Report Received, Reply Begins:

Aun'El Dalyth Rakithia to Shas'O Dalyth Lorossa,

Shas'O:

I have read your reports of the efforts at attrition of invading forces along the Hub-Gel'bryn corridor, and I find myself highly displeased. Your reports speak of a few la'rua of Gue'vesa Marines and their primitive vehicles destroyed, while you have allowed a unit of Finishers to teleport and join with the invasion force, and a heavily armored Earth Marauder to escape your grasp with its troop intact.

I tell you I have not heard of such difficulties from the other Shas'O in this Tio've, and I will not hear of them from you a third time. Your idiosyncratic Crisis Suit arrangements will be brought more into line with orthodox Fire Knife configuration at once. Further, your habit of restraint in the face of invaders will cease, likewise at once.

I have reviewed your accounts of the injuries to the Steadyfoot la'rua, and the rumors they passed along to you of incursions into city ruins. I have had civilians evacuated from the cities you have mentioned, after confirming via orbital surveillance that these areas are indeed at risk of enemy penetration. You will proceed to the northernmost of these cities at once, and arrange to make any attempts at occupying those ruins as painful and ruinous to the invader as possible.

Your Shaper, Proj Nar Gel'bryn, informs me as well that other Kinbands have told him of Ork presence in system, and of their trailing a raiding band along a corridor west of your position. Our Hunters from Pech have a longstanding hatred of the Orks, for which reason I am ordering you to seed your forces heavily with them. I am also dispatching a Por'ui to seek out this "second faction" Marine group you have mentioned to me. If the smaller faction can be allied with us briefly, we may be able to turn these invaders one upon the other, and so obviate an expensive evacuation and recolonization.

Do not fail me again. Neither of us wishes me to be forced to enter the battlefield and to relieve you of command in the presence of my troops.

Rakithia out.

(Something I missed last night-- Melta Weapons are AP1, so that any Glancing Hit is a Penetrating Hit, forcing debarkation of passengers. This would made one damage roll on the Land Raider with tacsquad and Chaplain a "Vehicle Destroyed" instead of "Weapon Destroyed", giving me the game. Oh, well, I snoozed, I losed.)