Liberation of Numinal - Counterinvasion: Five sidereal hours had passed since the attack on the moon Quachil, and now all communication between the relay station and Numinal had been cut. The truth that a full scale counterinvasion against a world they had only themselves so recently conquered had not entered the strategic equations of the Taghmata Cyclothrathe, and the magi were swiftly being forced to re-assess their position. Above Numinal, the Hammer of the Deep and its charges had already forced their orbital supremacy by destroying the protective Dark Mechanicum escort squadrons, their Warp-dromons and macro-haulers having proved themselves armed and shielded far beyond what their design and appearance indicated.To further the unfolding crisis, the Archmagos Yelav Draykavac had, only moments before the communications silence with Quachil, been forced to accede even to the retreat of his own orbiting warship, the Mechanicum Forge-cruiser Sacra Astra, after it had proved heavily outmatched by the attacking galleass.Precipitating direct command override over all Mechanicum forces on Numinal, Draykavac issued rapid commands through his Taghmata's djinn-skein to recall and amass his forces to meet the invaders, dispersed as they had been to carry out his general order for planet-wide population processing.As a result of this decision, the attackers made planetfall all but uncontested, the invaders concentrating their landings directly on the large and most sparsely populated archipelago chain in the planet's northern hemisphere, a few hundred kilometres from the edge of the island cluster on which the forces of the Mechanicum were most densely based. Seven sidereal hours after planetfall, the Taghmata Cyclothrathe, having amassed a sufficiency of force, responded aggressively to the ongoing invasion, swarming towards the area like antibodies to an open wound.Slowly at first, but with increasing intensity, the two sides engaged -- the Taghmata sending fast-moving reconnaissance servitor drones into the area initially to assess their enemy at close range. The invaders were identified as Solar Auxilia forces operating at multiple cohort strength; likely in the region of 30,000-40,000 infantry troops and several thousand armoured vehicles.Archmagos Draykavac's analysis indicated that their iconography comported to the long-decommissioned 60th Expeditionary Fleet, but used observed unit markings and numerals which did not match historical records. The invaders were also not, as he had first projected, launching an immediate attack, but rather digging in; rapidly preparing prefabricated defence lines and supply dumps, sowing mine fields and excavating trench works with remarkable speed and efficiency to meet the incoming Mechanicum forces.This led Draykavac to a series of observations from the data: firstly, that this was a hostile Loyalist army despatched from the Agathean Domain and, in addendum to that observation, no known Agathean-liveried warships had yet been sighted as part of the force. The attackers had also refrained from the mass use of orbital bombardment, limiting themselves to a few strikes only against anti-orbital batteries which might have impeded their landing and had not yet attempted to breach the Void Shielded bastions of the Mechanicum control centres.This resulted in a single conclusion; that the Agatheans intended to take the planet in as intact a state as they possibly could. Logic and strategic prediction indicated then to Draykavac that this invasion force was merely a beachhead for a much larger contingent to follow, a force mounted and protected in the absent Imperial cruiser squadrons the Agathean Domain was still known to possess.Based upon this analysis, Draykavac then drew his own plans accordingly. Determining that the beachhead should be destroyed at all costs, he reinforced the attacking waves en route to the landing site with the goal of maintaining pressure while he amassed a second force of sufficient power to destroy it.