Boltar III taken by Tau

 05.021M42 saw a concerted effort to accelerate the Tau plans to dominate the Hadron Expanse and complete the creation of their "Hadron Expansion Sphere". The Tau leadership devised two task forces, one to continue the war against chaos in the Boltarean system while a separate force was detailed to reinforce the foothold the Tau had gained in the Tanis system. The Tau plan was twofold. Boltarean was the final chaos dominated system in the Hadron Expanse and would only fall to a direct assault. The Imperium, with their bases at Vanir and Oreen, would first need to be stopped at the far flung Tanis. Doing this would isolate General Konev's armies at Hexis from the rest of the Imperium, which would then find itself flanked on two sides, unable to determine from which direction the Tau attack would come from.

 

The war on Boltarean progressed with a full scale invasion of Boltar III, a necessary stepping stone for the final assault on the main planet of the system, controlled by the Emerald Serpent. The forces of chaos were not in any hurry to abandon the second world however, and Commander Malkaor's troops soon found themselves fighting a bitter battle for control of Boltar III that lasted far longer than the Tau would have wanted. The final chaos positions surrounding their spaceport facility saw the hardest fighting, with high casualties on both sides. Malkaor lost a trusted commander, as the Empire's forces struggled to deal with an extremely stubborn enemy.

 

Eventually after fighting one another to a standstill, with both sides down to minimal strength, the chaos foothold was finally unseated, and the remaining chaos forces were forced into the wilderness. It would take weeks to mop up these disordered forces, but the planet of Boltar III now lay in Tau hands. The casualties taken did however delay the planned advanced onto the primary world itself.