Conquest of Galaspar

The Conquest of Galaspar
Date	mid-850s.M30
Scale	Cluster-wide
Theatre	Segmentum Pacificus
Status	Decisive Imperial victory
Belligerents
Imperium of Man	The Order
Commanders and Leaders
Mortarion	High Comptrollers
Strength
XIV Legion and its fleet elements	Numerous fortress-monitors and orbital platforms, millions of slave-soldiers
Losses
Numerous warships destroyed. ~6,000 Death Guard KIA	All Comptrollers and soldiers of the Order KIA or executed after the battle; heavy casualties among civilian population
Outcome
The Galaspar Cluster is liberated and brought into Imperial compliance. All elements of the Order's authority destroyed and all its willing adherents killed or executed. Mortarion censured by Horus and Sanguinius in the name of the Emperor for excessive brutality.

The Conquest of Galaspar was the first major campaign undertaken by the Death Guard Legion after being reunited with its primarch Mortarion in the mid-800s.M30. For the remainder of the Great Crusade, it was known as one of the most remarkable and brutal victories won by any of the Legiones Astartes. It established Mortarion's reputation as a ruthless warlord who brooked no defiance and accepted no surrender, and became the first example of the Death Guard's new way of war.

Background

When first discovered by Imperial scouts, the eleven star systems of the Galaspar Cluster were under the control of a regime known as The Order, which ruled from the capital planet of Galaspar. It was a rigid and highly stratified oligarchical slavocracy, in which billions of enslaved laborers worked for the benefit of the High Comptrollers, the small group of elites who controlled Galaspar's hive cities. The Comptrollers did not measure their wealth in currency, but in the number of slaves they owned. These slaves were not given names, only work numbers, and were referred to by their owners as "labour units". Any failing on the part of a slave, no matter how minor, was grounds for instant execution and replacement. These nameless billions were kept compliant through the use of drugs that dulled their minds and made them docile and sluggish, rendering any form of independent thought or organized rebellion nearly impossible. Those who were higher in rank were kept in check by smaller doses of these drugs and an even more sinister form of control: sheer inertia. The Order had existed for so long that its origins had been forgotten, and any justification for its casual brutality had long since been lost. It had become a self-perpetuating system in which no one was allowed to or could even conceive of questioning its strictures. Even being born into the ranks of the Comptrollers was no guarantee of safety, for failure in their inherited role also meant replacement. This inertia extended even to resource production; the hives' manufactorums generated enormous surpluses of every kind of product, from food to clothing to furniture. The excess products were catalogued, then broken down and discarded, adding to the colossal waste heaps that dominated Galaspar's barren, toxic terrain.

The Order was convinced of its perfection and refused to brook any challenge to its dominance. The first Imperial envoys to arrive in the system were ordered to depart; when they did not do so, their ship was destroyed. All further overtures were also met with violence. As there were other large battles then being waged elsewhere in the segmentum, the Imperial Army concluded that it was best to simply blockade the Cluster and wait until these other campaigns were resolved before turning their attention to Galaspar. However, when Mortarion learned of the Order, he was immediately reminded of the tyranny he had so recently extinguished on Barbarus and concluded that it could not be countenanced to exist any longer than necessary. At a council of war, he proposed to lead his legion on a swift, brutal decapitation strike. The Imperial generals present protested his suggestion, but he used his status to overrule them. His decision was made: the scythe would fall upon the necks of the Order.

Prelude

Mortarion ordered the assault barque Fourth Horseman to be specially reinforced for ramming tactics and began collecting and outfitting asteroids and decommissioned destroyers to use as fireships. His legion began drilling in the tactics he would use, though none of them yet understood their primarch's purpose. Once he was ready, Mortarion briefed his captains and commanders on his intentions. Their target was Protarkos, the largest hive on the Cluster's capital world, and the Comptrollers who lived there. They would use the fleet as a spearhead to punch cleanly through Galaspar's defences before ramming the Fourth Horseman into the side of Protarkos and deploying to seize the hive and kill the High Comptrollers before reinforcements from the other hives on the planet could arrive.

