The Tyche's Lament, reeling and shrouded in a molten cloud of burning debris from its forequarters, began to turn under its own power. It had expected no battle, its gun ports closed and its weapon capacitors empty when the treacherous foe had struck the mighty battleship, but even without its own shields fully powered, it had been far from defenceless. Meter upon meter of ablative armour plating added to the hulking warship by her bitter-hearted master had been splashed into jetting plasma by the fusion torpedo strikes, but the armoured core beneath it, fashioned in the forges of the Olympia shipywards, had been built to withstand worse, and that had barely been scorched. The colossal engines of the Iron Warriors battleship roared into sun-white fury and the Tyche's Lament leapt forward with brutal acceleration, its tortured superstructure screaming in protest at those onboard.

Extant records show that though his ship's targeting auspexes had been blinded and the bridge flamed about him, it was Warsmith Kyr Vhalen himself who threw aside his steersman and triggered the main drives at maximum power, shouting black and profane oaths aloud as the seven kilometer long warship hurtled like a burning spear at the Anax-Rho. Locked into firing solutions against the planet and the wounded escorts, the Anax-Rho could not recover itself in the short moments that the Tyche's Lament devoured the distance between the two huge warships, and when its own main drives triggered to manoeuvre, it was already too late. The blunt bladed prow of the Tyche's Lament struck the Anax-Rho amidships from directly below, shattering its voidshields and smashing it aside in a storm of broken debris and venting atmosphere. The heavy assault cruiser - itself forged to endure terrible damage had survived the devastating impact - barely, but now spun all but out of control, its own engine-thrust carrying it out of orbit in order to escape the scarred monster which was already beginning to turn again for another attack run.