The end of 10.013M42 also saw a renewed offensive from the eldar on Ares. Instead of consolidating their gains in Ares City and waiting for the counter attack, this time the eldar advanced, taking Vassilevsky off guard and breaking the defences on the Hellebron road in under a day. Vassilevsky was forced to retreat rapidly, evacuating to Pallian Settlement before his forces were trapped in the mountains by the eldar.
With only a few tens of thousands defending the planet, Vassilevsky was please by the intervention of the Ultramarines, whose forces quickly deployed between the eldar and the retreating guard. This gave the imperial force time to regroup, but the ultimate prize was retaking Hellebron, which the Ultramarines set about doing on 3010.013M42.
The marines pushed forward, trusting in their armoured vehicles to protect them from the inevitable eldar reaction. Unfortunately the eldar were well equipped and ready to deal with this move by the astartes, and a bloody firefight on the Hellebron road quickly turned into a one sided massacre. The eldar easily penetrated the armour of the space marine vehicles, and soon the smoke from buring tanks could be seen as far west as Pallian. In under two days the ultramarine force had been smashed and its survivors limped back to the west. Caeralon surrendered and over the course of two weeks the eldar had reached a new high point in their invasion of Ares, holding now nearly half of the imhabited zone of the planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment