13th Black Crusade - The Fate of Phalanx: As the tides of the 13th Black Crusade washed across the Cadian Gate, jealous eyes sought advantage elsewhere.The Iron Warriors Warsmith Shon'tu and the Daemon Prince Be'lakor thought to upstage Abaddon's latest crusade by striking directly at Terra. Emerging from a Warp rift at the heart of the battle-fortress Phalanx, they sought to seize command of the mighty vessel and turn its unparalleled weaponry on the Emperor's Imperial Palace itself.Victory seemed assured. Five companies of the Imperial Fists had already departed upon the Crusade of Vengeance, unleashing the righteous fury of the sons of Rogal Dorn against the fortresses of Medrengard. Three others were scattered across the Segmentum Obscurus on missions of vital import. That left some thirty Battle-Brothers of the 1st Company, alongside the newly reconstituted and unblooded 3rd, to repel the assault on their beloved sanctum.Captain Tor Garadon, master of the 3rd Company, took command, rallying the bond-serfs of Phalanx's crew alongside his Battle-Brothers. Though badly outnumbered, the defenders of the venerable battle-fortress knew every hall and chamber of their home, and used that knowledge to bloody effect. Ground was yielded only to draw the snarling daemons into the jaws of ambush. The armoured castellum -- fortresses within the fortress -- kept firing until their ammunition was spent and their positions overrun by the Iron Warriors' clanking war engines.It was not enough. Assaulted by the insidiousness of the Dark Gods and the machine viruses of Shon'tu's Warpsmiths, the very flesh of Phalanx rebelled. Automated defences turned on their creators. Rad-baffles cut out, flooding hallways with reactor waste. Gravitic and life support failed across the entire forward superstructure. Hangars vented without warning. And wherever the Iron Warriors advanced, elegant stonework and golden panelling that had endured since the time of Dorn writhed and twisted, screaming faces distending the surfaces from within. Soon, whole decks resembled nothing so much as the nightmare bastions of Medrengard.The Imperial Fists held their ground with a tenacity worthy of their long-dead Primarch, but with every passing moment, more of the fortress ship succumbed to the infestation. Already the Machine Spirits of its dorsal batteries eroded beneath the Warpsmiths' insidious designs. Garadon knew that a planetary bombardment would soon follow. The last testament of Dorn's great prize would be one of failure -- worse, it would be one of treachery.Faced with the unthinkable, Garadon took the only course open to him. This was a foe that could not be bested by Bolter and Chainsword, nor even through the unswerving valour of the Adeptus Astartes. Withdrawing his forces from the infected sections, he ordered Phalanx's weaponry turned inward. With them, he would cut away the disease as would a chirurgeon. Garadon felt each strike of the Fusion Beamers as if upon his own flesh, but the necessity of the hour allowed for no compromise.Fully one-tenth of Phalanx's mass was lost to that scouring, either obliterated by the strike of its own weaponry, or cut free by the same to suffer a fiery demise in Terra's atmosphere. But the sacrifice had been worth it. As Holy Terra consumed Phalanx's ravaged flesh, the machine virus' hold was shattered. Seizing the opportunity, Garadon set Phalanx onto a blind heading, hurling the fortress adrift into the tides of the Immaterium. Whatever the fortress' fate, it would not be wielded as a weapon by the Ruinous Powers. With the worst of all fates cheated, Garadon rallied what remained of his Battle-Brothers and set forth to scour the last of Shon'tu's presence from Phalanx.Alas, Garadon had underestimated his foes. Though the bulk of the Iron Warriors had perished during the excision of Phalanx's corruption, the fury and resolve of Be'lakor's daemons had heightened the moment the fortress plunged into the Immaterium. Thus, though Shon'tu's death beneath the vengeful Power Fists of Terminator Squad Furan did much to restore lost honour, it did little to alter Phalanx's fate. His forces weary and diminished, Garadon elected to make his stand in the Chamber of Storms, beneath the granite