Gethsamaine Raid
The Gethsamaine Raid was a battle that occurred during the Horus Heresy, when Clan Morragul of the Iron Hands, led by Autek Mor, descended upon the planet of Gethsamaine Colonus in the Cyclops Cluster.[1][2b]
History
Believed to be one of Autek Mor's first punitive campaigns againsts the traitors, the battle began when a ragged yet bellicose flotilla of warships led by the Red Talon rose from the depths of the Grail Abyss and fell upon Gethsamaine, which had declared for the Warmaster a year earlier. At the time, Gethsaime was stripped of its void defences due to the Traitors' actions during the Manachean War. With only a few gun platforms to protect the planet, the Red Talon began a great bombardment of the planet from low orbit to prepare the world for a ground assault.[1][2a]
What followed was a brief, yet shockingly brutal assault, any resistance to the Iron Hands was swiftly obliterated, and an entire cohort of planetary militia and their Horusite overseers were crushed beneath the treads of Clan Morragul's armour in less than an hour. Wasting no time, seats of government were blasted to rubble, and those in positions of power that had aided the Traitors or sided with their cause were methodically hunted down and executed, save for a select number of prisoners deemed to have potentially useful information, who were dragged screaming back to the Red Talon's gunships. As the Iron Hands Thunderhawks blasted off from the surface, the bulk of the civilian population, which had fled into hiding during the sudden assault, nervously rejoiced and came forth, little knowing what would come next.[2a]
In each of the five major cities of Gethsamaine, the Iron Hands had left behind an improvised atomantic device fashioned by the bloody hand of their Iron Father, each bomb clad in layer upon layer of radioactive material designed to enrich and multiply the fallout generated by its detonation a hundred fold. The Red Talon broke orbit just as the cities bloomed into fire; the world's major cities were destroyed in all-consuming nuclear blasts that would render the entire world uninhabitable for generations to come.[1][2a]
See also
Sources
- 1: The Horus Heresy Book Six - Retribution, pg. 105
- 2: The Horus Heresy Book Four - Conquest, pg. 161
