[You move through the corridor at an unhurried pace, the brown-red plates of your Terminator armor filling the passage from wall to wall.]
[Your Terminator bodyguard falls in behind you within moments of leaving the cogitator chamber. You notice the small hesitation before they follow: Asterion Moloc's history of operating without a protective detail is well documented in the data stream running through your mind, and the guard are clearly not certain what to make of a commander who stops to wave them forward rather than simply walking on alone.]
[On this point, you have already made your own calculation. This is not your body. Moloc's agreement to your arrival, whether explicit or simply implied by the fact that you are here, is not something to take for granted. You do not intend to be reckless with someone else's flesh.]
[You proceed toward the bridge.]
[The captain of the Daedalus meets you there: a middle-aged man whose expression carries the particular set of someone who has served in a difficult posting long enough that surprise has been worn away entirely. He greets you without ceremony.]
[You give him two instructions. First: display a tactical overlay of Holy Terra and the Imperial Palace on the main screen. Second: have the flight deck prepare enough Thunderhawk transporters to carry the entire Chapter to the surface.]
[He begins issuing orders to his crew before you have finished speaking.]
[The overhead display lights up. Terra fills it: the vast brown-grey globe wrapped in its haze of atmospheric processors and orbital infrastructure, the Palace a pale radiance at the center of a continent-sized sprawl. You study the image.]
[Your eye is drawn to a broad black region pressing against the outer walls of the Palace complex. You raise one armored hand and point to it.]
["What is this?"]
["Commander. From the intelligence we have received, the combined forces of the Imperial Fists and the Adeptus Custodes have been conducting anti-cult operations throughout that zone, but progress has been poor. The cultists are too dispersed and too embedded in the civilian population to be cleared quickly." The captain pauses before continuing. "A large number of Terran civilians are trapped in the area as well. Many of them are without food or water. If the situation is not resolved soon, they will die in place."]
[You look at the display for another moment without speaking. The Lion's Gate War left more behind it than a repaired spaceport.]
["The Imperial Guard has had more than enough time to account for a few thousand mortal heretics. Whatever excuse they are offering, it is not sufficient." ]
[You turn from the display.]
["Bring the newly attached Primaris to assembly alongside the Chapter veterans. It is time for them to move."]
[The nearest Terminator bodyguard does not wait for a second instruction. He turns without acknowledgment and his heavy footsteps are already receding down the corridor.]
["Captain." You keep your voice even. "Send formal notification to the Imperial Fists' gun batteries and the Lion's Gate Spaceport command. Also to the Astra Militarum command on-planet. Inform them that the Minotaurs Chapter will be providing combat support to assist in the restoration of order within Holy Terra."]
[The captain looks up at you for a fraction of a second longer than he should before composing himself and turning to his vox array. You walk out.]
[The flight deck is in the middle of the flagship. You hear it before you see it: a low hum of preparation, the sound of hundreds of armored bodies standing in organized silence.]
[You step through the hatchway into the hangar, and the full muster of the Minotaurs Chapter spreads across the metal floor in front of you. Nearly a thousand Astartes, still as sculpted iron.]
[You take stock of them. The distinction between the Chapter's veterans and its newly attached Primaris is visible at a glance: not in bearing, which is uniform throughout, but in armor. The veterans wear plate that carries the marks of many campaigns in its repairs and repaints. The Primaris arrivals are equipped with newer patterns, their ceramic less lived-in. First Company stands intact on your left flank, their Terminator plate representing two distinct patterns: the older Cataphractii suits with their heavier shoulder guards, and the more commonly issued Indomitus pattern alongside them. The company is intact, which tells you something. Most of the Chapter's attrition fell elsewhere.]
[You do the calculation quietly. The losses against the Death Guard must have come down heavily on the battle companies.]
[You have not yet moved to address them when Reclusiarch Enkomi appears at the far end of the hangar at something between a walk and a jog, two parchment scrolls tucked under one arm. His expression suggests the morning has not improved since you left him in the cogitator chamber.]
["Lord Moloc!" ]
[His voice carries across the deck.]
["A response from the Ultramarines. And a directive from the Senatorum Imperialis."]
[You wait for him to reach you. He hands you the first scroll with both hands.]
[You unroll it and look at the contents.]
[The recognition signal you transmitted required a specific coded response. The response is not there. The person who replied chose not to use it, which means the reply either bypassed Calgar entirely or was composed by someone who received the signal but answered with their own authority instead.]
[The message itself is short. A single line.]
["Twenty-two. Do not act rashly. I have already made arrangements for everything on Holy Terra."]
[You read it twice. Then a faint movement crosses your face that the Terminator bodyguard behind you will later find difficult to describe accurately.]
[Guilliman knows. The signal reached him. He answered it himself, without Calgar's code, because he recognized what the signal meant and responded as a Primarch to something that only a Primarch could have sent. He has plans already in motion for the situation on Terra. He is telling you to hold.]
[You think about that for a moment.]
["What a pity. Our actual patrons may not see it that way. If they did, I probably would not have been placed here at all, Your Majesty."]
[The Terminator bodyguard hears this and finds nothing in it to respond to. Enkomi gives a long, slow exhale through his nose.]
[You accept the second scroll and open it.]
[The document carries the official seal of the Senatorum Imperialis, but the language beneath it is not institutional. It is a private communication from one of the conservative High Lords, routed through official channels to give it weight it would not otherwise carry. The content is a set of operational suggestions framed as directives, each one pointing in the same direction: pressure Regent Guilliman, undermine the Indomitus Crusade's momentum, create conditions that would require him to return to Terra and submit to the authority of the High Lords before being permitted to continue.]
[They are not asking you to fight anyone. They are asking you to be useful to them.]
["Ignorant."]
[The word comes out flat and without particular heat.]
[You tear the scroll lengthwise, then again across, and let the pieces fall from your hand.]
[You turn to face the assembled Chapter.]
["From this moment, the entire Minotaurs Chapter is at combat readiness. No veteran of this Chapter will take independent action without my direct order."]
[Your voice carries across the deck without effort, absorbed by the silence of nine hundred Astartes standing at attention.]
["But when I give that order, you will carry it out. Even if the objective is the Palace itself. There will be no hesitation and no exceptions. Is that understood?"]
[The veterans say nothing. Their stillness is its own answer. They have always been this way: a controlled instrument, pointed and released. Waiting for the hand that holds them.]
["Primaris! Step forward!"]
[The newly attached Space Marines shift from the formation and take three steps forward as one.]
["From this day forward, you have two allies in this galaxy. The Emperor on His Throne. And me. Everything else is circumstance. Do you understand?"]
[A pause of exactly one second.]
["For the Emperor! For the Commander!"]
[The roar that comes out of the Primaris breaks across the hangar like a physical force. It rises and holds.]
[The veterans remain still and silent, watching. Their silence is not disapproval. It is the patience of weapons that have already been aimed.]
[Looking at them, you think: this is the Minotaurs Chapter. A blade made of flesh and ceramite, built by a very specific kind of patron for a very specific kind of work.]
[It belongs to you now.]
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