The vast Mechanicus Ship fleet crossed the entire Great Rift corridor without incident.
The Chaos fleets, daemons, and various Chaos Warbands that frequently attacked Imperial ships were nowhere to be seen.
Its sheer size frightened off enemies with brains, while the brainless ones took no interest in ships devoid of souls.
The region south of Segmentum Obscurus was immense.
Iax had little faith in Imperial archives whose catalog dates had changed between two scans.
Most of the named locations were not difficult to find, though. While the times, dates, and coordinates were all problematic, the place names recorded in writing were still fairly reliable.
The enormous fleet swiftly divided into more than a dozen flotillas of twenty or thirty ships each, scattering to search all of Segmentum Obscurus.
Their objective was clear: find the Necrons or the Aeldari Corsairs.
Since the Aeldari were fighting the Necrons, Iax only needed to capture their ships directly on the battlefield to secure a large number of prisoners. The Necron xenos could wait for now.
After spending nearly half a month checking every location in the archives associated with Aeldari fleets or Necrons, the Mechanicus Ship fleet finally found its target.
It was in southern Segmentum Obscurus, almost touching the edge of the Great Rift's chasm and nearly bordering the Eastern Fringe.
A small reconnaissance ship shaped like a flattened pyramid was observing a battlefield from the edge of an unnamed Star System.
An Aeldari fleet of 147 ships, built around fifteen Phoenix-class battlecruisers and thirty Flames of Asuryan cruisers, was locked in a chaotic battle with a Necron fleet of fifty-three ships, whose main strength consisted of two Cairn-class Tomb Ships and ten Scourge-class massive cruisers.
The Necrons were clearly doing little more than fending off the attacks.
Stormlord Imotekh paid these foolish