Editing Hektor Heresy (section)

===Assault on Terra===
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<center>'''THE HAND OF CHAOS'''</center>
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The appearance of the Traitor Legions made clear the great gulf that now separated the two sides of the civil war. The Heralds of Hektor had been greatly changed in spirit, no longer humanity's champions but instead darkened and bitter souls who fought more from spite rather than for glory. But they were still recognisable. When Inferox, Uriel Salazar, and Johannes Vrach set foot on ancient Terra, they did so as daemons devoted to the Ruinous Powers and their gene-sons were little better. The Voidwatcher and his Black Augurs had set aside any restraint and let the corrupting power of the Warp flow through them, corrupting and empowering their ranks. The Mastodontii, always fearsome in appearance but gentle in spirit, were now twisted sadists in bestial bodies. More exotic still were Aubrey the Grey's Eternal Zealots who had begun to transform themselves into alien forms, and the Lions Rampant of Cromwald Walgrun who were modifying their own bodies in pursuit of more rarified pleasures. Of the Iron Rangers and Rogerius Merrill, little was seen but the marks of their passage gave no reason to mistake them for their past selves.
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Loyalist forces in the inner Solar System were concentrated on humanity's homeworld. Squadrons of military voidships sworn to the Entombed, Eyes of the Emperor, and the Silver Cataphracts had combined with those under the Emperor's own command into a great fleet for the defence of Terra. These powerful warships were supported by thousands of orbital weapons platforms and joined by every civilian vessel that could be converted to military usefulness, but they were still grossly outnumbered by the combined Traitor fleet. Hektor Cincinnatus commanded ships drawn from across the vast and wealthy Segmentum Solar and beyond. Inferox and Aubrey had looted the great shipyards of Nahardul, adding exotic warships born from the imagination of the War Scribes techmarines to the Traitor armada. Due to the great disparity of forces, the Loyalist fleet fought a delaying action and its remnants withdrew to Mars.

The main objective for both sides was the Imperial Palace, a vast hive city that covered half of ancient Eurasia. Within the heart of the complex were the twin keys to the Imperium; the Astronomican and the Emperor of Mankind. Despite more than a trillion Loyalist warriors at his command, Alexandri gave little protection to other areas of Terra. Civilians in old Merica, Afrik and the Pan-Pacific had been issued arms and organised into militia, but if they were attacked no assistance from the Loyalist army would be coming until after the main battle was won. Although the most important installations on Terra were protected by void shields and adamantium, Hektor's campaign for the planet still began with a heavy orbital bombardment. After days of concentrated attack by the Traitor fleet, thousands of drop pods were dispatched to the surface. The battle for Terra had begun.

Hektor had chosen his own First Legion, the Heralds of Hektor, for the honour of leading the Traitor assault. The initial target was the spaceports close to the Imperial Palace, with the Warmaster himself at the historic Lion's Gate spaceport. Despite fierce resistance from the Imperial Army, the Traitor Marines quickly seized their objectives. With these in hand, enormous macro-landers began their slow descent, bearing untold numbers of Chaos cultists and Traitor army regiments. Due to their bulk and clumsiness, the macro-landers were targeted by loyalist defence lasers and the defenders were occasionally bouyed by the sight of a Traitor lander losing power and plummeting to earth. However, such small victories did little to reduce the tide of attackers. As the balance of forces on planet tilted in favour of the invaders, Hektor divided his forces into three. The main force would besiege the Imperial Palace. A secondary element under the command of Aubrey the Grey went into the depths of Terra's catacombs and sought to outflank the loyalist from below. The third element, perhaps self-selected, was made of the Traitors too far-gone to follow discipline. These monsters were unleashed on the rest of the planet, where they committed atrocity after atrocity for no apparent purpose other than the increase of human suffering.

At the head of the drive to the walls of the Imperial Palace strode Uriel Salazar and his grey-armoured Justiciars. Their steely indifference to the arms of the defenders disheartened the warriors of the Imperial Army and Alexandri's plan for a staged withdrawal began to turn into a rout. Only the intervention of the Eyes of the Emperor stemmed the tide. Shakya Vardhana confronted his traitorous brother and the two stood motionless for a few moments as their gene-sons clashed, before Uriel Salazar withdrew from the field. Although the Vardhana's arrival steadied the Loyalist lines, the sheer weight of numbers drove them back. The tens of billions of warriors who had survived the long retreat to the Imperial Palace now grimly manned its outer walls and steeled themselves for the siege.

Beneath Terra's surface, the Traitor advance seemed to be losing focus. The Eternal Zealots faced little organised resistance and mainly contended with problems of navigation in the labyrinths below. However, the Legion did find tens of billions of under-hivers, humans who were beyond the pale of Imperial citizenship and therefore given no protection by the Loyalist armies. Aubrey the Grey commanded that these poor souls be offered up as a great tribute to the Ruinous Powers and hastily constructed altars were soon running with blood. Psychic reverberations from this depravity touched the mind of Malcador. The Sigilite immediately realised the peril of leaving Aubrey to his terrible work: if the Traitors below were not stopped, then they might open up a rift to the warp and give Hektor's Legions an endless supply of daemonic reinforcements. There was no question which of the defending Legions was best suited to oppose the Eternal Zealots. In the cramped conditions of the catacombs, the Entombed would shine despite their limited numbers. Golgothos led his sons into the abyss.