Following the chaos offensive in the east the forces of the Emerald Serpent were now over extended. Daemonic forces could not be manifested indefinitely and the Iron Warriors were brought up to defend the flanks of the salient into the Abrax mines. The position was still difficult however, and general Kutuzov acted quickly to redeploy regiments of Novgorod Guard, equipped with fresh tanks, to deliver a blow into this area, in order to reach the Kunues Traps and cut off the forces now entrenched in the captured Abrax mines. This was made possible by the continuing supply situation on Mordecai Secundus. Although the daemon world of Astralis still made it impossible to cut the chaos supply routes, the imperial navy were by now able to conduct logistics missions to Mordecai Secundus without too much harassment from the chaos fleets, which remained bottled up at Mordecai docks, unwilling to challenge Admiral Jellicoe's naval superiority.
The Novgord tanks advanced in early 02.023M42, chewing up the chaos front lines. The Iron Warriors responded by sending in their elite infantry, holding their terminators back until their enemy had committed their mounted cavalry. This the Novgorod guard did, sending in their mounted troops on the right flank and in the centre of the imperial advance. The terminators were now deployed on the left flank, attempting to exploit imperial weakness here, but the imperial tanks had survived the initial engagement and now had a clear field of fire to pound the elite traitor astartes units. Taking heavy casualties the Iron Warriors fell back to the east, allowing the imperial forces to reach the shores of the Kuneus Traps. This cut off the remaining traitor units in the Abrax mines and over the following days these were mopped up by second line forces. In less than a month Kutuzov had re-stabilised the eastern front and restored the original front lines.
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