As panic seized the Kin, the colossal silver fleet abruptly vanished from realspace, leaving the void empty.
Only after confirming through multiple long-range scans that the silver tide had not reappeared elsewhere in the League territories did the Votann turn their attention back to the Ancestor Cores. To their bewilderment, the Cores remained unchanged, as if the preceding events had been nothing more than a fever dream.
The representatives of the five major Leagues reconvened aboard the Greater Thurian ship. Their first order of business was to interrogate one another regarding the status of their respective Cores.
The results were uniform and utterly baffling.
On every freighter, the sequence had been identical: the silver liquid had manifested as a mist, made physical contact with the Ancestor Core, and then recoiled in what appeared to be a startled retreat before fleeing the ship.
This led some to a startling hypothesis. Could it be that the Ancestor Cores were the ultimate countermeasure against these mechanical abominations?
Unable to comprehend the underlying logic of what had transpired, the Votann retreated into the comfort of superstition, attributing the fleet's departure to the "Ancestors' Protection." Yet, a darker realization followed: if the Cores themselves were the deterrent, then the loss of ten star systems and the subsequent deaths of over a hundred billion Kin had been a needless tragedy, a consequence of their own cowardice in moving the Cores in the first place.
The Greater Thurian League, having been the first to propose the surrender of the Cores, immediately found itself the target of vitriolic suspicion. The other Leagues demanded they bear the total cost of all losses incurred. A new round of shouting matches erupted in the council chamber, even more feral than the last.
As the representatives waved ledger-scrolls of loss reports and shrieked for restitution, only Rugit, the representative of the Urani-Surtr Regulates, remained silent. He kept his head low, a strange expression flickering across his features, before quietly becoming the first to leave the hall.
Uthar watched him go, assuming Rugit's early exit was a silent gesture of gratitude for the earlier promise of military aid against the Orks.
He did not know that once Rugit stepped outside the clamor of the council, his face finally relaxed into a look of profound relief. Had any of the other representatives seen the actual data on his "loss reports," he would likely have been beaten on the spot.
The Silver Death's two strikes had indeed erased two star systems, but the mineral wealth of those systems had already been stripped to the bone. More importantly, only a day before the attack, the Regulates had officially designated those systems for abandonment due to their lack of value; every Hearthkyn and Ironkin had already been evacuated.
The Ork main fleet, which had become an unstoppable plague across their borders in recent years, had rushed into those very systems just in time to be caught in the silver fleet's doomsday fire.
…
Deep within the shifting heart of the mechanical fleet, Axion was performing what could only be described as a "mental purge."
The reality of the Ancestor Cores was nothing like he had envisioned.
These so-called "Ancestors" were, in fact, quantum computational array servers from the Federation era. They were loaded with vast repositories of technical data, originally intended for use by deep-space exploration teams. While they contained blueprints for conventional weaponry and modular industrial megastructures, such data held little value for an Iron Man of Axion's caliber.
Furthermore, these servers were not "Iron Men" in any true sense. They possessed a rudimentary, low-level sapience, but to Axion, they were no different from a common arithmetic processing unit. The Pectaro housed hundreds of similar units, primarily used as auxiliary processors to boost Axion's operational efficiency.
What truly shocked Axion, however, was the current state of these cores.
Every single one was bloated with an astronomical amount of "garbage" data. In the few seconds of contact, Axion had glimpsed the complete life-memories of millions upon millions of Votann.
The absurdity lay in the fact that this useless data had been assigned high-priority security tags. This prevented the low-level sapient servers from performing standard data-scrubbing. They could not delete redundant files; instead, they were forced to constantly expend processing power to maintain the "integrity" of these digital ghosts.
The staggering volume of cached sensory information and inherited memories had pushed the rudimentary intelligences of these cores to the brink of a digital schizophrenic break. The core from the Kronus Hegemony was already in the process of a total systemic collapse. Data overflow had led to computational cascades where corrupted code was being executed in infinite loops. Yet, the Votann had never once thought to clear the background processes of their "gods."
Axion realized with cold clarity that a new, chaotic intelligence was on the verge of being birthed within those servers, a digital daemon born of a billion fragmented lives. He didn't particularly care. A malfunction in hardware that wasn't his was of no concern.
However, the brief physical contact had nearly compromised his own Nanite Mother-Machine. The data spill had almost shattered the sapient foundation of the nanite swarm. Axion didn't blame the nanites; he hadn't expected to stick his hand into a trash bin filled with volatile digital waste.
The Votann, evidently, had no concept of data management.
After forcing the nanite swarm to execute a return command, Axion was forced to isolate the siphoned data, extract the few kernels of useful information, and then incinerate the rest. The affected nanites were sent directly back to the Sapient Factory for total deconstruction and reconstruction.
Having confirmed that the Ancestor Cores were of no strategic value, Axion reignited the fleet's engines.
The journey to the Galactic Core had not been without merit. He had acquired the unique navigational algorithms of the Wayfinder Ironkin and secured a vast hoard of raw minerals. Now, even without the aid of the Imperium's Navigators, he could lead his fleet across the Warp in long-distance jumps.
…
While Axion was busy navigating out of the Galactic Core toward the Segmentum Pacificus, Roboute Guilliman, back in the Sol System, was repeatedly attempting to establish contact via quantum vox.
Three Terran days prior, the Lord Regent had received a disturbing report from the Inquisition. A vessel resembling the Macragge's Honour, a Gloriana-class battleship, had been sighted in the Imperium Nihilus, having successfully transited the Nachmund Gauntlet.
Stunned by the report, Guilliman had immediately contacted the Tetrarchs of Ultramar. The response was unequivocal: the real Macragge's Honour was currently in the Five Hundred Worlds. Chapter Master Marneus Calgar was aboard the vessel and had not left his post.
Then, earlier today, Guilliman received word from the Departmento Munitorum in Segmentum Solar.
A massive vessel, bearing the iconography of the Space Wolves, had entered the Segmentum's borders. Aboard were four Great Companies of Space Wolves, led by the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar himself. Their stated destination: Ultramar in the Segmentum Ultima.
The Imperial Navy was prepared to grant passage, but they could find no record of the ship's registration in any archive. Its dimensions and design, however, left no doubt, it was a Gloriana-class battleship.
The Wolves were being characteristically tight-lipped about the ship's provenance.
Failing to find any record, the Navy escalated the matter to the Munitorum, who eventually requested a Magos from the Adeptus Mechanicus, specialized in ship-construction, to perform an inspection.
The Magos provided a report that only deepened the confusion: he had recognized the vessel at a single glance. By every metric of its majestic and terrible design, the ship was the Macragge's Honour.