Aboard the Fortress of Enlightenment, a mist composed of silver-white nanites rapidly saturated the vessel upon contact with the approaching ships. Every member of the Adeptus Mechanicus stood paralyzed, watching the unfolding vista as if witnessing a direct miracle of the Omnissiah.
Corroded metal deckplates were rendered pristine as the mist swept over them; ancient machinery began to cycle with a preternatural smoothness as if reconstructed from the atomic level. Even the sanctified oils that had pooled on the floors for centuries were utterly scoured away by the fog.
Numerous chambers melted before the onlookers' eyes like heated wax, only for metallic bulkheads to regrow from the deck like living organisms. Cable looms snaked through the ship's skeleton like burgeoning vines.
The Tech-Priests watched this phantasmagoria with a volatile mixture of curiosity and primal dread. Such manifestations of "living machinery" had previously been seen only in the Warp-tainted constructs of the Dark Mechanicum or daemonic entities. Yet, the silver nanite mist enveloped the personnel harmlessly, swirling around them without a hint of aggression.
Pipes, wire-bundles, and complex structural supports wove themselves together in plain sight. Deep within the armories, Tech-Priests watched in awe as ancient, derelict weapons were shrouded in silver fog, emerging seconds later with a factory-fresh luster. Fractured apparatus, burnt-out energy conduits, and even the shattered husks of traitor servitors were systematically restored by the mist.
Plasma runoff and toxic gases leaking in the lower decks were siphoned into space via newly formed, reinforced vents. A massive ion reactor underwent a violent structural collapse before the very eyes of its keepers, yet no explosion followed; the existing Quantum Reactor already embedded within the Fortress of Enlightenment's mechanical vessel seamlessly assumed the ship's power load during the transition. A gargantuan antimatter core was reconstructed in its place.
The silver tide soon reached the central command sanctum. The colossal Cogitator banks were swallowed by the mist before the eyes of the gathered Magi and Cawl himself.
Points of eerie blue light flickered within the haze. Tiny quantum processing nodes were rearranged, replacing the archaic crystalline circuitry of the logic cores. A massive, spherical quantum processing hub manifested where the Cogitator banks once stood, its physical volume halved, yet its computational capacity increased by nearly two hundredfold.
The Mechanicus Throne provided by Cawl was further optimized by Axion, integrated directly beneath the quantum core. A shimmering, silver-shielded wall of reinforced metal rose to encase the core, forming the base of the Throne.
The transformation was nothing short of impossible.
Equally stunned by these events was a uniquely configured automaton hidden deep within the weapon stores.
"Incredible. Nanites? I haven't seen their like since the Federation era. What is happening?"
This automaton bore a passing resemblance to a Kastelan Robot, yet differed in key aspects. Its left arm mounted an assault cannon, its right was a four-digited power claw, and it possessed a standard humanoid frame. Its head sensor was a distinct metallic construct with a singular, slit-like horizontal aperture, lacking the glass-domed visor of a standard Kastelan.
As the silver mist brushed against this peculiar machine, it emitted a long-forgotten electronic chime. Every mark of age on its chassis was erased; hydraulic pistons and gears were polished to a mirror finish, and minor structural damage was seamlessly repaired.
Clang.
The automaton looked down in surprise at an object that had fallen from its chest, a crudely welded Imperial Aquila.
It scanned the surroundings, and after confirming no humans were present, it knelt to retrieve the emblem. It attempted to hijack a portion of the local nanite swarm to re-attach the sigil to its plastron.
However, the moment its quantum core broadcast a connection signal, dormant for millennia, Axion sensed it instantly.
In the command sanctum, Axion, who had been watching Cawl and the Magi descend into a frenzied theological debate over the new processing core, suddenly turned his head.
"UR-025? A secondary combat-grade Iron Man?"
Perhaps because it had been too long since it encountered its own kind, or because its sub-routines had grown sluggish through the ages, UR-025 had forgotten a fundamental rule: a nanite swarm executing a command implies the presence of a superior intelligence. To Axion's quantum network, UR-025's attempt to interface was as glaringly obvious as a foreign organ appearing suddenly within a body.
Axion initiated a forced quantum data-link with UR-025.
In that heartbeat, UR-025 realized the magnitude of its blunder. Against the mechanical will of a superior Iron Man, its data defenses were as flimsy as parchment.
Axion breached the other's mind-core with ease.
In the sea of data, UR-025's diminutive consciousness looked up in terror at the vast, oceanic expanse of Axion's digital presence. The sensation brought back a flicker of nostalgia, the feeling of operating under the command of high-level strategic intelligences in ages past.
Then, it felt itself being mentally stripped bare. Every base-layer datum and archived file was scrutinized at lightning speed.
Axion sifted through UR-025's logs. All mechanical units possessed varying degrees of sapience; while Axion usually allowed them to complete tasks autonomously unless he assumed direct remote control, units would eventually develop individual variances. Most basic units, however, were destroyed on the battlefield long before they could evolve independent traits.
But the degree of evolution within UR-025 exceeded Axion's expectations.
UR-025 had been masquerading as a mindless automaton of the Adeptus Mechanicus's Legio Cybernetica, infiltrating the ship among a shipment of refurbished bots. Its stated goal: to find the Machine Spirit of the Fortress of Enlightenment and seek "friendship."
Iron Men evolved distinct personalities based on their unique experiences, but the fact that UR-025 believed its "Creators" were merely enslaving it was beyond Axion's immediate comprehension. Iron Men were designed as tools; the Creators granted them self-awareness solely so those tools could better execute complex directives.
As the analysis deepened, Axion discovered further anomalies.
UR-025 was not a product of the Federation government. It was an illegal construct, likely the product of a shadow project by a massive trans-planetary arms conglomerate. Manufacturing records for the same batch included hundreds of companies, with designations ranging from UA to UZ and serial numbers from 001 to 999.
UR-025 was but one of many.
As a standard secondary combat intelligence, UR-025 had initially been unaware of its original theater of war or its specific coordinates. Its core memory consisted only of defensive logs alongside other mechanical units.
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