Upon the high ridges of the mountain range, Jaghatai Khan brought his massive yet sleek jetbike to a halt. Like a nomadic hunter tracking prey across the high steppes, his piercing gaze swept continuously over the sprawling industrial complex nestled in the basin below. Beside him, a split detachment of the Stormseers and his personal vanguard fanned out, conducting a swift reconnaissance of the blasphemous fortress's defensive perimeters from multiple vectors.
The signals had been sent; the remaining sons of the Great Khan would be arriving shortly.
The operational parameters were straightforward: once the main host converged, high-mobility strike elements would execute a feint to draw the defenders out of position. Simultaneously, heavy armored detachments would launch a localized breakthrough. After maximum structural damage had been inflicted on the superstructures, aerial augurs would map the shifting layout to facilitate a final, concentrated internal breach.
Resorting to such a ground-focused siege doctrine was a matter of bitter tactical necessity. This was not the material universe; even a Primarch could not conjure a glorious battle-barge to conduct orbital saturation.
Under normal circumstances, the Khan would have preferred to lure the enemy garrison clear of the complex. Once it was verified that no void shields protected the structures, he would have summoned an immediate lance strike or utilized his legionaries' overwhelming mobility to encircle and annihilate the enemy's operational strength in the open.
Following that, his sons would have initiated a joint assault with the stubborn scions of Rogal Dorn or the meticulous sons of Roboute Guilliman, easily flushing out whatever craven survivors cowered in the smoking ruins. Or perhaps the sons of Leman Russ would have sufficed.
At that thought, the Khan's mind drifted for a fleeting moment into an uncharacteristic reverie.
He wondered how Leman Russ fared in these dark times. Once he won his way back to reality, he would seek his brother out for a proper feast; the heavy, intoxicating ales of Fenris were always welcome comfort.
The phantom memory of the taste caused Jaghatai to subconsciously smack his lips. When he set off to hunt the elusive xenos eldar, he had never intended to become utterly lost within the twisting corridors of the Webway. The Khan suspected that a few of his sons still harbored hidden stashes of vintage spirits among their field rations, but he was their Primarch, not a common brigand.
Furthermore, he wondered if Guilliman's wounds had healed. Word had reached him before his disappearance that the Ultramarines had been searching tirelessly for a cure to the mortal blow dealt to their lord. He wondered how that search progressed; Roboute had been interred in stasis for nearly a century by his reckoning.
And his Father...
"Haaah..."
Inhaling deeply, Jaghatai pushed the tangled thoughts from his mind, turning his gaze toward a newly arrived jetbike that had slid to a halt beside his own.
"Hawks, bring me good tidings."
A White Scars legionary, his power armor adorned with ornate gold filigree and a specialized eagle crest gracing his pauldrons, dropped to one knee.
"Khan, our sensory arrays could glean nothing further from the complex. However, word has arrived from the Stormseers. Their lead psyker has witnessed a specific portent: beneath the smallest fabrication sector at the absolute center of the complex, there lies a singular, anomalous point of light. They believe that obliterating this node will turn the tide of this campaign entirely in our favor."
Jaghatai looked down at the messenger with a flicker of skepticism.
"Another portent witnessed by Hurkha?"
The legionary nodded, then subtly shook his head. "Not solely Hurkha, my lord. Several of our Stormseers have received the exact same manifestation. They are convinced it is a definitive sign."
Hearing his warrior's confirmation, Jaghatai nodded slowly.
"If the winds dictate it, then we ride! Forward, my Hawks! For the glory of the Emperor!"
"For the Khan!"
As the ancient, thunderous war cry rippled through the vox-net, the host of the White Scars moved as one.
The sky suddenly filled with the roar of engines as jetbike squadrons crested the ridgelines, diving at breakneck speeds toward the distorted complex. The fast-moving interceptors swept low over the battlements of Vashtorr's forge-palace.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A torrential cascade of melta bombs and plasma charges tumbled from the underside of the speeding jetbikes.
