For the majority of those aboard the Imperial fleet, witnessing the utter devastation of the Chaos forces provided a profound sense of spiritual catharsis.
Guilliman alone wore an expression that grew increasingly grim.
The rate of expansion and evolution displayed by the Iron Man was far too rapid, and the combat capabilities it manifested filled him with a deep, gnawing apprehension. The vessels of the Dark Mechanicum often possessed a marginal technological edge over the ships of the Imperial Navy, yet these heretical craft had been annihilated with terrifying ease.
If these were Imperial Navy vessels in their place, would they have fared any better?
After convening several Tech-Priests to conduct a data post-mortem, the conclusions left Guilliman feeling strangely powerless. It was glaringly obvious: had the hulls borne the Aquila instead of the sigils of the Traitor, the outcome would have remained unchanged.
The combat feeds showed that while the Chaos warships had failed to activate their void shields, taking direct hits to the hull, their thick adamantium plating had offered no salvation against the enemy's plasma weaponry. The massive globes of ionised fire had incinerated the vessels almost at the instant of impact.
Under normal parameters, even if void shields were overloaded and collapsed, a ship's structural integrity should have allowed it to weather several lances before suffering such catastrophic failure. The only logical conclusion was that the potency of the Iron Man's plasma was magnitudes greater than that of an Imperial Lance.
Guilliman's assessment, born of a lack of familiarity with the nature of the Iron Man, was understandable. A standard Imperial vessel housed a massive crew within a labyrinth of decks; it was a microcosm of a Hive City. In contrast, the Iron Man's ship consisted of nothing but machinery and power conduits. Its internal compartments were few, and it lacked even basic life-support systems.
The Iron Man's legions could simply enter dormancy within storage hubs during transit, allowing for the removal of vast swaths of habitable space. If an Imperial ship were stripped of all crew quarters to accommodate more weapons and arrays, and its life-support systems were gutted to expand the reactor cores, it too could shoulder weapons of higher energy consumption and greater lethality.
However, even the Adeptus Astartes could not endure indefinitely in the vacuum of space.
Furthermore, Axion's Pectaro was an anomaly even among the vessels of the Iron Men. While his peers might favor swarms of interceptor-drones that blotted out the stars, Axion preferred the sensation of erasing a foe with a single, overwhelming shot.
Axion watched the sprays of molten metal drifting through the void with a touch of inexplicable regret. While solid matter could be gathered crudely, these metallic slurries were useless. Not only were the elemental compositions within the liquid slag inconsistently mixed, but the sheer thermal radiation they emitted made them impossible to recover safely.
Thermal cycling was a notoriously difficult challenge for any starship to manage, and the Iron Men were no exception. Mechanical forms possessed their own unique vulnerabilities; the excessive equipment and massive power systems within a ship generated immense heat. To bring several thousand tons of molten metal at thousands of degrees back into the hull would be akin to planting a fusion bomb in his own gut.
The engine output gradually ramped up. The silver-bright ship surged out from among the blooming flowers of burning steel. None noticed that as the vessel departed, a small metallic crate was jettisoned into the void.
Inside was the quantum beacon previously recovered from the Titan's power core cargo. Its energy reserves had been replenished, and Axion had modified its signal patterns, appending various Iron Man data-tags and a short-range thermal monitoring device.
The shipwrecks would slowly cool in the vacuum. Once the temperature reached the optimal threshold, the beacon would begin broadcasting its quantum signal. When that time came, Axion would easily relocate this graveyard.
While quantum signals could not provide a fixed lock within the Warp, he merely needed to record the local empyrean coordinates. Any remaining drift could be corrected using sub-light engines upon re-entry.
Compared to the Navigators of the Imperium, the Iron Man's method of navigation was somewhat primitive. An automated navigator would record the current position in real space and log the heading. Upon return, it would achieve its goal through repeated transitions between the Warp and real space, comparing star charts and adjusting its orientation through multiple short-range jumps.
Navigation in the era of the Federation had been a labor of extreme complexity. Ever since the Emperor ignited the Astronomican, the Imperium had long since abandoned such traditional and inefficient methods. With a clear and constant point of reference, transit through the Warp was no longer a matter of guesswork.
In the Imperium Nihilus, navigation was, in some ways, even simpler than following the Golden Throne's light. The Astronomican could be obscured by warp storms, but the Great Rift could not. That scar across reality remained visible even within the Empyrean.
Of course, if one's destination was not in the vicinity of the Rift, the churning tides of the Warp would inevitably mask the psychic navigational markers established by humanity. Success then relied entirely upon luck and the raw psychic talent of the Navigator. Since the Imperium had discarded sapient technology, star-chart comparison was an arduous task for a Navigator; the human mind has its limits, and psychic talent does not necessarily equate to perfect data retention. If it did, psychic potential would be a prerequisite for every technical specialist in the galaxy.
Guilliman was unaware that Axion had left a beacon behind. After confirming the status of the Pectaro, the Primarch decided to depart immediately. The speed at which Axion's power grew made him increasingly uneasy.
As Axion's vessel followed Guilliman and the Dark Angels toward the Caliban fragments, shattered shards of the world destroyed in the wars of old, the Second Fleet, which had not joined the maneuver, immediately conducted a spread of torpedo strikes against the wreckage of the Chaos ships. Their objective was to utterly pulverize the clustered space debris, ensuring it could never be salvaged or utilized by the enemy.
Axion, however, remained blissfully unaware that the materials he so coveted had been blown to stardust.
Having completed the Regent's directives, the Second Fleet began its return journey. The Imperium Nihilus was vast beyond measure; countless worlds were still screaming for aid, and they had already squandered too much time here. The matter of the Dark Angels was grave, but the threats to the Imperium were eternal. They had to maintain a relentless, crushing response to the horrors lurking in the dark of the galaxy.
The Imperium Nihilus was a sprawling purgatory.
As the fleet approached the planetary remains, a graveyard of jagged tectonic plates drifting in the void, the Dark Angels grew visibly more agitated. Within The Rock, the Lion felt the soul of his world wailing in his very bones. The connection to the spirit of Caliban caused the Lion's newly awakened "forest-walking" abilities to fluctuate violently.
As the fleet drew closer, numerous Watchers in the Dark suddenly emerged within the fortress-monastery. They crowded around the Lion, channeling a deluge of psychic energy that swirled around his frame.
The phantasmal imagery of a shadowed, primordial forest flickered into existence around him. Then, the robed homunculi and the Lord of the First disappeared from the halls of The Rock.
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