gaze of Chapter Masters long-dead -- witnesses to their inheritors' valour. As the golden cloth of the 3rd Company's banner defiantly unfurled, Be'lakor's mocking laughter echoed around the chamber.The defenders of Phalanx gave no ground that day. The roar of Bolters vied with the screams of dying daemons and the blasphemous curses of the damned. Hellfire blackened the walls, and shrivelled the souls of the fallen. Be'lakor spent his forces carelessly, hurling them into oblivion with the surety of a general on the brink of victory. Malice and disappointment doubtless played their part also, for with Phalanx's departure from Terra, Be'lakor's quest to overmatch Abaddon's glories had met with rank failure. Once again, the First Damned had slipped into the shadow of a mortal champion. Thus Be'lakor spent the coin of his thralls' lives carelessly, confident that the tides of the Warp would replenish his ranks where those of Phalanx's defenders would only diminish.But not all forces within the unpredictable Immaterium bend their knee to the dark designs of Chaos. As Be'lakor at last deigned to join the battle, one such faction drew nigh. Hellfire found itself contested by the flames of sacrifice as the spectral Battle-Brothers of the Legion of the Damned entered the fray. Daemons withered in the spirit-fires, and no matter how Be'lakor railed and pleaded with his dark masters, his ranks were not renewed.Caught between the Sons of Dorn and the sepulchral warriors of the Legion, the daemons' grip upon Phalanx slackened. The Chamber of Storms, no longer the site of a last stand, now became the stage upon which a great victory played out. By the time Be'lakor, his undying flesh rent and pummelled by the grasp of Garadon's Power Fist, cast himself into the nothingness beyond Phalanx's Gellar Field, the outcome was no longer in doubt. Phalanx had been saved.As Phalanx's crew wrestled to bring the mighty fortress under control, Garadon took stock of his losses. The price of victory had been steep. A tenth of Phalanx's structure had been lost to save the remainder. The ravaged whole was marred by altogether too many wrecked weapons emplacements, launch bays and Void Shield projectors, and manned by a mortal crew little above half strength. Of Garadon's 3rd Company, the Sentinels of Terra, only forty-eight Battle-Brothers would fight again. Of Sergeant Furan's demi-company of the 1st, a mere fifteen Astartes survived. As seemed ever the case, a great victory for the Sons of Dorn had come at an equally great cost.Oddly, the Legion of the Damned had not vanished at battle's close, as was usually their wont. Instead, they stood silent vigil in the Chamber of Storms, unmoving and unspeaking. Save for Garadon himself, all avoided that hallowed place, discomforted by the grim spectres whose presence seemed to chill the air even as Warp fire crackled across their armour. But not even Garadon could bring himself to question the cadaverous sergeant who stood at the Legion's head. That they were waiting for something seemed obvious, but what?Commodore Trevaux, Phalanx's senior surviving officer, recommended that the battle-fortress set return course for Terra, or else make full speed for the great shipyards of Mars to commence much-needed repairs. Garadon was of a mind to agree, but couldn't shake the feeling that fate had other plans for venerable Phalanx.No sooner had Phalanx's heading altered towards Terra once more than Librarians intercepted a garbled and desperately brief distress hymnal. Cadia called for aid. Trevaux and Furan argued that neither Phalanx nor its crew were in any condition to respond, but Garadon overruled all objections. A sword sheathed, he argued, served no one. Phalanx's first duty was not to itself, but to the Imperium, and all present knew Cadia's importance. The decision made, Phalanx's aged Plasma Drives fired anew, ploughing a new furrow through the Immaterium. Only when the tremors of stressed metal faded away did Garadon's eye fall across a shadowed corner of the fortress' command sanctum. Fire flickered in the darkness, and the Legion's sergeant offered what might have been a brief nod, or it might equally have been a motion that belonged entirely to Garadon's imagination.