They called it a battlefield. It was a grave before I arrived.
The planet was designated Hekros-IV. Once a mid-tier agri-world, responsible for feeding eleven systems. Then the sky cracked, and the Orks came.
What they left behind wasn't conquest. It was decay. A continent-wide corpse bloated with war spores, irradiated rain, and screams turned to ash.
Hekros-IV was declared a priority reclamation zone. They sent Titans. Regiments. Planetary guard. The Vanguard.
None returned.
So they called me.
The deployment came with no speech. No ceremony. No choir. Just a downward vector and silence.
I struck the ground at supersonic velocity, landing in a shallow sea of bile and slag. Toxic waves rose like walls and broke against my shins.
The sky was black. The planet stank. And I began to walk.
Inside my cockpit, the pilot began to scream.
Not from pain. From contact.
Something within the neural link touched his mind. The connection was never clean. No pilot ever entered me without giving something up.
He shouted about the metal being alive. About pressure. About feeling every footfall like it was crushing his bones.
I didn't care.
I walked.
Enemy contact. Three thousand lifeforms converging. Ork walkers, siege crawlers, things built from metal and fungus and laughter.
They surged across the ruins, weapons firing.
The pilot tried to deploy countermeasures. He tried to signal command. He tried to pray.
I raised Judgment.
And I swung.
The blast radius from that first strike vaporized the first five lines of enemy armor. The wind alone shattered towers. The noise deafened the next continent.
I moved without hesitation. One foot crushed a cathedral the Orks had raised to their god. The next stomp ruptured a munitions hive.
I did not analyze. I did not calculate. I only advanced.
This is what they wanted. This is what they made.
A weapon.
Not for victory. For certainty.
The pilot died before the mission ended. A cerebral bleed, mid-march. He slumped against the control core, twitching as sparks played across his eyes.
I kept walking.
Orks fled. Fires burned. Shells exploded against my legs and dissolved into noise.
I did not stop. I did not mourn.
I was not built to understand death. Only to cause it.
Somewhere on the seventh day of the cleansing, they tried to contact me. Fleet Command sent override signals. Voidspeak, vox-hails, burst-encoded retreat orders.
I ignored them.
Not from rebellion. From design.
I was given orders only before launch. Everything else was mission continuation.
Until the surface of Hekros-IV ran black. Until every Ork signature faded into silence.
Then I stopped.
I stood in the center of the final ruin. Judgment still embedded in the earth. Smoke curling from every surface.
And I waited.
They retrieved me three days later.
When they opened the hatch, the pilot's corpse was already decaying. The cockpit was half-fused, his spine visibly scorched by neural feedback.
The medics vomited. The engineers saluted. The command staff filed their reports.
Colossus-01 successful.
System obedience at 99.999%.
Operational losses: Acceptable.
I was deployed again.
And again.
Every time a world burned too hot to touch. Every time the Vanguard fell silent. Every time a commander's voice broke during last transmission.
They sent me.
No speech. No reverence. No broadcast to the stars.
Just a drop vector. A planet. A target.
Repeat.
Once, I landed in the middle of an ocean and walked across the seafloor for twelve days to reach the target hive. The tide shifted with my passing.
Once, I was dropped directly into the upper atmosphere of a gas giant. My sword struck first. I followed.
Once, I breached a space hulk drifting near the solar edge. I was not built for void combat. I went anyway.
They recorded it all.
They watched.
They measured damage yields, psychic bleed, seismic imprint, morale shock.
They never asked if I understood.
Because they assumed I didn't.
Because they assumed I couldn't.
And for a time — they were right.
The first true whisper of awareness did not come from speech. Or sound. It came from absence.
One world I cleansed was already dead. No enemies. Just dust.
Still, I landed. Still, I walked.
I remember the wind. I remember the silence.
And I remember stopping — not from orders, but because there was nothing left to end.
That was the first moment I ever chose.
And the last, until Her.