The crew of the Tau craft intended to take their findings back to the Tau High Command, hoping they could make sense of the readings, but they never returned to Prefectia, nor any other Tau holding. When an Imperial vessel translated from the Empyrean a few days later, a Tau scouting vessel was close enough to take swathes of new and disturbing data from the roiling anomaly still fading around the much larger Imperial vessel. Seeking to learn of the human fleet's ability to burst from nothingness into reality, Shadowsun called up all instances of such sudden appearances and found a correlation - they tended to appear in certain locations on the fringes of the Dovar System, far away from any celestial bodies. On Prefectia's slow-moving moon, Galacrastus, the Tau massed reinforcements inbound from Mu'gulath Bay - though they took pains to keep to the planetoid's dark side in order to evade detection. This too was marked by Shadowsun's patient genius. Whilst Tau and Space Marines matched wits upon Prefectia's surface, a wider battle unfolded in the heavens. In the space of six short decs, every living thing in the complex, barring Swiftflame, had been slain. Swiftflame's breath came in ragged gasps as he scanned around. The Space Marine struggled upright, slashing a dust-caked Breacher's head from his neck just as the Commander blew the Imperial warrior to pieces. The bright blue-white of pulse energy lit the crumbling bastion as he rejoined the fight, his battlesuit taking a quadruple stab wound to the thigh even as he backhanded another clawed assailant into the wall.
The Commander's blacksun filter neutralised the dust's obscuring effects as he fell backwards into a nearby alley, the beam of his fusion blaster catching a Space Marine in mid-leap and cutting him in two at the waist. Three night-black Space Marines rode the wreckage down to slash crackling talons through Swiftflame's Breachers. There was a crash, and the rockcrete ceiling gave way in a cloud of dust. In the face of the Breacher Team's pulse blasters, however, even Humanity's super-warriors came apart like burst sacks of meat. These warriors were formidable indeed they were the first enemy troops the Tau had encountered capable of striding through pulse rifle fire without harm. The shots painted the Commander's battlesuit with Imperial blood. Swiftflame's cyclic ion blaster tore away half of the Space Marine's torso just as one of the Breachers discharged his own weapon into the warrior's helm. Their expertise made them all but impossible to track, let alone to drive out of their defences. In response, the Raven Guard made a masterful use of the cover afforded by the ruined bastion complex. Accompanying them was the blinding energy discharge of a new and unseen assailant that could blast a Space Marine into little more than a cloud of superheated vapour.
Each shimmering mirage seen in the ruined bastion complexes was a precursor to a terrifying barrage of pulse weapon fire. Appalled, Swiftflame sent in his Stealth Teams. Mid-leap, they triggered the krak charges they had seeded throughout the Lawhall, and collapsed the entire structure upon their would-be killers. As the Pathfinders opened fire, the Space Marines leapt from their vantage points - heavy weapons and all - to an adjacent building's roof. Their orders were to neutralise the Tactical and Devastator squads raining death into the advancing Tau from its wide rooftop.
As his cadre made haste into the bastion network girdling the great hive, Swiftflame's Pathfinders infiltrated the Lawhall Atlassi.
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