This battle report is for the Last Signal campaign, played in coop with a split Interdictors squad.
Last Signal - Operation 2
After completing Operation 1 with no injuries and a full score (12 MP), the Void Raptors moved on to Verath III.
The signal hadn't originated at Kethara Station, it had only passed through. Before that, it had touched a relay buried in the mining colony that stopped reporting decades ago, once the Swarm made planetfall. The colony was listed as a total loss. No recovery operation was ever mounted.
We went anyway. Those are the orders.
Mission 2.1 - Planetfall
The excavation basin was larger than the maps suggested, and the Hunter Killers knew it better than we did. The objective: locate the colony's communication hub by activating three relay nodes scattered across open ground, while simultaneously destroying a trio of hardened spawn targets that kept regenerating HIT at the end of every turn.
The first attempt ended in a total party kill. The Killers came in from three angles and we didn't handle their flanking speed well. No objectives completed, no extraction. So we just tried again.
The second attempt went differently. Andronicos held elevation and made the Killers pay every time they broke cover. Decaeta's grenade cleared an anchor cluster that would have buried Castius before he could reach the second node. Sgt Toland pushed the perimeter hard enough that we finished the activation objective before the spawn pressure became unmanageable.
All objectives completed. 8 MP earned. Two injuries on the squad, the cost of learning what Verath III was going to ask of us.
Mission 2.1 setup.
Mission 2.2 - The Consumed City
We found the hub intact. The Swarm had no reason to destroy it, and that small mercy was the only one Verath III had left to offer. Getting the dead systems live long enough to pull the transmission record meant holding a perimeter in the middle of the devastated city with Hunter Killers closing from every direction.
The deployment was brutal: encircled, NPCs at all four diagonal anchors. The objective structure made it worse: we had to hold two control markers for two consecutive turns while simultaneously activating a special objective that couldn't even be attempted until we controlled the northern anchor first. The sequencing mattered.
The squad pulled through. Two more injuries. All objectives completed, another 8 MP on the board.
The Squad positions itself to try to eliminate the enemy early in the mission.
Mission 2.3 - Ghost Signal
Disaster. Fiasco. Debacle.
The systems were live. The transmission record was in there, fragmented but readable. And now every Hunter Killer that had been pacing the basin since we made planetfall knew exactly where we were.
Pull the data and get out. That was the mission. It did not go that way.
The Killers hit fast and hit everything. One by one the squad went down. Decaeta. Andronicos. Castius. Corvius. Sgt Toland held on to the bitter end.
He fought. It wasn't enough.
Total party kill. No extraction, no objectives. 2 MP for finishing the mission.
Castius contending with a Killer and a Spinecoil while nursing a broken arm. He fought valiantly, but did not survive the encounter.
Homebase
The Void Raptors come out of Verath III with 18 MP, four injured units, and the knowledge that the signal didn't start here either. It came from coordinates that don't appear on any current chart.
Exclusion Zone Kael brings Relict Wardens at Threat Level 3. Patient, overwhelming, holding something they have been dying to protect for longer than the Hegemony has existed. The capital ship's medic station will help, but whether 18 MP in Spoils is enough to face what's waiting at those coordinates is a different question.
It will have to be enough. There is nowhere else to go.