Both Fire Warrior squads now fired in earnest upon the scouts, raining down their own barrage now. This barrage of pulse fire lit up the battlements, flaying another few scouts. Then a handful of Warriors from Bravo squad noticed the mission objective in the rising sun’s light – the datacore was being carried by the few remaining scouts. Bravo squad redirected their aims and before long the datacore fell to the snowy grounded peppered with droplets of blood and shreds of scout cloak armour.
The air between Alpha squad and their target began to glow; a ball of expanding super bright light; the unmissable signs of Tau teleportation. With a vicious clap, the glowing orb disappeared into a point of singularity and nothing stood in its place. Nothing to the eyes of the scouts and psyker anyway. Clearly visible on the head-up-displays of the Tau troops however, were 3 suits of XV15 stealth armour.
Under covering fire of the Fire Warriors, the stealth units flanked around the outside of the fortification until they stood at point blank range. They scoured the fortified walls and let rip with their savage burst cannons; their active camouflage now redundant as thousands of medium sized rounds filled the air. Several more figures, one the psyker were instantly slain. To the north, over the other side of the barricades, the XV15’s now saw more chaos filled marines, and in the very distance a 2nd drop pod could just be made out. Between the drop pod and the chaos however, stood a badly damaged dreadnought, engaged with some indistinguishable unit in brutal close quarters combat.
The XV15’s did not envy that unknown unit – they were surely dead against that powerful armour clad beast.
To their amazement, a Whirlwood tank now sprung from cover and drove through the snow alongside them. Their stealth suits were clearly working well enough!
The commander and her bodyguard were now within range of the bikes and began to get peppered by their mounted guns. Again, one of her drones flew a suicide mission into the hail of oncoming rounds, this time deflecting them without having its armour dome penetrated. Shas’va’el now ordered the Pathfinder’s directly; seconds later more markerlights appeared, this time steady and concentrated on the lead biker.
Shas’va’el, her missile drone and the bodyguards gun drone now fired upon the oncoming wave of bikes. With 2 rockets aimed at each of the first 3 bikes, they exploded as one into a mass of flames and flying debris. A wall of fire continued to encroach towards the Tau HQ unit before dissipating into the surrounding cool air. The bodyguard found himself instinctively piloting his Battlesuit into an evasive roll as a flaming wheel shot straight for him. He regained a sure footing in the snow and noticed the distant XV15 Stealth’s repositioning themselves around the southern edge of the battlements, it’s previous occupants now all but slain.
Alpha and Bravo squads continued to move through the knee high snow towards their objective, the now downed datacore…