After several successive rounds of intensive bombardment, Axion was thoroughly nonplussed by the shields shielding the Ork battle fortress.
Massive quantities of computational data nearly caused an overflow in his storage arrays. No matter how the algorithms processed the variables, these bizarre energy barriers proved preternaturally resilient. Following the integration of the offensive temporal device modules, conventional shielding should have been pierced as easily as parchment.
This was a glaring anomaly.
The solitary logical conclusion was that this strange, green energy possessed extraordinary properties. Could it perhaps be causing interference within the temporal dimension?
However, if punching through the shields via conventional kinetic or energy vectors was mathematically unfeasible, the Iron Man possessed myriad other protocols to deal with fortresses enveloped in such barriers.
Chime.
A localized data-file from the allied Imperial forces suddenly flashed onto the communications array. The transmission originated from a Strike Cruiser belonging to the Grey Hounds Chapter. During the War of the Beast, this specific Adeptus Astartes Chapter had launched boarding actions against the Orks' terrifying Attack Moons, granting them extensive combat telemetry regarding xenos megastructures of this scale.
Though these Astartes had never anticipated that the Orks still retained the capacity to construct such titanic engines of war, they clearly judged the Iron Man's current orbital bombardment strategy to be ineffective.
Axion rapidly parsed the data-file from the Grey Hounds. It was a meticulously detailed combat after-action report, containing a wealth of structural analysis regarding the megastructure, down to its primary internal components. The tactical conclusion of the report strongly advocated for a concentrated boarding action to sabotage the super-fortress's internal reactor cores from within, thereby paralyzing the war machine.
By now, the broader Imperium had acquired a substantial understanding of the Iron Men's surface assets. As Astartes, no matter how deeply ingrained their genetic pride, they were forced to concede that the mechanical automata of the Iron Men were physically superior to their own.
Yet, the Iron Man's strategic doctrines far exceeded anything the Imperial command could conceive.
The Imperial fleet, which had been maintaining a supportive rearguard position to supplement the mechanical fleet's firepower, was about to witness an unimaginable method of warfare.
Endless waves of a grey-white substance began to exude from the hull of the Heart of the Forge, spreading out across the void like a shifting shroud before descending upon the nearest planetary fortress. Caught by the gravity well, these nanites, each smaller than a speck of cosmic dust, accelerated rapidly toward the target.
The kinetic and thermal energy profile of any single nanite was utterly negligible, far below the minimum activation threshold of the fortress's void shields. No defensive barrier, regardless of its design, possessed the fine-grained filtering required to repel matter on such a microscopic scale.
It was this precise physical bypass that granted the Grey Tide Annihilators the capability to ignore defensive shielding entirely.
Planet-scale shields possessed an exceptionally high activation floor. After all, if every stray micrometeorite triggered a kinetic displacement reaction, the shield generators would remain trapped in a perpetual cycle of cascade failure and burnout. The individual components of the nanite swarm were exponentially smaller than a pebble.
The grey-white nanites drifted down through the upper atmosphere toward the planetary surface like a silent, devastating snowfall.
The Orks, conversely, were ecstatic. They boisterously assumed that their own returning batteries had crippled the titanic vessel in orbit, forcing it to leak some manner of fuel. Though they had never seen grey-white propellant before, the greenskins possessed absolutely no conceptual understanding of nanotechnology.
By manipulating minute electromagnetic forces, the nanites accelerated their descent, drawn along the lines of the planetary fortress's gravitational and magnetic fields. The grey-white dust began to settle across the staging grounds and parapets of the battle fortress.
While a fraction of the nanite swarm was incinerated by the backflash of the Orks' surface-to-orbit batteries, the surviving volume remained staggeringly immense.
Several simple-minded Ork Boyz excitedly reached out with their thick paws to catch the falling ash, watching with dull amusement as the flakes vanished into their skin like melting snow.
