On the surface, the colonel dispatched by Vonlense sat within the Minotaur, watching as the towering iron engines strode past, swiftly vanishing from his line of sight. After a moment of hesitation, he stepped out from the crew compartment.
Observing the Sapient Machine Automata standing in silent formation and the Eight-Legs stacking themselves into precise tiers, he cautiously approached.
"Warning. Unauthorized personnel: state your purpose immediately. This zone has been requisitioned for temporary operations. Do not approach the minimum security perimeter unless necessary."
A crimson guidance beam lanced out from the top of the maintenance hub, painting a dot on the colonel's chest. Atop the structure, the muzzles of the Heavy Automated Defense Turrets ground downward, tracking him with predatory precision. A booming, synthesized warning echoed from the building's interior.
"I am Colonel Tarrock of the Raknor Planetary Defence Force!" he shouted. "I request an audience with your commander!"
Axion had no desire to waste time with bureaucratic pleasantries. Instead, he performed a maneuver that left Tarrock paralyzed with shock.
A holographic projection interface flickered into existence directly in front of the Colonel. From the other end of the link, a voice crackled with a distinct note of confusion.
"I am Lord Solar Leontus. Who are you?"
As a mere PDF officer, Tarrock had never seen the Lord Solar's face, but he certainly knew the title. He had only hoped to contact a local commander; he never expected to be patched directly through to the Lord Commander of the entire Segmentum's war effort.
"My Lord! I am... I am Colonel Tarrock of the Raknor PDF!" Stuttering and nearly losing control of his bladder, the Colonel managed to report his identity.
Leontus's expression shifted, his eyes widening with sudden interest. "Raknor?! How did you establish contact with us?"
"I don't know, my Lord! A legion of automata we've never seen before made planetfall and rescued us. General Vonlense sent me to contact their command to express our gratitude, and then... this happened."
A remote interrogation session commenced immediately across the vox-link. Meanwhile, Axion, acting as the signal relay, simultaneously directed the ground forces' steady advance and coordinated a series of saturation strikes against Tyranid swarms using the Heavy Combat Drones.
The quantum communication signal beamed from the Pectaro to Vorchad III, where it was translated into conventional vox and relayed to the Imperial Command headquarters on the nearby world.
An hour later, a dazed Tarrock returned to the fortress. When Vonlense learned that his subordinate had been debriefed by Lord Solar Leontus for a full Terran hour, the old general stood in stunned silence. The revelation effectively ended any further ambition he had to "negotiate" with the mysterious machine legion.
Upon confirming that these unknown allies were launching a full-scale counter-offensive against the Tyranids, Vonlense immediately mobilized every remaining PDF unit.
Supported by their remaining transports, the battered PDF soldiers soon caught up with the iron tide pushing outward. However, once they reached the front, they found it nearly impossible to provide meaningful assistance.
The "iron men" were advancing too fast.
The Automated Sentry-Troopers formed a parallel firing line at the vanguard. High-output beams swept across the battlefield like a scythe; these potent energy weapons could burn through multiple Termagants or Hormagaunts in a single burst, maintaining an incredible rate of fire.
Every time they advanced a set distance, the Sentries would halt, allowing the Peltast Sniper Automata and Armored Wardens to unleash wide-area devastation. High-explosive grenades blanketed the target zones with mathematical precision, every shot maximizing its lethality. It looked less like war and more like a systematic clearing, a grim, mechanical game of elimination played out against the swarm.
Towering Armored Wardens shouldered their atomic pulse cannons, sniping synapse creatures with clinical efficiency. The thick beams of light frequently erased the primary target along with any lesser organisms caught in the discharge path.
In the skies, swarms of Gargoyles and Harpy-forms were shredded by the Heavy Combat Drones diving from the upper atmosphere. Brilliant blue flashes of detonating plasma flickered across the heavens. Every plasma bolt reduced everything within a dozen meters of its impact to charred husks. The blackened, smoldering carcasses of xenos flyers rained down incessantly.
The PDF watched as the massive drones used their terrifying velocity to plow directly through the flying Tyranid swarms, shattering bone and chitin through sheer kinetic force. The drones would then perform a slight aerial roll, flicking the xenos filth from their hulls like water.
With air superiority established, the few remaining Valkyries within the fortress took flight. These elite pilots felt the crushing weight of the heavy drones' presence even more acutely. Observing the drones' blistering speeds and violent maneuvers, they speculated that only Adeptus Astartes could possibly withstand such g-forces. They certainly weren't controlled by Mechanicus servitors; no sluggish mono-tasked slave-brain could manage such fluid control or pinpoint accuracy. If they could, the pilots joked darkly, they'd all be lobotomized into servitors tomorrow.
However, after expending their munitions and returning to base, the Valkyrie pilots flatly refused to fly again.
Normally, Hellstrike missiles and multi-lasers were the ultimate tools of slaughter against ground swarms. This time, the pilots were humbled. Once the heavy drones secured the sky, they simply hovered, transforming into massive, stationary plasma defense turrets.
The velocity of the plasma bolts was faster than autocannon fire, and the power was incomparable. Synapse creatures that usually required a missile to fell were reduced to ash by two quick plasma bursts. The Imperial pilots found themselves circling the battlefield with no targets left to hit.
The enemies fell in swathes under a curtain of plasma fire that was almost continuous. In terms of weapon yield, reaction time, and even missile capacity, the PDF were outclassed in every metric.
The iron legion's ground and air assets moved in perfect synchronization. For the local troops, this level of coordination was something not even the legendary Death Korps of Krieg could achieve. Every fire mission and kill zone was calculated to such an extreme that grenades and missiles would detonate mere inches from the humanoid machines, the blast radius stopping exactly where their armor began.
The pilots felt not just out of place, but entirely redundant. Eventually, several Valkyries ventured further into the fray just to dump their remaining ammo into random clusters before retreating to the fortress. For the first time, they felt their support was entirely unnecessary.
For Axion, this was not complex. Precise calculation and flawless execution turned the slaughter into a grand performance.
The two columns in the center of the line advanced the fastest, even without drone support. While other columns utilized Executor Heavy Tanks to breach the swarm, the Apocalypse-class Titan had moved from the rear to the absolute vanguard.
The Tyranid-warped flora and capillary towers were nothing more than weeds to the god-machine; it crushed them effortlessly beneath its massive tread. Whenever the swarm grew too dense, its two primary macro-cannons fired in alternating succession.
A single shell could turn thousands of Tyranids and the very ground they stood upon into a smoking crater. To prevent the terrain from becoming so scarred that it slowed the advance, Axion carefully modulated the firing rhythm.
The Titan's myriad secondary weapon arrays saturated the surrounding three-dimensional space with fire. Even the Executor Heavy Tanks were finally able to fire at full capacity. Countless, fragile enemies were merely a diversion for these engines of murder. The surrounding wreckage of Imperial facilities and shattered weapons became the perfect raw material for nanite swarms, which processed the scrap to replenish the legion's ammunition and missiles.
With the Pectaro overhead, the automata within its radius suffered no lack of power. If not for the necessity of venting heat from the energy weapons, the legion would have been able to advance without a single moment's pause.