Chapter 5 Part 6

Chapter 5: The Battle of Victory Bay

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Part 6

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Imperial Command Center

Victory Bay

In just a few short hours, General Alexander found himself hating the Necrons. It wasn't simply because they were Xenos and thus loathing them with a passion was its own reward, as the priests often proclaimed. Surprisingly enough, they were yet to prove how treacherous they were and instead the Necrons were apparently going out of their way to be accommodating, and with the exception of their voice, did go to some lengths to try and be as unoffensive as possible… which was admittedly a tall order for the metal monsters.

The root of his hatred was simple and perhaps even heretical.

Lucas Alexander was envious. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Xeno Lord didn't lie and its troops were crippled, yet despite all that, what they could offer and display was frightening. First and most obvious, it was the enemy's auspex equivalents combined with their stealth metal insects, which offered crystal clear real time intelligence of the enemy's movement. That information was precious commodity at the best of times and against the Eldar, seeing where they gathered and how they infiltrated the Imperial lines was invaluable in order to prepare the various ambushes and units that were about to be struck.

Next came the natural way the Necrons combined their various forces, which was a hard thing to do for the Imperial Guard by design. There was precious little infantry in armour regiments, no tanks to speak of in mechanized ones, and the poor bloody Infantry, well it was up to them to do and die as that ancient saying went.

The Necrons, and the fucking Tau of all people, they demonstrated how effective integrated combined arms approach was when available. Alexander fumed inside because the Guard couldn't have the same as a matter of course, because of the risk of making any traitor forces that much more dangerous. Even ten thousand years later, the Empire was yet to heal from the scars from the Great Heresy.

The less said about how much better the Necron weapons were than what everyone else handed to the rank and file the better. The way the Mechanicus Adepts attached to his forces acted clearly showed how much better those things were and how much some of them wanted to get their mechanical appendages on them, while others were up in arms at that perceived heresy.

When the battle began, Alexander received another reason to loathe the Necrons, especially their leader. The self-proclaimed nameless Lord took the field personally and engaged the Eldar Farseer responsible for the current mess. Yet the fact was that while the Necron Lord was currently fighting one of the most dangerous individuals on the planet, perhaps even the sector, he was also simultaneously commanding and controlling his deployed forces!

That much was evident thanks to displays on hololith collecting data from hordes of servo-skulls and a crystal clear map projected by a Necron scarab that silently floated nearby.

The final reason to loathe the Xeno up to his dying day, Alexander found in the revelation that without this unholy alliance, he would have been unlikely to hold Victory Bay. There were too many Eldar, they were extremely dangerous and by the time the Tau broke through the primary defense lines, the blue aliens would have faced only scattered remnants of Imperial mobile forces. Even now, when his troops were forewarned, prepared and had the Necrons fighting beside them, the reserve and mobile formations were taking a beating, not enough to break them, not enough to ensure the Tau could roll over them, yet…

General Alexander grit his teeth. If the Eldar had taken them by surprise, they would have slaughtered his people in more than enough numbers to ensure the Tau would finish the job before fading away. Well, instead the knife-ears were too busy fighting a real war and dying, unfortunately they were dying hard the bastards and taking too many of his troops with them. Lucas wanted to turn his full might upon the Eldar, yet he couldn't. Their armour was already through the defensive lines with Blood Raven assets under the personal command of Davian Thule moving to intercept and the Tau would still achieve and exploit the breakthrough they desired, and once committed would sign their death sentences. Alexander had no intention of letting them escape and thus prove a credible threat at a time when he had to focus his undivided attention upon the traitors.

The command center was full with chatter from the various Imperial forces fighting all over the region and too many of them were final transmissions of forces being overrun or turned combat ineffective. That was a large issue among the PDF regiments deployed throughout the city, who were suffering the brunt of the Eldar wrath.

The same was true for the doomed bastards who found themselves in the way of the Tau advance. Five regiments stood their ground and four of them were already destroyed, with the fifth…

"Kroot! We're being overrun by Kroot! Final defensive fire on my position! Ave Imperator!"

"Enemy Crisis suits have us pinned down! We need artillery support!"

"We lost contact with all friendly forces on our flanks! Tau units are about to encircle us!"

"This is Commissar Nor-rah The Colonel is dead, Vespids raided the HQ! I'm taking command, hold your ground in the name of the Emperor!"

"Shoot it, shoot it down now! They got the Commissar! Kill them all!"

"This is Sergeant Yuma, the Colonel and Commissar are dead, all other officers have fallen as well! Half the regiment is already gone and we're being overrun! All available artillery, fire for effect on my position, it is target rich environment! Ave Imperator and have a nice war! Fifth Kronus Planetary Defense Regiment, signing off."

And after that transmission, only silence came from the Imperial regiments between the two points of the breach in the defensive lines. It took three more minutes for the Necron display to turn that zone fully red, showing that there were still Guardsmen over there fighting to the last and dying after contact was lost.

The Tau were going to pay for this, their Eldar masters as well if Alexander had any say in it. If he had to, he was going to chase Taldeer to the depths of the warp and back so he could put that cursed witch down himself!

"Very soon we'll have them where we want them." The Necron envoy broke the relative silence that followed the death of five whole regiments.

According to the map, what was left of Alexander's armoured regiments would be still very much out of position and would be forced to engage the Tau mobile formation that favoured the enemy's hovercraft. With the artillery more often than not suppressed or moving to avoid being destroyed by the enemy equivalent, the situation appeared grim. Yet, much of the artillery park was still largely intact and whole regiments were almost in position to launch attacks in overwhelming numbers upon the Eldar raiders who were still alive. Once those pests were neutralized, the Guard and PDF units tasked with killing the Eldar would move to reinforce the defensive lines and the armoured regiments. At the same time, the Necron's heavy units would enter the fray, forming the hammer that would shatter the Tau with the Guard forming the anvil.

"Ten minutes for the enemy to be in position, then another five for them to engage fully." Alexander summarized. At that point we'll be hitting the Eldar with everything we have and should have overwhelmed the majority of their deployed units." That was the plan anyway. It remained to be seen how little in common it would have with the cold, hard reality.