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.

Preparations

Kleisthenes knew and accepted that this mission would likely end in the deaths of every Astartes under his command well before the first shuttle was boarded to Europa. The ports were far too massive to defend, even with 700 Legionaries against a dedicated attack from Hektor's host. Bearing this knowledge, he set about relocating all supplies to submarine storage on the moon of Europa proper. The commander of the Imperial Army charged with defending the moon was ordered to guard these caches against all but confirmed loyalist Primarchs.

Kleisthenes had learned much under Hektor's command, and understood the importance of picking the battleground and using your men to their greatest potential. He chose Europa's Gamma Port for both its strategic importance and the labyrinthine layout of its interior. He then set the Europan troops to the task of filling a majority of the landing bays within the 16 lesser ports with detritus to deny the traitors a complete foothold.

With the initial and hardest work underway he called his nine commanders and asked each of them candid advice on his plan to defend Gamma Port. Kleisthenes re-emerged after two days of discussion with a solid and detailed plan. Many of the orbital ports had every door and bulkhead sealed and the equipment sabotaged in methods that would be quick to fix but take time to find with the help of what techpriests remained. A long and detailed list of this work was sent to both Europa and Terra so that loyalists could rapidly bring the facilities back to full operation but the traitors would be mired for days locating and repairing faults.