First Battle of Paramar - The Hydra Strikes: The captain of the Anax-Rho had waited too long. Auspex returns on Paramar V had begun to pick up the echo-flashes of heavy weapons fire at the Pharaeon, and the Alpha Legion's hand was forced. The Anax-Rho ended the argument with the Tyche's Lament by unleashing a spread of fusion-warheaded torpedoes at their unsuspecting rivals, before turning their attentions on the Nexus below.As atomic fire blossomed across the prow of the Iron Warriors' Battleship, the Anax-Rho's assault bays launched a wave of heavy Kharybdis Assault Claws at the Nexus primary terminal, the barbed lancing craft burning like comets as they streaked groundward. The Mechanicum outpost reacted to the fury unleashed above them with preternatural speed, but it was not fast enough; the terminal's Void Shield coursed to crackling life in the skies between the two, but too late to stop the meteoric descent of the Assault Claw wave which tore through the still-forming shields with flashes of pyrokenetic lightning as they streaked groundward, the Void Shields slowly sealing shut above them.The Kharybdis Assault Claws, wreathed in the flames of their descent and trailing behind them streamers of torn lightning-plasma form the half-formed Void Shields, slammed into the upper towers of the Terminus Panopticon, their blade grapples smashing into hardened ferrocrete like murderous talons as they began to burn their way within.Far above, the Anax-Rho pressed its attack. While its dorsal Lances fired on the Iron Warriors' escort, scattering them, its main armament was turned groundwards. Built for close-range orbital assault, the Anax-Rho's macro-bombardment cannon began to rain down shell after titanic shell on the still-powering-up defence shields, while its torpedo bays frantically reloaded with cluster warheads to press the onslaught further and overwhelm the Terminus by brute force now that subtlety had been denied them.A second assault wave, already prepared, awaited to exploit any failing in the shield, no matter how brief -- the Terminus could still be taken and Paramar V could yet fall with a single blow if this was so.The Tyche's Lament, reeling and shrouded in a molten cloud of burning debris from its forequarters, began to turn under its own power. It had expected not battle, its gun ports closed and its weapon-capacitors empty when the treacherous foe had struck the mighty Battleship, but even without its own shields fully powered, it had been far from defenceless.Metre upon metre of ablative armour plating added to the hulking warship by her bitter-hearted master had been splashed into jetting plasma by the fusion torpedo strikes, but the armoured core beneath it, fashioned in the forges of Olympia's orbital shipyards, had been built to withstand worse, and that had barely been scorched.The colossal engines of the Iron Warriors Battleship roared into sun-white fury and the Tyche's Lament leapt forward with brutal acceleration, its tortured superstructure screaming in protest at those on board.Extant records show that though his ship's targeting auspexes had been blinded and the bridge flamed around him, it was Warsmith Kyr Vhalen himself who threw aside his steersman and triggered the main drives at maximum power, shouting black and profane oaths aloud as the seven-kilometre-long warship hurled like a burning spear at the Anax-Rho.Locked into firing solutions against the planet and the wounded escorts, the Anax-Rho could not recover itself in the short moments that the Tyche's Lament devoured the distance between the two huge warships, and when its own main drives triggered to manoeuvre, it was already too late.The blunt-bladed prow of the Tyche's Lament struck the Anax-Rho amidships from directly below, shattering its Void Shields and smashing it aside in a storm of broken debris and venting atmosphere. The heavy assault cruiser -- itself forged to endure terrible damage, had survived the devastating impact -- barely, but now it spun out of control, its own engine-thrust carrying it out of orbit in order to escape the scarred monster which was already beginning to turn again for another attack run.