The encrypted communiqué was cut short as mounted bolters spat out explosive bolts from the drop pod’s built in armament. The nearest Fire Warrior in Alpha team took the entire brunt of the salvo as miniature shells exploded inside his armour; his terminated life signs instantly registering on both his squad’s and his commanders visual displays.
Simultaneously the XV8 bodyguard unit grabbed her shoulder and directed her attention skywards to the Pathfinder unit. They had dropped their carbines and were down on their knees; some shaking and pounding their heads, others clawing at the build in audio relays. All four now perilously close to the thermal vents roof edge and the sheer drop below. Unlike the drop pod readings, she knew what was happening to them. Their minds were being infected by a psyker! She could lose that whole squad without a single shot fired if they could not locate the source of the attack quickly.
She turned back to face the direction of the datacore and pushed her visual enhancements to the limit…
There! Amongst the digital noise and distortion, amongst the flurries of snow and ice, a dozen or so Space Marine scouts stood sheltering a in a small fortification. That’s where the datacore now pulsed its inaudible locator signal. The space marines had the objective!
Without order, but not without reason, her personal rocket drone lurched forward and rose quickly into the sky. She knew she would receive a reason from the AI unit immediately, but as it exploded and showered both her and her bodyguard with splinters of metalwork, she didn’t read it. The inbound missile from the scouts had been detected and intercepted by the drone, long before the commander would have been able to react. A second drone, this time one of her bodyguards gun drones, went down hard into the snow after a sniper rifle tour through its frontal camera mount.
The commander struggled to target the enemy in their bunker as they continued to rain down both precision sniper shots and high explosive rockets.
A sniper round glanced off her shoulder, jolting her sidewards and ruining her aim, but otherwise doing no harm. She knelt to offer a smaller profile against horizon, it also helped to maximise stability while her trackers restarted their lock-on procedures. Her bodyguard moved forward slightly, offering himself up as a better target, his weapons were woefully out of range at this distance but he could still aid his commander by being a target.
A rocket now crashed into the thermal vent to the commanders left hand side; thankfully it missed the defenceless Pathfinders as the continued to writhe in intolerable pain, positioned high up and alone on their sky perch.
With an audible ping her rocket pods locked on and fired immediately upon the scouts. 4 rockets shot off of her shoulder mounted weapon and streaked towards the fortified space marines. Her remaining rocket drone, linked to her by her inbuilt drone controller, evaluated it’s best cause of action would be to follow suit. Stabilising fins steadied the tiny drone as 2 rockets roared away from its under-slung launcher, perfectly following the smoke trails of it’s commanders rockets.
Readying herself to hear the multiple blasts of her rockets, Shas’va’el’s audio relay was instead overwhelmed by the gigantic blasts of a salvo of rockets raining down upon Alpha squad…