Vitokh thought back to the fight earlier. "They feel strongly about the loss of their...religious leaders, My lord. Upon it's death earlier. They gained fury and recklessness. All they cared for was vengeance or death, perhaps we could exploit such a weakness using death marks again?"
Ovaius orders the deathmarks to finish their scout missions and to report to him at the canyons after. He phased out and made his way to the rendezvous point. Just as the last team arrives the deathmark gets a report that the ark containing the prisoner had arrived at the necron encampment and is awaiting Lord Ythak's attention now, the prisoner being weak but alive. He notes this as the forces he requested arrives in the form of around a small army of necron warriors and even several destroyers. Without hesitation he makes each deathmark teams to guard a natural entrance to the canyon trenches. Depending on the size of the entrance, the amount of troops assign to each is proportional. Their orders are to shoot anything that moves within range outside of themselves. When the last team departs, Ovaius opens a communication feed to the high command of the necron forces, but directly addresses the crypteks, inquiring whether the experimental gauss fire that they were testing before their slumber was available for use.
"Similar to our old foes...." He summarized and nodded. "Good observation Vitokh, I hope to rely on you in the upcoming battle to protect me." Ythak said, raising from his throne, his staff and Orb Relict strong in each hand, heading to the captured lifeform that was sneaking around in the Tombs at the South Pole. The Necron Lord as he made his way fed all Necrons with defense orders, save for Ovaius and the Crypteks, having recognized their orders, though feeding in Ovaius especially to be ready at his disposal or at least some of his Deathmarks under his command, meanwhile the space forces of Ythak heading to the Orbit to intercept whatever comes in range.
Tohltek continued his slow progression towards the well fortified city, hoping to find some scarabs or atleast another destroyer who might not still need his harness. While the resurrection orb had revived his mid and body, the heavy ion damage to his harness and weapon were still irreparable. With one arm he finally lugged himself to the wall before slumping down as his vital energy began to get depleted. Just then the swarm of scarabs that had been melding an old hole in the wall took notice and flocked over towards Tohltek, much to his silent relief. He waited patiently and silently as they went to work, molding and crafting his body, a process which would not be quick.
Vitokh walked behind lord Ythak. He would guard him until he was dead. He looked around at the warriors guarding the wall. Suddenly a blue pulse flashed on the top of the nearby section. A warrior melted, More flashes came from nowhere, melting warriors, Phasing them out. The warriors around were confused, they had no target to shoot at. This advantage the aliens had did not last long, as the invisible beings walked into a canoptek spyder who was repairing a large chunk of wall. It proceeded to rend them completely. Blood went everywhere as it dug its sharp legs into their bodies. The wall shook. The aliens stealth approach had been stopped. They now proceeded with a full barrage. Lasers, missiles and energy pulses struck the wall. The Tau were counter attacking. In force.
"Gauss fire use granted," Lord Ythak spoke to the Deathmark awaiting at the canyon. The assassin waited patiently and when a few hours passed a few ark arrived with large machineries. The large, obelisks size cubes had several spikes poke out of one of their sides. Under Ovaius' instructions, these machines were placed at the strategic points of the canyon trenches, each placed so the spikes were directed at the trenches themselves. At the Deathmark's signal, all of the cubes were activated at the same time. Green lightning streaked out of the spikes and flooded the trenches. Within minutes all the trenches were glowing green, and after an hour of firing, every surface that covered the trenches were transformed into glass. A few feral flayed ones managed to stumble out, and were quickly gunned down by the sentries placed around the trench openings. When the fire finally abated, Ovaius signal the awaiting Wraiths to follow him into the trenches. It took several hours to fully cover the full extent of the trench system, but the assassin did not want to leave anything to chance. Anything and everything that was destroyed in the trenches, and upon more careful inspection Ovaius discovered that there was indeed an additional tomb under the trenches, all of it destroyed during the cleansing effort. He forwards this information to Lord Ythak, with approval saying that the tomb was more than likely to have been the origins of the virus, and that it served to secure our hold on the planet more in its destruction than it ever would had it been awaken. As the deathmark made his way out of the trenches, he looks up to the sky just as the first of the Tau assault made planetfall. Ovaius quickly gave the orders to relocate back to the Necron base. Those that could phased out and immediately made their way towards the encampment, the rest mounted the arks (with the gauss fire) and began making their way back, but it was obvious that they could not beat the first wave of the enemies to their destinations.
