After several days of sorting through the records, a list complete with street addresses was submitted to the Guardian-class Ship's Intelligence Core.
The Transport Aircraft that the local Planetary Defence Force had first seen only days earlier landed once again in the landing zone inside the hive city.
Several ranks of silver machines emerged from the massive aircraft, projecting a cold, solemn presence to anyone who saw them.
The Sentinels marched in orderly ranks through the partition wall around the hive city's landing zone, then along the central road between the Planetary Defense Force and the Industrial Zone. Their synchronized steps resembled an army on the march, yet made very little noise.
Reducing metallic noise aided combat and rapid advances.
Although the Sentinels used no vehicles, they were far from slow.
Within a few dozen minutes, they had traveled from the landing field to the hive city proper.
Once they entered the designated area, these conspicuous metal Machine Bodies quickly dispersed through the city and vanished, as though they had never appeared.
The Machine Bodies sent to arrest additional illegal psykers naturally also drew the attention of the local Adeptus Arbites and Inquisition.
But mortals found it difficult indeed to keep up with Machine Bodies whose speed rivaled that of the Astartes.
In the end, they decided to wait at the destinations and observe, hoping to learn something new.
Every hive city was enormous. Even with street numbers or district designations, finding a particular person amid that vast sea of humanity still took some time.
Twenty thousand Sentinels hardly stood out in a hive city inhabited by hundreds of millions, or even billions.
Compared with Servitors, the Sentinels looked more rounded and stood somewhat taller, and had no flesh components.
But ordinary citizens of the Imperium showed little curiosity about