Bitter fighting in the tunnels under Hexis

With the chaos base on Hexis now in ruins, the Imperial forces on the planet now focussed their attention on the main objective, namely to capture the device room from chaos forces in the heavily fortified tunnel system underneath Praxis. This was no easy undertaking, and small teams of elite forces were needed to clear rooms and corridors one by one, and to force their chaos enemies out of the maze of passages and chambers that covered an area the size of a large city.

 

The Grey Knights had already cleared many of the tunnels under north Praxis, and now small teams of these elite astartes pushed deeper, soon encountering a robust response from the Death Guard. The nurgle devotees held off the imperial force for quite some time, as they used hideous poxwalkers to block tunnels and hold shut doors. Eventually however the Grey Knights were able to bring their formidable psychic powers to bear, even in the close proximity of the necron device. The Grey Knights suffered no casualties, and were able to force back the enemy to within a few kilometres of the device chamber, although this still meant more hard fighting ahead.

 

As the Grey Knights struggled with Death Guard forces, the Imperial Fists sent their own teams into the warren. First they encountered traitor mechanicum troops, specially skilled at tunnel fighting. However the Fists dealt with this initial encounter with relative ease. The Death Guard were a different proposition however, and the loyalist astartes had tremendous problems dealing with a security lock down in the underground chambers, meaning they were unable to gain easy access to several chambers. This allowed the Death Guard to outflank and compromise their positions, and the imperial force had to withdraw.

 

To the east of the device chamber the Sky Lords also encountered traitor mechanicum forces, but were able to use their overwhelming firepower to blast apart their enemies in the narrow underground passageways. The Mechanicum did manage to engage the Sky Lords' squad leader in combat, but the veteran astartes finished them off with his chainsword. By 0511.019M42 the imperial underground front line was within mere metres of the device chamber, but were still unable to launch a final assault.