The Hammer of Spite got within five hundred yards of the causeway’s end when its void shields overloaded. The crackling blue nimbus shell suddenly blinked out. A terrible race began between the reactor crews struggling to find the fault and fix it, and the traitor artillery batteries scrambling for a kill.

The vulnerable war machine looked small and insignificant in the shadow of Crannog Mons as shells rained down like hailstones. Three times the void shields flickered to life and three times they failed again.

The generators were just starting up once more when a lucky warhead penetrated the plasma reactor chamber. The fifty-strong boiler corps died within seconds as fires roared through the col­ossal beast. Hatches were slammed shut and coolants poured into the plasma reactors. But too late.

A succession of detonations tore through to the magazines. Fyceline explosions ripped out of the encased chambers. Infernos howled through the guts of the behemoth, seeking an escape route with all the force and fury of magma escaping from a planet’s core. A fountain of fire and sparks erupted like a geyser into the air before Hammer of Spite was ripped apart in a series of cata­clysmic explosions that flung debris out in all directions.

The death of Hammer of Spite was felt throughout the Imperial forces. Her wreckage burnt for hours as her two sister craft Terra’s Contempt and Hatred of Iron trundled forward, guns blazing until the barrels glowed red.

Shells screamed overhead and the lightning of Navy lance shots strobed the night. The traitors worked furiously, desperate for another kill. The void shields of Terra’s Contempt and Hatred of Iron held – just.

As they reached the lower circuits of Tor Tartarus, assault teams gripped their weapons and prepared themselves for the furious attack. The great tracks ground on as the Leviathans pushed out across the last hundred yards.

At last they were in position, staring up at the rising walled circuits of the fortress.

Tor Tartarus had not escaped unscathed. The massive ferrocrete walls and bastions were pitted and scarred. The sober statues that had adorned its walls were fractured and broken, and in places the cliffs had given way and great landslides had carried away whole swathes of defences.

But despite the damage, it was clear the fortress and its void shields were intact. Its kill-zones and death-traps lay ready for the inevitable assault.

Bendikt stood to watch the Leviathans make their way towards Traitor Rock. His face betrayed no emotion at the fiery death of Hammer of Spite, but the command staff felt the tension rise. Prassan relayed vox-reports from the remaining Leviathans. The tension ratcheted slowly up, until at last the Leviathans were in place.

‘Ready, sir?’ Prassan queried.

Bendikt gave the command.