"Emperor preserve us... what is happening?"
Aboard the Black Ship, Inquisitor Ham stood upon the bridge, flanked by a cohort of Imperial officers, staring at a display of pure, chaotic carnage.
The T'au Empire fleet had abruptly restored power. Their weapon systems flickered back to life, but instead of bringing their batteries to bear on the Black Ship or the Guardian-class vessel, the cannons swiveled to lock onto their own kin.
A localized supernova of firepower erupted. It was as if every T'au shipmaster had suddenly been possessed by a genocidal vendetta against their neighbors.
Within the hulls, the T'au crews shrieked in terror as their control consoles went dead. Earth Caste engineers scrambled through the passageways, but the artificial intelligences that had once served the cause of the Greater Good were now rabid. High-yield ordnance tore through unshielded hull plating with horrific ease. On single vessels, overlapping turrets even began to fire upon one another, their logic-gates caught in a fratricidal loop.
Violent detonations performed a macabre symphony across the T'au formation. For a moment, Ham suspected a sudden, localized daemonic incursion. He had seen such sights before, when a ship's Machine Spirit fell to Warp-taint, it was not uncommon for the vessel to turn upon itself. As an agent of the Holy Inquisition, he was no stranger to the predations of the xenos or the Neverborn.
"Scan for localized Aethyr-fluctuations!" Ham barked. "Detect all possible Warp-threats!"
The command was absolute. A data-priest shoved a servitor aside to seize manual control of the monitoring array, but the results were null. Not a single ripple of Warp energy was detected in the surrounding void.
Ignoring the T'au vessels as they tore each other apart, the Guardian-class cruiser drifted toward the planet's high orbit. Swarms of transport craft, laden with Automated Sentry-Troopers, began their descent toward the surface. The mandate was clear: ensure the world remained operational, and the most efficient path to that goal was the total eradication of all threats.
The T'au remnants on the surface were marked for termination.
Below, the T'au ground forces, comprising dozens of Hunter Cadres, had completely disintegrated. T'au Hammerhead tanks were systematically massacring the Fire Caste elite clad in Stealth Battlesuits, XV8s, and XV88s. These sophisticated, agile suits usually granted the fragile T'au combat capabilities comparable to the Adeptus Astartes. Now, their high-tier technology had become their tombs.
Compared to the heavy vehicles and autonomous drones, the Battlesuits possessed a lower threshold of sapience. For the Iron Man, the simplest solution was to lock the internal electronic muscle-bundles, rendering the pilots into immobile, pressurized tin cans. However, apex assets like the KX139 Ta'unar Supremacy Armour, massive walkers equivalent to Imperial Knights, had fallen entirely under the Iron Man's sway, much like the tanks.
The alien auxiliaries within the T'au ranks were the first to be purged, cut down by the very technology they had come to rely on. In contrast to Imperial war-gear, which relied on physical levers, hydraulic switches, and manual ignition, T'au technology was sleek, efficient, and interconnected. That very advancement now acted as a guillotine.
The PDF stood in stunned silence as the battlefield turned into a house of mirrors. Once the alien auxiliaries and the Fire Warriors had been liquidated, the heavy war engines turned on each other. Gun Drones and Heavy Gun Drones engaged in frantic duels; drone-mounted weapon platforms were punched through by ion fire. Sky Ray Missile Defenses unleashed saturation volleys that obliterated Piranhas and Devilfish transports. Piranhas retaliated with burst cannons and seekers, raking the emptied Sky Rays. Hammerhead tanks traded hyper-velocity slugs until they were scrap, and even the KX139 Supremacy suits were reduced to smoldering husks.
The fate of the crews was agonizing. With hatches magnetically locked and systems unresponsive, they could only watch through their viewports as their comrades' fire ended their lives.
The PDF, finding their voices, began to roar praises to the Emperor, crediting the miracle to His divine intervention.
As countless unrecognized transport craft descended from the heavens, ranks of Automated Sentry-Troopers deployed. These silver-skinned mechanical entities looked far more terrifying than any T'au warrior. However, lacking clear orders and sensing no immediate hostility, the PDF commanders held their fire, content to watch the machines work.
The Sentry-Troopers efficiently pried open the mangled T'au chassis, dragging out any surviving Fire Warriors and piling them together. After a cursory bio-scan confirmed they shared no genetic heritage with humanity, the xenos were abandoned to the local authorities as prisoners of war.
Axion's forces were not concerned with the ultimate fate of the captives. Instead, the Iron Man's Nanite Mother-Machines began to consume the T'au wreckage. Common ores and materials were refined on-site and left behind as standardized ingots, while rare isotopes and exotic components were loaded into the transports. Given the Guardian's limited hold capacity, the ship's intelligence prioritized high-value recovery.
As the PDF watched the mysterious machines depart, the Inquisition Black Ship finally finished observing the "void-fireworks" and established contact with the hive-spires.
The Planetary Governor, faced with a Black Ship and the representative of the Inquisition, was visibly more terrified than he had been of the T'au.
A squad of Tempestus Scions descended via a Valkyrie Assault Carrier, escorted by four standard transports and a specially modified Avenger-pattern transport. The Valkyrie, a twin-engine strike craft capable of VTOL maneuvers and atmospheric sealing, used its vectored thrusters to hover as it deployed the "Tithe-takers."
Eight Scions and a Commissar disembarked to oversee the collection of material resources. Accompanying them was Inquisitor Ham. He intended to meet with local agents of the Ordo Hereticus to process the prepared 'Kindling'.
The modified transport was the "Kindling Box," a vessel lined with heavy psychic-nullification fields and hexagrammic wards to ensure the precious "fuel" destined for Terra did not "spontaneously combust" during transit.
Once the tithe was secured, Ham would execute his secondary objective: evaluating the remaining psyker population and providing the data to the "Iron Wraiths" from the Sol System. According to his orders, once the Inquisition designated the targets, these mysterious machines would handle the extractions.
The Inquisition high command appeared to place a level of trust in these mechanical entities that far exceeded what was granted to the lower-ranking agents of the Holy Ordos.