ténacité, an old Lunar-class cruiser gifted to the Fifth Legion by the Steel Marshals, and her escorts were present to defy the Amatteir warships that warped into the Ciban system. A terse discussion between Joso Nikolić on the Ténacité and his genefather on Ciban IV's surface saw the Imperial squadron withdraw before making contact with the invaders. Nikolić travelled to Ghalhal to ensure that the Fifth Legion's allies would be aware of the budding calamity.

Unopposed in space, the invaders began their planetary assault. The attack focused on Arcadia, Ciban IV's more heavily-populated populated continent and the site of both its temporary government at Saint-Vercy and the foundations of the new planetary capital, Ciban City. Records indicate that the Xenos landed several army groups, with between two and four million soldiers committed to Arcadia and perhaps half as many to the smaller continent of Jolof. This division of forces pitted the Amatteir's main strength against the Ciban Chasseurs and second-line Ciban Fusiliers, while Gaspard Lumey's Space Marines would face a much weaker force across the waves.

Early Operations on Arcadia

An Amatteir airstrike killed Jean-Davide d'Orléans and much of his command staff on the first day of the invasion, leaving Marie Fayolle in command. Unable to resist the invaders' airpower, Fayolle immediately ordered his mobile forces - the Ciban Chasseurs - to only move by night. This may have saved the Chasseurs, but it exposed the second-line Ciban Fusiliers guarding Arcadia's strongpoints and cities.

Xenos landings over-ran the second-class spaceport outside Saint-Vercy, but the Amatteir were stalled when they attempted to move into the city itself. Commandant Drouet Sainte-Menehould's Fusiliers had been joined by an immense turnout of irregulars, many of them armed with the black powder arms that had overthrown the Gallian monarchy a generation ago. Although the invaders had superior firepower and command of the skies, the stubborn courage of the Cibanese denied them access to Saint-Vercy's narrow streets.

If the Ciban Fusiliers were not as successful across Arcadia, the general pattern held good. Contrary to the Amatteir's expectations, their human foes, including many civilians, were not intimidated. Most of the continent's great cities remained at least partly in Cibanese hands and the Xenos had paid dearly for their gains. Even in the few cities that were completely overrun, the militias quickly transformed themselves into partisan bands and set to harassing the invaders.

Despite their limited gains on Arcadia, developments on Jolof soon compelled the Amatteir to redeploy forces to the southern continent.

Jolof Campaign

The Fifth Legion was still a very small force by the standards of its star-going brethren. In a contrast to most of their campaigns, the Fifth's records of the fighting on Ciban IV are terribly incomplete, an indication of the bitter fighting that took place. However, it is known that Antoine Antonelle's cadre of a few hundred Astartes were joined in the field by their first class of recruits, bringing their numbers up to perhaps five thousand. Given the invaders' numbers, Gaspard Lumey initially refused battle and went to ground, letting the Amatteir seize control of Jolof's cities. In contrast to their Arcadian brethren, the ordinary citizens did not form up in militias - but partisans sprang up and started picking off sentries and sabotaging the occupiers' equipment.

Initial Amatteir bombing raids on the Fifth Legion's Collegium Majoris in the interior of Jolof were an utter failure. The fortress was impervious to their weaponry and its own armament took a toll on the Xenos aircraft. A major strategic error was made in the wake of this setback. The Council of Primates wrote off the Collegium Majoris as too distant from the campaign's strategic objectives to act as a base of operations and scrapped plans to storm or besiege it. This left Remus Alsara and the scratch forces defending the Fifth Legion's base unmolested, while the tireless Space Marines were more than capable of the long marches to and from their fortress.

Three task groups, really nothing more than a superhuman interpretation of the guerilla bands from Ciban's Revolutionary Wars, were formed on Jolof and operated in close collaboration with the newly-formed partisan bands. Lumey himself roamed the northern desert like a nomad chieftain, his warriors running more swiftly than the fastest horse. Fabrice Diallo, in the west, prowled the savannah with his two-legged lions. And in the south, Antoine Antonelle's men moved through the swamps and rivers, more silent and deadly than the crocodile. In all three theatres, the Fifth Legion launched sudden and unpredictable assaults on Amatteir strongpoints, inflicting massive damage and fading away into the wilderness. The endurance of the Astartes allowed them to raid and move nearly constantly, giving the impression of an enormous and deadly army.

