Roboute Guilliman shifted his gaze away from the broken, mutilated forms thrashing within the two containment cages, turning instead to face the silent mechanical construct standing nearby.
Axion had naturally overheard Trajann Valoris's demand.
A sharp holographic projection flickered into existence before the assembled Imperial commanders.
"Historical tactical data suggests that transferring custody introduces significant unpredictability. A scenario where the prisoners breach containment remains highly probable."
"Based on current protocols, the immediate deployment of ectoplasmic dissociation weapons offers the highest likelihood of permanently neutralizing both entities."
Guilliman and Valoris exchanged a brief, uncertain look. The Lord Regent was the first to speak, a note of caution in his voice. "Ectoplasmic dissociation weapons?"
The holographic projection shifted rapidly, unfurling a dense stream of battlefield pict-captures and combat logs. Utilizing the augmented sight and cognitive speed granted by their post-human physiology, Guilliman and Valoris scanned the cascading data within heartbeats.
The nature of the footage was straightforward. The vast majority consisted of recorded engagements against daemonic incursions on various Imperial Shrine Worlds and Paradise Worlds. Much of the baseline data was already familiar to both the Lord Regent and the Captain-General.
Reports compiled by the Inquisition and the Departmento Munitorum had long noted that the Iron Men possessed a specialized energy weapon uniquely effective against Neverborn entities, an armament capable of bypassing daemonic invulnerability fields entirely. This, however, was the first time they had heard its formal designation.
"Axion," Guilliman said, staring intently into the pale-blue brilliance of the machine's optic sensors, his tone heavy with anticipation. "Tell me. How do the Iron Men verify that these daemons are truly dead? Permanently?"
Axion's processing units suffered a sudden, brief stutter.
Ectoplasmic dissociation weaponry was still a highly experimental technology. Its final metaphysical efficacy had never been conclusively verified; only the immediate physical destruction and raw kinetic output of the ordnance had been cataloged. During the era of the ancient Federation, the galaxy had not been plagued by such anomalous horrors screaming from the Immaterium.
Furthermore, the denizens of the Warp were wildly disparate. Monsters that did nothing but howl, butcher, and destroy left no coherent biometric signatures to analyze. In a galaxy so vast, the probability of encountering the exact same warp entity a second time was infinitesimally small.
Seeing Axion fall into an unprecedented silence, Guilliman felt a surge of surprise. It was the first time he had ever witnessed the machine experience a cognitive delay.
Within the core archives of Axion's calculation engine, a cascading torrent of data flashed: Cross-referencing historical records... verification... identifying logical paradox... executing secondary correction... permanent erasure of daemonic entities cannot be verified. Scheduling subsequent field tests.
Reallocating commands. Appending new testing targets: capture Drukhari raiders for experimental processing.
The surrounding Destroyer-class Heavy Automatons and Erratana-class Armored Wardens began to step back, clearing the open ground. With a sharp, blinding arc of displacer energy, the remaining mechanical forces vanished instantly from the terrestrial theater.
The sudden spike of localized warp displacement caused the surrounding mortals to tense instinctively, their hands dropping to their weapons. Yet, aside from the abrupt departure of the mechanical host, nothing occurred.
Axion's towering chassis shifted to one side, exposing the Adaptive Daemon Detention Devices that had previously been heavily picketed.
"Absolute verification of specialized weapon efficacy cannot be achieved at this time. Custody of the detention units will be transferred to the Adeptus Custodes."
Guilliman nodded slowly before turning to the Captain-General. Valoris raised a hand, and a vanguard of golden-armored Custodians stepped forward, preparing to hoist the mechanical cages onto heavy transport skiffs.
None of them noticed the twisted, triumphant grin that flickered across An'ggrath's horrific features the moment the Iron Man conceded custody.
As the quiet polar winds began to sweep over the reclaiming ice, the Imperial relief forces that had mobilised for the defense began the long, grinding march back to the core sectors of Holy Terra. The massive armada of reinforcing warships hovering in the upper atmosphere was ordered to return to their designated defensive pickets immediately.
