r18novel Chapter 1042: The Joining of the Tau Empire
Chapter 1042: The Joining of the Tau Empire
Erin's protective boots were knee-deep in blood. The beam of a medical searchlight swept across the tunnel wall, illuminating the dense scratches.
Three hours ago, these traces left by the Genestealers gave her nightmares, but now they became the least of her horrors.
Since she separated from Calvin, she decisively joined the medical team and cooperated with the medical team to transport the wounded.
The medical team behind her was using stretchers to form a raft with thirty-seven seriously injured people lying on it. Blood plasma dripped through the cracks, forming strange whirlpools in the sewage.
"The exit is three hundred meters ahead!" The leading Astra Militarum engineer waved a laser pointer, the shovel on his back covered with Tyranid shell fragments, "The Chimera armored vehicle should..."
The tunnel suddenly shook violently, and a roar like some ancient beast awakening came from overhead.
Irene's medical kit slipped into the water, and the floating bandage roll was quickly stained dark red.
When the second wave of vibrations came, she could see fluorescent spores seeping from the cracks in the tunnel, a sign that the Tyranid swarm had breached the surface defenses.
"Hurry up! Move!" screamed an Astra Militarum officer.
When the light of the exit was within reach, disaster struck.
I saw the huge head of a digging python smashing the concrete dome, and its 20-meter-long body rushed into the tunnel like a train.
The Chimera armored vehicle that came to provide support was overturned like a toy, and the rotating turret cut off half of the medic's head.
Irene was hit against the wall by the air wave. Through the cracks in her protective mask, she saw the spiral teeth in the python's mouthparts grinding the soldiers into meat paste.
"Take the wounded and retreat!"
Erin roared and pulled out the laser pistol from her thigh holster, the energy beam leaving scorch marks on the burrowing python's shell.
This insignificant attack caught the monster's attention, and it turned towards the medical team with its body covered in biological turrets, its acid glands beginning to swell.
"Quickly open!"
However, it was too late.
Irene's memory suddenly flashes back to the scene where Calvin taught her how to operate heavy weapons on the farm.
Irene decisively pounced on the overturned Chimera armored vehicle, and the broken tracks left bloody marks on her calves.
The barrel of the heavy bolter was bent, but she remembered what Calvin had said: "As long as the ammunition chain is not broken, the Emperor's wrath will not stop!"
"Emperor, bless me."
When Irene used medical scissors to pry open the safety of the weapon, the torrent of acid sprayed by the digging python was already in front of her.
She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger, praying that it would distract the monster.
The roar of the heavy bomb shattered the last intact eardrum, but the expected severe pain did not come.
Twelve blue beams of light wove into a web of light, evaporating the torrent of acid into purple mist.
The high temperature cut a perfect circular gap in the tunnel dome. In the morning light and smoke, the array of Tau Empire XV88 Crisis Battle Suit descended from the sky like a divine army.
The surface of their armor was flowing with ripples as the optical camouflage faded, and the pulse gun muzzles still had lingering starlight from ion burning.
“The Greater Good guides us.”
The leading commander's battle suit emitted a synthesized sound, and the emblem on his shoulder armor indicated that this was a direct unit from a home world of the Tau Empire.
Four combat suits deployed energy shields, creating a blue wall of light in front of the medical team, while the other eight used fusion cannons to cross-fire at the digging python.
Erin slumped over the wreckage of the armored vehicle, watching as the alien machines dismembered the Tyranid beast with breathtaking precision.
When the last core of the burrowing python was pierced by the plasma beam, the entire tunnel was filled with the stench of scorched shells.
"Human Medical Officer, your courage is commendable."
The commander's battlesuit landed in front of Erin, the hatch sliding open to reveal the angular face of the Fire Warrior officer.
His voice went through a translator into stiff High Gothic.
"Alien! Don't move!"
The few soldiers who were still able to move raised their weapons and pointed them at the Tau Empire Fire Warriors in front of them. One of them pulled out a bayonet and pointed it at the people opposite him.
The time went back to two hours ago.
On the bridge of the Tau Empire expeditionary fleet "Aether Blade", the pulsating robes of Commander Shas'vre Vior'la Kais Mont'yr, also known as Kais Mont'yr, fluttered in the energy flow of the Warp.
The navigation array showed twisted gravitational lines at the edge of the Great Rift, like countless nooses tightening the throat of the galaxy.
“Gravity anchor overloaded!”
The operator's hands flew over the console, and etheric energy blasted spiderweb cracks on the transparent crystal panel.
Montel stared at the chaotic scene outside the observation window. He saw that the subspace storm was like a boiling sea of blood, with the wreckage of Imperial warships and the broken shells of Tyranid bio-ships floating in it.
The shadow of Aether Master Kalreon flickered in the comm orb. "The Greater Good needs this victory. By crossing the rift, we can gain valuable data on humanity's engagement with its enemies."
His voice was fragmented by the warp interference. "But remember, we are only observers..."
The ship suddenly shook violently.
Montel saw the real universe on the other side of the rift waving at them, and the warning star wrapped in war, like a festering gem embedded in the wound of the galaxy.
When the Aether Blade leapt into the real universe, the sixteen accompanying Tau Empire warships had already deployed optical camouflage.
Their streamlined hulls refracted iridescence in the starlight, like transparent jellyfish swimming into a boiling battlefield.
A ballet of death is being performed in orbit around Vigilant: the main guns of the Imperial battleships are exchanging fire with the Warp torpedoes of the Chaos fleet, in the bursting energy turbulence, the Ork junk ships are rampaging, and the Tyranid bio-ships are devouring all the wreckage like cancer cells.
Tau fleet sensors indicated that radiation levels in the areas of heaviest fighting were sufficient to kill unprotected life in 0.3 seconds.
"Starting silent protocol."
Montel's instructions were transmitted into each fire warrior's helmet through the communication link.
XV95 stealth combat suits slid out of the launch bay, their phase shields resonating perfectly with the battlefield's electromagnetic interference, and even the most sensitive Imperial auspicious instruments mistook them for reflected signals from space junk.
In the northern hemisphere of the planet, the orc warlord is leading the "Broken Tooth" tribe to attack the imperial fortress.
The greenskins didn't notice at all that fifty Tau Empire Manta transports were flying over their heads. To them, the electromagnetic interference released by these aircraft made the Ork technicians think it was just "Fuck Brother's fart", so they just fired a few inaccurate rockets into the sky and called it a day.
The landing of the Tau ground forces was flawless.
A group of XV88 Crisis Battlesuits landed in the crossfire between the Tyranids and Chaos forces, their fusion cannons accurately harvesting the remnants of both sides in the melee.