Signus Campaign - Fallen Tear: The second phase of the daemonic enemy's attack then began. Concealed in the shoal of spacecraft wreckage that girdled Signus Prime, deformed mutant vessels broke free of the planet's gravity and surged forwards to assault the Blood Angels fleet. At first dormant, dead to all sensors, they now came alive with ghostly energy. The monstrous hell-ships attacked the Blood Angels fleet, and soon a full-scale orbital battle commenced.The Blood Angels' warships fired torpedo barrages and pulsing blasts from their mega-lasers, stripping all protection from the attackers, but still the enemy came on. The Red Tear opened her gun ports and let her cannons give their all, the brilliant spears of particle beams and the streamers of missile salvoes striking hard across the line of the hell-ships' advance. The flagship sent repeated requests to the Word Bearers vessel that accompanied their fleet, but their calls for aid went unanswered.As one of the hell-ships approached the Red Tear on a direct collision course, the Word Bearers ship was the only one in position to fend off the assault. In a moment of the basest treachery, the Word Bearers ignited their engines and abandoned the Blood Angels. The hell-ship collided with the flagship and disgorged hundreds of Warp-spawned creatures and Chaos-corrupted, mutant Signusi crew-men. As the servants of Chaos swarmed out into the Red Tear the Blood Angels were there to greet them, but not in great number. Fortunately, the defenders were able to blast apart a small section of bulkhead with a Missile Launcher, the explosive decompression blowing the fleshy monstrosities out into the void.Meanwhile, on the command deck of the Red Tear, the ship's commanding officer, Admiral Athene DuCade of the Imperialis Armada, was confronted by a demented ship's officer. The Admiral drew her Laspistol and put the maddened officer down. When DuCade looked around, she could see that the bridge crew surrounding her all had the same tell-tale signs of the madness that had possessed the deranged officer. She pulled her other Laspistol and opened fired with both weapons at once.DuCade blasted her maddened crewmen as they ran, ultimately killing her entire bridge crew. When DuCade caught sight of her own reflection in the navi-monitor, she realised that the infection of madness had afflicted her too. Weeping bitter tears, DuCade sought to make amends for her crimes, and she set the massive flagship a new course towards the surface of Signus Prime. With her guns, she destroyed the command console so that her deed could not be undone. She then placed the Laspistol against her chest and fired point-blank into her heart. There was no stopping the Red Tear from crashing into the surface of the planet.With nothing to stop its fall, the Red Tear plunged into Signus Prime's gravity well and kissed the outer atmosphere in a flickering cascade of orange fire. The Red Tear was a mighty vessel, built for the punishment of a hundred wars, yet the flagship had been forged in vacuum and made for the deeps of interplanetary space. It was not a vessel configured to fly in a planet's atmosphere and it hurtled towards the ground like a great brick of adamantium and plasteel.Meanwhile, the Blood Angels attempted to cut through the command bridge's central hatchway. A Techmarine managed to bypass the locking mechanism and gain access to the bridge. The Astartes found a mortally wounded bridge crewman, who informed them of the Admiral's madness and subsequent sabotage of the ship's navigational controls. Sanguinius finally arrived and was informed of the Legion's dire circumstances.Unable to delay the inevitable, Sanguinius refused to abandon the falling vessel. He was confident that the ancient and mighty starship would survive the fall and crash intact on Signus Prime's surface. He ordered all personnel to make for the core of the starship where the most heavily protected compartments lay. The flagship crashed to the planet's surface, and though broken, it still remained undefeated; the Red Tear had denied its enemy victory.Within solar hours, the fallen Red Tear was no longer a starship. The Battle-Barge was transformed into a fortress, a vast island of burned red metal in the middle of the dead lands of Signus Prime. The warriors of the IX Legion secured the vessel and assessed the damage. What could be used for war was made a priority for salvage, and what could not be saved was discarded. The survivors amongst the mortal human crew were few; many had died in the fires and the impact, but more from the ultimate effect of the psychic malaise that had infiltrated their minds. They simply died of fear, hearts seizing in their chests as they were consumed by the dark shadow of the forsaken world that had reached out to claim them.