FicFan.org

It seemed that cooperation between Eldar and Tau were a little less strained than that between human and xenos, and in the eve of battle the hesitant allies were starting to gain some ground.

Unity, it seemed, was a journey made upon a river of blood.

Sitting down at the edges of the graveyard, I watched a group of mixed engineers with interest. A bonesinger and a helmetless Warp Spider conversed with each other, tinkering with a Frisbee of Doom – that is, a Tau Gun Drone – as they were given the run down with a blue-armored Tau Fire Warrior; probably a combat engineer or something similar.

The top plate – the only thing Drones could consider anything like armor – had been melted, the layers of armor burned away by the miniaturized sun.

Something round was being produced by the two Eldar, and soon the Warp Spider reached across, picked the newly made armored dome up, and set it on top of the Tau Gun Drone.

Nodding, the Fire Warrior reached underneath the Frisbee, and seemed to play with a few switches. A few moments later, and he stepped back. A thumb was applied to a button. Nothing happened. The Drone was then upended, and the three worked furiously at the circuitry.

There were a few sniggers from the tech-adepts off to the work-group's left. They were clearly enjoying the frustration of the xenos, and took little effort to hide their amusement. Chuckling over, they returned to their work and went about tinkering with the Chimera, carefully threading each link in the tracks together to replace the one that had been salvaged from the disabled APC's hull.

However, one was still staring. A red robed tech-adept pushed past his fellow cogboys, limping slightly as his charred robes billowed about in the wake of a passing Devilfish's engines. He strode out, uncaring of the questions that were thrown at him from the other machine-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus as he joined them.

Two seconds later, a boot was swung back and then forth, connecting with the FoD with a sharp clang, and the Drone was hurled into the sky, propelled initially by the force of the impact, and then – with a sputter and a cough - by a jet of blue ionized gases as the drive engines kicked in.

Bewildered and bemused, the three aliens turned to the smug human.

"I do wonder, mon-keigh, is how are you able to simply hit the thing and make it work?" Asked one of the Eldar.

"It may take two seconds to learn how to hit a machine, xenos, but it takes two decades to learn where to hit a machine." Smugly answered the Tech-Adept.

There was a laugh from the more light hearted Tau engineers. "Oh really?"

"Yeah, really." Grinned the Techpriest of Mars. "I can assure you of that."

Smiling, I left the group of technicians to their work.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5474237/26/