"The enemy's camouflage lies beyond the scan range of our auspexes. Use your eyes and instincts to lock onto them."
Hill immediately made his judgment. Whether it was the unmanned reconnaissance drones they had sent into the dense forest or the miniature auspexes and other scanning devices mounted on their power armor, none were particularly effective against the Aeldari.
The Imperium of Man rarely encountered such a situation. It meant the enemy's stealth technology surpassed their own.
But considering the enemy was the Aeldari, a race with a history spanning tens of millions of years, it was hardly surprising.
The Space Marines had grown accustomed to using their power armor to locate enemies. That ingrained habit had now put them at a disadvantage against the craftworld Aeldari.
The Astartes created by the Emperor were powerful for far more than just their power armor.
With the warning received, the Ultramarines immediately cast aside the useless alerts from their armor and turned to their superhuman senses and honed combat instincts to fight the Aeldari.
Their sixth sense and instincts proved more reliable instead.
The roar of boltguns and cross-shaped muzzle flashes marked their counterattack. More than six hundred Ultramarine veterans exchanged fire with the Aeldari in the dense forest.
They even changed their firing stances, using their armored gauntlets to cover the lenses of their tactical helmets as much as possible, lest the enemy once again shoot through their visors and blow their heads apart.
"Knights and super-heavy tanks, take the lead. Close in on those damned enemies. Everyone, watch your infantry-armor coordination."
Hill's order urged the Ultramarines closer to the enemy. A mere kilometer was a distance Space Marines could cross in seconds.
Hill, ever skilled at drawing conclusions from experience, realized that fighting the Aeldari in the dense forest was