"Sir, the swarm's offensive has resumed. Our reserve fleets are at least three days away from transition."
A guardsman arrived with more news that left Lord Solar Leontus nursing a growing headache. To pursue the hive fleets and maximize their combat potential, vast numbers of Imperial ground forces had been deployed to several key worlds to establish new bridgeheads. By offloading these troops, the Navy had managed to mitigate their losses during void engagements.
However, those tens of billions of Astra Militarum and Adeptus Astartes personnel had now become a liability they could not abandon. Constant setbacks in the void war meant that the logistics and transport capacity of the theater were dwindling. On several worlds, cut-off units were already out of supplies, forced into desperate melee combat with the Tyranid swarms.
The Hive Mind held the initiative; it would grant them no window to extract these ground forces.
"My Lord! The mysterious allies have returned!"
A messenger stumbled into the command sanctum, shouting over the strategic displays to the brooding Leontus.
"Mysterious allies? Those silver ships?"
Unlike Guilliman, Leontus harbored fewer political anxieties regarding the nature of the Iron Men. To him, the crisis at hand was far more pressing. If the line broke here, the Great Devourer's next meal would be the Segmentum Solar itself.
The combat efficiency of these ancient machines had deeply impressed the Lord Solar. They were self-sustaining, required no rations, and operated with a cold, autonomous precision. Their logistical speed put the sluggish, bureaucratic machinations of the Departmento Munitorum to shame.
When reports previously indicated that these "Iron Men" had vanished into the Warp under the assault of the Leviathan tendrils, Leontus had assumed they were lost to the Warp or torn apart by its tides. Now, it appeared the "allies" Guilliman had secured were far more resilient than imagined.
…
For the ground troops and naval crews barely clinging to life on the front lines, the arrival of the Iron Men was nothing short of a divine reprieve.
Even the veterans of the Imperial Navy had never witnessed the sheer audacity of hundreds of battleships translating into realspace simultaneously. Towering above them all was the flagship, a vessel of planet-shaking proportions that jumped directly into the outer rim of the system.
Beams of dark-purple antimatter lashed out, reducing entire clusters of bio-ships to subatomic dust. The massive hull glowed like a pulsar, every pulse of light heralding the extinction of a Tyranid swarm.
Beyond mere firepower, the silver warships formed perfect, illuminated geologies in the void. With a sudden burst of blinding engine flare, they dove headlong into the bio-fleets. Like a monomolecular blade through flesh, the hulls carved the Tyranid vessels into bloody segments. The Imperial fleet, which had been battered and suppressed for months, felt a sudden, fierce surge of vindictive triumph.
As soon as the fleet cleared the Warp lanes, Axion began dispersing his forces. The common Tyranid bio-ships were of little consequence to him. Unless the massive Leviathan tendrils were decisively repelled, the swarm would remain infinite. Furthermore, the standard bio-fleets and ground swarms lacked the exotic extra-galactic minerals he craved.
To find the "high-grade ore," he had to hunt the three primary tendrils.
Axion had been processing the battle data provided by the Imperium, running a singular, complex calculation: how to sever these tendrils as efficiently as possible.
The weaponry of the Titan's Spear was undeniably powerful, strong enough to bisect tendrils the size of star systems. However, such overwhelming force often resulted in total molecular annihilation. Axion had to fine-tune the output to maximize lethality while ensuring as much of the physical biomass and mineral structure remained intact for harvesting.
While he calculated, the Iron Men fleet fanned out across the Saphiris Sector. Ten command flagships split the armada into ten sub-fleets, initiating a total offensive across the entire theater.
Astra Militarum regiments, some of whom had witnessed the Iron Men on previous battlefields, broke into cheers at the familiar sight. In recent weeks, entire regiments had been erased from the rolls. Now, the "walking iron" that many had viewed as cold and alien returned as their greatest salvation.
The shining silver forms offered the ultimate comfort to the mortal soldiers. On the ground, the tides of the chitinous swarm broke against the silver reef of the Iron Men like waves against a cliff. Destroyer-class Heavy Automata ignited Bio-Titans with concentrated fire. Vengeance-class Automata's beams swept the plains, carving through the swarms with surgical indifference. Shrike and Gargoyle swarms were reduced to grit by sonic and vibratory weaponry.
It felt surreal. For months, the war had followed a horrific script: the swarm would rush the trenches, mortals would die in the thousands under scything talons, and Lictors would assassinate Astartes and commanders within their own sanctums. The sky would be choked with acid fog and spores as Valkyries, Thunderbolts, and Stormravens were swatted from the air by the millions of winged xenos.
Now, the script was inverted.
Heavy Combat Drones utilized omni-directional plasma fire to herd Tyranid aerial units into tight clusters, only for ground-based Destroyers to erase them with a single vibratory pulse. Synapse creatures were targeted with lethal priority by Armored Wardens and Peltast Sniper Automata. Bereft of the Hive Mind's guidance, the feral swarms fell into mindless confusion.
The Automated Sentry-Troopers advanced as a cold, silver wall. Every Tyranid organism that entered their range received a systematic blade-strike to ensure its life signs were extinguished. Imperial Guardsmen cheered and followed behind their mechanical allies, pouring their remaining ammunition into the piles of xenos corpses, venting months of terror and frustration.
Upon receiving confirmation that the Iron Men had assumed control of the sector's defense, Leontus immediately ordered the Navy to prioritize resupplying the ground forces. Thousands of wounded needed medicae attention, and entire armies needed food.
Faced with the sudden "breaking of the teeth" at its dinner table, the Great Devourer turned its singular, baleful gaze back toward this troublesome theater. The Hunger in the Warp became a frenzy.
To the Hive Mind, the previous Iron Men incursions had been like pebbles in a dish, annoying, perhaps capable of chipping a tooth, but easily avoided. But with the expansion of the Iron Men fleet, those "pebbles" had become grinding millstones that were actively destroying the Hive Mind's "cutlery."
The rage of the Hunger in the Warp became absolute.
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