The next minutes are chaos as everyone runs for their positions. Valentin takes up a gunpit, racking back the Heavy Bolter's charging handle with a satisfying click. Henrik slides into position next to him, bracing the appropriated sniper rifle on the railing of the Bastion. Just north, Gerard slides a missile into his tube launcher then goes to a knee, glancing into the monochrome display of it's attached targeter. Lucille joins him, augmetic eye hunting for targets amongst the trenches far away.

Down below, outside the precinct, Lennox, the Legion Officer, rallies his men. "Form for assault!" He shouts.

The milling about Penals move to fill out into bayonet columns, quickly but with little discipline and uneven ranks.

"Legionnaires, at the signal, we will advance!" The officer's voice is loud, carrying even over the distance and through the chaos. Many of the penals seem to be bracing themselves for what is to come.

More shells fall every second, most wasting themselves against the fortress wall or burst far short of the enemy trenches.

Some of those shells however are not bearing packages of high explosives. From a burst of mortar fire, thick clouds of grey-white smoke billow out over no man's lands in fat clouds. Fortunately, the soldiers on the walls can see over the smoke clouds-though they note that the sheet of smoke cover has very large gaps from which the penals will be exposed to fire.

"We cannot stop, and there can be no delay and no retreat! Do you understand, Legionnaires!" The officer continues. A low roar of "Yes Sir!" ripples through the Penal Ranks. Far from enthusiastic, but it is obedient. "Good! Slaught, and ready yourselves!"

A moment, as neck mounted injectors hiss. Then two, as bayonets are fixed in a steel rattle.

Lennox glances back at Lt. Savatier, who by now has exited the command post and is rallying his command squad around him. The Bolwerc Junior officer nods to his Legion counterpart.

"Charge! Die with honor!" Lennox shouts, waving his chainsword forward. On the other side of the district, the Legion Commissar does the same, practically shoving the men forward and past the Bolwerc's lines.

The Penal Legionnaires bolt forward, far faster than any man not on combat Drugs could manage. One rough column marches straight down the cobbled road, perhaps forty men strong. Another, of similar size and led by their Officer, practically swims through the mud and craters, feet pounding with superhuman speed. A third launches from south of the distrct, pushing forward under smoke cover.

The Bolwercs open fire at the same time the enemy defenses do, and no man's land is crossed by lines of tracers as many heavy stubbers open up, trying to suppress either the Penals or the Republican infanry in their trenches.

For their part, the conscripts mostly oblige, staying low as lines of bullets and the luminous trails of Heavy bolts stitch up and down the lines of their trenches. Other Bolwercs fire upon the protected defenses, trying to neutralize the worst of those defenses. A Heavy Bolter within it's bunker tracks towards the columns of Penal infantry. Gerard fires his rocket, trying to disable the gun. The missile is just barely off target, blasting a crater in the hard packed earth just outside the bunker. The Gunner is undistracted by the blast, and is only interrupted from putting a burst of deadly fire into the column when a high caliber solid bullet flies through the vision slit of the Bunker, slips under his helmet, and then punches through his face and evacuates the contents of his skull onto the bunker's back wall. The headless corpse slumps onto it's gun, and Henrik looks for his next target.

Other Heavy Weapons are not so dettered, and storms of Heavy Stubber rounds punch into the gaps between smoke or else fire blindly into the clouds. Here and there a Legionnaire falls, heavy slugs punching them from their feet or stunning them when they rebound off a helmet. One Penal screams and drops, a slug punching through his kneecap and severing the limb at the knee. To the north, a Heavy Bolter position fires into the Penals moving up the road. The leading edge of the column disappears in a rolling series of detonations and blasts of red. Things that can hardly be described as corpses paint the roadside, limbs blasted away from ruined bodies and unidentified human remains blasted all around and onto the succeeding rank of Legionaries.

Shells continue to fall from the heavens, and now in the open, the Penals are a much more open target. One falls onto the abused roadside behind the advancing northern Collumn. Several Enforcers and their Commissar are in the rearguard, and the shrapnel and concussive blast washes over them. Two of the Enforcers are consumed by the detonation, shrapnel and concussive force breaking their bodies like toys. Slightly further away and protected by Carapace, the Commissar goes to her knees, shell fragments and shattered cobblestones rebounding off her stormcoat.

Another bursts just short of the other group. Legionaries throw themselves prone with super human reflexes, an entire squad finding the ground as their position disappears in another blast of fire and death. Another squad is not quite quick enough, and broken bodies in Munitorium brown are hurled away, limp. Others are scythed down by lucky shrapnel that drops men as readily as any bullet.

To their limited credit, the Legionaries do not break at such bombardment. Men pick themselves up, even the wounded, and keep moving forward. Lennox shouts something, and the columns begin dispersing into a vague cloud of men advancing in an uneven skirmish formation. Less effective at the bayonet assault, but it might carry them to the trenches.