When Mortarion led his fleet into the Galaspar system, the Comptrollers fatally underestimated his intentions and capabilities. Assuming that the Death Guard intended to fight a conventional battle, the Comptroller of the Navy deployed the closest groupings of fortress monitors and orbital gun platforms against them, aiming to slow the Death Guard down until the rest of the system's defensive forces could join them. The fortress monitors were met by a wall of engine-equipped asteroids that absorbed their initial salvoes before detonating once they had taken enough damage, destroying many of the orbital platforms and damaging several of the fortress monitors. Now came the second stage of Mortarion's strategy. The decommissioned destroyers, refitted with as many guns as they could carry and loaded with explosives, charged the monitors and detonated as soon as they were close enough, destroying most of the enormous vessels. In this way, the Death Guard easily breached Galaspar's first line of defense in exchange for several escorts and capital ships. Mortarion deemed these acceptable losses, for the only thing that mattered was to deliver Fourth Horseman and its cargo of 11,000 Astartes to Protarkos.

Death Comes to Protarkos

As the Death Guard closed on Galaspar Prime, the planet's orbital and terrestrial defence batteries opened fire, only to be stymied by the remaining shield of asteroids and fireships. As these sacrificial weapons detonated, their debris annihilated many of the orbital platforms and rained destruction upon Galaspar, accompanied by an orbital bombardment from the Legion's ships. The surviving batteries were blinded by the overlapping detonations and could not draw accurate firing solutions on the Death Guard ships. The stunned Comptrollers could only watch as the Fourth Horseman entered the atmosphere and came for them, as relentless and inexorable as the Reaper's scythe. It struck Protarkos three-quarters of the way up, devastating the outer sections of the hive. Tens of thousands were killed instantly, while others were left to die exposed to Galaspar's toxic atmosphere.

The First and Seventh Great Companies deployed from the Horseman and began clearing Protarkos. Mortarion had calculated that it would take reinforcements a day and a night to reach Protarkos from the next closest hive and had ordered his Astartes to ensure that the hive was in their hands by then. As the Death Guard advanced into the hive, they were met by thousands of soldiers and slaves, all whipped into a berserker frenzy by near-overdoses of combat drugs. The soldiers were armed only with stubbers and lasrifles that inflicted minimal damage upon the Space Marines, the slaves with bare hands or improvised weapons that did even less. No mercy was shown to anyone who raised their hand against the Death Guard, though Mortarion ordered his sons to spare any who did not take up arms against them. Here, too, the Death Guard began to practice their new way of war. They used rad grenades and chem-flamers to clear out dug-in troops and weapon emplacements and employed phosphex bombs against enemy troop concentrations. The overflowing phosphex spilled through the hive's corridors, killing anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the creeping flood of inextinguishable green fire. Mortarion and his Deathshroud engaged a concentration of armour that he destroyed with graviton and vortex grenades, allowing none of the tank crews to escape. The First Company, under the command of First Captain Antavus Barrazin, attacked and destroyed the hive's main generatorium, plunging most of Protarkos into darkness. On their way up from the generatorium, they were caught in a counter-trap; the Order destroyed one of their refineries and funneled the molten ore into the grav-lifts, inflicting heavy casualties on the company, including Captain Barrazin. One of the few survivors was Legionary Calas Typhon.

Desperate, Lord Comptroller Avald Stevang decided to buy time by ordering the control center to be sealed into a rockcrete bunker beneath Protarkos, a measure of last resort in case of a successful slave revolt. The descent mechanism could not be used again and the only escape routes out of the center could not be quickly employed, meaning that he and his fellow Comptrollers were entombed for the duration of the conflict. He also authorized the deployment of the Wretched, mutated psykers who had been corralled and contained for such an event. Mortarion was unable to reach the control center in time to prevent its sealing, and suffered severe injuries from the Wretched's psychic attacks, both physical and mental. Further, he received word that the Order's reinforcements had arrived, a mechanized army led by the forces of Peitharchia hive. His entire battle plan was in danger of falling apart.

