The thunder of the Iron Warriors Legion's guns tore through Ullanor's foul skies, heralding the full-scale opening of the ground war.
Three Scimitar super-heavy Tank destroyers belonging to the Iron Warriors Legion became the knuckles of that crushing fist, silent as steel behemoths.
Their massive hulls stood firm as mountains upon the hastily constructed steel positions. Their wedge-shaped Turrets slowly turned, until the fathomless muzzles of their Volcano Cannons locked onto a twisted giant moving slowly along the horizon, built from countless scraps of metal and insane welds.
It was an Ork Stompa, its body dozens of meters tall and festooned with noisy Gretchin and wrench-waving Big Meks.
Energy gathered inside the barrels with a low hum like an ancient behemoth awakening, and the surrounding air warped in the intense heat.
"Fire."
The command was brief and cold.
The next second, three blazing white lances spanning heaven and earth shot forth.
The fire unleashed by the Volcano Cannons struck the lumbering behemoth squarely in the torso.
There was no explosion, at least not in the conventional sense.
Terrifying energy surpassing that of a star's surface flooded into that heap of scrap in an instant—the Ork Big Mek's proud masterpiece, its internal reactor, its stockpiled ammunition, the roaring Orks, the twisted metal...
In one hundred-millionth of a second, all its matter was forcibly driven to an energy level it could not withstand, then transformed into pure light and heat.
The Stompa vanished.
All that remained was an enormous depression nearly a hundred meters across, instantly vitrified, with lava streaming down its edges like tears.
A ring of scorching air swept across several kilometers, blowing away nearby Ork Boyz and heaps of rubbish alike and setting them ablaze.
That stunning spectacle of destruction became the unmistakable signal for the General Offensive.
"Attack!"