Operation Vral'y'he

Operation Vral'y'he ( Gai'kal Dialect : i/vɾæl.ʌʔhiː/, Galactic Standard Tau Lexicon : /vrɑːl.jʌʔhiː/) was a conflict between the Tau Empire and an offshoot fleet of an unidentified, entirely organic xenos species which would later be identified as the Tyranid race, or in Tau lexicon, the Y'he.

Regionally, Tyranids were believed first be encountered by an air caste orbital station near a far-flung Sho'kara roughly three light years northeast of the future theatre of the operation, Gai'kal, in the year 701.M41, notably occuring hundreds of years before the true force of the Tranid threat was ever realised. A considerably derelict post inhabited by barely fifty to eighty air caste officials on duty at any one time, the fleet struck the orbital station so ruthlessly that no radio signals or escapes of any kind managed follow through. It has been assumed in subsequent reports that all radio signals were absorbed by the fleet's multi-spectrum jamming capabilities, potentially evolved through combat in innumerable other galaxies beyond the rim of the Milky Way.

It wasn't until a change of monthly shifts and the arrival of a craft full of twenty replacement Kor'la was the ruined wreckage of the once functional Tau outpost discovered. With evidence stitched together from whatever CCTV footage and other data records found that remained functional, it was gathered that the invading species was an vastly numerous, almost vampiric organism, invading life forms for the sole purpose of reclaiming all biomass by means of aggressively hunting down and killing its prey via a variety of specialised combat organisms, followed by a equally devastating mass digestion through swarms tiny, worm-like organisms.

Assumed by Tau commanders and scientists within the locale to be a small and rare - but nevertheless deadly - xenos organism, a prototypical operation specialised for the purpose was orchestrated on the three nearest inhabited planetary bodies, in an effort to lure and destroy a the fleet. Of the triad of worlds, the Gai'kal system was colonised by a joint operation between the Tash'var and Hwo'kye Septs. Initially operating as a life-rich world hung before the approaching fleet as little but bait for a cast trap, the world would soon become the theatre of a vast war of attrition at the hands of an inimical miscalculation.

Confident in its strength, and perhaps ignorant in the alien strength and adaptability of the Y'he, Hwo'kye had devoted a wealth of Kor'vattra fleets to flank the approaching tyranid spacecraft within several fractional solar units, accompanied by a planetbound ground force of almost nine hundred thousand Fire Warriors with associated crafts and weaponry. This force was combined with a sizeable deployment of Earth caste engineers assigned in the repair of weapons, battlesuits, and vehicles, and to assemble run'al and cadre fortifications.

Having been deployed far later than anticipated due to delayed interstellar transit, the teams of Nicassar psykers employed by the Tau forces to detect the size and direction of the splinter fleet found it incredibly difficult to make such predictions. By the time psychic beacons of a strong enough volume were constructed with what limited aid deployed Earth caste engineers could provide, the psychic shadow of Erebus had descended upon the world. A backdrop of terror in the face of such irrefutable and narrowly favourable statistics struck the coalition command, halted only from rampant spread throughout the entire force by rigid information containment in all mediums, and partially through the cooling words, seemingly vehement in their objectivity and logic to leading factions, of leading Ethereal caste clerics to the very commanders themselves.

When the fleet finally hit in full force, the twin-sept army was prepared for a fight unto death, as a rigid but knowingly temporary shield guarding the Tau worlds that lay beyond it. The battle consumed the world in a swarm of black amidst flecks of ice blue and yellow, a sight akin to an spectral fire committing vampirism upon the world's biomass. Within two months of ceaseless warfare, a tide of bloodshed, and constant ramshackle regroupings, re-diversion of supply lines and reassertion of strategic high grounds in defiance of an infinite re-breaking of fortified lines, the tau force sustained 1.4 million casualties on the ground and over 3/4 of its Air Caste orbital fleet before the numbers of Tyranids managed to wither to a point where it saw it unsustainable to battle much longer for what fractional biomass remained, initiating a tactical retreat and exiting the system upon what few hive ships remained.