Following in the wake of the mechanical legion, the PDF troopers watched the swarming tides of Tyranids fall in massive swathes. For the first time, they felt a strange sense of reprieve. In a few short hours, these formidable machines had pushed forward hundreds of kilometers without pause.
Every bio-form within their line of sight had been reduced to a carcass upon the earth. Nearly sixty percent of them had been scorched into blackened husks. The air, once thick with the choking haze of xenos spores, now held nothing but searing heat. All mutagenic flora had been put to the torch.
Along the route, they witnessed the effortless eradication of massive synapse creatures. Whether it was the common Tyranid Warrior, the rare Prime, or the gargantuan Tyrannofex and Hive Tyrant, their end was indistinguishable from that of the lowly Termagant or Hormagaunt.
Missile barrages saturated the ground to thin the swarms, while heavy units were overwhelmed by Heavy Combat Drones raining down plasma and relentless volleys of ordnance. Should any creature miraculously survive the aerial onslaught, it was swiftly shattered by the main batteries of the heavy tanks.
Numerical superiority seemed meaningless before the absolute qualitative dominance of these metallic constructs. Facing such devastating and concentrated firepower, the foes that had once seemed insurmountable now appeared almost trivial.
Yet, the conquest was not without attrition.
The Tyranids' bio-ballistics caused negligible damage to the mechanical hulls; it was the razor-sharp monomolecular claws and scything talons that posed the greater threat. Axion maintained a disciplined distance between his forces and the Great Devourer's swarms, ensuring the vast biological masses could not force a protracted melee.
The Heavy Combat Drones hovering above maintained a strict targeting priority. The Acid-beasts lurking within the swarm were marked for immediate termination. The caustic ichor these units spat was not only terrifyingly corrosive but also highly flammable. Upon contact with weapons already pushed to the brink of overheating by sustained fire, the fluid would ignite, generating temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees.
A significant number of Automated Sentry-Troopers had already sustained damage from these vexing corrosive fluids. The resulting heat soak would cause the weaponry of adjacent sentries, already operating at critical thresholds, to overheat instantly.
Whenever autonomous failsafes engaged, the neutron beam emitters of these sentries would enter a forced cooling cycle. During this downtime, the sentries would draw their particle-vibration blades and move to the vanguard, fighting alongside the Erratana-class Armored Wardens who used their energy shields as mobile bulwarks. In the press of close-quarters combat, these relatively slender sentries were vulnerable to being dismembered by the overwhelming numbers of Hormagaunts.
The sheer scale of the enemy was, after all, staggering.
Fortunately, these losses were not irreparable for Axion. The Tyranids had no desire to consume alloyed hulls, nor could they drag the remains from the field. A crippled unit required no evacuation; the destruction of any sentry-trooper immediately triggered a retaliatory missile strike on its position, allowing other sentries to swiftly recover the wreckage under the cover of the explosions.
At regular intervals, pairs of Eight-Legs would arrive at the front lines hauling massive empty crates, returning to the rear laden with mechanical salvage. There, tech-servitors would rapidly sort the shattered chassis, salvaging viable components for immediate reassembly. Parts beyond repair were consigned to separate bins to be fed into the furnaces and reforged once the campaign concluded.
Once their combat efficacy was restored, the units were cycled back to the front.
According to Axion's scans, after several hours of advancement, over a hundred million life-signs on the planet had been extinguished. For creatures like Rippers or other lesser organisms that could be wiped out by a single shell, such a tally was not difficult to achieve. Even an Adeptus Astartes, given sufficient time, could slay hundreds of xenos without much trouble.
But the front line of a planetary war was another matter entirely.
Supported by infinite power reserves, the machine legion swept across the surface in an indiscriminate purge, their shields shimmering under the strain. The trailing PDF looked on in silent awe as the mechanical host moved like a Great Scouring brush across the planet's face, leaving behind strata of Tyranid remains as they marched forward, unfeeling and inexorable.
To keep pace with these "iron-clads," the PDF had to halt periodically to harvest the ichor from the xenos corpses, pouring it into fuel tanks rumored to burn anything. The Tyranid blood was rich in biomass and sufficient to serve as fuel; the only drawback was that the engines would require a total overhaul once the fires died.
That mattered little to them. No one wanted to fall behind. They were desperate to witness the moment every last bug was ground into the dust.
However, even without the burden of active combat, the PDF grew weary from the long trek. They were forced to find a clearing amidst the xenos remains to pitch camp and rest. As they slept, the din of battle gradually receded into the distance. Enveloped by an ultimate silence, these men and women, who hours ago were balanced on the precipice of death, finally found a moment of peace.
Such high-intensity, prolonged engagement would have exhausted even the transhuman stamina of an Astartes. But the machine legion remained unchanged. A few hours of continuous operation was nothing to a mechanical frame; "fatigue" was a concept that did not apply to tempered metal. Neutron beams continued their rhythmic discharge; power blades continued their criss-crossing arcs, reaping life with every stroke.
The pitiless steel of the Reaper knew no exhaustion.
Perhaps sensing the futility of this struggle, the Hive Mind withdrew its direct control over the planetary swarms. With the Pectaro hanging in orbit, all of the Great Devourer's tactical maneuvers had been rendered moot. Whenever a swarm managed to breach the Iron Men's lines, a concentrated lance of high-energy particles would descend from orbit, saturating the engagement zone. Every organic entity within the strike zone was instantly deconstructed into a slurry of shattered meat. Moments later, the iron constructs would walk out from the gore, utterly unscathed.
The Hive Mind's alternative, to gather the remaining organisms, dissolve them into biomass, and gestate massive Bio-Titans, was likewise discarded. Against concentrated orbital bombardment, such massive terrestrial units were nothing more than sitting targets.
These steel-beings were more tireless than the swarm, and more fearless than the hive. Though they numbered only three hundred thousand, the speed at which the Iron Men reclaimed the surface matched the terrifying velocity of the original Tyranid invasion. After a dozen hours of combat, their actual numbers had diminished by only a few tens of thousands, many of whom would be back on the firing line within hours.
Deprived of the Hive Mind's unifying will, the behavior of the xenos began to shift. They no longer attacked in mindless, world-covering carpets. Instead, under the direction of surviving synapse creatures, they huddled into isolated clusters, with some even began to fight amongst themselves for resources.
The intensity of the enemy's resistance had collapsed. To Axion, this was the only change that mattered. With the Tyranids now gathered in distinct, concentrated pockets, the efficiency of the purge reached a new zenith.
From the void above, the precision orbital cleansing began.
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