The defeat of the Night Lords fleet was a blow to the forces of chaos but not a crippling one. They still had eight capital ships undamaged and roving the system. The largest group of six capital class vessels, along with six escorts, encountered the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet between the orbits of Gideon and Phyragia.
Upon detecting each other the fleets formed up into their battle lines with the chaos fleet approaching abeam in line astern and the Imperial vessels approaching with their armoured prows and torpedo tubes aimed at the enemy. A lucky shot however would make all the difference.
As the two fleets approached the Hades and Styx vessels opened up at maximum range. To the horror of the Mechanicus observers the light cruiser Praesul suddenly broke in two and went dark as a lucky shot broke her back and disabled her main generators. Immediately the chaos fleet had the advantage and the luck stayed with the followers of the powers of the warp.
The Imperial gunnery was poor and the evasive manouevring of the chaos vessels was excellent. As the fleets closed only one slaughter class vessel took any meaningful damage while the chaos fleet crippled two of the Adeptus Mechanicus vessels. Even at close range, firing both her broadsides, the Mechanicus flagship could not hit her mark, and the chaos fleet barely recieved a scratch as the giant battleship fired at point blank range both port and starboard.
With the chaos fleet behind her, the Mechanicus vessel was now vulnerable. Rather than risk his valuable vessels any further the commander of the Machine God vessels abandonned the battle to withdraw the fleet back to Caitlen station where there was hope of salvaging the Praesul and facilities to repair his battered vessels. One of the three Imperial fleets had been put out of action and the battle for Farport system hung in the balance as the Imperial fleet emerged into realspace after the two week journey from the Zadoc subsector...
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