As the lengthy construction process began, Iax started taking on a steady stream of missions from Leontus targeting the swarm.
Four heavy assault ships, accompanied by a Transport Ship packed with troops, began operating frequently across the entire Imperial front.
Time and again, the fleet emerged from a Mandeville Point.
Whenever they reached a Star System, the Assault Cruisers immediately accelerated. Racing in for close-range attacks, they burned through the organisms' outer tissues with dense volleys of thick neutron beams, while their Neural Ripper Cannons stripped the Bio-ships of control over their own bodies. As the ships hurtled through space, they used their hulls to dismember the Tyranid Bio-fleet, simultaneously unleashing swarms of unmanned fighters and high-energy particle streams to wipe out smaller Bio-ships in batches.
Once space had been cleared, the Transport Ship approached the Planet and began deploying its troop-laden cargo holds.
Swarms of Sentinels smashed into the swarm with overwhelming force, rapidly exterminating its smaller units.
Synapse creatures fell apart beneath the claws of the heavy Destroyer robots.
Every discharge of an energy shockwave weapon blasted a vast empty zone into the battlefield.
With orbital support, the Men of Iron forces proved extremely efficient. They typically advanced and fought without interruption.
The high-energy particle streams aboard the Assault Cruisers, powerful enough to destroy small Bio-ships, delivered precision strikes against the Tyranids' Bio-Titans.
Without an advantage in space, the swarm could not effectively counter the plentiful Men of Iron ground forces.
In just a few days, the Imperium could gain a "clean" Planet, with only slight residual radiation and layers of insectoid corpses.
A wave of counterattacks swiftly gathered momentum.
For the swarm, it was nothing short of disastrous.
The Men of Iron killed so efficiently that even the swarm's hatching rate began to seem sluggish.
Yet Iax