Since pushing the front lines into the fallen sectors, Lord Commander Solar Leontus had known only exhaustion. Two months of unrelenting attrition had turned the entire Segmentum Pacificus into a charnel house. The Hive Fleets of the Tyranids, bypassing the world of Eternal Night, had begun a frantic assault on the surrounding systems. The perimeter was being compressed, lost, and then, through the arrival of desperate reinforcements, bitterly reclaimed.
Roboute Guilliman, the Regent of the Empire, was well aware of the dire straits. From his seat of power in Segmentum Solar, he had funneled reinforcements that provided a modicum of relief, yet the fundamental nature of the war remained unchanged.
The "Firewall" plan, championed by the Adeptus Custodes, had failed to halt the tide. Over a thousand worlds had been subjected to Exterminatus, their surfaces scoured by fire to deny the Great Devourer sustenance. Yet, three massive tendrils of Hive Fleet Leviathan pushed forward as if oblivious to the belt of ash and death cutting across Segmentum Pacificus.
To balance the scales, more and more assets were being requisitioned. Even the Segmentum Tempestus, the only relatively stable theater, had been bled white of its regiments to bolster the Imperial forces in Pacificus.
Still, faced with three Leviathan tendrils and a swarming armada of tens of thousands of bio-ships, the Imperial defenders could achieve little more than a bloody stalemate. Every second, across the entire Segmentum, the meat-grinder of war claimed its tithe. From the void-cold brutality of ship-to-ship engagements to the gore-slicked planetary invasions, the galaxy echoed with the death-rattle of mankind.
The Departmento Munitorum had thrown open the naval vaults. Countless vessels, mothballed for untold centuries, were pressed into service. To maintain sufficient crew complements, the first duty after any engagement was the frantic recovery of personnel from crippled hulls. The strength of the Imperium was being rapidly spent in this furnace.
Furthermore, those ships that had languished in docks for decades or centuries presented a more insidious threat. They were not simply ready to be manned; even before the plasma drives could be brought to life, the Tech-Priests would often discover that the ship's Machine Spirit had been corrupted by the Warp. Others were found to be the lightless nests of Genestealer Cults or various heretical sects. Countless xenos abominations had claimed these vessels as their territory during their long slumber.
Before these ships could augment the Imperial Navy, they had to be purged in corridors-to-corridor bloodletting. Planetary Defense Forces, stationed at the starports, were forced to fight through the claustrophobic, alien environments of ship interiors they barely understood, all to ensure control was restored before the arrival of the Naval officers. And when the transport ships returned wounded crewmen to the ports for rudimentary patching, these once-proud officers were immediately funneled into these "newly" cleared hulls and sent back to the slaughter.
Despite this monumental effort, the Imperium was merely holding the line.
Today, however, a report from the sentries brought Leontus a new kind of headache. A new vessel had appeared in the orbit of Vorchad III. Its hull appeared largely unarmed; the Magi conjectured it to be a transport or a heavy freighter.
Guilliman's communiqués had indicated that assistance could be sought from the "Iron Men" allies on this planet. Yet, neither Leontus nor Trajann Valoris harbored any trust for these soulless automata.
Captain-General Trajann Valoris, in particular, remained adamant. During the height of the recent crises, Leontus had broached the subject of seeking aid from the Sapient Machine Axion, noting the devastating power of their weaponry and their efficacy against Tyranid biology. Valoris had vetoed the proposal, choosing instead to accelerate the scorched-earth Firewall policy.
Now, the Firewall was breached. The pressure from the Tyranids was mounting exponentially. Fallen worlds were being picked clean by the rapacious swarms. The bio-fleets showed no sign of thinning. While Imperial reinforcements remained constant, the cost was staggering. Multiple reports confirmed that entire relief fleets had vanished within the Warp, their traces scrubbed from existence. The Archenemy was sabotaging the logistics of the crusade; the forces of Chaos were preparing for a dark carnival.
Lord Solar Leontus had also received a specific warning from the Regent. A Warboss known as Zog Steeltoof was organizing a new Waaagh!. Following the defeat of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, a new greenskin hegemony was rising in their ancestral domain of Octarius. This new Boss, who favored painting himself blue, had survived multiple Tyranid incursions, and as the Imperium well knew, an Ork who survives only grows stronger.
Guilliman could not reinforce Pacificus indefinitely. To prevent an Orkish breakout, the Imperium had to act pre-emptively. The Officio Assassinorum had been contacted, and three execution forces of the Callidus Temple had been dispatched. These masters of mimicry were tasked with infiltrating the greenskin ranks while they were distracted by the Tyranids to eliminate the blue behemoth. Skilled in poisons and lethal close-quarters combat, the Callidus were the Imperium's premier silent killers.
Leontus understood the stakes: if the assassins failed, the flow of reinforcements would soon dwindle. No one knew what kind of monster would eventually emerge from the Octarius Sector.
Amidst these dark tidings, a direct order from Guilliman himself offered Leontus a sliver of hope:
"Utilize our Iron Man ally. His technology and armaments shall prove vital in the coming conflict against the Tyranids. Cooperate with him closely; his intervention may yield unexpected boons."
Leontus did not realize that the timing of this message was no coincidence. It was the result of Axion reaching out. Having reorganized his forces, the Sapient Machine had wasted no time in inquiring about the status of the Segmentum Pacificus theater.
It had been far too long since any military honors had been presented to him. An Iron Man does not mind waiting, but he does not wait without purpose. Eternal Night had been scoured; all six planets in the system were reclaimed. For two months, while his new units were being forged, Axion had done little but observe the movement of Imperial ships.
Though the Tyranids had ceased their attacks on this specific system, the constant transit of battered fleets through the sector made it clear that the war still raged. He intended to fulfill his pact with Guilliman as swiftly as possible.
As for the matter of the tithe, Guilliman had informed Axion that since the local Imperial administration had been annihilated during the fall, he would commission a joint task force from the nearest Tithe Prefect's Guild and the Inquisition to re-evaluate the planet's standing.