Breaching the hull and using a boarding action style to re-enter the vessel was a choice born of utter desperation.
However, finding a suitable airlock or docking port to enter and then racing to the Bridge would take too long.
They had not prepared teleport homers; attempting a hasty, blind individual jump would risk embedding themselves directly into the hull structure, an act indistinguishable from suicide.
Although he was separated by their helms, Axion detected the palpable anxiety of the Black Templars.
They had synced the data.
There were at least thirty Iron Warriors Astartes, several hundred mortal renegades, and heavy weapons teams inside the ship.
The Black Templars, serving as unexpected passengers, numbered only twelve in total.
This was a squad, not a company.
Yet, facing enemies of their own calibre that outnumbered them nearly three-to-one, the Black Templars showed no inclination to retreat.
After all, battles where the few triumph over the many were a source of glory.
As for defeat.
If they failed, the Emperor's Angels would all perish.
In this kind of engagement, retreat was not an option.
To allow a warship of the Imperium to be captured in their presence while they still drew breath—that was an insult!
"Brothers! Glory awaits this day. As Sons of Dorn! No Pity! No Remorse! No Fear!"
"No Pity! No Remorse! No Fear!"
"For the Emperor! For the Gene-Sire! Uphold the honour of the Sons of Dorn!"
Thien led his battle-brothers in a roaring war-cry, his voice steeped in conviction and fanaticism.
The atmosphere in that moment even plunged Axion into silence.
Seeing every warrior meticulously checking their gear, preparing for the arduous fight ahead, Axion hesitated for a moment, then spoke.
"Erm, while I can appreciate your surging morale, and it's clear you have made a 'glorious' decision. However…"
Before Axion could finish, Thien twisted his helm to look at Axion, who was standing in the center of the troop bay like a mechanical statue.
"What is it you wish to say, machine-mind Axion?"
Axion tilted his mechanical head, then looked down at Thien.
"I believe this needn't be so complicated. You merely need to provide me with the approximate internal location and structure, and I shall jump into your warship. You neither need to breach the hull nor engage the enemy in a grinding war of attrition. If the enemy's combat ability is comparable to your own, I suspect the battle may be concluded by the time you manage to find an airlock and arrive."
Axion's words caused the atmosphere in the compartment to freeze.
But Thien quickly reacted.
"Allow an ancient machine-mind of unknown allegiance and morality to warp directly into an Imperial battleship without supervision? And participate in a complex internal defensive battle?"
"Axion, though I fell to you in a duel, that does not give you leave to disregard our fighting spirit! If you entertain such notions again, we would sooner be collectively consumed by the void than allow a destabilizing element like you inside the Imperium."
Thien instantly rejected Axion's proposal. No Astartes would trust an ancient construct, much less one with clear, independent sentience that he himself could not best.
Aside from the crazed members of the Cult Mechanicus who treated mechanical entities as blessings from the Omnissiah, who would place faith in a machine-mind?
What Thien did not know was that Magos Vashur was not trusting Axion, but was similarly incapable of restraining him.
After all, that enormous Fragmentation Cannon was currently aimed directly at the Hive City. Vashur dared not gamble whether a fully charged Fragmentation Cannon could obliterate the entire Hive.
Axion did not take Thien's refusal to heart. These bio-synthetic warriors, clearly more potent than 'ordinary humans,' obviously held higher clearance.
Preserving these seemingly fragile warriors might be beneficial in clarifying what transpired in the past.
"Thien, we're almost in position! Ship data indicates the enemy is less than five hundred metres from the Bridge!"
"I've had the Astra Militarum evacuate a side corridor. The Thunderhawk doesn't carry armour-piercing Meltas. Perhaps I can try to blast a hole in the hull with the Battle Cannon."
"Poof!"
Before the piloting battle-brother could finish his sentence, Axion, who had been in the cabin, vanished with a soft sound.
Thien's two hearts clenched tightly, staring at the spot where Axion had just been.
"Quickly! Breach the hull and get inside! Damn it, the machine-mind must have warped on its own! May the Emperor spare us from disaster! If that thing starts a massacre on the warship, we will all be held responsible!"
An urgent roar tore from Thien's throat. The pilot quickly aimed the weapon and began bombarding the thick hull plating, desperately trying to carve out a sufficiently large breach.
Axion was unfamiliar with the internal structure of the Imperial Oberon-class Battleship. Although the Black Templar pilot had mentioned clearing a corridor, Axion did not know its coordinates, making it impossible to warp directly inside.
However, warping directly into the void was no issue.
As Axion's gigantic form floated in space, the silhouette of the entire Oberon-class Battleship filled his vision.
"Hmm, quite large. Let me see where the Bridge structure is."
Scanning beams quickly traced the nearby hull sections.
A compartment with a large number of observation windows and many internal control stations appeared in the scan results.
Looking at the familiar design structure, Axion was puzzled.
"Tens of thousands of years have passed, and the design of this vessel's command deck is still so archaic. And why are there so many more manual control stations? Is there no intelligent control assistance?"
In his database, only vessels designed purely for their Creators would feature a command deck like this, yet those ships also featured significantly fewer control stations; a standard exploration vessel did not have such a multitude of cluttered manual control units, relying mostly on intelligent auxiliary control.
Let alone the warships of the Iron Men fleet, most of which lacked a traditional cockpit altogether.
However, having found the command deck, the subsequent steps were simple.
As the light of short-range jumping flared again, Axion materialized directly onto the Oberon-class Bridge.
"What?! What is that?! A xenos incursion?!"
The Captain was the first to spot Axion's sudden appearance on the command deck.
Just as the crewmen frantically redirected their weapons, which had been aimed at the hatch, towards Axion, Thien's communication patched into the command deck.
"Captain! Control your men! Absolutely do not fire or provoke that strange mechanical entity that just appeared! It is an ancient construct discovered by the Adeptus Mechanicus below! Under no circumstances should you engage it unless it attacks first!"
Thien frantically relayed the warning, then quickly glanced at the communication screen as the Thunderhawk attacked the outer hull, instantly recognizing Axion's figure standing on the command deck.
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