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Chapter 5: The Battle of Victory Bay
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Part 5
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Victory Bay
Kronus
"For the Emperor! At them, no mercy!" A vox-enhanced voice thundered above the battlefield and thousands, tens of thousands took up the war-cry, their fury shaking the very foundation of the building Gabriel fought from.
"For the Emperor!" A deep, resonating bass came from below, proving that the shaking came from someone fighting on the lower floors. The floor danced below Forkas' feet, making him stumble. A deafening crash and cracking energy could be heard from below, then another one and a huge red figure exploded on the avenue, waving around a thunder-hammer.
Gabriel shook himself up and continued to fight. Finally he could see and sense it, the tide was turning! The Guardsmen below were swarming forwards racing on the heels of Sentinels and Chimeras that came down from the far end of the avenue, with a trio of Leman Russ tanks and their infantry support slowly moving to joint them. The Sergeant spared a few precious moments to take in the sight, especially when he saw a familiar figure among those leading the charge. There, flanked by a command squad and the distinctive shape of a Commissar, was the Inquisitor who became famous by first reigning in the Blood Ravens and then going after the Ork Warboss himself, charging that ugly abomination like a hero from legend! He even got away with it, and here he was, leading another charge to break the enemies of humanity!
"The Emperor Protects!" Gabriel screamed at the top of his lungs, suddenly feeling ashamed that he had been skulking around taking potshots instead of being even more active in the fighting. He wasn't proud at all of the thoughts he had while following that Space Marine and using that hero as a distraction so the enemy wouldn't come after him first.
"For the Emperor!" "No mercy!" "Kill the Xeno!" More and more war-cries echoed through the battlefield.
The Imperial war-machine chugged along nicely, and now that it was up to speed, there was no stopping it. Eldar tried their favourite hit and run tactics, however there wasn't much space to run into that wasn't already crawling with squads of Guardsmen with blood in their eyes!
A Xeno craft came screeching from above the ruins of the command center and began strafing the avenue heedless that some of its own people were fighting and dying down there. Imperial fighters were hot on its heels, however even to Forkas' untrained eye in things aeronautic, they were losing ground. Lasfire rose to meet the coming death-bringer for all the good it did. Gabriel aided his own meager firepower at the onslaught, however the Eldar fighter continued unabated and it appeared it was aiming straight at the Inquisitor, the never sufficiently damned bastard!
Green lighting cracked at two locations below and a lone figure appeared between the approaching death from above and the advancing Imperial forces. It was a large Xeno, one of the Necron "allies", who had to be some kind of leader – its whole body and regalia was more ornamental compared to the a few other of its kind Gabriel had the misfortune of seeing so far. It rose its staff at the fighter and unleashed a single beam of green light and shook it left and right, following the Eldar craft. The fighter released a spread of missiles before promptly blowing up, and with a bit of luck, it would take out the other Xeno for good measure…
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The Necron Lord grew more and more frustrated with every passing second. The elusive Farseer continued to evade his strikes, the Aeldari managed to bring some reinforcements as well, which was a mixed blessing. While that meant crushing them in this location and eliminating their leader became much harder, those troops weren't somewhere else wreaking havoc against the Imperial mobile assets, which would be vital in winning the larger battle, not just the ongoing skirmish in the middle of the city. Nevertheless, it was immensely frustrating, especially once he lost the support of his first Immortal squad to awake and enter the fray. While he couldn't get a solid hit upon the Farseer, she did manage to strike his metal hide a few time, leaving slowly healing scars behind. At least the damage he had suffered so far hadn't impaired his combat capabilities.
The same couldn't be said for too many of his available units. While they did their job, too many troopers, warriors and even Destroyers were damaged if not outright destroyed while clashing with Eldar raiding parties. That was less than ideal considering that the primary clash was yet to occur with the Tau just piercing the Imperial outer defenses. It didn't help that the Necron Lord found himself drawing reinforcements from the force he had been carefully gathering in order to strike the Tau from behind once they committed themselves so they could be broken in the field for good.
It wasn't all bad. While the humans proved inferior individually to the Aeldari as expected, there were a lot of them and they didn't flinch from throwing themselves at the enemy and paid the price for victory. They were already rallying in large numbers and soon they would have the critical mass to ensure this skirmish would be brought to a decisive end. That much was clear to the Necron Lord and he wondered if the Farseer could foresee how doomed her efforts were.
Well, apparently she did and in response, she called air support. While the human aircraft were decently armoured, given their apparent technological level anyway, well armed as well, they were damn slow and ponderous, something that the Aeldari exploited ruthlessly. If it wasn't for a couple of squadrons of Doom Scythes he was able to get operational just in case, the Tau and Eldar would have had uncontested control of the air, with predicable disastrous consequences.
Not a single one of them was in a position to intercept the incoming enemy air support… and the Eldar fighter wasn't aiming at the Necron Lord, which gave him a tiny pause once he figured that out. It was coming at the wrong angle and he was already engaged with the Farseer in close combat, he would be able to better weather any heavy weapons strikes than the witch. Using the sensors of cloaked scarabs and his active units in the area, it immediately became clear what the target was – the humans had just rallied and advanced rapidly this way. One of their leaders, the Inquisitor, led them and his death at the hands of aliens might be perilous for the alliance. From what little the Lord could gather, said human was uncommonly reasonable for someone of his station, which thinking about it, was another reason for the Farseer to want him dead on general principle.
It took him a split second to weight the probabilities and decision made, the Necron Lord disengaged, using a power surge to overload his phasing systems and teleport in a better position to intercept the incoming craft. He channeled the excess energy into a makeshift defensive screen even as he fed as much power as he could through his staff and released it as a beam at the coming fighter. His aim was true and the offensive machine blew up in an impressive display of pyrotechnics, but not before it launched a spread of missiles at the Necron. He braced himself and pumped all available energy in protecting himself before plasma warheads turned the immediate area into slice of hell.
Even as his systems struggled to compensate for the immense heat and he walked out of the inferno with the outer layer of his plating melting, the Necron Lord could see that the Aeldari gambit would be partially successful. The humans couldn't move fast and in force through the raging fire, only their sealed combat vehicles could brave the impacted area by moving through its outer edges. While that would doom any Eldar behind him, those on the other side of the fire would have a small window of opportunity to disengage, disperse and try and run for it.
That was unacceptable. The Necron Lord called more reinforcements to hunt down the old enemy, despite doing so meaning that neutralizing the Tau would be slower and bloodier for everyone involved. Allowing the too many Eldar to survive would mean that they would be available to cause havoc on the supply lines and other soft targets while the allies had their attention focused at greater threats.
Two surviving Immortal soldiers joined him, falling a step behind once the Necron Lord walked out of the inferno.
"What is your command?" The senior one, the equivalent of a human Sergeant, asked, both through the secure communication network and aloud, demonstrating that his voice-caster was very much all right.
"Hunt down the Eldar." He sent back.
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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.