The Partisan Problem

If the Space Marines presented the more immediate threat, the civilian resistance had a severe effect on the Amatteir legions. The Xenos warrior caste was used to dealing with humans as slaves, or as disorganised feudal or primitive peoples with little ability or stomach for resisting their raids. Finding the Cibanese soldiers organised and resilient had been disturbing, but the sight of armed civilians - including the elderly and children - shook the worldview of the Amatteir warriors. Many began to fear for their families at home, surrounded by human slaves. Others simply despaired, seeing the whole foundation of their species' way of life eroded. Drug abuse and suicide rates sharply increased among the units on Arcadia. The redeployment of these compromised units to Jolof spread the rot and the Amatteir morale slumped towards collapse.

Beyond their moral effect, the partisans were busy sabotaging equipment and destroying supply dumps. Ambushes greatly reduced the Amatteir mobility on land, and the slaughter of troops disembarking from their dropships at Trois Rivieres in southern Jolof put an end to airborne redeployment. The invaders were reaching the limits of their endurance.

Legio Cataegis arrives

The crisis on Ciban IV was catalysed by the arrival of an Imperial fleet. Ténacité and Joso Nikolić reclaimed their honour by leading the reinforcements. The whole of the Fifth Legion's naval assets had arrived from Kerstes VI, and alongside them warships from the Forge World Ghalhal. In the train were transports bearing the warhost of the techpriests, including a maniple of their mighty Titan Legion, Legio Cataegis. The Amatteir naval crews fought a long running battle across the system, attempting to disrupt the Imperial landings and, when that failed, to keep open the possibility of an evacuation.

On Arcadia, the Xenos legions broke under the impact of Ghalhal's Titans and their scattered remnants were run down and slaughtered by the resurgent Ciban Chasseurs. Gaspard Lumey's Space Marines asserted their strength on Jolof, shifting from attacking the invader's weak links to direct attacks on strongpoints. For all the heroism of their sailors, scarcely one in ten of the warriors who had invaded Ciban IV escaped alive.

Interlude: the Hero Planet Ciban IV

Following the withdrawal of Amatteir forces from the Ciban system, the Imperial leaders took stock of the situation. Gaspard Lumey saluted the courage of the civilians of Ciban IV and, in lieu of decorating individuals, awarded the entire planet with the Markian Star. The presentation ceremony would be cut and re-cut into propaganda broadcasts; some played up Ciban IV's martial prowess to shame proud warrior cultures, others focused on the civilian sacrifice to play on the heartstrings of more civilized folk. However the message was spread, the Hero Planet Ciban IV ended on the lips of hundreds of billions across the growing Imperium.

In the Al-Sherar sector, the Imperials were more concerned with their next move. Gaspard Lumey argued, with his trademark fierceness, for a maximum counter-offensive. Senior Princeps Uthman Al-Farsi was reluctant to agree, believing that the Fifth Legion had barely held onto its homeworld until aid had arrived. No compromise was achieved. The Legio Cataegis maniple would remain on Ciban IV to protect the population, but could neither persuade Lumey to hold his position nor join his offensive.

The Strymon Offensive

Gaspard Lumey was disappointed by Al-Farsi's decision but he still deemed the timing was too good not to counter-attack. Fifth Legion's planners had spent considerable time identifying the Amatteir's holdings and building up a picture of their defences based on the reports of Rogue Traders in the Al-Sherar Sector. Although Lumey had planned to await further classes of Astartes before starting a war with the Xenos, the Amatteir's losses on Ciban IV had been severe - and revealing. The new Imperial plan aimed to use the same tactics of guerilla and insurrection that had shattered the Amatteir invasion to wrest the entire sector from them, gambling that the many human slaves on the Xenos worlds could be brought into the fight.

Fifth Legion's counter-offensive started immediately, but almost silently. Teams of Astartes, mainly the "graduates" of the fighting on Ciban IV led by Terran-born veterans, were delivered to the first-wave targets by the Warp Runner Aventurier. Once the infiltrators had verified their intelligence, they sought out labour camps and began freeing enslaved humans. Although arms for the liberated slaves were in short supply, the Space Marines found no shortage of would-be warriors.