Gethsamaine - The Coming of War: The first voidships to manifest were four Havoc-class Heavy Destroyers bearing the slate grey and bronze of the 507th Attack Squadron, an Armada Imperialis unit that had been part of the Warmaster Horus' 63rd Expeditionary Fleet for more than a standard decade. The real threat manifested shortly after: a Battlecruiser in the dark viridian of the Sons of Horus Legion, a vessel whose name would go on to become synonymous with dark deeds and terrors: the Ikon.Battle was joined almost immediately, the heavy destroyers opening fire on the Gaius Herab and the Brazen Bull. However their plasma-caster and turbo-lasers put up such a barrier of fire that none of the fusion-warheaded torpedoes launched by the 507th Attack Wing got through. The Gethsamaine defence monitors were powerful ships designed for just such protracted firefights, each one of them boasting the firepower of a Cruiser and the armour of a Battleship in their own right. Their main duty were planetary blockades and picket-duties and compared to the sleek warships they now faced, they were slow and cumbersome vessels; yet their armament proved superior thus far, the dorsal Lances of the Brazen Bull and the Gaius Herab striking through the curtain of fire and torpedoes at the Havocs.Drawn close together to maximise their overlapping fields of fire, the monitors' captains drew on their experience and fell back into defensive tactics the monitors were best suited for. Torpedoes and plasma-gouts still burned across the void, mutually cancelling each other, but all the while distance between the two formations dwindled as the Havocs closed in on their powerful thrusters. So far neither the relentless barrage of the Havocs’ torpedoes, nor the intense cannonade of the monitors had faltered. Even if the duel had waxed and waned, it seemed that victory would go to the one who would be able to keep up the punishing regime of fire the longest.Suddenly there was a bright flash and shouts of elation rose on the Brazen Bull’s command deck as one of the Traitor destroyers blazed out of existence, a lucky shot of the monitor's lances having found the Havoc’s plasma reactor and ruptured its containment field.Triumph turned at once to horror and despair as a frantic Vox-message from the boarding party on board the derelict Malin Dawn cut through the static: they had seen what the monitors had not, blinded as they were by their own fire and concentrated on the task at hand; using the ongoing battle between the monitors and its Escorts as a diversion, the Ikon had powered-up her massive engines, and burning on over-thrust corkscrewed wide of the firefight to flank the Brazen Bull and her companion. Frantically, the Brazen Bull tried to divert its firepower against this new threat, only to open a gap in the barrage that had so far protected them from the volleys of torpedoes launched by the Havocs. The next volley of the Traitors irremediably found its mark, striking the Brazen Bull amidships just as the Ikon opened up with her Macrocannon batteries.The Brazen Bull was almost ripped to shreds, opened from stem to stern while fires raged in the few compartments not opened to the icy touch of the void. With almost dismissive cruelty, the Ikon passed by the remaining monitor, the Gaius Herab, and released a wave of Dreadclaw assault-pods in its wake. The Gaius Herab valiantly fought on, but it was now desperately out-gunned, the Havocs closing in for the kill. A final volley of torpedoes bracketed the ship, immobilising it shortly before the Dreadclaws slammed home. Squads of Sons of Horus -- once the finest of the Emperor's warriors -– disembarked and ran amok amongst the crew who sold their lives with desperate futility.