As it turned out, two hundred thousand rounds of explosive ammunition was not a complicated ask.
The foundry on Second Son Island was already producing tens of thousands of rounds per day at current capacity, with standard boltgun rounds coming off the lines in the hundreds or thousands daily. The existing stockpile alone ran into the tens of thousands. David had spent months systematically absorbing supply chains through Imperial Heavy Industries, quietly redirecting material flows from corporate warehouses and storage depots across the continent, building up reserves in locations spread wide enough that no single incident could touch them all. Meeting the Carcharodons' needs would require no special arrangements. It would simply require pointing them at the relevant ledger entry.
Nolan had never seen a request for cooperation that was quite so easy to satisfy. He suspected, from the way Tyberos received the news, that the Chapter Master had never encountered an Imperial force that answered a supply request with "of course, how much do you need?" rather than a six-month bureaucratic review followed by partial delivery of the wrong caliber.
Tyberos's face did not change. It never seemed to. But something in the quality of the silence between them shifted, and Nolan was satisfied that both sides had gotten what they came for.
He invited Tyberos to tour the base.
The Chapter Master moved through the tunnels of Twin Islands with the unhurried patience of a large predator that had nowhere in particular to be. When they emerged onto the training grounds and Tyberos looked out at the Gang Dogs working the cliff faces, something in his posture changed slightly. Not warmth, exactly. But recognition.
"High-quality new blood," he said, watching a group of them haul themselves up an iced-over rock face with their bare upper bodies steaming in the cold air. "Why have they not been genetically enhanced?"
Nolan smiled, and the smile had a certain rueful quality to it. He told Tyberos the truth: he had never had access to the necessary biochemical infrastructure. No gene-seed stocks, no Apothecaries to train, no facility capable of supporting the work.
Tyberos considered this for a moment. Then, without any particular ceremony, he offered to help.
The Carcharodons could cultivate Astartes for Nolan, provided Nolan supplied willing candidates and gene-seed. Alternatively, selected personnel could be attached to the Chapter's Apothecaries for a period of long-term study, returning with the knowledge to begin building that capability independently.
Nolan felt the pull of it immediately, the same feeling as when any genuinely useful door opened. But he also raised his concern before the silence could settle.
Chaos corruption. He could stand against it through the Emperor's gaze and the particular stubbornness of his own constitution. His people did not have that protection. Subjecting them to the gene-seed implantation process, the psychic exposure that came with it, the attention it might draw from powers that were always watching for moments of vulnerability: it was not a risk he was willing to take lightly.
Tyberos turned his great helmet slowly toward Nolan. The dead-white face and lightless eyes regarded him without hurry.
"The Ghoul Stars are not a territory where Chaos comes and goes freely, Lord Primarch. I can only tell you that that region is... particular." He paused. "If the concern remains, we can conduct small, quiet experimental trials in future. If any problem or accident arises, I will handle the consequences myself."
Nolan said nothing. He stood with his eyes narrowed, watching the Gang Dogs pull themselves toward the cliff's upper edge against the Antarctic wind, and he let the offer sit in his mind without committing to it yet.
They moved on to Raditus's foundry.
The Tech-Priest, for his part, treated the arrival of a Space Sharks Chapter Master with approximately the same enthusiasm he might extend to an unexpected invoice. The speaker in his servo skull produced occasional cryptic utterances that were neither greeting nor conversation, and the rest of his attention remained fixed on whatever he had been doing before they arrived. Tyberos, to his credit, did not appear to expect anything different. He observed the foundry with patient, unreadable interest and asked nothing that required a human answer.
Doom was a different matter entirely. He was moving through the space with three servo-arms extended off his back, checking tolerances on a newly completed component, when Tyberos rounded the corner. He stopped. The servo-arms stopped. For a full three seconds, Victor von Doom simply looked at the Chapter Master of the Carcharodons Astra the way a man looks at something he has only ever encountered in descriptions and has now found standing directly in front of him at a scale he had not fully accounted for.
He had heard Nolan mention the Astartes. He had simply, apparently, not fully internalized what "Astartes" meant until one was standing in his foundry.
Nolan guided Tyberos out before the situation could become complicated.
