...
The warships of the Twelve Star Systems activated their dimensional engines and leaped into the next galaxy. Soon after, the shadowed void shimmered as a warship appeared from nothingness, orbiting the second planet of the system.
This vessel was unlike any in the Talon fleet; it looked like a vast logistics machine scaled up to battleship proportions. With a diameter of twenty kilometers, its rounded form bristled with mechanical limbs that resembled massive tendrils. This colossal logistical dreadnought was known as Leviathan. Not designed for combat, its only weaponry comprised small particle beam emitters.
Before its launch, rumors had only whispered of a new warship under construction in the orbital dockyards—a vessel intended to reinforce the Talon fleet. Now, Leviathan had been transported directly from the dockyards to hover above the world below. Its task: to cleanse this desolate, plague-ridden planet. Rather than deploying transport ships or teleporting ground forces, Leviathan extended its mechanical limbs toward the planet's surface.
These limbs housed the most advanced detection and scanning technology, as well as a device known as the Material Extractor—a colossal apparatus engineered as a reverse-application of matter-printing technology, first deployed in the mining operations of Talon-III. Instantly, the planet's subterranean mineral veins were mapped out, and beams from the extractor tore them free, pulling countless resources toward Leviathan, while even natural gases were siphoned from the planet's core.
The extracted gases, once inside Leviathan, were collected for weapon production, while the metals were immediately smelted and fed into fully automated alloy production lines. Once refined, they were dispatched to assembly plants that filled 80% of Leviathan's internal expanse.
Inside the assembly plants, there was no light, nor any space designated for human activity. Instead, row upon row of automated production lines stretched endlessly, each crowded with large-scale printing equipment. Above every line, hoisted drones hovered, while teleportation stabilizers at each corner transported alloys directly into the printing devices.
Materials fed in, and the assembly lines hummed to life. Beneath each hovering drone, components materialized from the gathered matter, held in place by a force field. Within moments, a completed Iron Soldier was printed—identical to those previously encountered by Vik, tall figures with heads mounted on broad shoulders. The assembly lines were many, producing an array of Iron Soldiers in varying forms.
Some were tall infantry models; others, with four mechanical legs, carried massive cannons. Some took the shape of spheres that could dispatch drones for battlefield repairs, while others resembled knight-sized mechs armed with chainsaw blades and an array of devastating weapons. Once the Iron Soldiers were fully assembled, their systems powered up. With quick, systematic checks, they came to life, their red optic lenses blazing as they stood upright, ready to be teleported to the surface.
Leviathan continued to consume and transform resources. Every three minutes, thousands of new Iron Soldiers were fabricated and dispatched to the planet's surface, initiating a relentless cycle of creation and deployment, continuing until the planet's resources were utterly transformed into engines of war.
In mere half an hour, tens of thousands of Iron Soldiers had already been deployed across the planet.
...
This world, selected as Leviathan's testing ground, held an atmosphere tainted by virulent pathogens, casting it a pale green hue when viewed from space—a sign that all organic life had long since perished, leaving only an endless tide of plague-ridden undead.
Before transmitting the Iron Soldiers, Leviathan's master AI calculated minimal specifics for teleportation, setting the planetary capital as a general arrival point. As a result, some soldiers materialized embedded in buildings or fused with rocks, and some even melded with one another. Such scenarios were lethal for living beings, but for Iron Soldiers, they posed little concern.
Entangled soldiers engaged their self-extraction protocols, analyzing the fused areas and then severing themselves free with precisely calibrated energy beams. Many emerged damaged, some limping or crawling forward, yet even as they advanced, they fired at approaching hordes of undead. Soon, repair drones hovered over to restore them to full function, allowing them to resume their advance.
Each Iron Soldier operated with precision, designed to fulfill its specific battlefield role—some stationed at vantage points to rain fire upon the infected, others using their bulk to scatter the undead. Infantry Iron Soldiers marched unwaveringly toward the zombie hordes until they were overrun.
The plague-ridden undead's attacks were futile against the Soldiers' metallic frames, clinging and clawing in vain until the heat weapons within the Soldiers' shells charged, igniting and reducing every organic material to cinders.
The aggressive advance was a meticulously calculated strategy, crafted by Leviathan's central intelligence. It controlled each Iron Soldier at a granular level, directing the army's relentless march to secure every subterranean entrance. The undead above ground were largely ignored unless they obstructed progress.
Leviathan's vast computational resources were divided between overseeing the teleportation of printed Iron Soldiers and running extensive weapons-effect models to cover the entire planet. Upon completing these calculations, the gases collected for weaponization were deployed, encased within canisters rigged with guidance systems to ensure their calculated descent.
As the canisters hit the ground, the gases, infused with catalysts and chemical enhancers, ignited, setting the planet's surface ablaze. Amidst this inferno, the Iron Soldiers marched unscathed through the smoke and ash, pressing forward to exterminate the undead buried below. They would persist until every last vestige of organic life on the planet had been obliterated.