Information was victory. Ignorance was defeat. For William Tiberius Smith, war came down to those two simple facts. As a Marshal of the Federation of Terra it was his duty to prosecute successful campaigns against the enemies of mankind. To do that effectively, he needed information. That was why he was currently jacked into the Battle Noospeheric Interface or BNI for short. It allowed him to monitor and command a battle in real time, such as the one he was currently waging against the foul Orks here on Baal. He could directly commutate with his senior officers and adapt to changing conditions on the fly. Which was what he was about to do.

"Colonel Morrel, deploy 12th Iron Breakers to shore up the 7th Mechanized. They're in danger of being overrun." Said the Marshal, sending the command through the BNI

Morrel, who was seated in a lower tier in the Mobile Command Node, commanding officer of the 12th Iron Breakers, a unit comprised solely of the Iron Men, the Federation's cybernetic servants, this particular group solely made for war

To deploy them was not taken lightly, for they were specialist war machines and hard to replace. But he knew that now the orks had closed the gap with the 7th, he needed units better suited to close-quarters-fighting. Smith had other units of Iron Men spread throughout his command, held in reserve for the most part. Using them minimized the cost in human lives and they had been invaluable in other campaigns particularly against the United Colonial Alliance, who favored clone soldiers. The UCA could afford to replace men, and while he was willing to spend his men and women's lives, he did so only sparingly.

Wanting to get a view of the battle, Smith directly took control of one of the Iron Breakers through the BNI , that were even now boosting across the battlefield on built in rocket packs, this one marked Unit IB 2-573. Smith saw through the optical sensors that were built into the front of the robots "face".

Through it he could see intermingled forms of his power armored shock troopers and the orks, he choose to land lB 2-573 amidst an knot of roaring greenskins, bowling them over with the force of the war robots bulk. He activated the twin power-axes the Iron Man was carrying and began to dismember and decapitate xenos warriors all around him buying time for the nearby Federation shock troopers to fall back and redevelop a battle line, the rest of the 12th Iron Breakers doing likewise.

The men and women of the 7th mechanized began to blast the orks to pieces with clearing out the space around the Iron Breakers in minutes. Satisfied with the progression of this portion the battle, Smith relinquished control of IB 2-573 back to its onboard AI and began to survey the rest of the battle zone with satisfaction. The 7th Mechanized brigade, with the support of the iron Breakers could push through this horde and link up with 505th Light Infantry Division, who was fighting their way from the east of the Grassy Plain.

The only reason the 505th were advancing so quickly was due to the support of Legion Mortis, whose mixture of Warlord and Reaver-class Titans, massive, awe-inspiring instruments of war, called God-Engines by the more superstitious among the ranks, was making short work of any enemy opposition. Being light infantry, the 505th was without power armor and were largely equipped with high-powered lasguns and an assortment of other standard infantry weapons such as tripod mounted heavy bolters and lascannons, shoulder mounted missile launchers and rail guns.

Arrayed against them stood enemy Gargants, who dueled with the Titans, exchanged devastating salvos of city destroying weaponry while men and orks engaged in brutal close quarters fighting around their feet. The edged the men of the grey armored men and women trading fire with the xenos possessed were the presence of more units of Iron Breakers, deployed on the order of Marshal Smith when it became apparent that they would be in melee combat.

The battle robots prevented the barbarian aliens from closing the gap keeping them pinned in combat while the soldiers of the 505th shot the exposed greenskins down with accurate, powerful las blasts and racked them with heavy bolter fire. It won't be long now, thought Smith. Soon he would have the Ork Warboss known only as Cracktoof encircled. They he would deal the decapitating blow and cut the head from the beast. Then the beast would die