The vector engines announced themselves long before the transports were visible, a deep, building roar that pressed down through the overcast and resolved into the silhouettes of more than twenty Thunderhawk transports descending in formation. They came down heavy and deliberate, fuselages shuddering slightly as the landing struts absorbed the weight, cabin doors already opening before the aircraft had fully stopped moving.
The Lamenters came out fast.
Black and white assault power armor, the new colors, hit the concrete and found purchase, magnetic boots striking the ground in rapid succession as battle brothers dropped and reorganized without instruction. The habit of decades under arms meant the division happened automatically: assault teams to the front, heavy weapons teams anchoring at range, the whole company arranging itself into a deployment posture within sixty seconds of the first boot touching ground. They faced forward, weapons held low, and waited.
Doom walked out of the line toward Nolan and David. The dark green cloak moved with him. The silver power armor beneath it carried the marks of a man who had stopped treating combat equipment as unfamiliar.
"Lord Primarch. Mr. David." He glanced between them. "David told me there were signs of rebellion. Nothing beyond that. What has happened here that requires the entire company?"
Nolan's expression had not changed since the office.
"Before you landed, David recovered the Gang Dogs' network account records and the surveillance data they had deleted. Since leaving the base, operating without direct oversight, they rebuilt. They ran the entire American underground in the name of the OG Gang Dogs. They monopolized the smuggling channels that belong to Imperial Heavy Industries." A pause. "And they restarted the hallucinogenic substance trade. The one I explicitly banned."
He let that sit for a moment.
"For that, they collected wealth that David could generate without effort in an afternoon."
David stepped forward slightly.
"My lord, this reflects a failure of my oversight. I granted Madam Gao's forces too much operational independence. The resulting situation is a consequence of my management decision."
"It is not." Nolan's tone was flat, not unkind. "Their nature is what it is. Even without the assassination attempt, the likelihood is that something else would have appeared eventually. The supervision was inadequate, but the root of this is not your management. We should be grateful we found it before it surfaced in a battlefield context." He looked at Doom. "Natasha has confirmed she is working with Hawkeye to investigate the S.H.I.E.L.D. angle. While they pursue the external question, we resolve the internal one."
He held out one hand, and the Terminator standing behind him placed a chainsword and a grenade launcher into it without being asked.
"Doom. You and I lead the First Company." He turned toward the assembled Lamenters and raised his voice. "First Company: on me. Advance!"
The training ground occupied a cluster of low, factory-style buildings a few kilometers from the Imperial Heavy Industries headquarters. The proximity was fortunate in its own way: every structure within the surrounding radius was corporate property, which meant there were no civilians to move and no evacuation timeline to manage.
The Lamenters received the area map on their helmet displays, organized into ten assault teams and several heavy weapons elements, and moved.
The buildings appeared in the eyepieces at range: low-profile, utilitarian, the kind of construction that served a function and made no claims beyond that. An assault team running in the lead on speed-type power armor had nearly reached the primary entrance when the response came.
Laser fire. Heavy and immediate, cutting through the window frames the Gang Dogs had melted open to use as firing positions. A line of heavy stubbers that had been bolted high on the interior walls had been repositioned to the exterior and were cycling fast, muzzle flame stabbing out in long bursts.
The incoming fire was heavy for mortal weapons. It was not heavy enough.
"I will say this," Nolan said, watching the assault team push through the fire without slowing. "The training held. Whatever else they became, they learned how to fight." He watched a Lamenter take a burst across the chest plate that left marks in the ceramite and kept moving. "It is a shame they chose this application for it."
The first assault team was already through the entrance. Grenade launchers spoke in short, purposeful sequences. The building's walls absorbed three breaching charges in rapid succession, new entrances torn open in the thick concrete, and the remaining teams poured through at a speed that left no time for repositioning or regrouping inside.
What followed was not a battle in any meaningful sense. It was a clearance operation, methodical and one-sided: Astartes moving through corridors at a pace that gave defenders no time to establish new positions, bolt rounds finding anyone who appeared in the eyepiece range before they could fire a second time. The sounds of resistance contracted and thinned over the course of minutes.
By the time Nolan, Doom, and the rest walked in across the rubble and the blood, most of it was finished. Individual Lamenters were still working through the outlying rooms, one boot against a door, the wall caving in around the frame, bolt guns completing whatever the door had interrupted.
Across the wreckage of the training ground, dozens of Astartes with faint impact scoring on their armor moved without urgency.
A figure stumbled out of a collapsed doorframe.
One arm was missing below the elbow, the wound recent. The man's balance was compromised and he knew it, lurching forward in the uneven way of someone fighting blood loss and momentum simultaneously. His eyes found Nolan at range and stayed there. He kept moving toward him, jaw working.
"Lord Primarch." The voice broke slightly and steadied. "Why. Why do this to us. The Gang Dogs were loyal to you."
The Lamenters around him raised their weapons.
Nolan lifted one palm. They held.
He walked forward alone and stopped in front of the man, who had fallen to his knees, the legs giving out beneath him at last. Nolan looked down at him without anger.
"You may not have participated," Nolan said. His voice was low and carried no performance in it. "But the others betrayed the organization. And when they did, you watched. You said nothing. You did nothing." A pause. "If you had resisted them, even if you failed, I would have honored your memory and hunted down those responsible. You had that option."
The man on the floor said nothing.
"You did not take it. And when you allowed yourself to be carried along by a betrayal, you became part of it. You understood what my organization's rules were. You understood what the penalty was. That understanding was agreed to on the day you joined."
The chainsword came up in Nolan's hand.
The man let out a short, exhausted sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. He tilted his head back and looked at Nolan with bloodshot eyes and a face that had moved past fear into something closer to resignation.
"Everyone talked about that phrase. Loyalty not absolute is loyalty absolutely absent. We thought it was a saying. Something people repeated." He smiled, and the expression was wrong in the way that expressions became wrong when there was too much blood loss and too little time left. "None of us believed anyone actually meant it."
"It is the truth that the Imperium of Man built with the weight of uncountable human lives," Nolan said. "Rest in peace."
He brought the chainsword down.
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