"I ain't nevvu zeen snow before," one grunted. "Diz stuff's roight funny."
The amusement was short-lived. As soon as the density of the descending nanite swarm reached its critical activation threshold, the anomalies began.
Without warning, the flesh and muscle of individual Orks began to peel away in layers, leaving behind nothing but pristine, stark white skeletal structures. Upon the ground, the spilled green blood mixed with the grey-white matter, churning violently within the crimson pools.
In moments, these substances coalesced into undulating, silver tides that surged across the stone and iron decking.
Faced with this unnatural abomination, the Orks' legendary bravado broke into primal terror. Countless Boyz shrieked and wailed, scattering in a panicked, disorganized rout. Yet, their headlong flight only brought them into contact with the trillions of microscopic nanites still drifting through the air.
Orks running at full sprint suddenly collapsed mid-stride, reduced to clean skeletons that clattered apart across the earth. Every single framework of bone was stripped entirely bare, without a single shred of sinew or marrow left behind. It was as though some invisible, titanic beast had sucked them clean in a single, voracious gulp.
Across the sectors of the Ork planetary fortress targeted by the Grey Tide Annihilators, the landscape transformed into a theater of horrific, quiet butchery.
Tens of thousands of greenskins collapsed into an expanding sea of gore flecked with silver luminescence. Flesh, bone, and heavy scrap-armor alike dissolved, feeding the ravenous tide that now coated the entirety of the fortress's primary surface.
The titanic macro-cannons and defensive battlements on the surface began to warp, liquefying and collapsing like wax exposed to a plasma torch. The planet-scale void shields flickered sporadically before shattering entirely.
Bereft of the garish green energy barrier, the shifting tide of blood and silver became visible even from the vacuum of space. The crimson-and-silver line swept across the face of the world, consuming everything in its path before the blood-slicked deluge began to seep downward.
The interior of the hollowed-out planetary fortress was a labyrinth of colossal structural vaults. Crude, titanic mechanisms filled the subterranean caverns, engines designed by the Orks to shift tectonic plates, artificially engineering super-earthquakes and ground fissures to crush any conventional ground forces daring enough to make landfall.
But the nanite-driven blood tide was absorbed into the subterranean crust like water into a sponge, rapidly penetrating the planet's deepest recesses.
Then, a planet-wide structural collapse began.
The massive underground mechanical arrays were gnawed to hollow husks within seconds. The Orks entrenched deep within the subterranean bunkers fared no better, their biomass instantly integrated into the collective swarm.
Before the eyes of the watching Imperial fleet, the Ork planetary battle fortress fell into an absolute, deathly silence.
What occurred next caused a cold dread to grip the spines of the Imperial officers and crews, their lips hurriedly murmuring frantic prayers for the Emperor's protection.
The Ork battle fortress, now a cracked shell of massive fissures and collapsed continents, began to shudder violently. It resembled a gargantuan beast violently shaking its frame to shed a dead skin.
Millions of tons of displaced soil, stone, and crushed iron were violently ejected into the vacuum of space.
Slowly, a colossal, silver mechanical structure began to tear itself free from the shattered ruins of the fortress. Two brilliant, silver-white prongs emerged first from the fractured crust, followed by the gradual ascension of a massive, sweeping hull.
The entire planetary fortress was split cleanly down the center into two symmetrical halves, drifting apart into the void like a pair of dead, rocky moons.
Only then did the Imperial fleet behold the entity in its terrifying totality.
The immense, silver-white hull gleamed under the harsh glare of cosmic background radiation, its silhouette forming a perfect, sweeping C-shaped crescent moon. Had its intricate architectural details not been entirely distinct from Necron geometry, it could easily have been mistaken for a masterwork of the star-gods.
Residual sand and planetary debris continuously sloughed off the massive vessel. Locked securely within the pincer-like embrace of the crescent's inner curve was the active, burning planetary core, the very power source the Orks had harnessed, now held in absolute, unyielding containment.
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