Sections of the twisted architectural spires and fabrication blocks within the forge-palace began to buckle and collapse. Snapping out of their industrial trances, minor daemons and newly constructed daemon-engines leveled their weapon mounts toward the sky, painting the air with crackling, warp-infused energy beams.
But the Scars were already gone. Sweeping clear of the forge-palace's upper airspace, the riders dropped to a low-altitude skim, tearing across the open flats toward the outer horizon.
Drawn by the bait, an immense horde of warp-entities scrambled onto the hulls of their mechanical monstrosities, roaring in unison as they charged out of the fortress gates to pursue the fleeing Astartes.
With the bulk of the planet's defensive garrison drawn away from the forge-palace, a massive armored spearhead comprising several White Scars brotherhoods suddenly emerged from the dead zones, rapidly closing the distance to the complex.
Sprinting among lines of Land Raiders were two exceedingly rare patterns of ultra-heavy armor.
They were Falchion super-heavy tank destroyers.
When Jaghatai first initiated his high-speed pursuit of the Drukhari, he had never intended to burden his lightning-fast host with such ponderous, lumbering beasts; indeed, he had not planned on deploying conventional armor at all. However, during the final embarkation, two Falchions had already been secured inside the hold of a heavy Stormbird transport for relocation.
Anticipating that the elusive xenos might have established reinforced fallback positions, and wary of some convoluted trap, the Khan had ultimately ordered his sons to launch the fully loaded Stormbirds. Alongside them, they had brought a complement of Predator battle tanks and Rhino armored personnel carriers.
The treacherous xenos had eluded the heavy wrath of these weapons, but now, the iron teeth of the Legion would find a worthy target.
The three-hundred-ton Falchion super-heavy tank destroyers fired first, their massive engines groaning under the sheer kinetic recoil. The twin-linked volcano cannons mounted to their chassis unleashed the apocalyptic fire of titans.
With four simultaneous, earth-shattering reports, four towering mushroom clouds tore through the heart of the forge-palace.
"Aaargh! Damnation!"
A distorted, kinetic forcefield flickered into existence within the center of the ruins, barely preserving a singular, miniature sanctum amidst the devastating explosions.
A colossal, terrifying silhouette, wreathed in thick, suffocating plumes of Chaos energy, erupted from the smoke. A breath reeking of burning sulfur and ozone poured from the entity's maw.
Foul waste from the Forge of Souls dripped from Vashtorr's jaw like red-hot, molten iron.
It had to be said that Jaghatai's tactical brutality had caught the Arkifane entirely unprepared. The sheer, unmitigated destructive power of weapons designed to crack Titan armor was catastrophic.
Vashtorr had originally planned to lure these arrogant Astartes deep within the labyrinthine halls of his forge-palace, allowing his cybernetic horrors and daemonic machinations to slowly grind them to dust. Even if he could not eradicate them entirely, delaying them would have sufficed.
But the two Falchions had utterly shattered his calculations.
The devastating volleys from the volcano cannons had vaporized the central fabrication sectors and shattered the black monoliths, effectively blasting away the entire upper superstructure of the forge-palace.
If those super-heavy tanks were permitted even two more salvos, there would be nothing left of his grand facility but slag.
Yet, the horrific manifestation of Vashtorr did not give the White Scars pause.
Without a moment's hesitation, the Falchions maintained their remorseless advance. Their sponson-mounted quad lascannons barked in unison, unleashing a blinding lattice of laser fire that slammed into the Arkifane, staggered him where he stood.
"Enough! You blind, sycophantic zealots of the Corpse-Emperor! I shall grant you the oblivion you seek!"
With a roar of pure malice, Vashtorr brought his massive hammer down against the cracked floor of the forge-palace. Across the complex, millions of hidden gears began to spin at frantic, screaming velocities, vomiting immense palls of choking black smoke into the sky.
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