The cataclysmic collision between the Heart of the Forge and the Ork planetary fortress tore the greenskin behemoth apart with ease.
Yet, compared to other specialized mechanical warships, the ancient templates of these Titan vessels dictated a design filled with vast atmospheric chambers and internal transit bays. To the Iron Men, who had no biological need for such voids, these structural chambers became the critical vulnerability during the impact.
The exterior of the planetary fortress was a dense bulwark of compacted earth and monumental, ramshackle greenskin superstructures. Even with the Federated technological mastery of hyper-advanced metallurgy, the Heart of the Forge was fundamentally not engineered to act as a ram.
The vessel's massive prow shattered, taking the structural cowls of the twin Oblivion Cannons with it. As structural breaches tore through the decks, the life-support systems began venting synthesized atmospheric gases into the vacuum.
A glittering cloud of millions of metallic fragments erupted across the star system.
Worse still, hairline fractures began to spiderweb across the mounting points of the newly integrated Super-Mass Projector.
Yet, despite the catastrophic appearance of the exterior hull, the actual systemic degradation of the Heart of the Forge was far less severe than it seemed.
The emergency warning declaring a 55% hull failure rate had been primarily triggered by the boarding Orks.
The sheer volume of greenskins, ramshackle vehicles, and crude scrap-iron wargear physically wedged into the ship's internal framework had paralyzed thousands of automated diagnostic modules.
This widespread network disruption had effectively blinded the logic-cores, generating a false read of near-fatal systemic failure.
Compared to the meticulous, reality-warping script-scars inflicted by the Necrons in previous engagements, this crude greenskin infestation was merely a superficial complication.
Conversely, the Ork planetary fortress had been utterly ruined. Countless mountain-sized slabs of rock drifted violently into the void. The planetary core, compressed to the point of structural failure by the impact, ruptured in an apocalyptic surge, spewing thousands of degrees of incandescent magma across the buckled surface.
Tens of thousands of Orks who had missed the teleportation windows howled in absolute agony.
Far more were swallowed whole by the yawning tectonic chasms that ripped through the crust, falling to their deaths or being incinerated by the blistering subterranean heat.
Even so, the automated secondary defense arrays of the Heart of the Forge showed no mercy to the survivors.
With its shattered bow still deeply embedded within the carcass of the planetary fortress, the flagship erupted with blinding, incandescent energy.
Weapon banks across every section of the hull unleashed a synchronized barrage, effortlessly saturating the forward hemisphere of the broken world.
Blistering lances of high-intensity laser fire and superheated plasma instantly turned half of the planet's remaining solid crust into a churning ocean of liquid slag.
Every crude Ork fortification, scrap-yard factory, and war engine remaining on the surface was vaporized instantly by the ship-borne weapon arrays.
Blinding arcs of raw energy crackled across the ruined terrain, cleansing the xenos taint with absolute finality.
Meanwhile, deep within the labyrinthine interior of the hull, the true purge began.
Countless billions of silvery nanites began to flow through the conduits like a liquid tide.
Every automated close-quarters defense system within the flagship awakened.
The tens of millions of Orks, led by a roaring cohort of ambitious Warbosses and Nobz, had barely begun to orient themselves within the cold, geometric chambers before they were subjected to a perfectly coordinated, lethal counter-offensive.
Concealed ceiling tiles and wall panels flipped open in flawless sequence, deploying automated defense turrets that spat continuous streams of superheated plasma, high-energy pulses, and terrifyingly precise laser fire.
Multi-barrel pulse turrets whined to life, spitting out tens of thousands of lethal energy bolts per minute at velocities that punched clean through the reinforced scrap-iron armor of the Ork vehicles.
Heavy laser grids manifested from both ends of the primary corridors.
The thick, blinding lances of coherent light completely filled the fifteen-meter-wide thoroughfares.
Everything in their path, flesh, bone, iron, and crude weaponry, was instantly reduced to ash and vaporized into dark green smoke.
The energy output of each beam was calculated to absolute perfection; by the time a laser lanced through the final Ork in a column, its thermal energy was spent, leaving nothing more than a faint, scorched outline upon the far bulkhead.
Simultaneously, the liquid nano-swarms scrubbed the structural corridors, dissolving the foreign biological matter wedged into the mechanical pathways and restoring severed circuitry in milliseconds.
Within the deep cargo holds, the dormant legions of mechanical combat automata were deployed, marching forward in silent, terrifying unison.
The Orks fell before them like autumn wheat fed into a mechanical harvester.
Compared to a meat-grinder on a conventional planetary battlefield, fighting inside the interior of a Titan vessel was an experience of pure, unadulterated horror.
In sections near the gravimetric stabilizers, the local gravity fields were suddenly and violently inverted. Millions of Orks were instantly flattened into a uniform slurry of crushed meat and pulverized bone.
