[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/cc/8f/0ccc8fde435fe6a2886b19e6c209b0e5.jpg[/img]
[i][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77-_lkYmc5s]They want neither God, nor Emperor
nor pain, nor consciousness.
Only prisons and howls,
Fires in the skies.

It's our fate to read
This horrifying novel
With the swollen eyes
Of mothers and brides.[/url][/i]

[h1][b][color=FF0000]THE BATTLE OF TARGUS IV[/color][/b][/h1][/center]

A thousand fires burned bright on the surface of Targus IV.

The once-green world, home to a billion souls of Severacian extraction, has been set alight like a dry field doused with gasoline. Whoever could not flee to the inner worlds of the Empire took up arms in defense of their world against the rabid Revolutionaries who sought to destroy Order and Truth on their homeworld and across the Galaxy, and who threatened to tear apart the greatest union of Man in history.

It was up to the 25th (Royal Panchala) Grenadier Regiment, as well as some other hastily-raised conscript regiments, to hold the line against the oncoming onslaught. While a vicious fleet action raged high in orbit, the men of the Ground Forces put up a vicious and dauntless defense against the invaders.

Brigadier General Childebrand, son of Clovis, stood behind the ruined parapet of the Faunkleid House, the once glorious seat of the Faunkleid Family which had been the lords of this Sector for many centuries. Now, it was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the decimated city of Taxandria, reduced to rubble by the brief-but-deadly orbital bombardment of the rebel forces.

He watched through his field glasses at the burning city some miles away. There, his men were fighting a grueling and vicious battle to toss the revolutionaries off the planet and back where they came. The Paladins had arrived only a week before the first rebel ships came into orbit, and were caught on the back foot as their orbital bombardment destroyed what little defenses they constructed. Many of the Empire's men had died in the fighting, including the previous brigade commander. He had been promoted as an acting-Brigadier, but it was starting to look like that he would have no time to be officially promoted.

For he was sure he would die on the surface of this world which, although part of his Home Sector and populated with his Folk, was far from his home of Panchala.

Oh, what a lovely war, he mused to himself cynically. They had spent all their lives preparing for War, but when it finally came, he found the business quite distasteful to say the least. But in the six years since the Civil War first broke out, he had become accustomed to it. He even began to relish in it.

A fighter-bomber squadron, friendly of course, streaked overhead and broke his thoughts as they headed at flank speed to annihilate an enemy position. But Childebrand was wondering just how they would be able to throw them off the planet for good.