You nod to Jace. "Keep an eye on him would you? If he starts doing anything too far outside of normal, let me know in time to do something about it."

Jace ponders for a moment, and nods. "Will do. He has been poking about the Olri a bit, and we have an hour or so before we are scheduled to be called in."

You eye the ladies, and decide they are good to go on their own for the moment. At your gesture Jace leads the way to the Olri. Rex is already there, looking over her lines in awe and comparing her to the two semi-repaired stormbirds landed next to her. Jace promptly engages him in more of that twittering Technua-Lingua, leaving you to wander the immediate area.

On an impulse, you decide to duck into one of the incomplete Stormbird’s passenger compartments. Big enough to hold an entire platoon with ease, even accounting for all of the volume taken up by the weapons systems, the chamber is illuminated by a work-light. You cast your eyes over the abandoned tools with disdain. It is a poor workman indeed to leave his or her tools out in the elements like this. Your thoughts are interrupted by the screech of metal tearing. It takes your brain all of six or seven seconds to identify the sound.

The screams and gunshots are already echoing around the beachhead by the time you clear the stormbird.

You bypass Jace and Rex, still wondering what the hell could have avoided all of the patrols and ambushed or bypassed the pickets and done so in large numbers. Jace already has his hellgun out and ready, with Rex diving into Olri, presumably to get her heavy bolter turrets online. "Start rallying who you can!" you yell to Jace in passing, running off towards where you last saw Mu'randa and Yasha.

You all but collide with them coming around a corner. "What in the Warp is attacking us?"

Mu'randa pulls Yasha to her feet roughly. "Genestealers. Came out of the ductwork right behind a wave of cultist fodder. The outer pickets are going or gone, if the combat chatter is anything to go by."

"Fuck. Head for the Olri, I'm going to try for the communications hub."

Yasha heads off, and Mu'randa pulls at your sleeve. "No point. The antennas were shot away in the opening moments of the fight. No way to punch a signal out of this."

You turn on your heel and quickly head for Olri. "Perhaps and perhaps not. We still have all of the communications kit aboard the shuttles."

All four of Olri's heavy bolter turrets open up. The angles are poor, given the other landing craft and the turrets positioning, but they are making work on the most obvious approaches.

You pull out your pulse pistol and neatly decapitate a cultist trying to drop down on Olri from the overhanging gantry. Bad as her position may be, attempting to move her would be worse. She would be a floating target in the air, and you don't have a better position to land her in anyway. Yasha gets into cover in the troop compartment, and Mu'randa turns to join Jace and the half-dozen armsmen and tech-guard in a defensive formation.

You duck past them and make for the communications console. Quickly you punch up the Deathwatch's frequency and are rewarded with the faint but distinct sounds of combat chatter. "Beachhead to Deathwatch, Beachhead to Deathwatch, we are under assault. I repeat, we are under assault. Genestealers and cultists in large numbers."

"Understood Beachhead. We are breaching their main nesting area now. Hold your ground. Rubicon, clear."

Promptly several things come together in your mind. One: the deathwatch strike force must have taken at least some casualties if Rubicon is in charge. Two: the Genestealers will either have to pull back and defend their nesting area if they want to continue to survive on the Malignus Maximus or go all-in and try and wipe you out. Three: in either case, you need to stay alive for as long as you can.

You emerge from Olri to consult with Jace and Mu'randa. The number of survivors with your group has grown to an even thirty, and they have pushed forwards somewhat to give Olri's turrets better firing arcs. "The Deathwatch is heavily engaged, and it sounds like the Armsmen are as well." A techpriest jogs past you into Olri. "Anyone know of a better place to bunker down? or is this the best we have?"

Rex emerges from the Olri, relieved from his gunnery position. "No other landing places to put this magnificent craft down. The other two may not be void-flight capable, but their engines work as do their weapons, and one of my tech-guard detachments is bringing more heavy bolter ammunition from one of our supply craft."

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Mu'randa nods. "Here we stand then."

You shake your head. "No. Here we rally. Once we have the needed bodies, we will need to reclaim more area to operate in, more supplies to fight with. Jace, Rex, best landing craft to secure next?"

A half-dozen tech-guard arrive, jugging cases of ammunition. They rush into the other stormbirds, followed by a few tech-priests to get the guns operational. Rex turns in place, surveying the area. "A Mechanicus ammunition and/or food lander would be best. Closest one is seventy-five meters away, under that gantry.

