As the inertialess drives nullified the ships' acceleration, the small fleet led by Zahndrekh quickly located the Titan-class vessel Heart of the Forge two systems away, following the energy trails observed by the Crypteks.
In that moment, even Zahndrekh could not suppress an exclamation of awe.
The Necrons possessed many titanic megastructures, and colossal starships were not rare, but this was the first time he had witnessed an artificial megastructure constructed by another race. Yet, despite his amazement at its sheer volume, the old General's fury toward the Heart of the Forge did not diminish in the slightest.
A massive hull did not equate to massive combat power, whereas a Tomb Ship powered by a C'tan battery was an almost indestructible entity.
The Necron fleet struck first. Against such a gargantuan unit, the Necrons possessed a multitude of specialized armaments. A sphere of emerald light coalesced before the massive monolith atop the Tomb Ship, then transformed into a thick green beam that lanced toward the Heart of the Forge.
It impacted the Titan-class vessel's immense void shields, which were several kilometers thick. The beam contained terrifying levels of energy, yet it did not detonate upon the shield. Instead, the strange energy beam tore through the dimensions, forming a cosmic rift, a localized hole in the universe that acted like a black hole, drawing in everything surrounding it.
Large sections of the Titan-class vessel's shield arrays immediately redlined into overload as vast quantities of surging energy were siphoned into the void. Unlike the gravitational pull of a black hole, this weapon was a form of Necron vortex technology; the rift consumed all surrounding matter and energy, erasing their existence from reality and casting them into the non-material universe and the Warp.
Such a massive technological megastructure mounted on a Tomb Ship could, in a single discharge, hurl an entire planet into a different dimensional space, tearing it to shreds in the process. (Weakened versions of this technology, known as Exile Cannons, were equipped on some Tomb Sentinels.)
Under the assault, the forward-most sixth of the Heart of the Forge immediately took on a grotesque, distorted posture. Axion, in control of the ship, reacted instantly. The Oblivion Cannons, though not yet fully cooled, were forcibly activated, projecting two point-blank blasts of destruction.
Such cosmic rifts often possessed a threshold of capacity. The concentrated giant beams accurately struck the rift appearing on the shields, triggering a violent explosion. Sensing the anomaly, the Necron fleet immediately engaged their inertialess drives to retreat, successfully clearing the blast radius at the final moment.
The cosmic rift struck by the Oblivion Cannons behaved like an underwater detonation; it expanded rapidly before sharply contracting, triggering a wave of spatial oscillation. The repeatedly overloaded Oblivion Cannons suffered immediate meltdown from the shock, and an even more horrific explosion erupted at the ship's prow.
The immense energy detonation formed a miniature singularity of matter upon the prow structure. This violent impact nearly tore the entire Heart of the Forge into several segments. However, amidst the repeated energy fluctuations, the small singularity was soon closed, and the rift in realspace was rapidly repaired.
Countless metal fragments drifted in space, while even more matter was swallowed by the cosmic rift and the singularity. This left the already unfinished Heart of the Forge severely damaged, its completion progress dropping significantly. The entire great ship fell into a near-instantaneous state of total shutdown under the energy backlash from its own weapon systems.
Minutes later, the Necron fleet that had departed previously returned to the scene. Seeing the Heart of the Forge motionless and seemingly fractured, the Necron fleet departed without hesitation.
Once it was confirmed that the Necron flagship's signal had vanished, the heavily damaged Heart of the Forge, like a cracked sesame dumpling, began to leak a substance resembling a greyish-white liquid.
Vast swarms of nanite bees flowed ceaselessly from the hull, beginning to reclaim and devour all shattered metallic materials in the void. Slowly, the entire Titan-class vessel began to recover from its state of paralysis.
Meanwhile, watching the shattered ships being continuously returned to the tomb worlds of the Sautekh Dynasty via phase-recall protocols, the Stormlord of the Dynasty finally could not resist sending a transmission to Zahndrekh. After all, the fleet of the Drazak Dynasty should not have been capable of inflicting such damage on a Sautekh fleet. The strength of a group of exiles should not have been enough to mar so many ships of the Dynasty.
They did not know that, originally, hundreds of Necron vessels had been vaporized directly into fundamental particles by the Oblivion Cannons, failing to even trigger their phase-recall protocols.
The inquiry from the Dynasty finally reminded Zahndrekh of his mission. He had come to handle the abnormal movements of the Drazak Dynasty, but having enjoyed himself too much in the fray, he had momentarily forgotten that he still needed to deal with those exiles who had devolved into beasts.
The Necron ships still embroiled in the melee on the front lines quickly received orders from Zahndrekh. They broke off from the battlefield one after another, vanishing into deep space. Looking at the Necron fleet, which was nearly half the size it had been upon departure, Zahndrekh did not forget to praise it as a "splendid battle." The other Necrons, however, began to wonder if they would be punished upon their return.
For Axion, this was the first time he had truly felt the terrifying potency of Necron technology. The Heart of the Forge would require at least several hundred hours to regain mobility. The machine fleet that had entered the battle first had lost 224 ships. A portion of them had been vaporized by the Oblivion Cannons, leaving no possibility of recovery. The remainder had been reduced to various wrecks and hull fragments scattered across the region, the scorched remains of ships that had self-detonated their power cores.
Only a third of the remaining ships were in good condition; the rest were marred by various missing sections. For Axion, the losses from this single battle were almost impossible to recover. There were virtually no wrecks of Necron warships on the battlefield; all destroyed Necron vessels had vanished in a flash of green light. As for those vaporized by the Oblivion Cannons, they were utterly dissipated.
Ultimately, only a pile of Necron Night Scythe fighter wreckage drifted in the war zone. Compared to the mass required for a ship, these fighter remains weren't even enough to piece together two vessels.
However, the recovery speed of the Iron Men's fleet was far beyond what the current Imperium could imagine. Ships with minor damage began to close in on large pieces of wreckage, as nanomachines began to devour the metal to repair hulls and increase material reserves. Some severely damaged ships drew together and began to fuse under the influence of nanomachines. Three or four sets of wreckage would merge into a single new ship.
Several hours later, the machine fleet once again began to push deep into the Ghoul Stars. Most of the fleet's damage had been repaired, but the scale of the fleet had shrunk by a full third. This battlefield was left with only a vast quantity of floating metallic dust and two Strike Cruisers that could no longer scavenge enough material to be made whole.
Once the Heart of the Forge recovered its mobility, it would arrive at this battlefield. It would use the Grey Tide Annihilators to devour all floating debris and those two Strike Cruisers that were now little more than skeletal frames and a few weapon batteries.
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