With so many Watchers in the Dark having vanished alongside Lion El'Jonson, the Dark Angels easily guessed that he might already have landed on Demonwood before them. But the intense Warp energies had cut off all communications between the surface of the Planet and space.
Otherwise, at this distance, they should have been able to pinpoint Lion El'Jonson's position with ease.
Even the ships' large Auspex arrays could not scan for any useful information.
The fleet conducted a reconnaissance sweep around the Planet, but unfortunately, apart from the Daemons visibly swarming everywhere, almost every scanning method suffered severe interference.
Unable to locate him, Guilliman also sought Iax's assistance.
The Pektaro's scanning arrays were affected as well. Even when Iax personally stepped in and employed multiple computational methods to filter out the interference, the results remained minimal. After all, the signal from a single suit of Power Armour was simply too weak.
With none of their equipment proving effective, optical reconnaissance became their only option.
Images of the entire Planet were painstakingly captured, magnified with the aid of immense processing power, and finally laid out in a complete mosaic.
Only machine intelligence could accomplish something so extravagant.
Once the image analysis was complete, Iax almost immediately spotted an anomaly on the surface.
On a plain dotted with lakes of machine oil lay numerous destroyed Daemon Engines. Their distribution formed a clear trail pointing straight toward a nearby rift valley.
Iax aimed an ultra-high-magnification optical sensor at the anomalous area and soon spotted a blond figure in black armour, carrying a shield and Longsword.
A simple image comparison allowed Iax to identify Lion El'Jonson's position with ease.
And that completely ruined Vashtorr's scheme.
His original aim had been to make the Dark Angels commit substantial forces to landing on Demonwood in search