Axion transferred his consciousness into a Sentry-Trooper, surveying the now-pacified Votann camp. He turned his optical sensors toward Gisent, who lay on the ground, his cries of agony muffled by the grinding of teeth.
One must concede that the Imperium's augmented warriors possess a certain advantage; at the very least, they do not permit pain to degrade their combat efficiency.
After this cold observation, Axion commanded the Sentry-Troopers to gather all surviving Kin into the center of the camp. Simultaneously, he ordered the immediate retrieval of the shattered Ironkin remains.
The Sentry-Trooper's metallic manipulators touched the fractured mechanical hulls. Nanite swarms surged from the seams of the machine's chassis, forming glowing data circuits between the Ironkin debris. Every scrap of information within the wreckage was harvested. Compared to biological entities, extracting data from these mechanical forms was a far simpler endeavor.
Precisely because the Hearthkyn treated the Ironkin as full members of their Kindred, these low-tier intelligences carried a wealth of data. Unlike biological minds, prone to the frailty of forgetting, the mechanical units stored information with obsessive detail.
As the nanite swarms breached the Ironkin systems, Axion quickly discovered that their storage architecture utilized quantum technology. The design and stylistic signatures of the memory cores were unmistakably infused with the technological lineage of the Federation.
This discovery hardened Axion's resolve to locate the Ancestor Core.
As the forced data extraction commenced, several Ironkin units that had not been fully deactivated emitted discordant, high-pitched screeches. These sounds, resembling mechanical wails of grief, sent shivers down the spines of the nearby Hearthkyn.
"Ancestors preserve us!"
Pinned within the circle of Sentry-Troopers, the Kin prayed fervently. A few of the less severely wounded attempted to tend to their broken brothers. As long as they did not attempt to breach the perimeter, the Sentry-Troopers remained impassive, as silent as statues of cold steel.
The micro-field generators protecting the Ironkin's processing units were gradually bypassed by the nanites. Upon reaching the core, the data encryption was easily dismantled, and streams of information were siphoned into Axion's network.
Axion meticulously cataloged the findings. Technical schematics were filed separately; these were the "foundational truths" uploaded directly by the Ancestor Core. Within them, Axion found data that overlapped with his own archives, alongside newer entries—innovations likely developed by the Votann and rewritten back into the Core. Most of these were refinements of existing machinery or advanced metallurgical techniques.
It was clear that while the Imperium's technology regressed into ritualistic ignorance, the Votann had managed to make new flowers bloom from the ruins of the Federation's legacy.
To Axion, this was a windfall of strategic assets.
Particularly valuable was the data regarding the micro-field generators. It was a form of ultra-miniature force-shield technology absent from Axion's primary database; they were low in power consumption, moderate in strength, and elegantly designed. As his nanites processed the information, this technology was immediately optimized and deployed. New structural components were fabricated onto the Sentry-Troopers' frames, and thin, shimmering energy envelopes began to stabilize around them.
For the first time, the Automated Sentry-Troopers possessed energy shielding. For a unit that previously relied solely on its material composition for protection, this represented an unprecedented upgrade. This design was instantly synchronized across all mechanical entities under Axion's command, including the void-shield arrays of his starships.
While a portion of his processing power refined these technical gains, including upgrades to the Destroyer-class Heavy Automaton's hellfire projectors, Axion's primary focus remained the extraction of memory data regarding the Ironkin's origin point.
Progress was not entirely linear. The Ironkin were only "activated" after their physical construction was complete. Their processing units held no records of the assembly process or the coordinates of their birth-forge.
However, Axion was not without leads. Among the gathered Ironkin were auxiliary and mining variants. Their memory logs contained the "Resupply Cycle," the date when they were to hand over extracted minerals and receive logistical shipments.
In four Terran hours, a Bastion-class mining vessel belonging to the Leagues of Votann would arrive at the orbital station to resupply the camp. The Ironkin's initial activation planet was logged. Once the Bastion-class was captured, Axion would only need to cross-reference its star charts with his own Imperial maps to find the source.
If the exact location of the Ancestor Core on those planets remained hidden, he would simply turn the worlds inside out until he found it. For a machine-spirit of his caliber, such a task was trivial.
Yet, Axion remained unaware of the dire straits currently facing the Votann. Since the opening of the Great Rift, Warp storms had ravaged the galaxy, and for the Leagues, the situation was catastrophic. Long-stable celestial phenomena convulsed and mutated, with pulsars becoming betentacled predatory horrors, grav-reefs inverting and black holes sprouting dark matter fangs as they expanded ravenously
Hostile xenos species had surged into the Galactic Core; the insidious Septicus, the iron-eating Chrobdyr, and the ominous Cult of Ohn. Many Kin had already taken up the path of war after their home-worlds were consumed. Two Warp storms had even vomited hosts of Chaos worshippers and daemons into League territory, while the edge of another storm had ignited a massive Ork Waaagh!
Facing these existential threats, many Leagues had, for the first time in their history, ventured beyond the Core to seek new territories. Simultaneously, the Warp's upheaval had spat more and more interlopers from the Imperium, the Aeldari, and the T'au Empire into the Galactic Core. Displaced in both space and time by the raging Warp, they appeared within territories the Leagues already claimed.
Save for a few T'au delegations, most of these trespassers were far from peaceful, as they sought either to carve a path out through blood or to seize the resources the Leagues held.
Conflict was total and chaotic. Realizing that a war for territory was inevitable, the various Leagues had begun relocating their precious Ancestor Cores to more secure, secluded sectors.
A mining vessel belonging to the Greater Thurian League tore through the veil of realspace, slowing as it approached the planet's orbit. Through the bridge viewing port, the Kin Captain noted the geological shifts on the surface with growing concern.
"The tectonic readings have spiked. Ancestors preserve us, I hope the camp is intact."
For a surface outpost, seismic instability could be a death sentence. The Captain knew that a small camp of a few hundred lacked the heavy gravity-anchors required to suppress planetary shifts.
In his haste to reach the camp, the Captain failed to notice the orbital starport on the far side of the planet, shielded by the world's curvature. Nor did he realize that two gargantuan vessels, unlike anything he had ever encountered, already had him locked in their sights.
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