Kairas walked over to the command station and began programming the generator's overload sequence.
His fingers danced across the control panel, entering strings of complex code. Red warnings appeared on the screen, stating, "The reactor will enter an irreversible overload state once the sequence is initiated."
"Set the countdown to ten minutes," Kairas murmured to himself. "That should give those humans enough time to reach the core area."
He entered the final line of code, but did not press the confirmation key.
That would have to wait for the right moment.
Saul led the Space Marines like a blade thrust into the heart of the T'au defenses.
Resistance along the way was fierce, but under the Astartes' assault, the defensive lines were torn open one after another. The Fire Warriors launched countless countercharges, and Kroot auxiliaries surged forward like a tide.
But none of it could stop the Imperium's advance.
The Space Marines had paid a price. Of the three hundred who had set out, only two hundred and ten remained fit to fight. Nearly a third of their battle-brothers now lay forever in the soil of this alien world.
But their sacrifice had been worthwhile.
Imperial forces had fought their way into the core area of the Mountain Fortress. The enormous Shield Generator stood before them, its energy projection tower rising hundreds of meters and radiating blue light into the sky.
Saul stood on the wreckage of a destroyed gun emplacement, gazing at the generator.
He could feel the immense fluctuations of energy emanating from it. A massive reactor was operating at extremely high efficiency, supplying power to the entire shield network.
"Destroy it, and we'll open a fatal gap in the planet's entire shield system," Saul told the company captain beside him.
The company captain was a veteran