Darnath Lysander - The Reconquest of Kalin: Without further delay, Lysander divided his command into two separate forces. Strike Force Anvil -- containing the bulk of the 3rd Company's Tactical Squads, as well as its Stormtalons and battle tanks -- bolstered the defences around Shivanol against the continuing Greenskin assault. Meanwhile, the remaining warriors would fight as part of Strike Force Hammer and assault the Ork factory complexes, choking off reinforcements. Garadon expected Lysander to take command of this second force, for it was there that the greatest opportunity for glory lay. He was therefore somewhat surprised when the Captain gruffly announced that he would instead assume command of Shivanol's defence. Thus, as much of the 3rd Company put their newly-honed Bolter drill to use from Shivanol's battered ferrocrete rampart, Garadon led Strike Force Hammer out into the once-verdant wasteland.Superficially, no two of the Ork factories were alike, with chimney stacks, Mek workshops and weapons emplacements arranged seemingly at random within the tumbled walls of the old agri-domes. Yet careful reconnaissance by Garadon's Scout Squads confirmed this assumption to be inaccurate. Beneath its skin of rusting buildings, the heart of each facility shared a certain commonality, constructed as it was around a sparking reaktor which fed everything from the piston-driven gates to the Traktor Kannon batteries that made orbital bombardment of the factory a suicidal proposition. Though the defences around the reaktors were sufficient to prevent simple sabotage by the Scouts, the novitiates were able to conceal locator beacons amongst the ramshackle structures, enabling a series of precision Drop Pod assaults into each factory's vulnerable heart.During the voyage to Kalin, Lysander had not been satisfied with overturning the 3rd Company's established Bolter-drill -- he had also ordered one of the Thunderhawk gunships retrofitted to accommodate a larger number of Centurions. The Artificers and Techmarines aboard the Battle Barge were scarcely less appalled at the decision than Markov had been by the captain's other changes, but they had complied nonetheless. Now, Sergeant Garadon putthem to good use.As the rampart of Greenskin dead and mangled wreckage around Shivanol grew ever higher, Garadon brought ruin to each of the Ork factories in turn. Each assault began simply enough, with the Storm of Wrath enduring the fury of a factory's Traktor Kannon batteries just long enough to fire its Drop Pods at the target. Descending too quickly for the Ork weapons to track, the Drop Pods slammed into the factory, disgorging Garadon's strike force into the veryheart of the complex. There, Garadon's own Tactical Squad, as well as the strike force's two Dreadnoughts, destroyed the anti-air batteries, whilst the company's Assault and [[DevastatorSquad]]s -- now piloting Centurion warsuits -- deployed via Thunderhawk gunship and destroyed the reaktors. With the factory's remaining defence batteries silenced by power loss, Thunderhawk gunships launching from the Storm of Wrath were able to extract the strike force before they were overwhelmed. Soon after, the Battle Barge moved into orbit once more to commence a saturation bombardment, pummelling the factory -- and the half-finished war engines within -- to dust.Garadon's audacious assaults were carried out with incredible speed and precision, often with only a matter of solar minutes between the first Drop Pod launch and the echoes of bombardment dissipating through the bedrock. Even so, there were casualties. A swarm of Dakkajets scrambled during the assault on the factory complex designated Kalin Epsilon, delaying the Thunderhawk extraction by several minutes. A number of Tactical Marines and Centurions were lost in that assault, although two of the pilots escaped by abandoning their warsuits before being overrun. Two Scouts were captured during their reconnaissance of Kalin Zeta and, though Garadon altered his assault plan to allow their rescue, one later died of his wounds, and Honoured Brother Makan sustained damage that took the Storm of Wrath’s Techmarines many days to repair.In the meantime, Lysander's demi-company had suffered its own losses. Chaplain Markov had lost an eye -- though he swung the Angel of Sacrifice as wickedly as he ever had, and claimed he saw the foe better with one eye than he had with both. The Predator Glorious Redemption was irrecoverable scrap, blown apart by a Stompa's Deff Kannon. Veteran Sergeant Odan was dead, hacked to pieces whilst single-handedly holding a breach in Shivanol's outer wall, as were six of his Battle-Brothers, and every warrior who held the line at Lysander's side bore fresh scars as proof of their valour.However, Strike Force Hammer's efforts had a swift and noticeable effect on the Ork war effort. With the Nemean blockade fleet denying reinforcement from off-world, and their factories destroyed one by one, the Ork assault on Shivanol slackened. This in turn allowed Lysander to assign ever more of his own forces to Garadon's command. By the time the last factory -- designated Kalin Kappa -- had been destroyed, Garadon's assaults were performed practically at company strength. Uniting once more under Lysander's command, the Sentinels of Terra brought the last remnants of the Ork invasion to battle on the Gansha Plains. The Warboss perished beneath Lysander's Thunder Hammer, and the survivors fled into the hills.Though the Ork threat to Kalin was seemingly ended, Lysander and Garadon knew that the Crusade of Thunder was not yet done. Ork Battleships still tested the Nemean blockade. The war would only be done when their origin point was located and destroyed.