With the construction of his new vessel complete, Axion reclaimed every remaining asset from Vorchad III, stowing them within the cavernous holds of the industrial ship. The massive flotilla stirred to life in the lightless void of the system. The gargantuan industrial ship tore open a jagged rift in the Immaterium and vanished, followed in sequence by the rest of the fleet.
With a mobile industrial base now at his disposal, Axion's primary objective, second only to the accumulation of merit, was the acquisition of mass resources. To his logic-cores, the most suitable source of material was the macro-tentacles. Their metallic content was exceptionally high, their quality surpassed natural ore veins, and they were surrounded by swarms of enemies, making them "high-yield" targets for farming both military contribution and raw materials.
The blind-jump tactics that the Imperial Navy found impossible were a non-issue for Axion. After departing the Eternal Night World, the fleet plunged into the depths of the occupied zones, swiftly scaring off the Tyranid swarms across an entire sector. The Pectaro, the industrial ship, and the transport vessels remained in a secured pocket of space to gather residual materials and replenish the troop deficits on the second transport.
The remaining Swarm Strikers vanished once more into the Warp, each charting a different vector.
During his previous encounter with a Leviathan tendril, Axion had observed that the outlying swarms eventually returned to these appendages to deliver the staggering amounts of biomass they had harvested. Although the Tyranids now preferred to turn tail and flee upon sighting his silver ships, Axion knew they still possessed the data he required.
By dispersing his fleet to appear at multiple points simultaneously, he could track the largest bio-ships and observe their flight paths to easily find the intersection point on his star charts. The location where these bio-fleets converged would inevitably be the site of a Leviathan tendril.
Days passed, and the detached cruisers completed their reconnaissance. The results aligned perfectly with Axion's analysis. The Tyranids recognized the Iron Man vessels almost instantly upon their transition into realspace; the Hive Mind seemed to have no desire to waste resources fighting these soulless machines. As soon as an Iron Man ship appeared, the xenos would evacuate and head for neighboring systems.
Axion maintained a pursuit posture with his cruisers while constantly analyzing the swarm's behavior. Though his actual kill-count during this phase was low, the pressure of the chase forced a change in the Tyranid disposition.
The Iron Men possessed no souls and thus cast no reflection in the Warp. This made them nearly invisible to a swarm that relied heavily on Warp-shadows to locate prey and enemies. Furthermore, the detection range of bio-ships was far inferior to the advanced sensors of the Dark Age of Technology.
Consequently, it did not take long for the swarm to believe it had shaken off its mechanical pursuers.
The reality was far grimmer for the xenos. The Swarm Strikers, utilizing biological signal detection, trailed the bio-fleets from extreme range, keeping their sensors locked onto the ships with the strongest life-signs. Just as Axion hypothesized, the swarm began concentrating harvested biomass onto specific Hive Ships, which then broke away from the main cluster to navigate independently into the deep void.
This clear directional vector allowed Axion to perform a simple cross-triangulation. Where the flight paths intersected, his destination awaited.
The only outlier in Axion's calculations was that among the four cruisers, one detected a Hive Ship heading in a direction that did not align with the other three. It was clear that there was another Leviathan tendril active within that region.
As the fleet reconvened, the four cruisers and the Pectaro vanished from the Materium. When they tore through the veil of the Warp once more, the bloated macro-tentacle of a Leviathan loomed before Axion's sensors.
The fleet struck immediately. The violence was sudden and overwhelming. Despite the impressive size of Axion's ships, the scale of the engagement felt uncanny, it was as if an elephant were fleeing in terror from a mouse, while the mouse pursued relentlessly, tearing away chunks of the giant's flesh.
This time, the results were even more pronounced. With their upgraded weapon efficiency, the fleet focused its fire on a single segment of the macro-tentacle, nearly severing the tip entirely with a ring of concentrated thermal and neutron fire.
The Tyranids seemed to grasp the fleet's intent. The Leviathan tendril offered no counter-attack; it simply abandoned several massive slabs of flesh and a handful of bio-ship husks, retracting into the void without hesitation.
Twice provoked, the Hive Mind was consumed by an extraordinary, predatory fury. Within the Warp, the Great Devourer gazed with insatiable hunger at the psychic reflections of life within the Imperial lines, but the damnable Iron Man fleet was a persistent thorn, an invisible assassin lurking in the reality-skin of the universe.
Initially, the losses had been acceptable—a few planets, a few dozen bio-ships. It was easier to simply bypass the soulless machines. But now, these things were actively hunting the Leviathan tendrils! The Leviathan was the physical manifestation of the Hive Mind's hunger in realspace. To lose a tendril was a severe blow to the Great Devourer's will. These appendages, built from staggering amounts of matter, were the essential "drinking straws" required to sate its cosmic famine.
Axion didn't want the biomass, but he coveted the "straws" themselves.
Someone was trying to steal the Great Devourer's cutlery.
This behavior finally ignited the full, incandescent rage of the Hive Mind. While Axion dispatched two cruisers to escort his transport and the Machine Weaver into the void between systems to "fry squid fragments" on-site, the swarms raging in other sectors began a simultaneous withdrawal.
Three Leviathan tendrils began to intertwine, executing a pincer movement on a galactic scale to surround Axion's position.
Axion, however, was immersed in the joy of refining "Great Squid Mince." New mineral materials and various elements were being continuously extracted in the high-temperature furnaces. Freshly separated metallic ingots began to fill the once-empty warehouses of the industrial ship.
As the swarm coiled its strength to strike back, the Imperium finally noticed the anomaly on the front lines. The Tyranids seemed to have vanished across the entire theater. As intelligence reports confirmed the mass withdrawal, Lord Solar Leontus realized immediately that this was the handiwork of the Iron Men.
Though he suspected they had repelled another tendril, the idea of them routing two simultaneously felt beyond the realm of imagination.
The Imperial lines began a rapid advance across the Segmentum Pacificus, a region already one-third reduced to ruins. Soon, the Imperial main force stumbled upon a sight of nightmare proportions.
Three Leviathan tendrils were twisted together like a colossal braid of meat. Their tips, however, flared out like a blossoming flower, lashing out across the scale of a star system toward a pocket of void filled with drifting biological wreckage.
And caught amidst those shattered remains was the Iron Man fleet, which had been missing for weeks.