Zytrex had retreated back to his chamber of awakening. As he stepped on its onyx floor he gave an extremely old command sequence for the room: Masterfully woven illusions and walls retracted away, and lights of green and red were lit to reveal that the once small hexagonal room was now a great deal larger. "My workshop," he thought, "Still works like a dream." Massive displays and boards descended from the ceiling accompanied by several servant-scarabs, taking their long since assigned places around the workshop. One of the scarabs floated to him, taking the Tau weapon he had brought with him, and placing it on one of the scan-boards. Lines of green light coated the gun - gathering every bit of information possible - before one display was woken to show its statistics. "Primitive, effective, lethal, inferior compared to gauss-weaponry," The plasmancer declared after a while, "Can not improve upon in any ways: Shall resume earlier experiments." He turned around and walked to a slab of metal impaled in the floor. Upon it was an ancient battle harness, one that had belonged to a Necron dear to him. A brother in arms, some had said. Sworn by blood, others said, nothing more. They had indeed been great brothers back in the day and had fought many a battle side by side - before he had been incinerated by C'tan sunfire. All that remained of him was this small piece of battle harness, badly rented and damaged. Maybe someday I will be able to bring this back to its glory, he thought, maybe it will even allow me to wear it. The old memories disappeared as fast as they had come, for there was no need to remorse the past while the future was still to be conquered. He was about to bring up old schematics when a warning blinked in his view. He quickly read it. An Attack, he hissed in his mind. He opened a portal and stepped in, ready to kill anything in his path. Ready to obliterate all that stood before him, for he no longer cared about studying these new beings: the weapon had shown how primitive they were. Now they were coming in a force powerful enough to be a threat.
The Tau made planetfall with hundreds of Orcas, Mantas and Barracudas, coming in from 3 sides to the planet. "Full Size invasion..." Ythak whispered to his Lychguard as he destroyed a few stealth-scouts through his Staff of Light, that ambushed him and his personal guard. "Ovaius! Scan the area, find out where the main deployment zones are and let your Deathmarks obliterate the chain of command!" "Zytrex! Try to disable but not destroy their Battlesuits for further analysis!" The Lord quickly ordered, feeding the Immortals and other units to focus fire on heavy targets, the deployed Obelisks, each on one side of the taken over fortress-city to cause main damage towards the hordes, rather than heavy targets. The Ships of the Necron army taking down Barracuda after Barracuda, the bigger Necron ships starting to open fire on the bigger ships, though only having a few resurrected so far they lacking the power to do this as swift as with the prior, smaller fleet. "This will be a long fight, my loyal subjects, obliterate all of them and do not show mercy! We will stand at the end of this fight, and they lay in shame and defeat!" He rammed his Staff into the ground, causing with the Orb of Resurrection to cause a mighty impulse to strengthen and revive any Necron in his surroundings, then raising his staff to emit another Gauss Lightning-Blast to destroy a XV-22 Ghost Team Leader.
Ovaius received his orders and immediately altered the course of all available deathmarks. While the Wraiths and the Arks continued to their destination the assassins made their way to the various mountain tops of the planet. Ovaius himself ascended the highest mountain on the planet, coordinating the teams to hit as much of the command structure as possible by firing at will at any and all enemy commanders on the field while going through all the information feeds in an attempt to spot the lightly armored target he had eliminated earlier.
The repairs finished just in time, for the moment Tohltek took to the air the screeching of drop troops rung through the air. Tohltek quickly lifted his arm to open fire, only to find that his once destructive heavy gauss cannon had been replaced by a rapid fire normal gauss cannon. Tohltek cursed the brain capacity of the scarabs and opened fire anyway. The increased rate of fire proved advantageous in this situation as Tohltek began to move back towards the city, hoping to find an entrance. Green blasts scored hits on many vehicles and troops, but without the penetrating power he wielded before, none of the heavier targets were destroyed.
