Iron Without: The Unique Combat Strategy of the Fourth Part VI

At the forefront of the Crusade

Horus's appointment as Warmaster changed many things, including for the Fourth. It became even more difficult for them, because now the Iron Warriors received orders from both the Warmaster and Terra. And all these orders ordered them to fight on remote and little-known fronts, where warriors were needed who were ready to dig trenches for years, with blood and sweat, winning from the enemy every meter of land generously strewn with ash. This led to the Iron Warriors suddenly developing a passion for hand-to-hand combat. Anger, born in the boredom of grueling sieges, demanded an outlet. Therefore, the Fourth began to improve in assault tactics, no longer honing artillery attacks, in which they were already flawless, but conducting combat at close range.

Lupercal had no qualms about using his brother to plug holes in the galactic fronts and order small outposts of Iron Warriors to be left in troubled regions. The situation on Dalgas II is indicative, where, by order of Horus, a garrison of one squad of Iron Warriors was left. Horus could not help but know that the warlike world with a population of 130 million people was on the verge of rebellion. Of course, he later rebelled. And of course, 10 space marines could not oppose anything to a multi-million horde.

There were hundreds, thousands of such battles. Inglorious and stupid. But Perturabo never stooped to grumble against his brother. Bound by an oath, he obediently followed the orders of the Warmaster. And the Warmaster, realizing this, threw the 125th Expeditionary Fleet, the core of the Fourth Legion, into the most brutal and bloody campaigns. After Davin, Lupercal stopped giving reinforcements to Perturabo. On the contrary, he began to fragment the Iron Warriors even more, seeing that this was eroding their morale. The Warmaster had already deliberately demoralized his brother’s legion in order to take advantage of it at the right moment.

Faithful Perturabo did not see this. How much can you see from a deep trench? But the other primarchs did not want to notice anything, they had no time, each had their own problems. Of course, there is a certain amount of blame here from the Iron Warriors themselves. After all, they did nothing to improve relations with their brothers from other legions. They could have at least tried... Or couldn't they? Perhaps this was their genotype, these were the conditions in which they were placed. They were accustomed to relying only on themselves, and the pride characteristic of all legionnaires, all warriors did not allow them to ask for help.

The Turning Point - Depths of Sak'trada and the Olympia Rebellion

In 999.M30, the Iron Warriors are ordered to move to a distant region of the galaxy known as the Sak'trada Depths. There was a star cluster there, called the Vulpa Strait, it was infected with hruds (in official sources of that time they were called temporaferrox). By this time, humanity had already encountered the Hruds several times, but not as part of a full-scale war.

Almost nothing was known about this xenos race, except that they were extremely dangerous due to their ability to create an entropy field that locally accelerated the flow of time and even changed the laws of physics. Perturabo was ordered to the Sak'trada Depths by the Council of War..

Let me remind you that during the Great Crusade, the Military Council was the highest authority in matters relating to the armed expansion of Humanity. The Master of War could convene the Council of War, but did not have a decisive vote on it. The council included many iconic figures, including Malcador the Sigillite, Constantine Valdor, Kelbor Hal. The Chairman of the War Council was always the Emperor, even after he went to Terra, leaving the leadership of the campaign to Horus.

I made this digression to make it clear that what happened in the Vulpa Strait was not Horus's plan. Apparently, the sending of Perturabo to Gugann was personally authorized by the Emperor. At least, the Hammer of Olympia blamed his father for what happened, because he could not help but know where and why he was sending his son.

One way or another, in the Depths of Sak'trada, the Iron Warriors encountered the Hruds. An incomprehensible race, completely alien to the human understanding of the world, for which time and space existed in fundamentally different categories. This was the most brutal war the Fourth had ever fought. Due to the constant influence of the entropy field of the Hruds, the fortresses of the Iron Warriors, designed to last thousands of years, were destroyed in a matter of days. Iron rusted before our eyes, stone crumbled from a simple touch. This campaign was the apotheosis of a grueling war of attrition that finally broke the legion's morale.

It was impossible to fight the Hruds with conventional weapons. The warriors aged for centuries or simply decayed in their armor before they managed to defeat at least one enemy. This region of space had no strategic significance for the Imperium. But Perturabo had an order and, as always, he intended to carry it out. After almost a year of fruitless confrontation, the primarch, with the support of the Mechanicus contingent, managed to build and launch a huge stasis field generator on Gugann, which blocked the entropic influence of the Hruds.

However, what should have brought victory to the legion almost destroyed it. The stasis field generator stimulated a Hrud migration that passed through the Iron Warriors fleet. Perhaps for the first time in its history, the Fourth was retreating, unable to do anything against the countless number of hruds who moved along intricate routes incomprehensible to human logic. Along the way, finally realizing the danger posed by Perturabo, the Hrud generated a space-time shock wave that destroyed and devastated hundreds of ships. Passing through the Iron Blood, the wave nearly turned the Iron Lord's flagship into a field of debris. It took the Iron Warriors ships a whole week to regroup and form any semblance of a battle formation.

Technically, Perturabo completed the task, the Depths of Sak'trada were cleared of hruds. The Iron Lord could not defeat the entire Temporaferrox race. Not a single legion could defeat them, not even all the legions combined. But they didn’t need to run. It was only necessary to direct the migration in the opposite direction from Terra in order to secure the Throne World. The Iron Warriors did it, they saved the cradle of humanity and countless billions of human lives.

However, the legionnaires themselves hardly understood this. Little did they understand that the Emperor sent them to the Depths of Sak'trada for only one reason - no one but the Iron Warriors could resist the Hrud for so long. No one but Perturabo could accomplish the impossible task of forcing the Temporaferrox to migrate in another direction. But, as often happened with the Iron Warriors, victory for the Imperium turned into defeat for the legion. And this is where Horus, or rather the Word Bearers, came into play. And to be even more precise - Chaplain Xaphen from Lorgar's legion.

The timing was perfect. Although the Sak'trada Depths were far from the center of the galaxy, rumors of Perturabo's war still reached the legions. Including the legions that were about to declare that they had rebelled against the Emperor. Knowing the state of the Iron Warriors and their primarch, the Word Bearers provoked a small, victorious revolution on Olympia. Perturabo's homeworld declared its independence just as the Sak'trada Depths campaign ended.

News reached Perturabo that the tyrant Dammekos had died and Olympia had fallen into anarchy. The Lord of Iron was horrified by the thought that he was the only one of the brothers who did not keep his home world in check. After all, even Nuceria was brought to agreement, even if not Angron. After a monstrous, exhausting, blood-draining campaign against the Hruds, the rage of the Iron Warriors, which had been building for decades, finally found an outlet. Perturabo sent a fleet to Olympia and committed genocide, allowing his warriors to do whatever they wanted to mortals.

The primarch believed that the world deserved it. After all, these people rebelled against the Imperium. They abandoned a bright future in favor of their bloody past, where there was only discord and incessant wars. And then he saw himself from the outside: he had just emerged victorious from a confrontation with the Hruds, in which it was impossible to win, and now he had exterminated 5 million civilians on the planet that raised him. At that moment Perturabo broke down. And his legion broke with him...