Their crude armor plates and heavy vehicles were compressed alongside them, transformed into perfectly flat discs of scrap metal on the deck plating.
Massive alloy bulkheads began to shift and slide along automated tracks. Compartments teeming with hundreds of trapped greenskins suddenly began to contract, their walls closing inward like giant hydraulic presses.
Even the crude, thermal fury of Ork melta weapons failed to leave so much as a scratch on the advanced alloyed metals of the walls.
When the heavy metal bulkheads finally retracted, the trapped greenskins had been converted into uniform, densely compressed blocks of bio-matter, a horrific, raw paste of squeezed xenos flesh.
Blood, mangled scrap, and shattered gear were crushed into perfect cubes, out of which a thick, crimson-green fluid seeped continuously onto the pristine floor.
The Orks' ramshackle vox-networks dissolved into a chaotic cacophony of panicked, incomprehensible screams.
"Boss! Da walls iz krumpin' us!"
"Boss, da floor an' da ceilin' are fightin' together! We're gettin' squished!"
"Boss...! Waaagh—AARGH!"
The continuous chorus of death-rattles and bizarre, terrified reports cast a sudden, deeply uncharacteristic shadow of dread over the remaining greenskin warlords.
"Where's Steeltoof?! Where's da Big Boss gone?!" one warlord roared into his vox-caster, his voice cracking with desperation.
There was only dead static in return.
"Did da humies krump da Big Boss already?!"
Unable to comprehend the reality of their situation, the leaderless Orks could do nothing but bellow in frantic, directionless fury.
The poisonous realization that they were leaderless spread through the horde like a contagion.
Yet, the mechanical architecture of the ship granted them no time to deliberate.
Beyond the relentless defense turrets and the advancing lines of combat automata, a literal silver tide of nanites was now surging through the arterial corridors of the vessel.
The Orks watched in mounting horror as glittering, liquid-silver walls rushed toward them through the dark passages, swallowing every living thing they touched.
When the silver tide receded, it left behind nothing but barren floors littered with basic, calcium-stripped skeletons.
Flesh, weapons, armored vehicles, and volatile ammunition, even the finest, most prized contraptions of the Big Meks, were utterly consumed.
In the span of mere tens of minutes, tens of millions of Orks completely ceased to exist within the hull of the Heart of the Forge.
Every scrap of their crude technology was systematically dismantled, broken down to its base molecular components, and immediately repurposed by the ship's automated system to repair the hull.
With the internal infestation thoroughly purged, Axion ordered the flagship's primary logic-cores to re-run the diagnostic protocols.
This time, the systemic failure reading plummeted to a mere 15%.
These remaining anomalies represented the genuine structural damage inflicted by the kinetic violence of the physical collision.
As the emergency-halted antimatter reactors roared back to life, the auxiliary power modules entered their recharge cycles. The titanic propulsion systems engaged, slowly and smoothly backing the Heart of the Forge out from the ruined carcass of the planetary fortress.
The shattered world, nearly split in two by the impact, radiated a blistering thermal signature and intense cosmic radiation that could be easily detected across light-years of cold vacuum.
The raw material spewing from the exposed planetary core, combined with the vast seas of crust melted by the flagship's weapon arrays, turned the entire celestial body into a glowing, infernal eye of dark crimson.
Such extreme temperatures, however, were highly detrimental to nanite harvesting operations. Axion had no choice but to temporarily abandon the raw materials bound within the fortress.
Instead, the Super-Mass Projector was brought online. The device targeted the fractured world, subjecting it to a localized dimension-shifting compression, shrinking the planet into a compact sphere before snapping it securely into one of the projector's empty storage slots.
Once the campaign in this sector concluded, Axion intended to drag this superheated mass to a local black hole. There, the extreme thermal energy could be safely siphoned off into the cosmic anomaly before the cool matter was fed into the super-dense gravitational well.
After all, the Leviathan mining planet had been cooled in precisely this manner.
The only difference now was that Axion possessed the technological capability to simply carry the entire planet away.
Its bow still visibly distorted and scarred from the impact, the lightly damaged Heart of the Forge deployed another massive wave of Adaptive Combat Cores toward a cluster of nearby Imperial worlds. With its automated directives updated, the colossal vessel adjusted its heading and prepared to drop into real-space at the coordinates of the next Ork planetary fortress.
However, the remaining greenskin warlords in the sector, entirely unable to re-establish vox-contact with Zog Steeltoof, had collectively concluded that their supreme leader had been utterly annihilated.
With a series of blinding flashes of green WAAAAGH! energy, the final two Ork planetary fortresses abruptly vanished into the Warp, fleeing the system.
As for the millions of greenskins who had already been deployed onto the surfaces of the Imperial worlds below, they were ruthlessly abandoned to their fates.