Following the battle of Aurelis, the long-silent astropathic channels finally received a response from the Imperial Theater Command. It was common for Imperial worlds to fall out of contact; Tyranid incursions always brought the "Shadow in the Warp." However, this was the first time Leontus had learned that in just one month of silence, an entire Imperial fleet of over fifty warships had been utterly annihilated.
The details of the battle on the planet were even more shocking. From the combat logs and pict-feeds, Leontus immediately recognized the mechanical aesthetic of the Iron Man army. The only problem was the sheer number of units; they far exceeded previous estimates. According to Axion's last report, his forces had sustained nearly 50% casualties. Yet, upon reappearance, his numbers had not only grown but now included entirely new classes of automata and warships.
None knew where these machines had spent their month-long absence. The Imperial intelligence apparatus was blind.
Neither Guilliman, the Custodes, nor the Inquisition had abandoned the idea of monitoring these ancient relics, given the potential threat of a catastrophic malfunction. Yet the task was proving impossible.
On a standard Imperial vessel, be it Navy or merchant, it was normal to have tens or hundreds of thousands of crew. Planting a spy to relay information was simple. The Inquisition had perfected this; often, a single coded command was enough to turn a crewman into an informant.
This method was useless against the Iron Men. Every unit under Axion's command was suspected to be a sub-extension of the ancient automaton himself, exhibiting individual consciousness only when separated by a significant distance. The few Erratana-class Armored Wardens left on Belisarius Cawl's Ark had displayed distinct personalities and independent agency, with intelligence comparable to a mortal. Cawl had attempted data-interchange and hacking protocols on them, but the machines proved highly adept at identifying unauthorized intrusions and had even issued a stern warning to the Archmagos himself.
Furthermore, there were no biological entities aboard the Iron Man ships. Analysis of the starport Axion had constructed suggested that his gargantuan vessels likely lacked life-support systems entirely. Even if a spy could bypass the omnipresent internal sensors, they could not survive the environment.
The Inquisition was at a dead end. Moreover, the two factions used fundamentally different communication protocols, making it nearly impossible for the Imperium to track the fleet's location. Aside from the massive quantum communication array aboard the Dawn of Fire, there was no way to contact the machines once they departed. To this day, Tech-Priests were still obsessing over that quantum device, which seemed to ignore the constraints of distance and Warp-latency.
While the Priests were forbidden by Guilliman from dismantling the device, its allure to the Adeptus Mechanicus was intoxicating. Axion's existence was no longer a secret within the Priesthood. Under the watchful eyes of Cawl and the Lord Regent, the Mechanicus was forced to restrain itself officially, but any technological scrap that slipped from the Iron Man's grasp immediately sparked a frenzy of greed.
Had it not been for ancient treaties with the Emperor, the fear of "Abominable Intelligence," and the internal obstruction of traditionalist factions, many Magi would have already attempted to "salvage" these machines on the battlefield. Direct force was not yet an option; the fate of the Dark Mechanicum served as a grim reminder of the cost of such hubris. The Legio Cybernetica was ill-suited for a strike against the Iron Men, and the flesh-and-blood Skitarii were demonstrably less resilient than the Tyranid swarms the machines were currently butchering.
The fact that Axion could come and go as he pleased on Cawl's own Ark suggested that controlling him through technical means was a fantasy. No one believed Cawl hadn't tried to hack the guest, and the fact that the Iron Man remained unaffected suggested such tactics were futile. No one dared question the capability of Archmagos Cawl.
Leontus could only wait for the Iron Man to reappear. The stalemate across the Segmentum Pacificus remained unbroken.
Meanwhile, Axion's fleet, having vanished into the Warp once more, was in a place no Imperial could fathom.
As the Warp-veil was torn open again, a string of silver ships transitioned back into realspace. The inefficiency of repeated, short-range Warp jumps was beginning to vex Axion. He wondered if he should ask Guilliman for a few Navigators. Since experiencing the efficiency of a Navigator-guided long-range jump aboard an Imperial ship, his current "hop-and-stop" method felt primitive.
As Axion cross-referenced his navigation modules with star charts to find a way to optimize his travel, his logic core began to register a series of anomalies. The chronometers recorded a total Warp transit time of forty-six minutes, yet his current coordinates were multiple factors beyond his intended distance. According to the charts, he should have been deep in the Imperial rear.
The fleet began to come about, adjusting course for another jump, when Axion was struck by the sheer impossibility of the sensor feed.
What is that gargantuan appendage?
Before he could process the origin of the massive biological structure, a Tyranid swarm materialized around it. Even the normally colossal Hive Ships looked like minnows next to the sprawling "tentacle" in the distance.
Combat was joined almost instantly. Heavy Combat Drones poured from the hangars, and the void was soon choked with particle streams, neutron beams, and plasma fire. The assault cruisers pushed their engines to the redline, with the transports following close behind.
Axion did not yet understand the nature of the macro-tentacle, but its sheer scale suggested a perfect site for a forced landing.
As he adjusted his visual sensors and processed the bio-feedback, the true nature of the structure was revealed. It was a collective organism thousands of kilometers in length—a twisting, serpentine bio-construct that resembled a gargantuan Terran squid.
The sheer intensity of the biological signatures emanating from the entity was so great that Axion's processors briefly flagged the data as a sensor malfunction.