It came as no surprise to Axion that the Imperium had ultimately ratified the accord.
According to all projections, the treaty was undeniably advantageous to the Imperium. Under the covert orchestrations of Oud Oudia Raskian, the Fabricator-General of Mars, a vast array of concessions and incentives had been promised. The fence-sitters within the Senatorum Imperialis quickly fell into line. Driven by these entangled interests, the pro-accord faction managed to secure a narrow majority among the twelve seats of the High Lords, passing this 'alternative transaction' proposed by the Iron Men.
Yet, even with the ratification, several granular details had been subjected to extensive revisions. The erratic vacillations of the unaligned lords had deeply dissatisfied the Fabricator-General, though he remained powerless to halt their meddling.
Upon receiving the coordinates from Roboute Guilliman, the Void Sword soon arrived within the perilous vicinity of the Eye of Terror.
A battle barge designated the Divine Radiance, having rigorously cleared all security protocols, slipped smoothly into one of the Void Sword's colossal internal starports. Watching the titanic mechanical marvel loom around them, everyone aboard the arriving vessel was gripped by absolute awe. The sheer scale of a starship capable of housing such an immense starport structure within its hull left them deeply shaken.
This battle barge, bearing no insignia other than the Imperial Aquila, had come strictly to execute the exchange.
As the docking clamps engaged and locked into place, the heavy iris valves groaned upward. Two parallel columns of Tempestus Scions marched cautiously out of the hull, their boots striking the deck in synchronized rhythm. The mortal soldiers aligned themselves along the vast gantry, their minds reeling as they took in the impossible architecture of the Void Sword's interior.
Following them, fifty towering figures shrouded in heavy, dark robes emerged from the vessel, their footsteps perfectly measured.
At the far end of the starport terminal, Ersen stood waiting to receive the delegation. The moment they stepped clear, his senses acutely registered a sudden, turbulent shift in the local psychic aether. Having undergone physiological augmentations via the Panacea, Ersen's sensitivity to the Warp had been drastically heightened. Beneath those heavy robes, he could feel a roiling, incinerating torrent of fanatical faith.
Ersen narrowed his eyes, scanning the three-kilometer-long battle barge in an attempt to discern its origins, but his scrutiny only birthed further perplexity. The vessel was unmistakably configured under the purview of the Imperial Navy; it bore absolutely no Astartes heraldry. Furthermore, the escort troopers were not standard naval ratings, these Tempestus Scions operated almost exclusively as direct assets of the Inquisition.
"With whom do we interface?" a sharp voice echoed from behind the towering figures.
An Inquisitor stepped forward, a dataslate gripped firmly in his hand. Ersen recognized the markings instantly; the man belonged to the Ordo Malleus. He had crossed paths with their kind more than once during his nomadic wanderings across the Imperium.
Beside Ersen, the Sapient Machine Automaton manifested no such hesitation.
"This unit is designated full designation 3-9-2241. You may address me as 2241, Inquisitor. Please submit the personnel manifest."
The Inquisitor offered no superfluous remarks. He strode to the vanguard of the column and thrust the dataslate directly into the automaton's waiting hand. A data-tether seamlessly extended from the machine's mechanical appendage, jacking into the slate as dense streams of encrypted lore and personnel records flashed across its optic sensors.
The automaton nodded, returning the device to the Inquisitor.
"Personnel data logged. Clearance authorized. Cargo is prepared at the staging sector. Corresponding technical sub-components have been integrated within the crates."
The synthesized, electronic monotone reverberated through the metallic corridor as the starport's heavy loading lifters groaned to life. Fifty massive, reinforced metallic containers were hoisted from the starport's freight vaults.
"Inform the Captain to unseal the cargo decks," the Inquisitor commanded into his vox-caster, his eyes lingering on the weapon crates. He cast a final, emotionally complex glance toward the fifty silent Astartes before turning on his heel back toward the ship. The Scions followed in total, disciplined silence, re-boarding the vessel.
The loading process was remarkably swift. The technology wielded by the Iron Men defied Imperial comprehension; powerful anti-gravitic arrays manipulated the massive containers with effortless precision, guiding them into the cargo bays as if they possessed a volition of their own.
