First Battle of Paramar - The Battle of the Panopticon: Within the Panopticon far below, the Mechanicum were being torn apart. Shimmering azure-coloured Terminators smashed through one barricade and bulkhead after another, Power Fists crushing the life out of any of the Machine God's servants who dared resist their progress, Bolter shells and plasma blasts scything down Tech-thralls at their work stations as they blindly carried out their tasks heedless of the invaders, and pounding automated defence guns to shrapnel in their wake.The Alpha Legion strike force pressed on relentlessly, their goal the Panopticon Narthex chamber from which not simply the Terminus but the entire Nexus facility could be roused to war -- or pacified as its controller wished.What the invaders had found within the Terminus Panopticon's armoured walls, however, had matched nothing their intelligence or experience had led them to expect and corresponded to no known standard schematic template. They had entered instead a true demesne of the Mechanicum, intended neither for the eyes or footfall of any not sworn to the Machine God's inner mysteries.It was a labyrinth, a machine in and of itself, intricate and complex beyond belief whose structure shifted and changed as it functioned. It was the brainchild of the Master of the Paramar Terminus, the Archmagos Suyria Nihhon and it was her will that now turned to destroy the invaders. The Panopticon began to respond as a living body responds when invaded by a hostile microbe, sluggishly at first but with increasing, indefatigable force.As one, the thralls of the Panopticon disconnected themselves from their machine umbilicals and began to throw themselves against the Alpha Legion attackers, heedless of their fates as they died by the hundreds, but by their deaths swarming the impregnable, Terminator Armour-clad Legionaries, slowing them down and making them expend time and ammunition to deal with the onrushing horde. The walls and bulkheads also began to slide and re-arrange themselves, not randomly but with malign intent, forcing squads of Alpha Legionaries apart, or trapping them in pockets and improvised prisons which had to be rent open with Chainfist and Power Claw.Consoles and power junctions overloaded and exploded as they came near, metallic deck plates became charged with crackling lightning, snakelike mechanical tendrils shot out to ensnare them, companionways collapsed and deadfalls opened up beneath them, plunging them down sudden shafts into the cavernous darkness below. Slowly, the Alpha Legion began to die.It is testament to the intelligence and ruthlessness of Alpharius' sons that they saw this attack for what it was and fought to counter it, linking together and seeing their path clear through the shifting maze that confronted them. Alone it was unlikely that this attack would have stopped them, but it was merely the prelude to the Mechanicum's true assault. Awoken from the darkness deep below the Panopticon, beasts of steel rose up to meet their prey.Castellax-class and Vorax-class Battle-automata appeared as if from nowhere amid the invaders, hidden bulkheads opening to disgorge them directly into battle, roaring binary war-cant in the distorted voices of the damned. Servo-clawed arms with the strength to pulverise tank armour hammered down to smash their foes or seized Terminators and rent them slowly limb form limb as their motorised sinews howled in protest.Bolt Cannon and Plasma Blasters blazed a firestorm at point-blank range, and Power Claws slashed through ceramite, severing sparking machine limbs and toppling the hulking engines of destruction even as the dauntless Terminators of the Alpha Legion fell before their onslaught. The attack degenerated into a score of desperate and savage melees and the Panopticon shook to the thunder of tortured metal and superhuman violence, blood and machine-fluids running in rivers through its vaunted chambers.Slowly, inexorably, the Mechanicum's Battle-automata began to gain the upper hand. A fresh engine of destruction rising up to replace each that fell while the Alpha Legion strike force, once more than two hundred Terminators strong, dwindled by the solar minute, though each life was brought dearly in its taking. The Traitor assault force, at first contained, was slowly being crushed.Paramar V had also fully woken to the danger it faced, slumbering no more. In the burning skies above, the two great wounded beasts -- the Anax Rho and the Tyche's Lament -- now circled each other, trading sporadic fire in search of weakness, the other badly damaged Iron Warriors escort ships circling out of range of the lethal Lance fire of the Anax-Rho, waiting for the opportunity to strike.That opportunity would never come, however, as without warning, a dozen burning lances of hellish light struck up from the planet below and pierced the Anax-Rho's azure hull. For a fleeting moment the Alpha Legion warship become a burning star in the heavens, and then was no more.The first attack of the Traitors on Paramar V had been foiled, but there was little cause to celebrate either from the Mechanicum or the Iron Warriors, for their long-range Auguries clearly detected the burning drive-signature of hundreds of new vessels now on a direct course for the world.