The audit concluded swiftly. When the machine asked if Wayne wished to inspect the other eight sites, the Inquisitor declined without hesitation. He had seen enough.
A transport craft descended from the Black Ship in orbit, carrying Wayne and his four Stormtroopers back to the stars. The automata at the starport loaded the remaining Hazard Environment Suits and the team's original gear onto the vessel as a final "gift."
Three days later, the audit results were finalized in the Imperial records.
…
Planet: Vorchad III
Tithe Grade: Exactis Prima
Status: No Planetary Governor. No resident population. Imperial administrative presence withdrawn. All tithes paid in refined mineral materials.
Ruling: Following a one-time total extraction of resources, the planet is designated as a Penal Colony/Wasteland.
Collection Rate: 100%.
…
A tithe fleet already en route received redirected orders. They were to be reinforced by five additional transport fleets to descend upon Vorchad III and hollow out the stockpiles.
While the Imperium busied itself with the harvest, Axion was focused on a different sphere, a warehouse world that resembled a planet made of solid metal.
This world sat near the edge of the galaxy in the Segmentum Pacificus. The surrounding systems had been scoured clean by the Great Devourer, but this planet remained untouched. It had once been a barren rock, but two millennia ago, its flat geography led the Adeptus Terra to designate it as a strategic depot.
It was chosen for its proximity to numerous mining worlds. The planet was now a tomb of accumulated wealth: rare minerals, heavy machinery, weapon caches, and millions of crates of munitions, all stored in gargantuan warehouses across its ochre surface.
Axion's prize was not just the minerals, but the technology.
This was a lost zone. The garrison had been evacuated during the early stages of the Tyranid invasion. Whether they survived or had become biomass was irrelevant. The commander of the evacuation had known that Tyranids hunt via biological signatures; if a world held no biomass, the swarm would likely pass it by. Before activating the automated defense grids and fleeing, the garrison had stripped the world of every scrap of food.
If they survived, they would be heroes who saved the Emperor's tithes. If not, the resources would remain hidden in the dark.
The Great Devourer's fleets had indeed passed by. After tasting the sting of the automated defense batteries and detecting no "meat" to justify the expenditure of spores, the Hive Mind chose to bypass the rock.
Axion guided his fleet toward the planet, his processors easily overriding the ancient Imperial defense codes. In his logic, if the Imperium could not defend its territory, it was lost; his arrival was merely a "recovery" of assets.
Once the data-intrusion was complete, Axion sent an override signal that overloaded every Imperial servitor on the planet, purging the Imperial systems to make room for his own.
He was satisfied with the outcome on Vorchad III. He had fulfilled his part of the mandate given by Roboute Guilliman. The Primarch demanded the planet remain productive; Axion had simply extracted a century's worth of production in a single stroke and handed it over.
Now, he needed to manufacture the legions required to assist the Imperial front lines and break the Tyranid advance. This would fulfill his "military contribution" quota.
The transport ship's cargo bays detached once more. These modules, once filled with soldiers, were now packed with automata and manufacturing rigs.
As the modules grounded, the Sapient Machine Automata set to work. Processing facilities were erected in the gaps between the massive warehouses. The warehouses' own power grids were diverted to fuel the industrial expansion.
As the first warehouse doors groaned open, Axion felt a flicker of what a human might call excitement. The minerals stored here as tithes were the rarest essences of the surrounding systems. As for common metals, he could simply smelt the mountains of standard-issue Imperial gear stored in the depots.
On the edge of the galaxy, a feverish production cycle began. The Shadow in the Warp, that soul-crushing psychic weight of the Great Devourer, had no effect on these soulless Iron Men. To the entities of the Warp, they were simply... null.
In this blind spot of the galaxy, the most terrifying blade was being forged.
Under the labor of over a hundred thousand automata and Eight-Legs, the warehouse world transformed daily. Raw materials were melted, refined, and fed into fabricators.
Axion also began the construction of new void-craft. Although the loss of the Executor Heavy Tanks and their nanite swarms meant he could no longer replicate anti-matter cores, the quantum cores for Strike Cruisers remained within his manufacturing capability.
Recognizing the devastating efficiency of Relativistic Particle Projectors against the swarm, he commissioned several specialized cruiser variants. To ensure he was never caught unprepared again, he outfitted these cruisers with massive hangars filled with Heavy Combat Drones.
The quality of the ground forces was being elevated to a terrifying new standard.