The Reaper's Harvest

Mortarion, understanding that the Order could and would sacrifice Protarkos to destroy his forces, swiftly improvised a new battle plan. A ten-man kill team would climb the exterior of the hive and breach the command center from the top, where its rockcrete shield was thinnest, while the remainder of the assault force would descend to the plains outside the city and hold off the Order's reinforcements as long as possible. He wanted to lead the kill team personally, but understood that he would be needed where the threat was greatest. The enemy army outnumbered the remaining Death Guard a hundred to one, and it had enough tanks to be a danger to his sons. He instead tasked Battle-Captain Vallian Tersus of the Seventh Company to lead the team, while he descended to the plains. This was a personal disappointment to Mortarion, as he had wanted to substitute his lost triumph on Barbarus for the successful destruction of the Order's leaders in their fastness, but he subordinated his anger to the exigencies of the campaign.

The Order's tanks began firing on the advancing Death Guard as they emerged from the rubble of Protarkos. The Astartes countered with rad and phosphex. Hundreds of soldiers died quickly and painfully, the flesh sloughing from their bones as the concentrated radiation stewed them alive inside their tanks and rad suits. Hundreds more were devoured by phosphex bombs as the creeping green death ate its way across the field. The Order's generals bombarded the area indiscriminately, sacrificing their own troops and armour to destroy the Death Guard. Mortarion in turn allowed his force to be deliberately encircled, then ordered his Astartes to lance out into the encroaching enemy. Though the tactic briefly caught the Order off guard, they continued their saturation bombardment, content to kill as many of their own as it took to wipe out the Death Guard. Mortarion recognized that the battle now hinged upon whether his kill team could silence the Order's planetary batteries.

The kill team was scaling Protarkos as the hive's defensive batteries attempted to kill them. One by one, they were swept from the hive's walls, including Battle-Captain Tersus. One of the two survivors was Legionary Nathaniel Garro, who breached the command center's rockcrete shield and took the High Comptrollers prisoner. The fall of the command center silenced the planetary batteries that had been holding the Death Guard fleet at bay, allowing Mortarion to call in an orbital bombardment. The bombardment devastated the Order's army. With their morale shattered, the survivors attempted to retreat, only to be caught between an incoming drop pod assault and the vengeful remainder of Mortarion's forces. They were swiftly exterminated, and the rest of the XIV Legion's forces began landing on Galaspar.

With their armies destroyed, several of the major cities attempted to surrender. Their spokesman was Acting High Comptroller Schyalla Vecchiaz of Peitharchia, who asked Mortarion what his terms of surrender would be. He informed her that no terms would be given and no surrender accepted, and made good on his word. Every overseer, soldier, functionary, and Comptroller on Galaspar was purged to the last, their corpses heaped in great mounds outside the cities they had once dominated. A few were kept alive long enough to be executed in front of or by the slaves. Mortarion ordered the newly liberated slaves to tally the Order's dead, in order to understand the full measure of their freedom, before departing from Galaspar.

Aftermath

The news of Mortarion's first conquest spread quickly through the Imperium. The sheer brutality of the campaign stunned many citizens of the Imperium, and even the Emperor himself was disquieted enough to request an accounting from his newfound son. He dispatched Horus and Sanguinius to Galaspar to speak with their brother. Mortarion sensed that he was being judged, and was angered. He showed his brothers the Order's records to ensure that they understood what it was he had come to Galaspar to destroy, and told them that he believed his methods were justified in light of the oppression the Comptrollers had enforced upon their people. Horus and Sanguinius countered that Mortarion's goal had been misguided. By coming to Galaspar as the Angel of Death, by massacring the Order so swiftly, publicly, and brutally, he had replaced one kind of tyranny with another. The people of Galaspar had been left terrified, not compliant, and Mortarion had only reinforced their instinct to unthinking obedience. Though they might be physically liberated, they would carry the trauma of the Death Guard's coming in their minds and hearts for generations, and it would take as long for the Imperium to undo Mortarion's work. Horus ended by formally censuring Mortarion and declaring that the Conquest of Galaspar would never be celebrated as a victory. Mortarion was stung by his brothers' words, particularly the accusation that he had brought his own kind of tyranny to Galaspar, and wondered briefly if there was another path forward for him and his legion, a different kind of destiny than had been wrought for him in the toxic crucible of Barbarus. At that moment, a former slave approached him with the tally she had been keeping since his departure, and in her devotion to his order and his precepts he saw the vindication he had sought, and confirmation that his path was the correct one.