Back in the main hall, over the kind of simple spread that passed for hospitality in a military base carved into Antarctic bedrock, Nolan gave the Chapter Master a working summary of Earth's power environment: the individuals whose combat capability ranged from genuinely remarkable to something that would give a Chaos Daemon pause, the covert factions, the political geography, the specific threats he was currently working against.
Tyberos listened without interrupting. When Nolan finished, the Chapter Master turned those flat black eyes down toward the lightning claws on his gauntlets and was quiet for a moment.
"So," he said, at a volume that was more like thinking aloud than speaking, "without an entire void fleet, the Shark Chapter alone could not quickly harvest the blood tax of this entire planet."
Nolan's eyebrow went up. He had been about to say several things. He chose not to say any of them, and instead settled for a look that communicated the general shape of his reaction without requiring words.
Tyberos looked back up.
"Lord Primarch. Do you have any combat tasks that require handling at this moment?" The dark eyes were steady. "We received a generous gift and the prospect of long-term supply. Sitting idle is not the Shark Chapter's manner. I have only myself and five guards, but that is enough for high-intensity ground operations."
Nolan considered the question for a moment. Then he said:
"As it happens, I am currently planning to eradicate a group of heretics alongside a newly formed organisation here. They call themselves Hydra. They are people who betrayed the interests of humanity from the beginning and have been working against it ever since."
Tyberos went still for just a fraction of a second. A name he recognised, apparently, or at least a word he recognised.
"I should clarify," Nolan added, "you may be thinking of something else. They share the name, but these are local heretics. They shout the same slogans. I would not rate them at the same threat level." He let that settle for a moment. "I have not moved against them before now simply because I lacked the time to manage the aftermath properly. But this territory needs a stable environment for what is coming, and I have brought together the right people to handle it properly. It is time to remove them entirely."
He turned and found David waiting at the hall's edge, patient as always.
"David. Hydra has a base in the Antarctic interior. Correct?"
"Yes, my lord." David stepped forward slightly. "One reason I selected the Twin Islands as our base was precisely this: once the opposing facility is destroyed, we can extend our control across the entire Antarctic continent. The region contains considerable mineral variety and would serve well as an expansion site."
Nolan nodded once. He turned back to Tyberos.
"We begin with the Antarctic base. It will give you and your guards a chance to calibrate against local conditions before anything larger." He paused. "Any requirements or additions from the Shark Chapter's side?"
"None," Tyberos said. "You need only tell us how far we are permitted to go."
Nolan's answer required no deliberation.
"Eradicate them to the roots. Leave no one behind."
A few hours later, Nolan sealed the last fastening on a fresh suit of power armor, settled the Warscythe across his back, and walked down the underground passage toward the vehicle platform. Behind him, Chapter Master Tyberos moved in his ancient Terminator with the steady, unhurried weight of something that did not concern itself with obstacles, and behind Tyberos came his five guards, armed in a manner that suggested they had thought carefully about every possible contingency and decided to bring weapons for all of them.
The engine sound reached them before they emerged from the passage: a deep, resonant roar that had already filled the launch space and was beginning to bounce off the surrounding rock. A Thunderhawk sat waiting on the platform, its hull freshly marked with the Carcharodons' insignia, the paint barely dry against the cold metal. The Antarctic chill lay over everything, but the engine heat was already pushing it back, creating a small bubble of warmth around the aircraft's flanks.
They boarded without ceremony. The cabin interior was dim, the kind of functional darkness that military transport designers consider adequate lighting. Everyone found a handhold and settled. Fresh boltguns from the foundry's latest production run rested across armored laps.
The platform deck groaned as the exit hatches opened overhead. Cold Antarctic sky appeared above them, grey and flat and featureless. David had the controls. The Thunderhawk lifted cleanly, the engines pushing a wave of heat downward as the aircraft rose through the opening, and the snowfield around the base erupted in a brief, spiraling storm of displaced flakes before the aircraft climbed above it all and leveled out.
Below, the ice stretched white and silent in every direction.
Today was, by any reasonable measure, a fine day for what they were about to do.
The real Great White Shark was out of the cage.
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