The Cadian commander, finally snapping out of his stupor, moved quickly to restrain his soldiers. The recent skirmishes had taught them a bitter lesson: their current strength was insufficient to overcome even these high-tech xenos "Squats." Yet these same xenos, whose weaponry, gear, and defensive capabilities far outstripped those of the Imperium, were being subjected to a systematic slaughter by these metallic entities.
This was clearly not a situation his meager force could hope to influence.
However, since the entities seemed to turn a blind eye to the Imperial troops, even appearing to avoid the Tech-Priests who had descended into a state of technological religious mania, the commander immediately dispatched scouting parties. Their orders were to stick close to the Tech-Priests and shadow these "iron-clads" throughout the Votann cities.
He had to discern the true objective of these machines; they potentially represented a threat far graver than the xenos they were currently eradicating.
While the Imperial ground forces remained in a state of bewilderment, Axion, positioned in high orbit, found himself in a similar state of confusion.
This was deep within the Galactic Core, the third so-called "Ancestral World" he had targeted. Yet he had never expected to find Imperial forces stationed here. Even more perplexing to him was the sheer ubiquity of these "red-robed fanatics"—they seemed to be everywhere.
Scanning the icons of the Imperial Aquila and the sigils of the Adeptus Mechanicus, he confirmed their identity. They were Imperial, through and through. Axion even detected the presence of those quintessential "canned warriors," the Adeptus Astartes.
Out of curiosity, Axion performed a cursory bio-scan of the Space Marines and the mortals. The results were predictably dismal.
The Cadians' genetic sequences showed significant mutational drift, scoring even lower than the average Imperial citizen and riddled with peculiar aberrations. As for the Space Wolves... well, their lupine genetic ratio exceeded fifty percent. In Axion's logic, this was a catastrophic foundation for a standardized gene-enhanced soldier.
A reliable weapon required stability. Axion found himself wondering if these Astartes might at any moment be consumed and overridden by their animalistic DNA. Having gathered sufficient data on the gene-defects prevalent among the Imperium's Astartes, he saw little point in further scanning; none of them were truly "human" in a functional sense. By comparison, the "gold-canned" Custodians fared better, at least their enhancement templates hadn't incorporated fauna.
Bound by his pact with Guilliman, Axion would not initiate hostilities against any Imperial faction that did not fire upon him first. Furthermore, he was obligated to provide necessary assistance to these Imperial allies.
In the void of the planet's outer orbital ring, twelve heavy carriers were systematically transferring plundered minerals to four industrial vessels.
The ship-printing modules on the industrial ships' ventral sides were working without pause. Four long-range strike cruisers were already one-third complete. Twenty strike cruisers and the Pectaro maintained a high-alert defensive screen around the fleet.
In the inner orbit, fifteen strike cruisers provided essential fire support to the ground forces, while the mechanical legions currently swarming the surface had been deployed from another four heavy carriers.
This massive fleet of fifty-two gargantuan vessels was the cumulative result of Axion's campaign through nine mining worlds and three Votann League Ancestral Worlds. Its sheer scale now eclipsed any of the individual fleets within the Indomitus Crusade.
The Leagues of Votann had attempted numerous interceptions against this brutal and devastatingly efficient mechanical fleet. However, each engagement only resulted in the enemy fleet emerging larger and more formidable than before. After losing hundreds, then thousands of vessels, the Kin had begun to know true fear. Orders had even been broadcast for any fleet encountering these "Metal Reapers" to retreat immediately.
Yet no one truly understood the machines' purpose.
After losing the mining worlds, the Kin assumed the machines were merely after minerals. But after the harrowing reports from the survivors of the Ancestral Worlds, they realized the Reapers were hunting for the Votann, the Ancestor Cores themselves.
The Ancestor Cores were the foundational bedrock of existence for both Hearthkyn and Ironkin. The Votann could not possibly know that Axion merely wished to "meet" a Core to assess its status and establish communication.
The Iron Men operated on rigid principles: non-threatening targets were not to be purged without orders, provided they displayed no hostility. Perhaps some among the survivors still harbored thoughts of rebellion, but Axion was indifferent. The Men of Iron were born engines of war and peerless assistants, not mindless executioners. Meaningless slaughter did not compute within Axion's logic.
The pattern on every world Axion attacked was identical.
Resisters were eliminated. Those who laid down their weapons were subjected to centralized interrogation. Once the necessary high-grade metals and minerals were harvested, the fleet departed, leaving behind a wake of survivors and the dead.
The Ancestral Worlds, however, suffered a more thorough fate.
The entire planet would be scoured. The crust was brutally overturned as mountains were leveled by the machines and valleys filled with the resulting earth. Only after confirming that no subterranean facilities remained hidden would the Iron Men depart. Axion gave no thought to the resulting cataclysmic geological shifts.
Simultaneously, Axion's own technological reserves saw significant advancement thanks to the integration of Votann innovation. The destructive output of most of his weaponry had increased by approximately 12% to 30%.
The most notable beneficiary was the standard Automated Sentry-Trooper. These units were now equipped with independent shield systems and energy-disruption armor plating derived from the Kin's Void Armour technology. These hulls possessed superior resistance, capable of better absorbing energy-based damage to protect the mechanical chassis.
A vast array of exotic alloys and high-performance materials, the result of millennia of Kin research, were digested by Axion on the spot and converted into physical hardware. Advanced metals that the Kin were still struggling to refine were constructed flawlessly by Axion's quantum printing technology, which processed material at the atomic level.
Once recorded and saved by the nanite mother-machine, these datasets were redistributed, triggering a fleet-wide reconstruction. The average quality of the mechanical units had risen by 8.2% compared to the original Federation standards.
Axion even permitted the nanites to consume and reconstruct parts of his own chassis. His material composition was re-analyzed and integrated with these new elements, resulting in a comprehensive data rebuild. His current physical frame was now 1.5 times as durable as his previous one.
He had considered a wide-scale rollout of this new metal, but reality proved it impractical. Even with a race as adept at mining as the Votann, the rare materials plundered from twelve worlds were only sufficient to provide Axion with a single spare body.
Naturally, Axion made no changes to his design. Materials could be upgraded, but in terms of engineering and architecture, he had yet to find any data that surpassed the pinnacle of the ancient Federation.
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