“My honor is in tatters. My reputation in ruins. They say ‘Only in death does duty end.’ How bitter that my dead comrades are honored for their sacrifice, and I am left to perform my duties in utter shame.“—Martel Vivant, captain of the 5th Company of the Knights of Altair Space Marine Chapter

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Continued from Part 1 . . .

Devastating blow

Mal’ka’ir had faith in the skill of her support team, and she took an incredible risk and attempted to drop as close to the Imperial armor as possible.

The bold move payed off. Mal’ka’ir landed her battle suit [Classification: Crisis Suit] only three meters from the side of the Predator, Dorn’s Deliverance, and opened fire with two fusion blasters.  The plasma beams pierced deep into the tank’s interior and tore apart its reactor.

The three-century-old tank exploded,  killing its crew and knocking Mal’ka’ir to the ground.

Meanwihle, the second Predator, Savage Justice, attempted to turn and challenge the Tau commander—until four smaller battle suits [Classification: Stealth Suits] dropped from the sky and opened fire.

Much to Vivant’s horror, the Savage Justice also erupted into flame.

Gun drones appear

The threat to his rear forced Vivant to pull his command squad from the fight on the ridge. While the tactical squads continued to pursue the fleeing xenos, Vivant raced toward his shattered armored force to deal with the Tau battle suits.

His advance suddenly was stopped by an aerial drop of a dozen enemy gun drones that opened fire and killed one member of his command squad.

Vivant led a charge into the heretical AI drones and, after a few minutes of boltgun fire and swinging power swords, the drones were wiped out.

The fighting delayed Vivant long enough for Mal’ka’ir and her accompanying stealth suits to power up their jet packs and leap over the burning tanks, obscuring them from the boltguns of Vivant’s command. Once they landed, the xenos turned their fusion blasters at the rear of the Vindicator tank firing at a faraway Riptide.

Four beams of plasma targeted the Vindicator, and three pierced its rear armor. The tank was soon in flames—and, with it, the last tank of the 5th Company was destroyed.

A final tragedy

Part of Vivant’s plan was to deploy an assault squad, commanded by Chaplain Numa, to handle one of two missions: attack any aerial assault to the Space Marines’ rear, or jump behind the Tau defensive line and help crush the xenos’ left flank.

That plan fell by the wayside when the Marines’ gunship, Vengeance is Mine, circling over the battlefield, was attacked by two Barracuda fighters. Numa’s squad was forced to remain in their restraints as the Imperial gunship aborted its drop run to fend off Mal’ka’ir’s attack.

After one xeno fighter was shot down, the surviving Barracuda fled the battlefield trailing smoke. At this point, hearing that Vivant was chasing the Tau battle suits, Numa ordered a drop on the left flank of the Tau force, which consisted of only a few dozen xenos.

The assault squad jumped but a gust of wind caused the squad to drift somewhat from their original target. That was bad enough. But as Numa approached the empty field below, he spotted a Tau Riptide step from behind a copse of trees.

It opened fire as his boots hit the ground.

The high-energy beam of the Riptide’s ion accelerator struck home, hitting square center of the assault squad’s landing zone. Two Space Marines were incinerated, eight more downed with injuries ranging form serious to minor, and Numa was severely injured and knocked unconscious.

Ignoble retreat

At this point, the Tau commander and her bodyguard flew into the air as Vivant’s command squad sought to close in. Vivant could only watch as the jetpack-equipped battle suits made their escape.

With his armor destroyed, and his assault squad out of action, Vivant had no choice: he ordered the recovery of the wounded and dead and retreated.

The Tau withdrew and left the Astartes to collect their fallen.

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Postscript: Casualties included two Predator tanks and one Vindicator, leaving the 5th company with no heavy armor support. Tech Priests currently are assessing whether the Vindicator can be brought back into service in any useful form.

The attack on the Tau ridge line resulted in only two wounded Marines, and one member of Vivant’s command squad was killed by gun drones. Two crew members from Dorn’s Deliverance died, but the crews of the other two tanks managed to escape their wrecks with only minor injury.

The attack squad suffered two dead and nine wounded to various degrees. Chaplain Numa survived but will be out of action for some time.

As the war on Namatos nears the end of its third year of fighting, it is regrettable to inform High Command that the Knights’ 5th Company is no longer combat effective as regards to carrying on the fight alone against the Tau.

Although Captain Vivant strongly disagrees with that assessment, he has only 67 Astartes still able to fight—and with only three Rhino transports, a gunship, and a handful of other heavy assets, his command is no longer capable of an offensive stance. 

He has reluctantly agreed to withdraw from the Beauce Region and serve as a quick-response reserve to assist the three partially organized PDF regiments that currently serve as garrisons of the planet’s major population centers.

Although I am aware of the shortage of available reserves, I must strongly emphasize that at least two veteran Imperial Guard regiments, along with armor support, needs to be deployed to Namatos if we are to guarantee success in our efforts to drive the xenos away.

TheGM: This Imperial defeat is embarrassing. The 5th Company has suffered more losses from the Tau than those Knights of Altair forces sent to fight the Death Guard on Dozaria and the Necrons on Myopolis. 

This is a dark spot on the chapter’s glorious record of service—and a personal humiliation for Captain Vivant.

I think Vivant himself understands the depth of his failure. Although it’s not his fault that he was facing a far larger enemy force than anyone realized, his string of defeats is something that High Marshal Ioculus is unlikely to accept.

Click here to return to Part 1.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.