Though the Iron Men possessed no innate psychic potential, this did not prevent Axion from subjecting the laboratory equipment to exhaustive scans and technical extractions. The cache contained a multitude of peculiar technologies: psychic weaving techniques used for Webway construction, inter-dimensional sub-strata drilling, and more.
These were the instruments the Emperor had engineered for his Imperial Webway Project. With the data salvaged from these devices, Axion could, at any moment, construct a segment of Webway and forcibly graft it onto the ancient network of the Old Ones. While Axion remained uncertain as to how to generate the specific psychic aegis required to repel daemonic incursions, such a hurdle was negligible for a machine intelligence.
As for the mechanism of opening and closing the gates, the solution was straightforward. Axion could not replicate the Emperor's psychic bio-metric controls, but he could mimic the Aeldari. By combining Aeldari gate-activation sequences with the Emperor's Imperial Webway weaving and the "brute-force" method of explosive closure, a nearly flawless set of Webway tactical applications emerged.
The danger of becoming lost within the labyrinthine dimension was a non-factor for the Iron Men. So long as their numbers were sufficient, every node and junction would be mapped and held.
Following the delivery of the laboratory's contents to Terra, Axion's fleet began a massive redeployment. Cruisers were reorganized into independent battle groups under the command of flagship vessels. Swarms of transport ships descended upon Terra to recover the legions from the Titan's Spear.
Nearly ten billion mechanical units within the Terran Webway required transit. Even a vessel as gargantuan as the Titan's Spear could not house such a staggering host.
The resources of the Leviathan Mining Planet in Segmentum Pacificus had been utterly depleted. The stationed fleet now set course for the Ultima Segmentum. The T'au homeworld was the next viable candidate for mineral extraction; it remained littered with shipwrecks and raw materials. This logistics fleet would systematically scour all T'au worlds, transforming their former Sept worlds into mineral distribution hubs.
To facilitate the deployment of his vast mechanical legions, Axion contacted Guilliman directly.
"Collaborator Roboute Guilliman, the new protocol is ready for execution. All Imperial worlds and their constituent forces may now petition for the assistance and support of the Iron Man legions. I shall respond to these requests."
For Guilliman, this news was like rain upon parched earth, an invaluable boon. He harbored no doubt that the Iron Men were far more reliable than his erratic and troublesome brother, Lion El'Jonson. However, when Axion presented a detailed manifest of the available forces, the normally stoic Primarch was momentarily stunned into silence.
Guilliman stared at the list, his mind processing figures that defied Imperial military logic:
[Small-scale Ground Combat Units: 8 billion]
[Medium-scale Ground Combat Units: 1.2 billion]
[Large-scale Ground Combat Units: 300 million]
[Standard Mechanical Fleets: 35 Battle Groups (Each consisting of: 1 Flagship, 20 Strike/Assault Cruisers, 20 Heavy Carriers; Total Drone Capacity: 220,000; Mixed Ground Units: 150 million)]
[Tax Escort Vessels: 1,378 Guardian-class (Medium Multi-role Combatants)]
The thirty-five Mechanical Fleets and their escorting tax fleets accounted for a total of 5.3 billion mechanical troops. Of the remaining 4.2 billion units in the sapient machine legions, 4 billion remained aboard the Titan's Spear, while the remaining 200 million were stationed upon the Void Sword and its immediate escorts.
This was the harvest of Axion's efforts in just a few short years.
Mechanical units not listed would not respond directly to Guilliman or Imperial requests. When the Iron Man strategic logic deemed heavy support necessary, the Planetary Arks would respond to fleet petitions and deploy to critical war zones. Even with these caveats, Guilliman was profoundly shaken.
The Iron Men favored explicit directives and tangible objectives; they thrived on efficiency. While Axion understood the current state of the Imperium, he believed that since the protocol was active, it was best to relinquish operational control to those better suited to wield it. Biological strategic processing differed from machine logic. Thus, Axion chose the safer route: the Iron Men would function as the ultimate executors of Imperial command.
Guilliman looked upon this mountain of military might with burgeoning excitement. His experience with Axion told him that with a precise order, the objective would be achieved perfectly. The process might be brutal, but it would be the ultimate weapon.
With the Lion handling matters on Terra, Guilliman was eager to delegate and focus his own intellect on the Pariah Nexus.
Ten of the thirty-five Mechanical Fleets were dispatched to the Imperium Nihilus to bolster the forces there; a message was sent to Commander Dante of the Blood Angels informing him of the Iron Man reinforcements. Of the remaining twenty-five fleets, five were assigned to patrol the borders of the Great Rift within the Segmentum Solar, tasked with intercepting Chaos raiders.
The remaining twenty fleets were diverted to the Ultima Segmentum. The Pariah Nexus required a solution. Armed with soulless mechanical legions, Guilliman intended to attempt the total eradication of the Necron presence in that sector. Once the Necron threat was neutralized, a massive portion of his fighting strength would be liberated for other fronts.
Speed was the essence of the plan. Guilliman had not been away from Terra long, yet the Lion had already sent several inquiries regarding his return. Knowing his brother's administrative "talents," Guilliman knew he had to act swiftly. He needed to return to the Throneworld before the Lion accidentally collapsed the entire Imperial bureaucracy.
Axion, naturally, raised no objection to Guilliman's distribution of force.
The massive fleet, resembling a swarm of iron leviathans that blotted out the stars, ignited their engines at the edge of the Sol System. Great plumes of flame propelled these behemoths into the Warp as they vanished into the empyrean, racing toward distant battlefields. Simultaneously, several newly modified Psychic Bombs were silently deployed into the Webway.
Unlike conventional melta, high-explosive, or plasma munitions, these Psychic Bombs were designed to disrupt localized supernatural energies rather than inflict physical destruction. Once the Sapient Machine Automatons had positioned the charges, a physical detonation cord was trailed back to the Titan's Spear.
The bombs were detonated.
In an instant, the neatly arranged psychic crystals within the charges were shattered by small melta initiators. A tidal wave of psychic energy erupted, shattering the energetic equilibrium of the Webway. As the psychic tide recoiled, it lashed out at the Webway gate established by the Harlequins.
There were no catastrophic collapses. Unlike previous attempts to destroy Webway passages, the backflow of psychic energy merely overloaded the gate's mechanisms. The wraithbone threshold sparked with arcs of psychic lightning, reducing a few automatons into molten slag, but otherwise, there was no loss.
To Axion, the efficacy of Psychic Bombs in sealing Webway portals was remarkably high.
With the portal closed, the Titan's Spear disengaged its spatial anchors. The mechanical fleet, which had kept the Imperial Navy and the High Lords in a state of high tension for months, finally vanished into the Warp.
The only ones left dissatisfied were the red-robed priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars. They had been "coveting" these mechanical fleets for a long time, observing every external structure and component during every supply drop, desperately trying to analyze and hoard the data of their "Lost Divinity."