The initial casualties were heavy as squads of vanguard and rangers struggled into the teeth of imperial fire, but, as dominus Krypter had expertly calculated, a full assault was the correct tactical move. Like a pendulum swinging, the momentum of the fight quickly shifted as the advance began to overrun the imperial squads and send them falling back, rolling over each other in increasing disarray. The unexpected mortar fire from Hassek’s captured battery only increased the confusion and hastened the rout. While castellex robots stomped through the greasy smoke, shunting aside knocked-out vehicles, Krypter received an order request from one of his forward units, appended with a vid-feed of several imperial squads emerging from cover with their hands up.
To the south, a swarm of beetle-armoured stormtroopers had been massing to retake the hill, with Beck’s company mounting a spirited defence. The stormtroopers were flanked and driven away by the steady forward grind of Krypter’s skitarii, and the maniple and the Jotun contingent linked up just as the first sicarians were prowling into the airfield; striding over bodies to root out the last of the imperials, much to the shock of a few dazed Patriots who were still holding out in the launch bunkers. With the field temporarily secure, Droplaug was able to start scavenging in earnest.
“Grenade launchers are good!” she barked at a sweating, sunburned Jotun who was scrambling back up the hill with a sackful of them. “But get these men some fucking water!”
“Alright, alright, I’m on it!” the man replied as he dropped the bag onto a growing pile, and hawked a glob of gummy spit into the dust next to it. “Quit hammerin’ my dick!”
The parched and tired Jotun on the east side of the hillcrest were able to watch the second arm of Krypter’s counterattack unfold. Artillery muzzle-flashes were lighting up the horizon, and the air was thick with rising smoke. Explosions mushroomed around the mechanicus perimeter, with flickers of plasma spraying out in reply. Several imperial tanks were burning; others had rolled into hull-down positions among the ridges and rocks. To the eyes of some of the more experienced Jotun, they seemed to be returning fire with a mix of high explosive and kinetic penetrators.
From his own command post, his beloved thanatar concealed from line-of-sight to the enemy as it rained sunfire down on them, Krypter watched the firefight unfold as a series of runic tags scattered across the battlefield, blinking and switching colour as they reported status and damage. The castellex shields were not calibrated to repel direct hits from battle cannons, and as such they had only advanced so far before the accompanying datasmiths ordered their robots to hunker down and use their elevated shoulder cannons, sacrificing firepower for protection. However, several of the tech-priest controllers had been killed by explosive rounds, and Krypter heard Donovan let out an uncharacteristic curse as one squad of leaderless robots was methodically knocked out, cored one after the other by AP rounds as they failed to take cover.
It was an irritating loss, but not enough to change the overall calculus of the engagement - with the imperial first wave scattered and half a dozen of their tanks already burning, the imperial armoured company declined to push forward into the castellex plasma wall and instead began to fire off smoke rounds and retreat before the skitarii infantry that had overrun the starport could come back into play.
<Estimate fifteen minutes to regroup western offensive units.> Donovan reported back to his magos dominus, returning to his facade of steel-hard stoicism once more. <Casualties within acceptable range. However, ranger alphas are quantifying 30% loss of combat efficiency due to Maxim drug injectors coupled with heat exhaustion.>
The enemy artillery was still firing, shells biting chunks out of the earth and spitting the rubble skyward. The majority seemed to be falling in the dead ground between the Imperials and Krypter’s maniple, covering the armoured company’s withdrawal. Some however were airbursting far behind the retreating armour, and one salvo of manticore rockets veered far to Krypter’s left, landing among the rocky foothills.
Hassek had reluctantly re-donned his helmet and left the shelter of the dugout in favour of the merciless sun. Herkja, stripped down to a sweat-sodden tank top, was enthusiastically showing him some of the captured phosphor quad-launchers when Ulf arrived with the vox.
“Blizzard group?” an unfamiliar voice crackled. “Striker Four.” The
Four drew a raised eyebrow from Ulf and Herkja. How many of the Nebula squad leaders had
that damn sniper managed to take out? “The imps are falling back to their drop zone on the east side of the island. How soon can you and Ironhammer group move out?”
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