"What in the...!"
Nalson and the Ultramarines behind him stood in stunned silence, their jaws nearly dropping. As the squad approached the coordinates of the spire, the towering silhouette that had once dominated the darkness was gone.
Reaching the base of the structure, they found the massive tower of metallic scrap reduced to a field of jagged fragments strewn across the earth.
Only Carson, the Grey Knight, remained focused. After a cursory glance at the structural debris, his gaze fixed intensely on Axion. The cacophony they had heard earlier in the darkness was clearly the sound of this tower being dismantled, and there was only one individual capable of vanishing from the group and performing such a feat in minutes.
Since Axion had disappeared without leaving a psychic ripple, it was evident he possessed a form of teleportation technology that did not rely on the Warp. Carson had initially attributed this to some esoteric Adeptus Mechanicus archaeotech, but now he was beginning to question Axion's true identity.
Nalson quickly ordered his men into a defensive perimeter to scan for approaching Orks, while the remaining brothers began investigating the wreckage.
As they sifted through the scrap, they discovered a section of the tower that bore damage distinctly different from the rest. Within a segment of the collapsed spire lay a bizarre piece of machinery. Unlike the structural supports, which had been cleanly severed, this strange device appeared to have been hacked into fine, unrecognizable splinters, as if by a power sword wielded with surgical fury.
Axion remained silent throughout, impassively meeting Carson's steady, scrutinizing stare.
The moment the planetary shielding had collapsed, Axion had tracked the fading energy trails back to this pseudo-projector embedded within the heap of refuse. Because the energy signature was dissipating rapidly, Axion had opted for a blunt solution: severing the tower's primary load-bearing joints to bring the entire structure down.
Once the debris settled, the device, a grotesque fusion of ancient technology and crude xenos junk, was finally exposed.
When Axion first laid eyes on the projector, he cross-referenced his internal databases multiple times. It was mutilated beyond recognition. Had he not scanned a fragment of a partial serial number on a small section of the chassis, he wouldn't have identified it as the source of the planetary shroud.
A standard holographic projector lacked the capacity to generate an interference field of this magnitude, but these crude modifications had clearly granted it unintended, emergent properties.
For the first time, Axion gained a definitive understanding of the terrifying, illogical technical "intuition" of the Orks. After concluding that no amount of scanning would explain how the device functioned in this state, Axion decided to destroy the desecrated machine entirely. He would not allow such an affront to logic to remain, lest some future scavenger mistake this heap of garbage for the pinnacle of ancient design.
The reality of the situation was both absurdly simple and maddeningly complex.
The Orks had discovered the projector while looting the ruins of an unidentified civilization. It had passed through the hands of numerous Mekboyz, none of whom could fathom its intended purpose. However, a particularly cunning Big Mek had accidentally discovered its capacity for energy projection.
The device originally ran on quantum power cells of immense output. The Big Mek, however, was convinced the machine was a "bigga energy loud-speaka." Driven by his own brand of "know-wotz," he had butchered the energy interfaces, jury-rigged a massive power bypass, and cranked the output to maximum to see what would happen.
Initially, nothing happened. By all laws of physics, the modification was a failure.
However, the Warboss of the tribe was currently dealing with an infestation of Weirdboyz. Needing a place to vent these unstable, head-popping psykers, the Big Mek looked at his high-consumption, "useless" machine and had a sudden flash of inspiration.
He commanded a mob of Meks and Gretchin to build a metal tower around the device. Whenever a Weirdboy felt his head was about to burst from excess psychic pressure, he was sent to blast his "brain-zaps" into the machine. The mangled projector violently absorbed the raw Waaagh! energy and projected it into the upper atmosphere, creating the flickering shroud that covered the planet.
To the Orks, this was merely a "Lighthouse." It meant they no longer needed torches. By cycling hundreds of Weirdboyz through the spire to vent their psychic buildup, the Orks had inadvertently kept the planet illuminated for years.
The Orks were entirely unaware of the interference field. The Big Mek's haphazard tampering had caused the device to leak erratic energy into low orbit, unintentionally severing vox communications and isolating the planet from the rest of the galaxy.
The Orks had no idea they had turned their world into a psychic beacon. The concentrated Warp energy gathered in the Empyrean like a massive flare, drawing Daemons like moths to a flame.
When a Tzeentchian-aligned Chaos warband arrived, the slaughter began. These sorcerous traitors had lured a contingent of World Eaters to the planet with the promise of a massive psychic sacrifice. Even the Dark Gods were enticed; normally, Ork energy flows toward Gork and Mork, but this processed, "ownerless" psychic runoff was an irresistible prize.
As the World Eaters descended, the Orks responded with their own brand of holy tribute: a mountain of severed heads. The gaze of Khorne fell upon the world, and he cast a vast daemonic legion into the fray.
This intrusion finally drew the ire of Gork and Mork. As the twin gods of the Orks grappled with the Blood God in the Warp, the conflict on the surface intensified. The more the Orks fought, the more Waaagh! energy they generated. The Weirdboyz were used with increasing frequency to vent this power into the tower.
The spire became the eye of the storm. The Orks fought for the joy of the scrap; the Daemons fought to seize the tower and claim its psychic reservoir.
Neither side used heavy ordnance near the spire, fearing they might destroy the prize. The mounting Ork casualties fed the Daemonic host, while the survivors channeled more and more energy into the machine. Finally, a panicked Bloodthirster manifested on the battlefield just as the Ork Warboss arrived to meet it in single combat.
The battle ended when the Daemon was banished, and the Orks, facing a catastrophically overloaded spire, were forced to temporarily evacuate the zone.