The automaton then turned to guide the fifty robed Astartes toward the inner sanctums of the ship for psychic calibration testing.
Left alone, Ersen walked out onto one of the Void Sword's peripheral observation galleries. Through the reinforced, multi-layered viewing ports, the terrifying, bruised expanse of the Eye of Terror loomed close enough to touch. Below, the Imperial battle barge was already decoupling, charting a course that took it even closer to the abyssal tear in reality.
The entire sequence left Ersen deeply bewildered.
Axion, however, had long since calculated every variable. The High Lords had compromised on the macro-treaty, but they had covertly shackled it with numerous unilateral stipulations. No individual Space Marine Chapter was permitted to independently contact the Iron Men or assign their own psykers to their service in exchange for logistical support. The Imperium would strictly control the pipeline, transferring only specific personnel to serve alongside the machines. Furthermore, all allocated Luminous Raider Warsuits would be sequestered and deployed exclusively under the strict supervision of the Inquisition.
To Axion, these stipulations were irrelevant. How the Imperium chose to distribute the yielded armaments was their own administrative concern. So long as the Adeptus Terra delivered Astartes psykers, Axion would honor the accord and supply the wargear.
The only variable that strayed from expectations was the sheer scarcity of the personnel provided. The numbers were far lower than Axion's initial projections.
But Axion had already designated a new objective to rectify the deficit. Two mechanized fleets had already broken orbit. During a routine escort assignment, a Guardian-class vessel had picked up the distinct telemetry of a major enemy of the Imperium.
Fabius Bile had reportedly surfaced near the eastern fringes of Segmentum Ultima. Extracting that primary target might yield highly sophisticated genetic and technological data sufficient to resolve their biological processing bottlenecks.
The psychic resonance testing for the fifty newcomers concluded rapidly. The warp-signatures of these newly arrived Astartes psykers were flawlessly identical. Every single warrior registered a controlled, tightly bound output that sat precisely at the precipice of an Omega-level assignment.
When subjected to the psychic stabilization and manipulation trials, all fifty displayed an astounding, flawless level of mental fortitude. It was glaringly obvious that very few Astartes institutions in the galaxy could boast such unyielding discipline.
In the vast majority of Space Marine Chapters, psykers were irreplaceable, precious assets. They were culled from the black ships by the Inquisition, brought to Terra for secondary screening, trained, implanted with the gene-seed, and thoroughly broken into the chapter's culture before ascending to the rank of Lexicanium or Codicier. They rarely erred, and they were virtually never remanded to the Deathwatch for penal service, let alone surrendered fifty Librarians at a single stroke.
Such a sacrifice was a statistical impossibility for a standard Chapter. Only one formation in the entirety of the Imperium possessed the capability and the mandate to execute such a mandate: the enigmatic, shadow-veiled brotherhood the Imperium went to desperate lengths to conceal—the Grey Knights.
The last time Axion's sub-routines had logged the Grey Knights, it had been across a warzone choked with Orks. Those grim, indomitable warriors had demonstrated extraordinary, lethal efficiency alongside the Aeldari. Now, these ultimate paragons of Imperial loyalty and unshakeable faith had been delivered into the heart of the Void Sword.
The Grey Knights themselves remained entirely unaware of the legendary, paradigm-shifting crucible they were about to endure. In the wars to come, the experiences gained here would become the bedrock of lore they would share with their battle-brothers.
Under Axion's direct oversight, a freshly manufactured contingent of psychic-attuned Luminous Destroyers was prepared, and the fortunate warriors were integrated into their new armored shells.
With its complements sealed, the Void Sword pitched forward, plunging headlong into the raw madness of the Immaterium. Within the turbulent tides of the Sea of Souls, Axion intended to conduct the first live combat trials.
Not far from the training decks, upon a newly welded titanium platform, several automatons carefully produced a small, velvet-lined pouch containing a handful of pristine Spirit Stones. These were a fraction of the minor spoils seized from the Drukhari during the compliance actions in Commorragh, some of which had been harvested from the wreckage of fallen xenos Titans.