Despite the catastrophic data corruption within the SRD Defense Iron Men, several data-links remained operative. It was through these flickering conduits that Axion gained access to their current tactical status. Dozens of combat signals were flashing in rapid bursts of data-transmission from the deeper reaches of the ruins. While Axion could not directly decrypt the content of these transmissions, he could triangulate the exact positions of the other mechanical guard units.
The swarms of the machine host accelerated, pushing into the depths with clinical speed. In their wake, the Scouts of the Dark Angels followed cautiously, picking their way through the massive mechanical tide and harvesting whatever intelligence they could find.
After pushing through nearly a hundred kilometers of carnage, choked with mounds of corpses and pulverized flesh, Axion finally encountered a truly anomalous sight.
Several ARD Combat Iron Men were frozen in space, locked in grotesque, motionless poses. Suspended around them in a shimmering, unnerving halo were countless bolts of plasma, melta-bursts, and a chaotic assortment of solid-slug ammunition and exotic beams.
Seconds after Axion's vanguard arrived, the suspended munitions and energy beams abruptly resumed their temporal flow. They slammed into the mechanical guards in a concentrated fury, followed by a sequence of violent, chain-reaction explosions.
Slightly further ahead, the remnants of the Chaos host came into view. The once-vast army of hundreds of thousands of mortal cultists and traitors had been winnowed down to fewer than twenty thousand. The survivors were huddled atop their vehicles, eyes wide with terror as they scanned the gloom. Most of the transport was composed of high-speed assets: Land Speeders, Scimitar Jetbikes, and Tauros Venators. At the heart of the column, a Gorgon Heavy Transporter was cocooned by dozens of uniquely modified Sulphur-Runners.
The frozen mechanical guards had been their handiwork. These specialized jetbikes possessed extreme mobility and were outfitted with rapid-fire plasma cannons and, crucially, Stasis Grenade Launchers.
Those stasis grenades were the only reason any of them were still breathing. A stasis grenade is a highly sophisticated piece of munitions, housing complex energy generators and stabilization arrays within its casing. They utilize specialized energy fields or warp-distortion tech to achieve localized temporal suspension. Upon detonation, the grenade generates a stasis field with a radius of approximately five meters, freezing the state of both matter and energy within its localized bubble.
When the traitor host was at its full, bloated strength, these rare and precious weapons could not hope to cover such a massive frontline. But now, with the herd culled, these ancient relics had become their salvation.
Falkus Kibre's Terminator squad had already lost four battle-brothers. The Khorne warband that had accompanied them down was more than half-extinct. For the first time since he had begun campaigning with the Black Legion, Kibre felt the cold touch of true peril. These bizarre machines wielded weapons that defied their understanding; every discharge claimed dozens of lives. The various shielding provided by Chaos amulets and dark sorcery proved utterly useless. The speed of the mechanical entities was so blinding that only a Chaos Space Marine could even hope to track their movements.
The slaughter had begun the moment they stepped into the complex. Just three of the mechanical entities had effortlessly butchered a thousand mortal rebels, crushed several armored vehicles, and annihilated thirty World Eaters of a Khorne warband.
Kibre had demanded that Magos Pholios find a countermeasure for these horrific slaughter-engines. In response, the blustering Magos had unleashed a swarm of bizarre, twisted mechanical constructs to meet the machines in battle. Pholios himself remained huddled over a data-slate, obsessively tracking information and emitting a constant stream of grating binaric noise.
The Magos's war engines were formidable in their own right. Through sheer weight of numbers, they had eventually managed to destroy the three attacking machines. After harvesting several heaps of mechanical wreckage, Magos Pholios had retreated into a transport vehicle and had not been seen since.
However, as the column pushed deeper, the mechanical guards adapted. The Magos's constructs were either obliterated by singular beams of light or swatted into the air, where they were reduced to metallic shrapnel that rained back down upon the mortal rebels with lethal force.
Kibre had attempted to corner the Magos multiple times to demand a better strategy, but the priest was entirely consumed by tinkering with the harvested wreckage. As for the Dark Mechanicum augment-troops that had followed him, they had long since been reduced to scrap in the opening engagements.
In desperation, they had turned to their Chaos Sorcerers, using the flesh of the fallen to summon powerful Daemons to bolster their dwindling strength. The arrival of the Neverborn did indeed cause some losses among the mechanical guards. Initially, the machines ignored the Daemons, but after several units were destroyed, they calculated a solution. Their massive metal fists, shimmering with energy, easily pulverized the Daemons into Warp-dust.
Other forms of sorcery were equally ineffective. The corruption of the Warp, which could typically rot a Machine Spirit, held no sway over these entities. Conversely, the machines' massive-caliber bolters tore through the cultist ranks, each round creating a literal rain of blood.
An incensed Kibre finally forced his way into Pholios's transport, interrupting his study of the wreckage to demand why they were being subjected to such an onslaught. The cunning Magos remained evasive.
In truth, Pholios had never expected to encounter such defenders. He had only brought his mechanical constructs out of a paranoid sense of self-preservation. When the Adeptus Mechanicus had first arrived in M35, the landing parties were small, too few to trigger the semi-dormant mechanical guards. It was only when the frigate attempted to enter the shaft that the defense protocols were fully awakened. News of the expedition's fate had never reached the fleet in orbit.
The activation of the ancient defense mechanisms had caused the facility to retract the ancient vessel, the very prize Kibre sought, deep into the heart of the structure. The sequence of events was so convoluted that Kibre had begun to suspect Pholios of deceiving Abaddon. Only after the Magos pointed out that he himself was on the ground, sharing the same risk of death, did Kibre begrudgingly accept that the priest might actually be ignorant of the danger.
Though the mortal troops were expendable, the mounting loss of rare armored vehicles was a logistical nightmare. More troubling was the fact that the mechanical guards pursued them like vengeful wraiths, and their stockpile of stasis grenades was plummeting. If they did not find the ancient ship from the pict-captures soon, they would be forced to retreat.
They remained blissfully unaware that the Iron Men's mechanical host had already arrived, held back only by the temporal fields left in the wake of the stasis grenades.
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