Intelligent Control Automata

Historians liked to divide major events into phases—what opened the curtain on an event, what propelled it into its climax.

The 13th Black Crusade was no exception. Later Imperial scholars would say that the rebellion on Agrippina Forge World marked the official beginning of the 13th Black Crusade.

The rebellion on Agrippina Forge World grew increasingly fierce. Although Magos Rom escaped the deadly conference hall with the other magi, their survival did nothing to fundamentally improve Agrippina's situation.

The first problem was the sheer size of the Titan Legion. These god-machines, capable of moving mountains and draining seas, could not fight in every corner of the complex hive cities. The intelligent control automata understood the Titan Legion's bulk and sluggishness, so they deliberately avoided them and wreaked havoc only in cramped areas with complicated layouts.

Yet as an ancient Forge World that had developed for nearly ten thousand years, every facility on every patch of Agrippina's land had its own value. Though the Adeptus Mechanicus had long considered building multiple facilities with identical functions against unforeseen contingencies, that only delayed the collapse of Agrippina's production lines by a few short months.

The Intelligent Control Legion possessed firepower far beyond that of any Skitarii force. Once these merciless weapons entered an irreversible extermination state, they activated every weapon installed upon themselves.

The battering ram—Annihilation-class siege automaton—within the Intelligent Control Legion mounted a massive Inferno-pattern Plasma Mortar. Such a weapon could launch vast numbers of high-energy plasma spheres bright enough to blind mortal eyes, bombing heavily defended positions into terrifying crater-strewn wastelands.

More astonishingly, the enormous cannon was controlled by the intelligent control automaton's processor, with a precision and flexibility that left people dumbfounded. By calculating and correcting its trajectory in an extremely short time, it could even fire a succession of