If but two Destroyer-class Heavy Automata were deployed here for a long-range engagement, only the largest Imperator-class Titan among the six engines gathered might survive.
The Warhound-class Wolf and Jackal variants, and even the Reaver-class Titans, would likely not last two blows against the twenty-five-meter-tall Destroyer automata, while the larger Titans were agonizingly slow and clumsy. Given the humanoid structure and sheer agility of the Destroyer automata, a Warbringer Nemesis-class Titan or a Warlord-class Titan would struggle to score a hit against these heavy mechanical units, which could run and leap utilizing anti-gravity sub-systems.
Once the distance was closed, even the Imperator-class Titan could be torn to shreds. The Destroyer automaton's massive power claws and terrifying plasma incinerators could easily dismantle the Imperator's load-bearing structures. With its inherent design architecture, the Imperator Titan was utterly incapable of dealing with enemies swarming around its own feet. As for its secondary weapons, those weapon systems lacked the raw output to rapidly destroy a Destroyer automaton. Within minutes, the towering war engine would have its legs severed, toppling to the ground as a useless hunk of scrap.
Yet, Axion had carefully reviewed all the combat logs obtained from the Imperium; it appeared that Imperator-class Titans had never been deployed on battlefields against the Aeldari. Faced with the agile wraithbone Titans of those xenos, perhaps the Titan Orders had already foreseen the grim outcome of such a deployment. The clumsy and sluggish nature of Imperial constructs had proven to be a defining characteristic, and Axion was not at all surprised by it.
The only thing that truly caught his attention was the manner in which these colossal war engines had just appeared.
Even during the Federation era, research into teleportation technology had never ceased. However, the sheer complexity of teleportation apparatuses was staggering. Axion's original chassis had been equipped with an experimental short-range warp-jump device. This system operated by folding a micro-segment of space, executing the translation, and then unfolding it to complete the jump. Yet, this method of teleportation caused energy consumption to scale exponentially when dealing with high-mass, large-volume units. If one were to teleport a twenty-five-meter-tall Destroyer-class Heavy Automaton, the energy expenditure ratio would be astronomical.
The staggering energy drain was not even the primary obstacle; the real issue lay in the physical size of the equipment itself, which had to scale up proportionally to handle such terrifying amounts of power. The device housed in Axion's original chassis was merely the size of a human head, a perfectly acceptable dimension. But if fitted onto a Destroyer heavy automaton, the module would require a diameter of more than four meters. Even with the automaton's massive frame, a module of that scale meant squeezing out other vital systems, including the conforming void-shield projection systems, power matrices, and a whole suite of other essential mechanisms. Under such constraints, Axion would much rather drop the Destroyer automata directly from orbit than consider teleportation.
And yet, the translation that had just occurred had not only brought forth Warhound Titans over ten meters tall, but even that hundred-meter-tall Imperator Titan had materialized out of thin air. Given the Imperator-class Titan's towering one-hundred-and-fifty-meter height and immense mass, executing a teleportation via the Federation's experimental warp-jump devices would require constructing a colossal translation matrix with a diameter exceeding eighty meters. Integrating such a massive piece of machinery into a combat unit would create a catastrophic vulnerability. At the same time, the energy required would be astronomical, making it impossible for the chassis to operate independently.
The Iron Man's unique parallel processing and terrifying computational capacity allowed Axion to complete countless simulations within seconds. Meanwhile, the newly arrived Magos Fathor and the entourage of Tech-Priests behind him were still reeling in shock from the Iron Man's cold evaluation. They had no idea that within his data-simulations, Axion had already calculated hundreds of different ways for these Titans to die.
As the number of simulations multiplied, his destruction efficiency scaled rapidly, and the viable methods narrowed down. Inefficient options were systematically relegated to secondary contingency files.
The alloy head of the mechanical entity turned, facing Tech-Priest Fathor directly as it spoke.
"Query: What is the teleportation deployment technology utilized by these Titans?"
