Chapter 6 Part 1

Chapter 6: Victory, you say?

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Part 1

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Tau forces

in the vicinity of Victory Bay

Kronus

He should have know this was a trap! Even against the humans, plans almost never went off so well unless you were doing something the enemy believed they could exploit. The only thing Commander Kais wasn't aware of if this was merely enemy action or did their allies betrayed them as well. Drones confirmed that the Eldar were still fighting, their own mobile forces had ran straight into the humans super-soldiers, which had turned into a mutual bloodbath. The Tau officer was glad he hadn't thrown his own army straight into that particular meat-grinder. In comparison, grinding his way through five human regiments and taking on their dug in armoured reserves was much easier to swallow, and survive. Let's not forget that.

Figuring out the hard way that the Eldar failed to neutralize the bulk of the enemy artillery for good came as a rude surprise heralded by all available sensors screaming in warning the moment they detected a massive barrage incoming. It was fired for effect, coordinated so it would strike in one fell strike, which was a small blessing that gave the Tau a whole minute to react. All available anti-air units shifted to present as many weapon barrels as possible towards the incoming bombardment, tanks, APCs, and IFVs raced for any trace of cover that could help them, yet most of Kais forces were presented with the unpleasant choice of either moving to better survive the coming bombardment or keep their best armour profile aimed at the dug in Human tanks.

Obviously, there wasn't a right answer to that question.

Kais himself jumped into a nearly hole dug in by an explosion and called his shield drones to him. They weaved a protective barrier that might keep him intact from anything but a direct hit, he hoped. Then the world ended, the ground erupted and broke, there was only thunder that probably deafened him despite his enclosed battlesuit, constant shocks slammed into the Tau like sledgehammers. All he could do was curl into his hole as much as his arms and armour allowed, endure and watch the battlenet shred as the enemy bombardment damaged or outright destroyed Tau units.

After this, Kais wasn't surprised to see the human armour surge forth from their defensive positions. It was a good thing that every single vehicle crew that was still alive could see it too thanks to their surviving sensors and command channels. The incoming enemy air-strike they could now detect too was even less welcome.

All that was bad, though Kais was still confident that he could fight, perhaps even win if the Eldar could at least keep the Blood Ravens off his back. Of course, only then, when the trap was about to shut, he figured out how much the humans suckered him in. He got that revelation while digging himself out of the hole he took cover in, courtesy of the ranking Kroot Shaper in charge of securing the breach in the enemy defenses.

"We're under attack by huge machines! We need help now!" The alien screamed, and for the first time in his life, Kais had the privilege to hear nothing but sheer terror coming from veteran Kroot. He really wasn't looking forward to finding out what caused it, however he feared he would be doing so the hard way very soon. A few commands on his display called a drone feed from the former Imperial lines. Sure enough, there were the Kroot swarming over the area, fighting flying amalgamations of metal skeletons and flying sleds, that had fully fledged such robots riding on their backs. In the distance, he could see a huge monolith made of dark green metal slowly crawling towards the Kroot positions.

It was a trap, all right.

"Captain Toris, take your forces and counter-attack the humans. You need to keep them off our backs! Everyone else, we're pulling back to reinforce our Kroot allies, they're being overrun!' Kais snapped order after order as fast as he could. He sent a priority alert to his base of operations to scramble what little forces he had left there to keep it safe so they could move in and help him save as much of his mobile assets as possible.

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Balbas the Shaper had twenty thousand of his fellow Kroot to accomplish a simple task – keep the large breach in the human lines open at all costs, and if practical, begin turning the flanks of the regiments on both sides of his lines. As an incentive, his people would be able to take and keep all enemy bodies so they could later feast and evolve. He also had a whole battalion of Tau infantry and a few of their large, heavy armoured suits to provide fire support. While those were useful, Balbas much preferred his own fire-support, the guns strapped on the Krootox were more than adequate to deal with the humans and he had a lot of those, along with whole packs of hounds still alive after he used them to soak enemy fire during the initial assault.

The Kroot Shaper had been confident that nothing the humans could throw at him would be more than an inconvenience, any enemy attack he could absorb then feast on the bodies of those daring challenge him.

Balbas might been right as far as the PDF regiments nearby were concerned. The silent mechanical killers that came from the haze to the south-west were something else entirely. His first idea that something was wrong arrived on the heels of green lighting that tore the sky asunder, shattered the ground and flayed the flesh away from any Kroot unfortunate to be anywhere near where it struck. The slaughter itself wasn't enough to phase Balbas, he had seen much in his long life. The waste of perfectly good food this way? That infuriated him.

The Shaper screamed orders, pointed at the approaching enemy and spurred his army to counter-attack. Only then did Balbas figure out that he could still feel fear. The ground nearby burst open and mechanical killers came out, swinging scythe like blades that sliced through flesh, bone and armour with ridiculous ease. Every one of them wore the still wet skins of humans, Tau, Kroot and even Orks like clothes and their evil green eyes blazed with eternal hunger.

Balbas was a Kroot. Eating your enemies, friends too once they died, that was a natural state of affairs to make you stronger. Those things however, there was something terribly wrong with them that made the primitive part of his brain shake with terror. The Shaper had barely enough time to call his Tau allies for aid before the ground around him blew up as a whole group of the metallic murderers surrounded him. He managed a single swing with his weapon aimed at the closest machine before they struck and tore him apart in a shower of blood. The Shaper died before he could see how useless his act of defiance was and his Kroot followed suit, dying without being able to even slow down the Necron advance.

The only thing that gave them pause was stopping to dispatch the small number of rampant machines that invited themselves to the slaughter.