While the other demi company was investigating Vespae, the rest of the hammers of the Emperor travelled to the Palantir system to aid in the re-invasion of the worlds overrun by chaos. Hobbiton had already fallen and the Chaos fleet ejected, but the defences of Dale precluded an orbital drop without first dealing with the defence lasers.
To deal with the defences from orbit would be to condemn the settlements and settlers of Dale to ruin, so the Hammers of the Emperor, a small elite force, dropped three squads of marines on the world virtually unnoticed. From their dropsite the super humans trecked over 100km overland before immediately going into battle against the Iron Warriors Thorakitai, who had been brought in to guard the Dale defences.
The Iron Warriors only grudgingly aided their allies in the Hadron Expanse, but Stahl approved of lesser forces to be sent to "distract" the Imperium from his main task - the Foramen Interdictum. Thus the Hammers of the Emperor faced superior numbers of maddened cultists and fanatics, but were able to brush them aside. Despite taking losses, enough astartes made it to the defence lasers in order to set the demolition charges. An hour later the astartes escaped, just minutes before the charges exploded, detonating the defence lasers and allowing the Imperial fleet to close with the planet.
In addition to this act, the rest of the Astartes demi-company conducted raids, drawing out a small force of Emperor's Children before ambushing them in the ruins of the planet's defences. By 0908_018M42 the constant small raids by the space marines had secured a bridgehead on the planet, with the minimum use of assets and almost zero heavy equipment.
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