Mordecai Tersius: Encounter battles hold off Librian tanks

After the defeat of Cybixx on the broad plains south of Mt. Harender, the Arch Dominus made swift plans to retake the territory. Of interest to the heretical tech priest was the Mechanicum Industria - a plant on Mordecai Tersius which had long been in the service of the dark gods. The Factorium had fallen to the imperium along with the rest of the planet in early 019M43, but the loyalists had not had time to uncover its secrets. Cybixx decided he needed to retake the complex urgently, and push the corpse worshippers back as far north as possible. 

General Kutuzov had reinforced the front line following operation supercharge, but the Knights of Eagleclaw needed repair and refit. Similarly the Novgorod regiments were pulled out of the line for resupply, leaving the imperial general no option other than to deploy the Librian regiments to the sector of the front. 

Regarded as unreliable following their home planet’s fall to the alliance, the Librians were nonetheless well equipped and keen to prove their loyalty to the imperium. Adopting new symbols for their army and denouncing their homeland as traitors, new blood had entered the ranks of the Librian regiments, chiefly made up of other dispossessed men from conquered worlds. 

The Librians fielded one division on Mordecai. The 4th and 7th armoured regiments were deployed in the north while the 16th garrisoned Danythe. Colonel Dempsey was in command at the northern front and had deployed his main force of infantry in the ruins of Mt. Harender, with his main armoured force acting as a mobile reserve. Closer to the front line itself Dempsey had multiple units patrolling the vast green spaces which made up the agri-world’s landscape. 

Cybixx planned a straightforward assault. The traitor did not have access to many of his knights, but one was sent with a scouting force to probe the loyalist defences. Once a weakness was found the rest of his army would push through, on to Harender and beyond, threatening to encircle the imperial force and obliging it to withdraw. 

Cybixx began his offensive with wide ranging patrols across the plains, one of which ran headlong into a Librian patrol. A skirmish quickly developed with the Mechanicum initially making gains and forcing the Librian force back. This led Cybixx to order his main attack, but the frontier battle almost went very wrong. The Librians rallied after early setbacks, knocking out the enemy knight and wiping out the ironstrider outriders with well placed leman Russ firepower. The imperial force almost regained the ground they had lost and came very close to upsetting Cybixx’s main assault before it began. However the traitor Mechanicum just held on, enabling the main thrust to begin at Mt. Harender.