Jace raises his hellgun and picks off a trio of cultists and a genestealer running along that same gantry. "Tactically unsound. We'd have foes dropping on our heads unopposed. Recommend we secure aft of the Olri first, to give good covering fire angles up into the gantries."

You nod. "Right, as soon as we have the personnel to do so, we do that, then work on securing that lander."

Over the next hour, your ranks swell to around ninety armsmen and tech-guards, plus another thirty techpriests. Jace leads the push and secures good lines of fire up into the gantries. Rex sorts the techpriests out into salvage, repair, and resupply parties. Mu'randa remains on the firing line, and Yasha keeps an ear on the ongoing fight over Olri's communications link.

By the third hour of the firefight, your ranks have grown to over a hundred and fifty armsmen and tech-guards, despite the slow trickle of casualties. Your perimeter has expanded somewhat, encompassing the three stormbirds entirely and pouring heavy fire up into the gantries every time a genestealer or cultist shows its face.

By the fifth hour of the fight, your ranks are up to two hundred combatants and another fifty walking wounded or non-combatants running supplies, food, and water, or helping to build barricades about the seven shuttles you now hold. A few crew-served weapons are up and firing down good firing lanes with a good stockpile of ammunition to spare, courtesy of the Mechanicus supply lander you have secured.

By the ninth hour of the fight, you are starting to get worried about fatigue. Your ranks haven't grown, but neither have they shrunk, which leaves you in the awkward position of not having quite enough warm bodies to allow your troops to stand down in rotation to eat and relieve themselves properly.

By the thirteenth hour of the fight, fatigue is definitely beginning to set in. The other pockets of resistance in the Beachhead have either been snuffed out or managed to fight their way through to you, adding a net ninety combatants to your ranks in the process. Instead of pushing your lines further forward, you opt to start cycling troops through thirty-minute stand downs, combat conditions permitting. Fortunately, the Genestealers and their cultist pawns also seem to be running short of manpower. Or, as your instincts continue to insist, are conserving it for a coordinated push.

By the fourteenth hour of the fight, you get your first instance of really good news. The Deathwatch have hammered the main nest hard enough to break it open. They should have everything wrapped up and be back at the beachhead in another six hours.

By the fifteenth hour, your instincts are proven right as the Genestealers throw their heaviest push yet. The fire up into the gantries looks thick enough to walk across, and every single one of your fire lanes is choked with dead or dying cultists. You burn through the last of your pulse pistol ammunition, exhaust your grenades and two full sets of resupplies, and have to resupply your laspistol three times in the process of holding the line.

By the eighteenth hour, the Genestealers are clearly on their last reserves of manpower, and so are you. Resupplying your laspistol and grenades yet again, you've lost track of just how many times, you finally get a headcount. You are down to one hundred and fifty effectives, another thirty walking wounded, and no non-combatants. They have all either taken up a weapon or perished. Your lines have shrunk down to back around the three stormbirds, and your heavy weapons are running low on ammunition without ready resupply available. Fatigue is a serious concern.

By the nineteenth hour, you can hear the Deathwatch and Mabis' Armsmen returning in force. What is left of the genestealers are caught between their hammer and your anvil.

The twentieth, and last, hour of the fight is a close and bloody affair. Everyone, friend and foe alike, is running low or out of ammunition, being forced back onto melee weapons. The cultists are naught more than mobile meat-shields with their ranged weapons spent, but the few remaining genestealers are in their prime without overwhelming firepower to oppose them. By the time the Deathwatch and Mabis link up with your depleted forces you were down to thirty combat effective bodies, all of them wounded, and another fourteen crippled. Yasha, Jace, Rex, and Mu'randa are all still somehow on their feet.

Mabis has fared little better, having taken forty-four percent fatalities and another twenty-seven percent casualties. Rubicon commands the remaining nine Deathwatch marines, including Danus and Lord Pyrus. Direwolf is alive, but is almost certainly going to be forced to retire from front line combat, given that he will need several months and several rounds of reconstructive surgery to even walk again. Of Force Commander Tarian Ddu, only his head was recoverable. The rest of him was lost to a cultist missile launcher fired from ambush.

All that is left for the Malignus Maximus is a few mopping-up operations and the gene-scanning of all of the survivors. You are content to let that happen without your direct involvement, and head for your bed and a well-deserved rest.