Battle for Europa
 This article is about a battle in the /tg/ Heresy project, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40k universe. |
| Hektor Heresy | |
| |
| Date | 014.M31 |
| Scale | Orbital Stations of Europa |
| Theatre | Sol |
| Status | Phyrric Chaos Victory |
| Belligerents | |
| Chaos | Loyalist Astartes |
| Commanders and Leaders | |
| Kleisthenes | |
| Strength | |
| 700 Assorted Loyalist Space Marines from Traitor Legions | |
| Losses | |
| 12,000 Space Marines and roughly 500,000 other military casualties | 700 Space Marines and roughly 2,000 Imperial Army soldiers |
| Outcome | |
| Chaos captures Europan space docks at comparatively great cost | |
This page covers the battle fought at Europa during the Hektor Heresy Sol Campaign. If you're looking for the main project page, go to the /tg/ Heresy
The Hektor Heresy was a galaxy-spanning conflict between the Imperial forces loyal to the Emperor (referred to as the Loyalists) and those who sided with Hektor Cincinnatus (the Traitors). The Traitors were sponsored by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos and strengthened by their gifts. The Heresy brought the Great Crusade to an end and ravaged the Imperium.
A Traitor's Welcome
In the beginning of the Hektor Heresy, Alexandri of Rosskar was given the task of defending Terra and its surroundings. He quickly built up Terra itself and prepared the Sol system and its surroundings for a siege. Within Sol itself he largely stripped the majority of the system of its defenses to bolster those surrounding Terra itself and the Imperial Palace in particular.
The number of troops defending the planet also included a number of loyalists who had defected from the 9 traitor legions and some from the banished V Legion. Alexandri was desperate for troops, but did not fully trust the 700 Astartes hailing from traitorous or otherwise untrustworthy sources so close to the palace itself. He instead opted to post them at the secondary yet strategically important location of Europa.
Europa itself was mostly unimportant. It had an abundant water supply and thriving community underneath its thick crust of ice, but that was secondary to the seventeen space ports orbiting the moon. Four of them were capable of holding capital ships, and one known as "Gamma Port" even hosted a dock built to hold a Gloriana-Class vessel. It was imperative that the ports be held both to deny the traitors the ability to refit, repair, or resupply their vessels within the system and to have access for the loyalist forces racing against time to arrive at Sol.
Command of this mission was given to Commander Kleisthenes. He was the first Astartes from a traitor legion to swear to the Emperor as well as an experienced leader from the Heralds of Hektor. Under his command were three hundred defectors from the Heralds, 150 Astartes from the V Legion, seventy Life Bringers, fifty of the Eternal Zealots, forty members of the Sons of Fire and Lions Rampant, thirty Iron Rangers, and twenty survivors of the Mastodontii.