Commander Farsight - Fire in the Skies: The Air Caste of Dal'yth knew their efforts would be pivotal in the war that was about to consume their planet. They meditated serenely as the Imperial fleet approached, but each pilot had a spark of anticipation in his heart. That spark was fanned into a flame by Commander Farsight's historic speech at Zephyrpeak, an address that played to the Air Caste's pride, patriotism and skill in equal measure. Under the direction of Farsight's trusted Air Caste ally, Admiral Kor'O'Li'Mau'Teng, the pilots of the Sept worlds would counter-attack in force.The Imperium descended upon Dal'yth with such murderous violence that the skies turned black with carbon within the first week of engagement. Grotesquely large drop ships painted in the drab olive tones of the Imperial Guard were first to descend. They approached Dal'yth in a two-stage vector that saw them first act as aircraft carriers then, after landing, as mechanised transports that deployed troops and tanks alike on a massive scale. The skies above Dal'yth's hexodomes were soon buzzing and roaring with the engines of crude Imperial fighters and transports. War scarred the skies long before a single shot was fired on the purple-grassed plains below. With the Imperial forces committed, squadron after squadron of Barracudas, Razorsharks, Tiger Sharks and Sun Shark Bombers lifted out of the uppermost panels of hexodomes across the planet, linking their sensor suites into a lattice of supporting data. They met up in mid-air to form staggered picket lines, each supported by clouds of networked Drones that buzzed in their wake like obedient insects. Any enemy aircraft that was caught by their net would be shot down in short order.The Air Caste's sky-trawling tactics proved to be extremely effective against the crude craft of the Imperial Guard, but they were found wanting when the crenellated Strike Cruisers above sent their own squadrons into the fight. Huge warrior-craft emblazoned in bright heraldic colours triggered their afterburners to hurtle in an almost vertical approach, stub-winged escort craft to either side. Monitor Drone scans picked out the icons emblazoned on the flanks of each vehicle. These were Space Marine craft, their blunt hulls somehow reminiscent of flying fists and launched with much the same intent. The Space Marine gunship squadrons roared toward the Air Caste trawler-net with terrific speed, guns blasting as they came. Incredibly, the heavily-armoured steersmen of each craft seemed to be seeking out mid-air collisions, roaring at a tight downward angle straight into the ordered matrix of T'au fighter craft. The Air Caste pilots were forced to break formation, wheeling away in curling evasive manoeuvres. Farsight had to admit he was impressed; the directness and bravery of such a deployment vector was commendable. He decided to take his own insurgency force of Crisis teams to the site of this new attack.With his Battlesuit teams leaping out from graceful Manta missile destroyers and his ground forces transported en masse by the planet's Magnorail networks, O'Shovah was able to react to the vertical incursions of the Space Marines with impressive speed. Targeting data acquired on the far side of the Damocles Gulf had shown the Imperial shock troops to be extremely heavily armoured, and so Farsight had taken the precaution of having every XV8 Crisis Battlesuit under his command equipped with dual Plasma Rifles. It proved to be the right decision. The mass reactive shells fired by the Space Marine squads deploying from each insertion pod were fierce indeed, but few penetrated the armoured shells of the Battlesuits that arced down out of the skies. Under Farsight's strict instruction, whenever one Crisis Battlesuit was hit it would peel back to be replaced by a fully operational replacement. Wave by wave, the Crisis teams descended, their numbers such that, from a distance, they looked like a Vior'lan seedstorm floating to earth. Hundreds of Plasma Rifles spat bursts of burning fire down into the ranks of the Space Marines, melting through ceramite and searing through flesh to scorch the ground beneath. The Imperial warriors were not so much shot as cored, the sizzling holes in their torsos exposing innards to the air. Incredibly, many of the fallen Space Marines still fought on, firing powerful sidearms from the ground and shouting their defiance even as their vital fluids drained away. It was an amazing display of fortitude and determination in the face of devastating firepower, and it impressed Farsight deeply -- as did the courage of the white-armoured medics administering to their fallen brothers. Yet courage would not be enough to save them. By the time the Fire Warrior Support Cadres had arrived, all that remained of the Space Marine insertion within Gel'bryn was smoking ruin.