Editing The Cleansing of Calverna (section)

==Strike at the Heart==

Ymoro now moved to escalate the battle.  The Second Legion commander divided the Techropolis into sectors and dispatched bands of battle brothers to each one to methodically purge the deadly machines within.  Despite operating in small units, the Space Marines fought with a deadly precision and few brothers were even wounded in this operation.  Yet for all the vigour with which the Legionnaires pursued their sweep-and-purge mission, they were engaged in a great distraction.  As his subordinates reported hunter-killer machines responding to their assault, Orend Ymoro and his command squad began the most dangerous part of the battle.  The would penetrate the heart of the Techropolis and investigate the life signs Tel Bernos had reported.

While Ymoro plunged into darkness, his warriors redoubled their efforts, seeking to draw more of their mechanical foe from the clanking depths of Calverna.  For a time, they were successful and the battle intensified - then, as one body, the machines fell back, racing towards the centre of the Techropolis.  The Second Legion's command squad beat them there, breaking open the command chamber with satchel charges and bursting in to find the nerve centre of the Techropolis rising to meet them.  Although his frame was riddled with snaking command and control cables and his brain was driven to madness by the surging input of a thousand sensors, the Arch-Maniac of Calverna was still a terrible foe.  Even faced with five of the Emperor's angels of death, the Arch-Maniac was far from out-matched and he showed his might by snapping brother Dalnaj Scott's neck with one blow.  The remains of Ymoro's squad surged against their foe, their chainswords snapping at cybernetic flesh and wetting the chamber's floor with curdled blood.  But their luxury of numbers was fleeting, for the Arch-Maniac's guardians were hastening back to his defence.  Orend Ymoro ordered his bodyguard to hold the entrance and fought on alone.

The Legionnaires on patrol knew of their final victory when they began to find hunter-killer machines lying inert but undamaged.  All across the Calverna Techropolis, the Arch-Maniac's servants ceased to move at the moment of his death.  But celebration was tempered with sorrow when only Orend Ymoro emerged from the depths alive.  Despite the evidence of his vid-captures showing the commander's conspicuous heroism, Ymoro lionised his fallen battle brothers as the true heroes of the day.