Alpha and Bravo squads continued to move through the knee high snow towards their objective, the now downed datacore. From behind them, and with no cover to protect them from, the drop pod fired again and killed two Warriors from Bravo squad. Both squads, unable to damage the pod, turned their fire onto the caped silhouette of a Warp Smith figure standing alone in the snow, just beyond the Stealth’s. Its face mask danced with the tactical marker lights from the steady hands of the Pathfinder unit. A unstoppable wall of pulse fire followed and caught the figure unprepared, shattering both facial armour and bone. He reeled over backwards, briefly twitching as he led dying in the blanket of snow that engulfed him.
Shas’va’el now pushed further up the western side, through the remnants of the bike squad that now burned in the morning sunshine. Her bodyguard to her left and two remaining drones to her right. From amongst the ruins, the fourth bike was located, escaping into the wilderness of snow. With a quick rise of her right metallic-clad arm, she fired her experimental cyclic ion blaster. The steaming torso of the final bike rider careered into the side of a building, his bike somersaulting before coming to rest in a nearby snow bank.
An explosion rocked the XV15 stealth squad, the turret of the nearby Whirlwind was now a torrent of fire as a squad of chaos beings open fired on its now perforated hull. With a second explosion and powerful shock-wave, the remaining Whirlwind rockets erupted all at once.
Lit by the fire of the now destroyed Whirlwind tank, a squad of chaos marines were instantly slain as they advanced unknowingly towards the stealth suits prepared burst cannons. Before the bodies could hit the floor, the XV15 used their jet packs to move position. Anything that had heard their shots would now be advancing onto an empty position.
The Pathfinders, still on their high perch overlooking the battle field, spotted a small bulky squad moving steadily through the blood filled trenches of the battlements. One Pathfinder adjusted his carbine scope and analysed the strange distant shape in front of him, distorted by a smokestack in the middle of the fortification, the outline of a terminator flickered into focus. He radioed Shas’va’el just as her HQ squad reached the western edge of the defence walls.
Instinctively on overhearing the communication, her bodyguard raised his fusion blaster for a quick snap shot if he needed it. He did! Even as a very seasoned warrior, the Shas’ui pilot of the bodyguard unit found himself face-to-face and alarmingly too close to a terminator. The Pathfinders, now a long way behind him, placed several markerlights onto the terminator. Disrupted by the smokestack and heavy snow still falling, the bodyguards targetting failed to benefit from their efforts however. Thankfully the missile pods, fusion blasters and blast cannons of the HQ unit devoured the terminator by sheer firepower and strength of numbers.
Both pilots of the HQ Crisis Battlesuits found their smiles quickly drop as the crumbling Terminator was replaced by the silhouette of two further terminators. Her two drones now rose up and engaged the remaining threat, even though their built in intelligence circuits calculated they were horrible ill-equipped to take on such mammoth fighting machines. Shas’va’el however had picked these drones herself and out of the odds, the twin-linked pulse carbine drone catches a lucky shot and slays a Terminator, leaving just one powering towards the Tau HQ.
Sirens rang within both the XV15 stealth and the HQ crisis Battlesuits; their built in knowledge banks now alerting them they were dangerously close to a strong close quarters unit…