The passage of the massive machine fleet through the Nachmund Gauntlet was eerily uneventful. The Chaos wolf-packs, warp-entities, and traitor warbands that habitually preyed upon Imperial shipping were nowhere to be seen. The fleet's sheer displacement intimidated any foe possessed of a functional mind, while those driven by mindless instinct felt no pull toward vessels entirely devoid of soul-presence.
The expanse south of Segmentum Obscurus was staggering in its scale. Axion placed little faith in the Imperial archival data, noting that between two separate scans, even the directory dates had shifted due to administrative entropy. Nevertheless, most toponyms remained traceable; despite the corrupted timestamps and erratic coordinates, the linguistically labeled designations remained largely consistent with reality.
The great armada splintered into over a dozen task forces, each comprised of twenty to thirty vessels, dispersing to conduct a systematic sweep of the Segmentum. Their objective was singular: locate the Aeldari or the Necrons. Since the two species were currently engaged in mutual slaughter, Axion calculated that he need only intercede in an active theater to secure a significant haul of captives. As for the xenos of the Necron Dynasties, they could be prioritized later.
After nearly half a month of rigorous searching, cross-referencing every site associated with Aeldari or Necron activity in the archives, the fleet finally identified its quarry.
Deep in the south of Segmentum Obscurus, clinging to the jagged precipice of the Great Rift and bordering the Segmentum Ultima, a lone, pyramidal reconnaissance craft lurked at the edge of an unnamed star system, observing a void-war in progress.
An Aeldari fleet, centered around fifteen Phoenix-class Battlecruisers and thirty Flame of Asuryan-class Cruisers, totaling one hundred and forty-seven hulls, was locked in a desperate melee with a Necron flotilla. The Necron force, consisting of two Cairn-class Tomb Ships and ten Scourge-class Light Cruisers among its fifty-three vessels, appeared to be engaging the Aeldari with nothing more than detached indifference.
Imotekh the Stormlord held these foolish Aeldari in utter contempt. The vast bulk of the Sautekh Dynasty's legions were nowhere near this sector. Yet, the Aeldari refused to break contact, fighting with a suicidal tenacity despite their mounting losses. For the Stormlord's subordinates, these self-immolating xenos were a mere distraction.
The true nemesis was Szarekh, the Silent King.
Szarekh had dispatched his most infamous Crypteks into the Segmentum Ultima, seeking to secure the allegiance of the Nihilakh Dynasty. This was an encroachment Imotekh could not suffer. He had diverted significant resources specifically to sabotage Szarekh's grand design. To Imotekh, there was no evolution superior to the cold perfection of the necrodermis; Szarekh was a fool for dreaming of extinguishing all souls to reclaim biological forms, potentially subjecting the Necrontyr once more to the shadow of mortality.
It was an act of utter idiocy. Imotekh adhered to the Triarchal codes established before the War in Heaven. But Szarekh, that traitor and iconoclast! How dared he abandon his people following the Great Biotransference, only to return with such fanfare, bearing a plan that spat in the face of tradition? Imotekh found everything the Silent King championed to be utterly abhorrent.
Axion did not care that the Aeldari were only holding their ground because the Stormlord considered them beneath his notice. Even if the Iron Man had known, it would not have stayed his hand.
In the void, emerald beams of gauss energy and anti-matter streams interlaced with the violet-blue splinter-gems of the Aeldari. Phase shields effortlessly swatted aside the Aeldari volleys, while the xenos ships relied on their preternatural agility to dance between the beams. To be struck by a concentrated gauss volley was to court finality; the beams would shatter the Spirit Stones, leaving the dead Aeldari to be swallowed by the Warp and eternally enslaved by the Dark Prince.
The combatants' attention was momentarily diverted by the violent birth of a massive warp rift above the theater. Neither side ceased fire. The Necrons, equipped with inertialess drives, moved at FTL speeds within realspace and had no need for the Sea of Souls. The Aeldari utilized the Webway; had reinforcements arrived, they would have emerged from a rearward portal, not the Warp.
Regardless of the newcomer's identity, neither Necron nor Aeldari feared a challenge.
Then, the colossal Titan's Spear punched through the veil of the Warp, followed by the looming silhouettes of the machine fleet. The reconnaissance craft that had been lurking nearby silently rejoined the formation, merging into a scarred Strike Cruiser like a drop of water returning to a stream.
The search area had been vast. To maximize efficiency after the fleet dispersed, Axion had commanded the nanite mother-machines to deconstruct and reconfigure the vessels. Strike Cruisers were highly modular; with slight structural recalibration, a single cruiser could be rendered down into twenty reconnaissance ships. These smaller vessels carried the same railgun armament as the cruisers; though few in number, the firepower was more than sufficient for self-defense.
As reconnaissance ships, they were... exceptional. Their total electromagnetic cloaking systems and universal battlefield-shrouding modules allowed their kilometer-long hulls to maintain optical invisibility while bypassing most sensor arrays. Conveniently, their quantum communication systems operated outside the detectable electromagnetic spectrum.
The Necron commander, a vassal of the Stormlord, had never encountered the constructs of the Federation's Iron Men. These gargantuan mechanical vessels were alien to him. During the height of the Federation, most Necron Dynasties were still in their long hibernation. Some minor dynasties had been unceremoniously erased, along with their planets and the local space-time, by the Federation before they could even stir. As for Trazyn the Infinite, who had been active in the galaxy for aeons, he was not the type to share his observations of the "interim" years with his rivals.
Silence fell over the battlefield. Both Aeldari and Necron struggled to identify the allegiance of this third party.
Before the Necron commander could formulate a conclusion, the machine fleet opened fire.
A rain of light cascaded from the zenith of the battlefield. The Titan's Spear alone unleashed a higher volume of fire than the entire fleet behind it. Thick columns of energy from Fragmentation Cannons and Nova Cannons blanketed the Necron flotilla.
The battlefield reignited in an instant. Titanic beams of light swept across the void. The shields of the Titan's Spear weathered the incoming fire with ease; any stray shots were absorbed by the escorting vessels' shielding.
Heavy Strike Cruisers began a sudden, violent acceleration. Their target: the Aeldari.
The prow lances flared. The massive hulls, trailing plumes of light, slammed into the rear of the Aeldari formations. Like a thousand falling blades shearing the tails off fish, the Aeldari ships were systematically crippled, their propulsion systems severed.
Axion watched with cold satisfaction as the Aeldari vessels were reduced to drifting "fillets." Ten thousand years had passed, yet the structural design of these eldar ships had remained entirely stagnant.
On the Necron side, there was only bewilderment. The concentrated fire from the gargantuan flagship and the overwhelming fleet behind it had effectively turned space itself into a wall of light. Evasion was a fantasy. Even with inertialess drives, acceleration required a heartbeat, and FTL transit required preparation, but the enemy's attack was already upon them.
Three massive Tomb Ships pulled a hard about-face, maneuvering in a way that defied every law of physics, and began an immediate retreat. Activating FTL drives without pre-heating risked catastrophic damage, but they no longer had the luxury of caution.
The remaining Necron vessels were simply erased. Phase shields struggled briefly against the onslaught, but the incoming firepower was grotesque. Once the shields overloaded and shattered, their necrodermis hulls were powerless against weapons that matched the main batteries of a battleship, especially when those beams filled every cubic meter of the local void.