Astartes tip the balance

Following a request for military assistance from Inquisitor Lord Natalia Vorushko of the Ordos Hereticus, the Dark Angels Strike Cruiser Dark Dominion redeployed to the Shadow Worlds in late 01.013M42, where it quietly watched and waited, it's mission to uncover material evidence of the Librian's apparent heresy. Inquisiotr Vorushko believed that if the Tau and/or Federacy (either entity being equally heretical in the eyes of the Ordo Hereticus inquisitor lord) were shipping supplies to Libria then these supply routes likely passed along the same lanes the Tau were already using to support their war effort in the region. A strike against one of the main Tau supply bases was therefore ordered, led by Captain El'Zahariel of the 4th Company.

On landing at a scrubby outpost simply known by the Tau designation as "Waystation 239", the astartes force encountered a surprisingly strong and well equipped garrison and the fighting was brutal and at close quarters. Eventually all resistance was subdued allowing investigators of the Lord Inquisitor's retinue to sift through the remains of supply depots, interrogate prisoners and examine cargo manifests. Documentation proved to be scarce and inconclusive but one prisoner, thought to be a low ranking Ethereal personally captured by El'Zahariel, apparently provided much valuable information. This led the inquisition to determine the final destination of some Federacy cargo shipments as the Libria system.

Scarcely days later the Dark Angel's Strike Cruiser Silent Hunter put in to the Libria V docking facility, ostensibly to resupply, and in the shadows at the endge of the system, a Carcharadon strike cruiser lay in wait.

Meanwhile in the Perseus Deeps, the Carcharadons were pursuing a more obvious enemy in the northern badlands of Bastien. Since the hostilities of the previous year the tyranid threat had been removed from the southern mountains, but in the north a large swarm of aliens was known to remain. The Carcharadons decided to hunt them down and exterminate them.

Using their customary airborne insertion tactics, the astartes warriors fell upon the alien horde with their usual savagery. Despite being outnumbered many times over the Carcharadons pressed their assault, aiming to fell as many of the large beasts and strike at the heart of the hive mind on Bastien, the hive nodes themselves. In this task they were successful, and soon all central control over the Nemesis swarm on Bastien collapsed, and the hive mind withdrew from the planet, astropaths in Salvation sensing the dark veil lifting from their minds. At least for the time being, Bastien had been cleansed, and hive fleet Nemesis looked elsewhere for its next feed.