The blunt demand for technical data made them feel deeply uncomfortable. It felt very much like someone asking for money the moment they met. This discomfort was particularly jarring given that they had already confirmed the Iron Man was, in essence, a rare kind of 'magnate.'
Fathor and the other Tech-Priests were somewhat bewildered. Back at the hive city's central plaza, this entity had maintained the grand demeanor of a billionaire dispensing charity. Why had it suddenly turned into this when dealing with them?
To Axion, however, there was no difference between Fathor and Valentine. Though their badges carried slight variations, both bore the heraldry of the Mechanicus of Lucius.
Fathor hesitated for a moment before finally speaking.
"Emissary of the Omnissiah, Avatar of the Machine God... as a servant of the Omnissiah, I implore you to grant us technical guidance."
As he spoke, Fathor stepped aside, raising his hands high to gesture toward the towering god-machines.
And Axion, for the first time in a very long time, fell into a deep silence.
Inside the Titan cockpits, the Princeps and Moderati, who had initially grown resentful over the vox-network upon hearing the Iron Man's dismissive evaluation of their sacred engines, fell strangely silent when they heard Fathor's choice of words.
Emissary of the Omnissiah?Avatar of the Machine God?Could this iron monstrosity truly be an envoy of the Emperor?
Titan Princeps were no ordinary mortals; their loyalty to the Emperor and their faith in the Omnissiah were inextricably intertwined and redoubled. Of course, once corrupted, their descent into damnation was equally absolute.
Axion re-evaluated the gathered Titans, large and small. The electronic lenses across his chassis flickered continuously with data-light.
Yet, no matter how many calculations he ran, Axion could find no inherent value in these war engines. Aside from the fact that the massive armaments of the Imperator and Warlord classes possessed undeniable destructive output, Axion could barely find a reason for the other Titans to exist at all. And even if their firepower was sufficient, Axion did not consider them practical. Their targeting arrays were sluggish, their weapons slow to bear. If an enemy behaved like the leaping, dancing Titans of the Aeldari, or charged with the swarming speed of a Tyranid Bio-Titan, these machines would likely fail to react in time. Once the distance was closed, friendly forces would have to expend vital strength just to protect these lumbering machines of war.
Furthermore, the structural design of these chassis was utterly incomprehensible to Axion. The massive walking mechanisms were hollowed out to accommodate countless corridors and chambers. This was especially egregious in the Imperator Titan. There was a vast amount of internal space within its legs. A simple scan revealed a dense concentration of life-signs within them. Clearly, the machine was packed with soldiers.
If it housed personnel, it required hatches, and hatches meant structural weaknesses. A hollow structure inherently compromised physical integrity; to design so much dead space into primary locomotion and load-bearing structures was nothing short of idiocy. If those superfluous voids were filled with dense armor plating and the support matrices reinforced with thicker alloy frameworks, the structural strength of the lower chassis would increase exponentially. It would be far more effective to stud the external hull with automated defensive weapon systems, which could double as additional ablative plating to absorb incoming damage.
Alternatively, they could emulate the Punisher Titans he utilized, a monocoque armored hull maxed out for total protection, where the massive mechanical feet themselves served as terrifying kinetic weapons, capable of crushing or kicking aside targets with absolute ease. Moreover, the massive, fortress-like superstructure atop the Imperial machine imposed an absurd amount of dead weight, while the bizarre shoulder designs severely restricted the operational arcs of the weapon arms.
Fathor had no inkling that his request had, for the very first time, put the Iron Man in a difficult position. To Axion, these Titans did not even possess the foundational merit required for technical optimization. Their design was so fundamentally flawed that it reduced the Iron Man to absolute silence.
After several seconds of dead quiet, Axion finally spoke, responding to Fathor's words.
"Perhaps I can provide a standardized template design for a twin-legged autonomous mobile platform to serve as a replacement optimization scheme. In exchange, I require the technology used to teleport and deploy these crude machines."
This time, it was the Tech-Priests' turn to freeze in absolute stagnation.