Badab War - Breaking the Ring of Steel (913.M41): The Loyalists were now ready at last to begin the final siege of the Badab System. Their forces had been greatly augmented by the arrival of the grim Star Phantoms Chapter, whose fleet carried a powerful force ten companies strong, as well as a maniple of Battle Titans of the Legio Crucius ("The Warmongers") brought in by the intervention of the Adeptus Mechanicus of Angstrom, and several heavy warships such as the Sword of Ordon which had been brought back into full operation.The initial attack itself would not be easy as the Loyalists first had to sunder the infamous "Ring of Steel" which held sufficient firepower to hold off almost any fleet of attackers, turning the void between its planets into a deadly maze of minefields and interlocking fire-zones. But the Loyalist high command had come up with an unorthodox plan to counter this threat with minimal losses which would allow for an immediate planetary assault. The key to this plan was twofold and it relied both on the arcane arts of the magi of Angstrom and the effects of the Tyrant of Badab's own growing paranoia.The greatest vulnerability of the "Ring of Steel" was that it was largely static. The positions of its various minefields and massively armed star forts were predictable, and what few defence ships and armed vessels of any size Badab possessed were insufficient to turn the tide against a concerted localised attack. The heavily defended star fortress orbiting Sigma (Badab VI) was the cornerstone of the outer system's defence.Loyalist spies had discovered here, at Sentinel-Sigma, was the primary node of control, which had been placed under the control of one of the few subordinates the Tyrant still trusted, the infamous Astral Claws Captain Corien Sumatris. This was done so that the control of the star forts and minefields wouldn't be controlled autonomously by scores of commanders the Tyrant thought unreliable. Taking Sentinel-Sigma intact would silence the legendary "big guns" of the Badab System.The Loyalist assault armada entered realspace in the Badab System on 317.913.M41, high up on the vertical plane of the planetary system, directly on an attack course for Badab VI. The armada consisted of no fewer than 6 Space Marine battle barges and 9 strike cruisers, along with 6 other Imperial Navy ships of the line, an Adeptus Mechanicus war caravel and 84 escorts and strike vessels of various classes. At its vanguard was the mobile star fortress Raptorus Rex, behind which, thanks to the artisanship of the magi of Angstrom, was towed a burning stellar core fragment torn bodily from the Bale Cascade.As the war machines of the Badab System sprang to life in response to the threat, it was already too late to prevent what was to happen next. Swiftly reaching terminal velocity, the ponderous cyclopean bulk of the Raptorus Rex engaged its main drive at maximum power to alter course, straining against inertia to allow the hellish fire of the stellar fragment to pass it by on its collision course with the Sentinel-Sigma battle station, while the Loyalist armada fell into a spearhead formation a safe distance behind.Unable to escape the path of the rogue star fragment, soon every weapon on the defence line within range and resolution was trained on the tumbling fireball. Blinded by the light of this new and terrible star careening towards them, the weapons of the "Ring of Steel" could not clearly see, let alone target the oncoming armada. This caused the legions of mines and weapon platforms' targeter-arrays to set upon each other, setting off waves of atomic detonations through the void.Only at near point-blank range did the Defence Lasers and arc-cannon of the star forts have any affect on the burning stellar matter, causing the fragment to be rent apart in a great wave of energy which washed over Sentinel-Sigma, painting its failing Void Shields with lambent flame and burning through defence ships and fighters in a torrent of destruction.Hard on the wake of the energy storm came the Angels of Death in unrelenting fury as boarding torpedoes and assault rams smashed into the reeling Sentinel-Sigma, carrying with them the might of the Sons of Medusa and Exorcists Chapters. Soon they were met in deadly combat amid the station's vaults and corridors by combat servitors and the suicidal fury of the vaunted Astral Claws 2nd Company and their commander, the arch-swordsman Corien Sumatris.As the boarding action raged the battle barges Sword of Ordon and the Star Phantoms' Memento Mori led a wing of strike cruisers to assault the burned and blinded star fort network at point-blank range, taking one after the other intact in a series of brutal boarding assaults which left none they found within alive.Meanwhile the Minotaurs carried out strikes upon the system's other inhabited spheres, Badab Secundus and Rigeal, with brutal efficiency. The darkly famed master of the Minotaurs, Asterion Moloc, hurled the members of Badab Secundus' ruling satrapy from the spire of its oratory-cathedral. This he did after impaling the Astral Claws Chaplain Varna Sabin to the front of his personal Land Raider transport as an example to Traitors of the fate that awaited them.Standing atop a mound of broken bodies, Vaylund Cal, Iron Thane of the Sons of Medusa, communicated to Loyalist high command that Sentinel-Sigma was theirs. He was joined via teleporter by the Mechanicus Lords of Angstrom. They did what Lufgt Huron and his court had considered unthinkable; within solar hours the Loyalists had subjugated the station's Silica Animus (artificial intelligence), and with it accessed the many Machine Spirits and weapons slaved to it.Incontrovertible override and destruct signals were sent out across the void. This function was only possible because of the possessive paranoia of the Tyrant in his effort to control a system so large. In response to the command the outer Badab System became a sea of fire. The "Ring of Steel" had been shattered, and only Badab Primaris and the defences that encircled it remained.