The corridor outside the rotunda had been wide enough, once. Now it was a storage problem.
Adamantium containers lined both walls and extended the full length of the passage, each one five metres across, four metres high, thirty metres long, their surfaces dulled by age and use and the particular care of a fleet-based Chapter that treated its material stores as a form of theology.
Antarctic vibranium chains as thick as a man's torso bound the containers into linked groups, and all of those chains converged at their far ends on the figure of Tyberos, wrapped around his Terminator armour in a series of loops that would have constituted a serious structural threat to anything rated below Primarch-tier. He stood at the centre of the arrangement like the anchor point of a very unusual freight train.
Nolan and David stood to one side and looked at the length of it.
The underground expansion project, which had been sitting on the agenda for some time, quietly moved itself further up both their priority lists.
The containers held what the Carcharodons had needed and Nolan had been accumulating. Millions of rounds of explosive ammunition. Several tons of high-explosive grenades. Five hundred standard bolt guns, five hundred storm bolters. Ceramite shell components in the thousands, enough to keep a Chapter's armour cycling through repairs for years, alongside fifty complete suits of power armour.
Every available cubic centimetre of remaining space in the containers had been filled with Antarctic vibranium power swords, three or four hundred of them, packed in tight, the green-tinged blades visible through the container inspection panels.
Every gap filled, every space used. Nolan found a particular satisfaction in that kind of completeness.
Bulk supplies of a different kind, food stocks and raw materials that could not be efficiently containerised, had been handled through the Diplomacy page. The material storage system allowed him to extract large quantities of independently-produced supplies and transfer them directly to the Carcharodons' fleet manifest without the containers needing to physically move. The Sharks would not be carrying their rations back in boxes like a colony resupply operation. They would find them waiting.
A small distance from Tyberos, positioned carefully apart from the container arrangement, the five Astartes guards stood loaded with whatever additional ammunition and supplies their armour could carry. The gap between them and their Chapter Master was deliberate. This had been discussed.
Tyberos had raised the possibility before the departure date: leave the five guards behind, permanently assigned to the Primarch's protection. A contribution. A statement about the nature of the alliance. If the Diplomacy system permitted it, the guards would stay. If the system pulled them back when the portal opened regardless of their intent, then they would at least carry everything they could hold.
Tyberos looked at Nolan through his eyepiece. "If the guards truly cannot remain," he said, his voice low and flat in its usual way, "I will send you material from our archives when I return. Our think tank has records that may be of use to you. The Carcharodons do not offer gifts that are worthless."
Nolan smiled, the expression small and genuine. "Being able to call on the Carcharodons occasionally is already a gift that is far from worthless."
He paused, then added: "If it ever happens that you have vehicles beyond your current capacity to repair, things close to the end of their service life, sending them for analysis would also be welcome. Ancient designs are difficult to find in complete form."
Tyberos's helmet moved slightly, the beginning of a response.
The space crack opened before he could give it.
It arrived with a sharp tearing sound that resonated through the metal walls of the rotunda, a rift of familiar quality, the Warp forcing its geometry into local space. A psychic echo followed immediately, the voice of the Carcharodons' Chief Librarian carrying through it with the strained clarity of a projection being maintained at significant effort and distance.
"Captain Tyberos! Return immediately! My psychic capacity cannot sustain this connection much longer. The regiment's next engagement is imminent. You are needed."
Tyberos became very still for a moment. Then he became himself again in a different register, the Chapter Master of the Carcharodons Astra rather than the ally standing in Nolan's rotunda, and the shift was visible in the small adjustments of posture that full Terminator armour could not completely hide.
He turned his helmet toward Nolan. One nod, complete and unambiguous.
Then he stepped forward, and the Antarctic vibranium chains went taut.
The sound of thirty metres of adamantium containers moving at once was considerable, the chains singing with tension, metal grinding against metal, the floor transmitting the vibration up through the soles of every boot in the room. Tyberos crossed toward the crack with the full weight of the supply train behind him, and neither the chains nor the containers slowed him in any visible way. He reached the portal's edge and disappeared through it, and the containers followed him in sequence, whipping through the crack in the ordered chaos of a single massive object being pulled through a fixed point, and then they were gone.
In the same moment, the five Astartes guards felt it too. Their bodies began to lose definition at the edges, the portal's pull asserting itself regardless of their intent, the Warp caring nothing for plans made in material space. They turned toward Nolan as they faded, and each of them raised a fist to their chest in the Aquilla salute before they became outlines, and then negative space, and then nothing.
The crack sealed.
The rotunda was very quiet. The corridor was empty.
Nolan stood and looked at the space where a significant amount of freight had been twenty seconds ago.
"I thought there might be a loophole worth exploiting," he said, mostly to himself. "Leave guards behind on each successful contact. Build a temporary Terminator unit one engagement at a time." He exhaled through his nose. "Apparently not."
He opened the simulator, navigating to the Diplomacy page. The Carcharodons' entry had shifted state.
[Void-Borne Carcharodons Astra (Fleet-Based Chapter)]
[Chapter Reputation: Venerated]
[Current Attitude: Loyal]
[Chapter Master: Tyberos]
[Chapter Support: Astartes Battle Team (Unavailable), Astartes Battle Company (Unavailable)]
[Note: An Astartes Battle Team may be summoned once per Terran month. Maximum duration: thirteen hours.]
[Note: Summoning an Astartes Battle Company requires substantial reputation expenditure and significant material contribution. Should substantial Astartes casualties occur, both the reputation ceiling and loyalty rating of the Chapter will be permanently reduced. Maximum duration: thirteen days.]
The grey-white unavailable state would lift when the cooldown cleared. Nolan read through the conditions once, noted the permanent reputation penalty clause on Battle Company casualties, and understood why he had told Tyberos no when the offer had been made.
He moved to the material storage page and began selecting supply packages for immediate transfer to the Carcharodons' fleet manifest. Protein energy bars, bulk quantities, enough to sustain half a million people for one to two years. He included the full stockpile of corpse starch as well, the grey processed supply that had been sitting unused in storage since it arrived from salvage, tasting of nothing and sustaining everything, which the Carcharodons would receive without complaint and distribute without ceremony. It was exactly the kind of gift a fleet-based Chapter could use.
He was closing the transfer confirmation when the portal request came through again.
He looked at it. The request was from the Carcharodons. He had just watched them leave thirty seconds ago by his measure of time.
"The time differential," he said.
David tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement.
Of course. Ten-to-one was the known ratio, but that applied to Warhammer universe time generally. The Carcharodons had stepped through a portal to their fleet in the Warp's geography, and from their perspective an unknown amount of time had already passed before this request was generated and transmitted. They might have already completed an engagement. They might have completed several.
Nolan accepted the request.
The portal opened in the circular space with the familiar violent tearing, and through it came the Contemptor.
It hit the metal floor in a landing that registered as impact through the soles of Nolan's boots, five metres of ancient Dreadnought chassis, ice crystals shedding from every joint and surface in the warm air of the rotunda, the void cold of wherever it had come from still clinging to the armour in crystalline sheets that fell and shattered as the frame straightened.
The voice that came from it was old. Not the mechanical translation of a modern Dreadnought system, but something with more depth and resonance, the voice of a thing that had been speaking through metal for a very long time.
"FOREFATHER ITAKO!" The Contemptor's chassis rotated at the waist, the ancient sensors sweeping the room, and then fixed on Nolan with unmistakable certainty. "I GREET THE PRIMARCH!"