The battlefield was a cacophony of surging data-streams.
There existed a fundamental distinction between the Iron Men and the Necrons. Although the Necrons had been transformed into living metal, they were not true artificial intelligences. Unlike Axion, who could exert direct control over every unit as if they were extensions of his own physical form, even the most meticulous Necron command required a finite, albeit minuscule, reaction time. The captains of Necron vessels and subordinate task force commanders still possessed individual agency and independent thought.
In engagements against other organic races, this discrepancy was negligible; most species followed similar command hierarchies. Against the Iron Men, however, this infinitesimal disadvantage was magnified to an infinite degree.
From their vantage point, the Dark Angels watched in disbelief as the massive silver vessels executed flawless, staggered defensive maneuvers. A profound sense of wrongness permeated the void; the mechanical fleet did not fight like an organized armada, but rather like a single, multi-headed organism.
Whenever a vessel sustained focused fire from the Necrons, causing its shields to fail and its hull to buckle, another ship would position itself with impossible precision along the attack vector, interposing its own shields to absorb the remaining impact. The damaged vessel did not retreat; it simply decelerated just enough to let its sister ships pass. After a brief shimmer of silvery light across its hull, the sign of rapid self-repair, the damage would vanish, shields would re-ignite, and the ship would surge back into the fray.
Though the silver fleet was outnumbered by the Necrons, it appeared to suffer almost no attrition in the face of such high-intensity warfare.
There were moments that shocked the Dark Angels even further. One Strike Cruiser, pushing deep into the enemy line, used its prow-mounted lances to impale two Scythe-class light cruisers in quick succession. Its double-edged prow buried itself deep within the alien hulls. Then, rapid-fire railguns hidden beneath its armor plating bared their fangs, tearing the enemy vessels apart from the inside and rending them into jagged halves.
A violent explosion erupted against the Strike Cruiser's own hull, snapping the vessel in two. Yet, unlike an Imperial ship, the bisected cruiser did not drift into silent death. Even as its internal atmospheric lights flickered and died, its engines roared back to life with silent, spectral power. The remaining half-hull surged forward like a vengeful ghost, hurtling toward a Scythe Harvester in the rear ranks.
The Necron commander overseeing the Harvesters immediately detected the incoming "wreckage." A single Scythe Harvester broke formation, its phase-shifter shimmering as it prepared to use its crescent-shaped prow to shatter the broken derelict. Emerald Gauss beams lashed out at the center of the Strike Cruiser's remains, seeking to punch a hole through the hull and mitigate the impact.
Suddenly, the shattered half-hull returned fire. Even with less than a third of its railgun arrays functional, the sudden outburst of kinetic fury caught the Necrons off guard.
At the moment of impact, the Harvester's curved prow punched effortlessly into the broken hull, burying itself hundreds of meters deep. Countless shards of metal shrapnel spiraled into the void.
Then came the detonation.
The Strike Cruiser's remains overloaded its Quantum Energy Cores, a terminal discharge that vaporized half of the Harvester embedded within it. Phase-recall protocols activated instantly; green light enveloped the crippled Necron vessel as it and its surviving crew vanished from the battlefield.
The shockwave from the explosion disrupted the firing solutions of the surrounding Scythe Harvesters. Sensing the opening, more Strike Cruisers accelerated violently, attempting to breach the Necron rear-guard.
This display earned a strange, begrudging admiration from Zahndrekh.
"It seems our foes are not so base after all," the Nemesor mused. "At the very least, they possess the courage to fight to the bitter end."
The surrounding Necron nobles exchanged glances, their cold, metallic oculars betraying a flicker of weary resignation.
His mood buoyed, Zahndrekh rose from his throne, brandishing his staff and shouting.
"This is the war I long for! Fair and fierce! Let us prove with our might to these ignorant foes that the Necrons remain the masters of the galaxy!"
"When we win this war, our dynasty shall flourish, and our name shall echo through the stars until every race knows the terror of our kind!"
Had they possessed flesh, the surrounding Necrons would have been ashen-faced. The name of the Necrons had already spread across the galaxy, to the point where most had forgotten they were ever the Necrontyr. And you, my master, they thought, your reputation for madness has already reached every awakened dynasty in the stars.
Just as the battle reached its white-hot zenith, the Heart of the Forge finally dragged its colossal bulk into firing range.
The reach of its "Doomsday" weaponry was staggering. Its Oblivion Cannons were capable of detonating a planet from two star systems away. As two beams, wreathed in crackling energy arcs, erupted from the prow of the Heart of the Forge, the forward mechanical fleet began to subtly shift its formation.
At such extreme ranges, it would take minutes for the beams to strike their targets. This was precisely why Axion had initially hesitated to prioritize single-target doomsday weapons like the Oblivion Cannon. Even with the Iron Men's predictive algorithms, the probability of a hit was low, unless the target was another Titan-class vessel.
Titan-class ships were notoriously sluggish in realspace, with acceleration that could best be described as tectonic. While they could eventually reach speeds sufficient to keep pace with a fleet, their initial maneuverability was nil.
The Necron vessels, however, operated on entirely different principles. Regardless of their class, they appeared far more lithe and elegant than Imperial ships of comparable scale. In truth, their mass was significantly greater than Imperial hulls, but thanks to their unique Inertialess Drive systems, these ostensibly lumbering ships were more agile than any equivalent in the galaxy.
If Zahndrekh desired, his Cairn-class Tomb Ship, a behemoth exceeding fifty kilometers in length, could literally fly circles around the Dark Angels' Invincible Reason. The Gloriana-class flagship would struggle even to bring its broadsides to bear on such a nimble foe. However, the old general was not like Imotekh; he had no taste for humiliation. A twisted sense of knightly chivalry and honor dictated his tactical mind.
As the minutes ticked by, the Necrons finally detected the incoming energy beams. Despite the vast distance, the beams from the Oblivion Cannons had lost little of their potency, each measuring over ten kilometers in diameter.
Worse yet, there were not two, but four beams. To ensure a hit, Axion had overloaded the Heart of the Forge's weaponry, double-charging the capacitors to ensure the saturation of every possible escape path.
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