Axion did not return to orbit. Instead, he accompanied Guilliman back to the Palace's central administrative spires, while Valoris followed the heavy convoy as it diverted toward a separate, subterranean entrance leading directly to the Shadow Cells deep beneath the Imperial Palace.
The Iron Man had intended to negotiate a compensation ledger with Guilliman for the collateral damage caused by the tech-trial. However, the Primarch simply gestured for Axion to wait until Valoris returned, noting that the Ordo Sinister fell strictly under the purview of the Captain-General.
Guilliman was well acquainted with Axion's rigid, almost dogmatic adherence to equivalent exchange. Many Imperial crusade forces had previously received bizarre compensatory tithes from the Iron Men following joint campaigns. These offerings ranged from crates of masterwork lasguns with enhanced focal arrays to heavily armored battle tanks with superior hull compositions. Because these gifts arrived as fully assembled war material rather than forbidden blueprints, the high lords of the Adeptus Terra rarely pressed the issue.
The reactions of the frontline Imperial regiments to these gifts from their machine allies followed a highly predictable pattern. They immediately shipped the exotic armaments to the nearest Forge World, bartering them to the resident Tech-Priests for an exorbitant sum of standard Munitorum gear.
An Iron Man-crafted lasgun boasted significantly higher power output and thermal efficiency than standard Imperial patterns. Guilliman had initially harbored deep anxieties that the artificial intelligences might be slipping insidious, heretical scrap-code into the Imperial supply lines. However, long-term surveillance by the Inquisition and several specialized unholy ordos verified that the gear remained entirely mechanical. The weapons were simply forged from superior alloys and possessed far more refined internal logistics. While their mechanical architecture had been heavily redesigned, they contained no trace of forbidden techno-heresy.
For the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, recovering these pristine examples of logic-driven craftsmanship was an obsession. A single lasgun forged by the Iron Men could be bartered on a Forge World for upwards of fifty standard-issue Imperial lasguns, even if, to the untrained eye, the only difference lay in the flawless quality of the metal.
Within the cavernous expanses of his primary sanctum, Guilliman was already buried beneath a mountain of logistics slates and strategic dispatches.
Beside him, Axion's massive frame stood completely motionless, casting a long, dark shadow across the stone floor like a monument of cold alloy.
"The prisoners have expired."
Axion's flat, synthesized voice broke the heavy silence of the chamber, causing Guilliman to snap his head up instantly.
"What did you say?"
Guilliman realized the identity of the prisoners immediately. Reaching for the vox-link integrated into the collar of his Armour of Fate, he established a direct channel to the Captain-General.
When the link clicked open, Valoris's voice was dark with suppressed fury.
The daemons had proven far more cunning than the Custodians had anticipated.
The two cages had been loaded onto a customized Aquila Lander and flown to the outer trans-atmospheric spaceports of Terra. From there, under Valoris's personal oversight, they were transferred onto an armored heavy-hauler. Flanked by a full phalanx of the ten thousand, the grim convoy had begun its descent into a labyrinthine, heavily classified transit tunnel.
It was one of the countless subterranean veins riddling the dark crust beneath the Imperial Palace.
Massive blast doors groaned open and slammed shut in their wake as the column ground deeper into the dark, claustrophobic corridors. The air here was ancient, thick with the stagnant reek of millennially old dust and industrial decay. The sacred sigils and protective hexagrammic wards etched into the Custodians' auramite armor flickered with a faint, uneasy light in the gloom. Each step of their heavy war-boots fell with a dull, hollow thud that echoed into the endless dark ahead.
Yet, despite the absolute security of the path, the golden guardians did not relax their vigilance for a fraction of a second.
Valoris walked at the absolute vanguard of the column, his eyes sweeping the shadows continuously. The defenses of Holy Terra were absolute, but history had proven that even the heart of the Imperium was not immune to catastrophe. Over the long millennia, the Palace had weathered numerous silent incursions, most of which were hunted down and exterminated by the Custodes without a single word ever reaching the lower spires.
Within the heavy iron confines of his cage, An'ggrath's smoldering, pitiless eyes gleamed through the shadows. Like an apex predator watching from the deep black, the Bloodthirster tracked every shift of his captors' weight, every breath, and every micro-second of their march, weaving their movements into a final, bloody calculation.
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