Out in the void beyond the ships, the fighting was every bit as brutal.
The warships of both sides were tangled together in an interlocking melee. Macro-cannons traded fire at close range, while lances plowed molten furrows through enemy armor. Countless fighters darted and dogfought like swarms of bees among the wrecks.
Farsight stared at the hellish scene before him, his eyes wide with fury.
He watched as a Guardian-class carrier, one of the T'au Empire's proudest vessels, came under concentrated lance fire from three Imperial cruisers. Its thin shields evaporated instantly, like morning mist beneath sunlight. Then devastating beams pierced its bridge, engines, and reactor... In the silence of space, the entire colossal vessel became a fireball brighter than the sun.
Tens of thousands of T'au soldiers, along with their Battlesuits that had yet to deploy, were reduced to ash in that instant.
Farsight realized at once that fighting a war of attrition in the void against these human lunatics, who feared neither death nor the cost, was nothing short of suicide!
"Retreat!" Farsight almost cracked his teeth with how hard he clenched them. "All forces, retreat! Relinquish most of our control of space! Every ship that can still move, converge on Dal'yth Prime immediately! Hurry! Hurry!"
He had made an agonizingly difficult decision, but an absolutely correct one.
He would abandon this space battle, which he no longer had any hope of winning, and drag the war onto the only battlefield where he still had a chance to turn things around-the planet's surface.
He would use the planet's formidable city shields, its complex urban and jungle terrain, and its endless local supplies to turn this war into a bloody, filthy, never-ending quagmire.
Farsight's orders spread across the chaotic battlefield through emergency channels. As though granted a reprieve, the