Having finished speaking, Axion terminated the communication. The War-Raven before Vashur fluttered its wings again, circling the hall.
It finally settled upon the head of a Servo-Skull, where it came to rest.
The War-Raven, though constructed of lightweight alloys, still possessed a measurable mass. This forced the Servo-Skull to increase its propulsion power to maintain flotation.
Vashur gestured curiously, indicating for the Servo-Skull to float closer to him.
The War-Raven did not depart, remaining perched upon it like a metallic statue.
Vashur meticulously scrutinized the bio-mimicking automaton, his lips murmuring praises to the Machine God.
"A truly exquisite piece of mechanical artistry. If I could disassemble it for detailed study, my mechanical prowess would surely advance even further."
Although Vashur spoke of disassembly, he knew he could not act on it immediately.
After all, Axion had explicitly stated that Vashur must take the War-Raven with him to gain the access authority.
Setting aside the question of whether the data privileges would survive disassembly, Vashur was not even certain he could reassemble it.
The design and manufacturing style of these machines were fundamentally different from the Imperium and the modern Adeptus Mechanicus; they were finer, more precise, and far more efficient.
Coupled with the metal material that stubbornly registered as an unknown composition during scans, and the intelligent network constructed by the machine-mind, these devices were likely far more sensitive than even the treasured combat automata held by the Imperium or the Mechanicus.
Vashur even recalled the sacred relics he had brought with him to this planet.
They were two ancient weapons that had been scrutinized by the Mechanicus and were not considered highly potent, two weapon components clearly salvaged from the same machine. They were reputed to possess the destructive power to obliterate a Chimera main battle tank in a single shot, though Vashur had never actually used them.
It was evident that the technological data for these two items had been thoroughly deciphered and they had been relegated to obsolete prototype gear, or they would never have fallen into Vashur's hands.
Yet, even so, Vashur had meticulously disassembled and studied the weapons, learning a significant amount about energy augmentation and focus.
Vashur could only imagine the sheer scale of the Iron Men fleet that Axion had spoken of—the mechanical designs and operational modes must have been a wondrous sight to behold.
Taking the Servo-Skull with him, Vashur walked to the hall's terrace, gazing at the colossal gun battery soaring into the sky nearby, a strange laugh escaping his lips once more.
"Now, I too possess my own ancient relic! Even if I only have usage rights, it does not prevent me from studying the technology without disassembly. Truly a blessing of the Omnissiah!"
Axion, naturally, had no idea what complications his simple grant of authority might cause. To him, these constructs of his own era were nothing remarkable; their technology, relative to the current age, should have been obsolete and 'backward.'
After all, the historical data and developmental records of the Golden Age and the subsequent so-called Dark Age of Technology were conspicuously absent from the book Vashur had provided.
The book contained no technical descriptions whatsoever, only long passages detailing the progress of the Imperium's development and various chaotic war stories.
The bizarre technological nomenclature further complicated Axion's understanding of what advances they represented.
If Axion could witness these technologies firsthand, he would likely be rendered speechless to the point of wanting to detach his own mechanical head and kick it like a ball.
The actual technological meaning behind those peculiar names was thousands of years more archaic than even the period in which Axion was constructed during the Golden Age.
They were genuinely primitive.
Fortunately, Axion was unaware of all this, and currently lacked the means to find out.
Presently, Axion was walking around the Oberon-class Battleship, grappling with a problem: the vessel's energy source appeared incompatible with his own needs.
The massive warship was powered by a Fusion Reactor, a product of nuclear energy. Axion's own energy core, however, required Quantum Energy replenishment.
In the Iron Men's Golden Age, Quantum Energy was fully ubiquitous; it was more efficient and could be transmitted remotely, even across vast distances, via quantum channels.
In the Iron Men fleet, the Mothership served as a remote super-energy transmission hub.
All their fighters and military units could draw unlimited remote energy.
The majority of their onboard craft did not even possess an internal energy system, relying entirely on the Mothership's remote charging technology.
Axion, too, would normally have a matching integrated Mothership to house his central intelligence module. However, considering his need for mobility and on-site command capability, he was additionally equipped with independent energy storage.
This design was intended to allow Axion to detach from a vessel or mobile command fortress in an emergency and transfer into other backup carrier devices to continue his mission.
His seemingly indestructible chassis, the Particle Oscillation Field, the short-range warp jump, and his minimal combat gear—all of these were designed to provide Axion with self-preservation and escape capabilities, not to engage in combat personally.
If the fighting between the Mechanicus Skitarii and the Plague Marines had not led Axion to assess the threat as low to negligible, he would never have risked stepping onto the battlefield himself.
While his maintenance centre was largely destroyed and his warehouse contained only machine parts in severe disrepair, Axion, possessing extensive template data, was still capable of reassembling some combat automata to assist him.
However, the combat assessment led Axion to abandon this idea; the enemy was too weak to warrant the time spent on reconstruction.
Crucially, the pervasive, severe Warp threat that dominated this universe posed virtually no danger to Axion, the soulless machine-mind, especially after Khorne's clumsy and shallow Warp-code infiltration failed, and Axion completed his programmatic evolution by establishing a new data isolation wall.
The minimal electronic corruption was completely screened out.
"Thien, does this vessel possess a mechanical fabrication centre or a maintenance bay?"
Thien, who had been accompanying Axion on his wanderings around the ship, suddenly paused at Axion's question.
"To maintain the ship's own state and for emergency repairs when not in port, is it not common to have a maintenance bay?"
"Excellent. Take me to the maintenance bay. I need to fabricate some components to resolve my energy replenishment issue."
Thien was not skilled in mechanical design or fabrication; that was the purview of the Techmarines. To ensure this destabilizing element did not cause any further trouble, Thien had mandated that at least one battle-brother always accompany the mobile ancient construct.
During the other warriors' routine training, Thien personally took on the task of surveillance to preempt any potential 'threats' emanating from Axion.
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