First Battle of Paramar - A Light Extinguished: The identity of the incoming warships was entirely unexpected. Though like the Alpha Legion, the Iron Warriors and their brutal Primarch Perturabo had sided with Horus at Istvaan V to the ruination of those Loyalists sent to bring the Traitors to heel, no love had been lost between the two brother-Legions in the past and their presence at Paramar at this time was entirely unpredicted.Likely this unforeseen turn of events, coming at such a crucial juncture, was itself a dangerous complication for the Alpha Legion's plans. Had the Iron Warriors been sent on the same mission as they by Horus in his distrust, and then if this was the case, had they come as aid or as watchdog to see that the Warmaster's wishes were carried out?Or were they simply a rogue element to be dealt with as proved necessary? Were these five ships all, or were there more in waiting, just as the Alpha Legion waited? Ultimately, it did not matter, the plan was too far gone to be stopped; events had taken on a momentum of their own.Like silent actors in a vast shadow play of gods and monsters against the backdrop of the cold stars, the colossal warships of blackened steel and ghostly azure moved across the void, each to their journeys' end. With equal silence, aboard the Alpha Legion's serpent-scaled vessels, Legionaries in full battle gear and armed for war waited in utter stillness for the order to be given, and shielded capacitors, their caged lightning hidden utterly from the prying auguries of the Pharaeon which automatically blindly swept over them, waited to fire their apocalyptic weapons into sudden life.Through the cyclopean floating chain-cables of the gun bastions the Alpha Legion ships passed; their leader towards the Phaeraeon itself and its escorts towards the protected fleet anchorage platforms, their progress patient and measured.As the Sigma-Pythonus came to rest in her appointed position mere kilometres away from the Pharaeon of Paramar's outer docking bays, and well within the radius and protection of the battle station's bastion-fortresses, a single unescorted amaranthine-hued Thunderhawk gunship departed her cavernous launch bays and made over to the Pharaeon bearing the Alpha Legion's delegation.The figure which descended the gunship's ramp to meet the shocked deck officers and magi who awaited it towered over them, a pale spear was held like a staff of office in its hand, its ornately worked armour glittered like a shimmering sea, the scaled cloak that coursed behind it writhing as if it had a serpentine life of its own. "Alpharius..." went the stunned whisper before him, "It is Alpharius, a Primarch is here among us!"The towering figure demanded to be taken to the Master of the Pharaeon immediately, and it was obeyed. On the deck of the main control Orrey of the Pharaeon of Paramar was the silent Primarch received by the Commodore-Intendant and his command staff, and with them was the Magos-Shipmaster of the fleet achorage and the Preceptor of Astropaths, indeed no dignitary of the Pharaeon dared decline the honour of such a dread meeting.It was as they were kneeling in obeisance before this son of the Emperor incarnate that the first alarm-claxons began to sound across the Pharaeon. Before even the first mumbled words of surprise and apology could fall from the Commodore-Intendant's lips for the interruption, Alpharius made red ruin of them all.The guns of the Sigma-Pythonus spoke, and too late the Pharaeon of Paramar discovered it had taken a clutch of vipers to its breast. In solar seconds the battle station's close-range defences and Void Shield generators were blasted, breaches punched clean through vital systems and the roar of boarding craft and the howl of teleporter shockwaves sounded throughout the beleaguered Pharaeon.At the anchorage platforms, the other Alpha Legion warships too woke to murderous life, their batteries blazing at point blank range as Caestus Assault Rams and Dreadclaws spat from their launch bays into the flanks of the helpless ships of the Imperial fleet moored nearby. Confusion reigned as control systems failed; all over the outer defence network, orders were blocked, power systems suddenly died, and targeting data was garbled so that defence batteries refused to lock on to their brothers or spent their ordnance fruitlessly into the empty void.Anarchy reigned on the Pharaeon void station as menials looked to their masters only to find many of their officers dead, murdered at their posts or poisoned in their quarters. Against the azure-armoured giants that crashed now through the Pharaeon's confined corridors, what little resistance that could be rallied was hopeless and savagely crushed.In under a solar hour all that remained was the bloody work of suppression and takeover. As for the line of drifting gun-bastions in the near-void around the Pharaeon, they could do little more than look on helplessly as the station and its anchorages both were systematically taken, their own primary weapons useless against the attackers in their midst, set as they were outward against attack from without not within. The Pharaeon of Paramar belonged to the Alpha Legion.