He turned to the bellicose, armoured figure of Angron and the gloriously presented Fulgrim and said, 'Mark this day well, my friends. The Emperor's loyalists are heading to their doom!'

The noise was horrendous, a never-ending howl of fire that turned the interior of the drop-pod into a blister-ingly hot oven. Only the ceramite plates of their armour allowed the Astartes to launch an attack in this manner, and Santar knew that their lightning assault would Catch the traitors at their most vulnerable while they reeled from the power of the orbital barrage.

Ferrus Manus sat opposite Santar, an unfamiliar sword across his lap, and the fire of their descent reflected in the silver of his eyes. Another three of the Morlocks filled the drop-pod, the greatest warriors of the Legion, and the bloody tip of the spear that would drive hard in the foe's vitals.

The skies above the Urgall Depression would be thick with drop-pods, the combined might of three Legions slashing through the air to exact a blood vengeance upon their erstwhile brothers, and Santar could feel the powerful desire to destroy the Warmaster s traitors in every breath he took through the new metallic chassis of his body.

'Ten seconds to impact!' screamed the automated vox-unit.

Santar tensed and pressed himself hard against the central core of the drop-pod, the servos of his Terminator armour locking in place in preparation for the colossal force of impact. He could hear thunderous, booming explosions from beyond the armoured petals of the drop-pod, recognising them as enemy battery fire. It seemed inconceivable that any enemy had survived the bombardment.

The jerk of retro-burners, followed by the crushing hammer blow of the landing, tore at his grav-harness, but Santar was a veteran of such assaults, and was well used to the violence of such screaming deceleration. No sooner had the drop-pod hit than explosive bolts blew out the hatches and the scorched panels fell outwards. The grav-harness released and Santar charged out onto the surface of Isstvan V.

His first sight was of mountainous flames as the fire of thousands of drop-pods turned the grey skies into a weave of light and smoke. Explosions marched across the ground as artillery shells smashed into the earth, and armoured bodies were pulped by the monstrous Shockwaves. The ridge before him was awash with gunfire, streams of it flickering back and forth as thousands of Astartes engaged in a furious firefight.

'Onwards!' shouted Ferrus Manus, setting off towards the ridge. Santar and the Morlocks followed him into the crazed maelstrom of the battle, seeing that the bulk of the Iron Hands had impacted in the very heart of the enemy's defences. The black desert burned in the aftermath of the bombardment, and the twisted remains of shattered bunkers, redoubts and collapsed trenches were a grisly testament to its power.

Nearly forty thousand loyal Astartes fought along the length of a ridge before the towering walls of an ancient fortress, the speed and ferocity of their assault catching the traitors completely off guard. Even with the filtering of his armour's senses, the noise of battle was appalling: gunfire, explosions and screaming cries of hatred.

The flames of war lit up the clouds above, and streaks of fire whipped across the battlefield in deadly arcs of bullets and high-energy lasers. The ground rumbled with the footfalls of an angry leviathan as the Dies Irae strode through the flurries of missiles and gunfire, its mighty weaponry blazing and gouging huge tears through the loyalist ranks. Miniature suns exploded in the desert as the Titan's plasma weaponry blasted craters hundreds of metres in diameter, obliterating hundreds of Astartes at a stroke and turning the sand to shimmering dark glass.

Ferrus Manus was a god of war, smashing traitors to the ground with blows from his shimmering fists or blasting them apart with an ornately crafted pistol of enormous calibre. The sword he had brought was belted at his side, and Santar wondered what it was and why he had bothered to bring it.

A hundred traitors emerged from a ruined trench complex before them, a mix of Death Guard and Sons of Horus, and Santar slid the lightning-sheathed blades from his gauntlets. Amid the riotous confusion of the battle, Santar relished this chance for simple bloodletting. The traitors stood their ground, firing their guns from their hips as the Iron Hands smashed into them. Santar disembowelled his first opponent, and waded into the rest with a speed that would have done any warrior in Mark IV plate proud. Bolts and the roaring blades of chainswords struck him, but his armour was proof against such things.

Ferrus Manus slaughtered enemy warriors by the dozen, their traitorous nerve failing in the face of such a majestic avatar of battle.

The trenches and bunkers were a mass of thousands of struggling warriors, against a backdrop of explosions and the tremendous noise of slaughter. Orders, and cries of victory or despair flashed through his helmet vox, but Santar ignored them, too caught up in the cathartic release of killing to pay them any mind.

Even amid the chaos of fighting, Santar could see that the battle for the Urgall Depression was going well. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of traitors had been slaughtered in the opening moments of the assault. Entire Chapters of the Salamanders pressed home the shock of their attack with flame units cleansing the trenches and dugouts of enemies in stinking promethium tongues of fire. Streaks of sun-fire stabbed through the smoke-wreathed darkness, and Santar recognised the light as fire from the weapon his primarch had gifted to Vulkan.

Sure enough, the mighty figure of Vulkan strode through the torrents of bolts, killing with every sweep of his sword and shot of the weapon his brother had forged in his name. A colossal explosion erupted at the primarch's feet, wreathing him in killing fire, and dozens of his Firedrakes were hurled through the air, their armour molten and the flesh seared from their bones. Vulkan marched through the fire unscathed, continuing to kill traitors without missing a beat.

Ferrus Manus pushed deeper into the ranks of the traitors. Their training had never prepared them to face the wrath of a primarch. The Morlocks followed behind their lord and master, a fighting wedge forging a bloody path through the filthy traitors with every shot and blow.

Behind the tremendous thunder strike of the assault, the heavy landers of the loyalist fleets braved the storm of anti-aircraft fire ripping upwards from inside the ancient fortress. Burning craft spiralled to the ground, ripped apart in streams of tracer fire, or blown apart by mass-reactive torpedoes. Hundreds of aircraft jostled for position as they descended to the dropsite, bringing heavy equipment, artillery, tanks and war machines to the surface of Isstvan V.

Billowing clouds of granular dust obscured much of the landing zones as cavernous holds disgorged scores of Land Raiders and Predator battle tanks. Entire companies of armoured vehicles roared onto the surface of the planet, churning the sand beneath their tracks as they raced to join the battle on the ridge.

Whirlwinds and Army artillery units deployed on the desert flats, spreading out and zeroing in on enemy emplacements, added their own thunder to the constant crack and rumble of battle. Even heavier craft descended on burning columns of fire, and the super heavy tanks of the Army rambled out, the barrels of their massive guns hurling huge shells against the glassy walls of the fortress.

What had begun as a massed strike against the traitors' position was rapidly turning into one of the largest engagements of the entire Great Crusade. All told, over sixty thousand Astartes warriors clashed on the dusky plains of Isstvan V, and for all the wrong reasons, this battle was soon to go down in the annals of Imperial history as one of the most epic confrontations ever fought.