"Honoured Commander Ang'lensa, sensor arrays and orbiting drones have detected two deep-space targets. One matches the profile of an Imperium of Man vessel; the other's classification remains unidentified. However, they are advancing in formation and are judged to belong to the same faction."
An Earth Caste member stared at the monitoring apparatus before him, reporting loudly to the Fire Caste commander standing nearby.
"Shas'el! Detecting a massive swarm of small-scale contacts inbound!" another Earth Caste technician shouted almost simultaneously, his eyes fixed on the short-range scanners.
Commander Ang'lensa did not panic. They had engaged the Imperium of Man many times and had emerged victorious on numerous occasions. Attacking this planet was merely a tactical feint, a maneuver designed to draw Imperial attention and bleed their strength from the primary front.
What this small T'au fleet did not know, however, was that the planet's distress signal had been sent two weeks ago. The record, transcribed into a parchment application by a servitor, was currently buried beneath dozens of stacks of documents on the desk of a Departmento Munitorum clerk. If luck prevailed, it might be submitted for review in another week.
As for whether the Sector Command had any remaining strength to dispatch for a relief effort, that was far beyond the concerns of a mere scribe.
"Signal the Air Caste pilots. Have them launch Barracuda fighters to intercept. We must hold our position to draw in more of the enemy. For the Greater Good."
Upon receiving the directive, the Earth Caste brethren immediately relayed the command through the comms-net. Within the T'au fleet, nearly a thousand interceptors, known as Barracudas, were scrambled into the void.
These sleek craft were swifter than the Imperium's Marauder Bombers, though they lagged slightly behind the Thunderbolt fighter in raw speed. However, their sophisticated electronic suites often allowed them to achieve target lock faster than a Thunderbolt. Furthermore, the craft possessed limited gravitic maneuvering capabilities, designed to eject the pilot to safety even in the event of catastrophic failure.
Typically armed with two drone-controlled burst cannons on the wings and a pilot-aimed ion cannon, the Barracuda was the T'au Empire's most ubiquitous atmospheric and void interceptor.
Yet, these nimble craft were about to endure a cataclysmic slaughter.
While Axion's Heavy Combat Drones were not as swift as Aeldari starfighters, they far outpaced Imperial designs. Against these relentless mechanical "silver discs," the T'au Barracudas appeared fragile and sluggish. Even with a staggering numerical advantage, the T'au fighters served only to add a brief, flickering brilliance to the expanding field of explosions.
Fewer than one-third their number, the Heavy Combat Drones unleashed a saturation of fire that dwarfed the enemy's output. Ion fire from the automata was so dense it seemed to weave a fine, lethal web across the stars.
The T'au craft were so delicate that even a glancing blow from the ionized stream caused their plasma stabilizers to fail instantly, detonating the fighters into expanding spheres of radiant energy. These fragile vessels ceased all response almost immediately.
Conversely, the pulse fire and ion cannon shots from the Barracudas yielded entirely different results. The drone-controlled burst cannons could just barely track the trajectories of the Heavy Combat Drones, pouring continuous fire onto the targets.
However, as thin veils of energy shielding shimmered across the hulls of the automata, the T'au tactical drones suffered immediate logic errors, their calculations failing to account for such resilience. Meanwhile, the Air Caste pilots found it nearly impossible to land a hit with their ion cannons; surviving the hailstorm of incoming fire required every ounce of their focus, leaving them no capacity for offensive coordination.
In just two passes, a span of mere minutes, the T'au fighter screen was reduced to a beautiful, tragic chain of pyrotechnics in the cold vacuum.
A deathly silence fell over the T'au fleet's vox-channels. Within minutes, the airwaves had transitioned from fervent oaths to the Greater Good to the screams of dying pilots and the roar of static, before plunging into total stillness. Even in the most grinding battles against the Imperial Navy, these warriors had never witnessed casualties of such terrifying velocity.
The Heavy Combat Drones, however, relied on cold data. Their auto-targeting and trajectory prediction were slave to sensor input, devoid of "instinct" or "intuition."
Everything was governed by icy, uncompromising mathematics. Every interlacing of fire was calculated for a harvest.
"Report enemy casualties," Ang'lensa demanded, struggling to process the cost.
It was only after he asked a second time that an Earth Caste brother stammered a reply. "The enemy... the enemy has sustained no losses. Target count remains unchanged."
Boom! Beep—!
Piercing alarms shrieked throughout the ship's corridors.
"Report!"
"The unknown vessel escorting the Imperial ship has opened fire! Our shields have been collapsed! We have sustained Level 3 hull damage, two layers of external plating and 13% of internal compartments have been breached!"
The Guardian-class vessel had fired its forward-mounted pulse-convergence cannon. Augmented by dual Quantum Energy Cores, the single beam had punched straight through the T'au shields and bitten deep into the ship's superstructure. The only reason the T'au ship hadn't been instantly vaporized was that the pulse-convergence cannon lacked the raw, shattering power of a Fragmentation Cannon or a Nova Cannon.
Chaos erupted on the bridge of the Messenger-class cruiser, the fleet's centerpiece. To the machine intelligence aboard the Guardian, the prioritization of large-scale targets was the optimal protocol. Regardless of species, the largest vessel usually represented either the greatest threat or the highest strategic value.
Furthermore, when a vessel exhibited an anomalous volume of data transmissions, it was flagged as a command-and-control node. The Messenger-class cruiser was the nexus of data flow for this twenty-five ship fleet.
Having bypassed the interceptor screen, the Heavy Combat Drones ignored the six larger Warden-class gunships nearby and swarmed the Messenger, initiating a point-blank bombardment.
Despair quickly took hold of the T'au. They discovered that their point-defense weaponry was incapable of destroying these strange, silver interceptors. Conversely, their main batteries could not be brought to bear without risking catastrophic friendly fire on their own flagship.
Already crippled and shieldless, the Messenger was riddled with holes. Any stray shot from its escorts would seal its fate.
Fire Caste Commander Ang'lensa issued a desperate final command: the rest of the fleet was to abandon their support role and prioritize an attack on the enemy mothership. He and his crew would provide a final rearguard action, preparing for an emergency ship-abandonment if necessary.
However, just as the order was transmitted, a Heavy Combat Drone slammed directly into the Messenger's bridge.
The hull buckled and shattered. Atmospheric pressure plummeted instantly, hurling the unarmored T'au bridge crew into the frozen void, killing them in seconds.
The nanites within the drone's chassis began a rapid repair of the collision damage, even as it extended data-spikes into the ship's ruined consoles. During the extraction process, the drone remained embedded in the superstructure, serving as a lethal, automated sentry to ensure the bridge remained firmly in the cold grip of the machine.