When the planetary surface temperature subsided to sixty degrees, the transport craft berthed within the hangar bays were once again cycled into operation.
Half of the available Automated Sentry-Troopers were deployed to the surface, their primary objective being the ruins of the former hive cities. Though the upper spires of the hives had been reduced to a mass of slagged rubble, Axion intended to scavenge for any salvageable machinery. The equipment aboard his vessel was finite; attempting to jumpstart an entire planet's industrial output with shipboard spares was fundamentally impractical. Furthermore, his meager supply of several dozen kilograms of nanite swarms was insufficient to construct a standard automated manufactorum from scratch.
Axion lacked the STC data for a standard factory. When he was originally designed, no one could have envisioned that the standard manufactorums, once ubiquitous across every corner of the Federation, would become such a rarity. Relying solely on his nanite swarms to achieve his expansion goals would likely take decades.
Fortunately, these Sentry-Troopers had been utilized as mechanical laborers once before, and their chassis had already undergone modification. Though only one limb possessed a standard humanoid manipulator, their immense hydraulic strength and the shearing power of their particle blades made them superlative industrial tools.
The melted skeletal structures of the upper hives were carved away by particle blades. Working in simple, silent coordination, groups of Sentry-Troopers hauled the debris away. Grotesque chunks of fused metal waste were cast aside as the sub-surface levels of the hive were gradually unearthed.
However, the results were disappointing. The subterranean foundations had suffered catastrophic damage during the tectonic upheavals. The metal smelting plants that once populated the lower hive had transformed into heaps of metallic refuse; molten slag had congealed inside the delicate machinery, utterly annihilating its functional value. It was clear that every Imperial facility on this world was now nothing more than scrap.
Driven by necessity, Axion recalled his deployed Sentry-Trooper units and engaged the ship's engines, setting a course for the neighboring industrial world of Vorchad.
If possible, he intended to "borrow" a batch of equipment from the local Planetary Governor, with the extracted ores from Vorchad III serving as eventual payment.
Yet, when Axion arrived at this Imperial industrial world mere minutes later, he found a planet possessed only by Tyranid bio-horrors. The Hive Ships responsible for reclaiming the biomass had already been neutralized over Vorchad III. Perhaps due to a lack of tactical data regarding this unknown adversary, while waves of bio-ships arrived daily to meet their end at Axion's guns, no second Hive Ship had yet arrived to begin the harvest.
Consequently, the Tyranid organisms that had been drop-podded to the surface via mycetic spores were now in a state of aimless planetary infestation. Nothing appreciates un-fresh food, not even the Tyranid Hive Mind. Without a functional hive structure ready for processing, these creatures would not instinctively hurl themselves into digestion pools to be dissolved.
The planet's fauna and survivors had been scoured clean; only a scattering of resilient flora remained. Hundreds of millions of xenos forms swarmed across the world.
Upon confirming that no Imperial survivors remained on the planet, Axion felt a strange, binary sense of relief. This meant there was no longer a need to mine ore to "repay" the debt.
After performing a deep biological purge of one of the hives using high-energy particle streams, three transports carrying two thousand Sentry-Troopers touched down in the plaza of the lower hive.
All the manufactorums were clustered here. Ignoring the wet squelch of metallic feet treading through the slurry of disintegrated xenos flesh, the area was remarkably still. Factories that once roared with the thunder of industry had fallen into a tomb-like silence. The narrow streets were devoid of life. Windows and doors were shattered, and bloodstains painted the walls, yet not a single intact corpse remained. Only smears of gore and the inert husks of Tyranid casualties littered the ground.
The Sentry-Troopers began to coordinate in silence. Dividing into squads of fifty, they entered the dormant factories to begin the reclamation of machinery. Everything from the forges and smelters of the machine-shops to the crude, "low-tier" production lines replicated by the Adeptus Mechanicus was dismantled and ferried to the central plaza.
More importantly, they recovered a vast stockpile of unused, refined ingots. These processed materials could be directly utilized to construct cybernetic servitors to man the factories, thereby liberating the Sentry-Troopers from their role as makeshift laborers.
The most critical acquisitions, however, were the maintenance spares for the hive's plasma reactors and geothermal stations. On Vorchad III, the only two hive cities had been utterly destroyed, their warehouses melted and their geothermal grids shattered. Their plasma reactors had gone supercritical, detonating and incinerating the hives from within. Axion needed not only the machinery but also the means to repair the planetary power infrastructure.
While remote power transmission from the Pectaro was feasible, the ship could not leave the system without establishing a stable, local energy supply. Should the vessel depart, the planet's operations would grind to a halt.
Due to the sheer volume of equipment and components, the Pectaro, which possessed limited cargo capacity, required two full rotations to complete the transport.
When Axion returned for the third time, the troops he had temporarily offloaded to the surface to make room for cargo had already engaged in a firefight with encroaching Tyranid elements.
A carpet of Rippers swarmed the outskirts of the nearly-stripped hive, supported by throngs of Termagants and Hormagaunts. Several Tyranid Warriors shrieked in the rear, brandishing long bio-blades, while flocks of Gargoyles circled overhead. A dense hail of living ammunition and bone-shards erupted from the Fleshborers and Spike Rifles clutched in the gaunts' claws.
However, the flesh-eating organisms that struck the Automated Sentry-Troopers were instantly confounded. These metallic blocks possessed no flesh to consume. The subsequent volleys of metal shards merely left superficial scoring across the sentries' chest plates and skeletal frames.
A Tyranid Warrior looked on with predatory confusion at these alien foes before brandishing its four arms and charging the sentry line.
Yet, compared to the Necron Immortals Axion's data-archives suggested, these sentries were far more agile. Two Sentry-Troopers in the front rank crouched slightly, crossing their particle blades in a forward-leaning guard. As the beast lunged, the twin particle blades swept outward, bifurcating the Tyranid Warrior with ease.
In its death throes, the Warrior managed to sever the heads of both Sentry-Troopers with its monomolecular bone-swords. It lived just long enough to witness a sight that surely would have baffled the Hive Mind: the headless sentries immediately raised their blades and hacked the Warrior's head into four pieces.
Afterward, the two Sentry-Troopers retrieved their own heads from the ground and tossed them toward the rear. Upon extraction, the nanite swarms would fuse the severed metal structures back together in seconds. In collective warfare, individual sensory arrays were secondary; a loss of a head did not hinder a unit's combat efficiency while operating in a state of shared data-synchronization.