Battle of Yunilari 3

Armorial of the Gray Hussars.

The **Battle of Yunilari 3** was an Imperial defensive campaign conducted by the Gray Hussars Space Marine Chapter, alongside their allies from their brother Chapter, the fierce White Scars and local Planetary Defence Forces against invading Tau forces.

## Background

Five years after the formation of the chapter the Damocles Gulf Crusade had begun against the new Tau Empire, several experienced chapters had taken up the call along with the other Imperial Forces. The Chapter Master, Grand Master Halious von Sturmwalden, dissipated the 2nd Division of the Gray Hussars as an expedition to test the new Chapter's warriors. The Gray Hussars had a small fleet and the Second Division took their 300 Astartes and half their number of ships with them: The Battle-Barge; *The Eternal Solution*, the Strike Cruisers; *Reaper of Glory* and *Phantom of Sigismund,* and twelve Hunter Class Destroyers. Lord-Knight Riley von Gergan, former Sergeant of the Black Templars who served with the Grand Master in several battles prior. He was ordered to make a name for the new Chapter, proclaiming it the first of this Chapter's Eternal Crusade, the channeling of his parent chapter.

The 2nd Division on route to join Imperial Force in the main assault Lord-Knight Riley von Gergan decided to go around the main conflict and pick a battle that would be all their own, after being shunned from the planning stage. He chose to respond to a distress signal from loyalist forces on an Agri-World being invaded by the Tau-supporting separatists. Upon translation into orbit they engaged the Tau fleet, destroying it shortly with little effort. The Planetary Defense Forces on the ground requested aid in destroying the Tau landing sight where they had established a shield generator and anti-ship battery. Lord-Knight Riley von Gergan decided to Drop Pod assault on the outskirts of the Tau lines. The initial assault was a slaughter for the Tau outer lines, the Gray Hussars overrunning them with their tactical and assault squads and bringing in Terminators, Devastators and Armored Vehicles. But as they charged past the second layer the assault ground to a crawl, eventually halting with a Tau counter-attack that killed an entire platoon of Astartes and heavily damaged many of their Thunderhawks and Armored vehicles. The squads dug in. The small foxholes turned into trenches as Planetary Defense Forces purged the traitors behind them with more and more local units coming to inhabit the Trenches.

Most of the Astartes and PDF Forces attempted to charge the Tau lines and would encounter a slaughter every time. Months passed and the Gray Hussars learned to change their tactics from relative copying of the Black Templars' style of combat to using more practical infantry-style warfare. The Astartes would organize squads of storm-troopers, the progenitors to the Reconnaissance Platoons. These Platoons gathered intelligence on Tau positions, sabotage one of the Anti-Ship batteries, Assassinated their most important Battle-Suit Pilots, [Name Retracted], and learned the value of ranged warfare. The best men would go on to form the first Reconnaissance Platoon, separated from the rest of their brothers to be a unique clique of highly skilled and specialized warriors. Several mass charges and assaults and high losses of Astartes lead Lord-Knight Riley von Gergan to reform his Brigades to act as unique units that worked off each other and with the assistance of the White Scars' [Retracted] Company, learned the Art speed-centrist warfare.

After the third month of siege, the Gray Hussars quarantined a Grand Assault, with elements of PDF and the White Scars supporting them, along with the experiment of the new tactics that would come to define the new Chapters dogma of war. Firing a red flare the twelve-hour final assault began. Carnage, battle, fire and chaos. The blood of the Tau mixed with the humans that day. The soldiers of the PDF proved themselves in the brutal wave charges of a final strike, nearly killing one-for-one with the Tau fire warriors. After three months 79 of the 300 Gray Hussars, a handful of White Scars and 879,442 PDF soldiers died in the Emperor's name, killing a small Tau army of 339,001 Tau warriors and 2,855,937 separatists humans. They left the blood-soaked world with no more honor than they had before, but the experience of not making the same mistakes as they had done.