The pragmatic calculation won.
An Emperor-class battleship at this stage of the operation would consume more than it produced. It would not become a combat asset. It would become a drain on every production line and a constant demand on a crew pool that did not exist yet. The Cobra-class destroyer was the correct choice, and Nolan had made it, and now he needed to make it real.
He and David returned to the Antarctic base wearing their respective armor, and the Intelligent Control Corps contingent and the repurposed Hydra mechanical constructs were already in motion before they landed, clearing space and preparing the ground under David's direction.
The hum in the air came first.
Nolan reopened the simulator page and selected the second reward.
The Cobra-class destroyer materialized above the prepared ground in the Antarctic base's main underground chamber: one and a half kilometers of dense metal hull, visible in sections as the effect spread from its center outward, the full shape emerging over several seconds the way a picture emerges when you stop looking at any one part of it and let your eyes take the whole thing in. Then the weight of five point seven million tons met the ground, and the concussion came up through the floor plates like a physical punch, and for several seconds everyone in the chamber was standing on something that was still deciding whether it was floor.
The metal settled. The dust cleared. The ship was there.
David immediately redirected the servo robot teams to inspection duties, the mechanical forms spreading across the hull in organized patterns as they began their systematic check of the ship's condition. Nolan kept the simulator page open and was about to close it when he noticed something.
The third reward had not disappeared.
Unused options from simulation rewards always cleared when a selection was made. This one was still present, and as he watched it, it shifted: moving out of the standard reward display and appearing instead in the prayer support section of the Golden Throne page. With a new indicator attached to it. Unlimited duration. And the chaos symbol of a female daemon.
Nolan looked at it for several seconds without speaking.
"What exactly does this mean?" He kept his voice quiet, more to organize the thought than to ask for an answer. "Is this still the Emperor's arrangement? Or has Slaanesh found some method of inserting something into a reward I was meant to receive?"
He held the question, then let it settle.
If the Emperor had designed the original reward, the likelihood that a Chaos God could successfully redirect it into a trap without that being immediately obvious was low. The Emperor had spent ten thousand years maintaining a functioning psychic beacon against the full weight of the Warp: subtle interference with a simulator reward was not beyond Slaanesh's nature, but succeeding at it without any trace would be ambitious even for a Chaos deity. More likely the Emperor had intentionally allowed some element of this to shift, either as a final complication or as a warning.
And the most natural reading: an Imperial world that should have been safe had become involved in something through Slaanesh's interference, and that involvement now appeared on his support page because the Emperor wanted him to notice it.
He noted it. He did not act on it.
The first Chaos blessing was approaching. Every resource he had was being organized toward that eventuality. Walking into a Slaanesh-influenced situation on a prayer support mission right now, with the team already stretched, was exactly the kind of dispersal of attention that a Chaos God would want to produce. If Slaanesh expected him to respond immediately, the most effective response was to do nothing immediately.
"If you want to create real trouble for me," Nolan said to the empty air with a slight cold pull at the corner of his mouth, "then come to the native world in person. Otherwise, keep it to yourself."
He closed the simulator page and turned his full attention to the ship.
A few days later, the Cobra-class destroyer was settled at the Antarctic base in a stable configuration.
The dock construction was underway, the servo robots and mechanical constructs working through the underground expansion in organized shifts. The ship's internal transformation plan and the Warp engine experimental protocols were both deferred: there were not enough Tech-Priests at the Antarctic installation to supervise either project safely, and cutting corners on Warp drive testing was the kind of economy that produced catastrophic results. They would wait until the personnel situation improved.
Back at Twin Islands, Nolan's first order to David was to contact Latveria.
Prime Minister Zora was to begin establishing a naval academy. Recruitment across Europe would start immediately, drawing students with appropriate physical baseline characteristics. The criteria were straightforward: they needed to be capable of eventually functioning as real void crew, not maritime sailors, which meant the selection process needed to begin now and run long before any of them would set foot on the destroyer.
The second thing Nolan did was ask David to compile a complete current inventory of everything under his command.
David's organizational mind produced the result with the particular thoroughness of a Man of Iron who had been cross-referencing data streams for decades. Nolan read through it.
Three companies of Stormtroopers were integrating alongside two companies of Lamenters, the training runs still finding their rhythm. Latveria's planetary defense force could mobilize between ten and twenty thousand mortal personnel, depending on readiness state. The Japanese base at Mount Fuji could field approximately a thousand from the Yashida ninja contingent, plus the specialist commando team built around Bucky and the superpower roster that had accumulated there. The Carcharodons summon was available: one call, and either Tyberos himself or a squad of Terminators would come for up to thirteen days. The Minotaurs reputation had been flagged as temporary, which meant the single available summons reset the diplomatic standing to zero afterward and required rebuilding from scratch. Worth knowing before spending it.
Thor and Tony were allies rather than command assets, and David had correctly left them off the subordinate roster and noted them separately.
The Intelligent Control Corps was classified as equipment rather than personnel, which made the count cleaner.
Weapons and equipment: the Stormtroopers were in auxiliary power armor with bolt guns, the mortal defense forces carried lasguns and carapace armor, the production lines were turning out Thunderhawks at an increasing rate.
The count at Twin Islands was already at fifty transports and climbing. One Crusader Land Raider existed, and that was likely to remain singular: Reditus had never solved the engine manufacturing problem, and producing empty ceramite shells without functional power plants was a waste of resources he had correctly declined to authorize.
The gap was partially filled by the Leman Russ tank transfer capability through Tetim Hive, which could be called on at the cost of reputation and resources. The Taurus Rapid Assault Vehicle production line was running well enough to meet Astartes short- and medium-range movement requirements. The helicarrier on Hydra Island and the Cobra-class destroyer at the Antarctic base were not counted in the current operational total: neither was deployable in the short term.
The overall picture, taken together: the force Nolan currently commanded was roughly equivalent to a small and resource-rich Astartes Chapter in the Imperium of Man, except with considerably better equipment provision per individual than most. In the native world, that force could move in any direction without needing to worry about provoking any official government or intelligence organization into a confrontational response, with the obvious caveat that certain individuals, the Ancient One, the Asgardian king, and perhaps one or two others operating at that level of longevity and accumulated power, were not in the same category as governments and should not be treated as though they were.
If the same force were deployed in the Imperium, its practical impact would depend heavily on context. For surprise operations or morale-critical engagements it could be disproportionately effective. As a sustained planetary-scale war commitment, it was capable of contributing meaningfully with heavy allied support, but the casualty cost would be real and significant.
Nolan set the document down and looked at David.
"The revolution has not yet succeeded," he said, with the expression of someone who means the humor but also means the thing underneath the humor. "Comrades still need to work hard."
"My lord." David's voice carried the particular quality of a Man of Iron preparing to say something it has thought about carefully. "I believe our next large-scale objective should be the unification of the native world. Population and resource base are never sufficient. After unification, planetary colonization becomes viable immediately. Given several hundred years of continuous development from that point, the departure on a true expedition becomes achievable."
"There is one complication worth naming." David paused. "The timing of visible intervention matters considerably. If our entry onto the world stage appears to the existing nations as invasion rather than transition, the resistance that follows will be substantial. And some of the people currently counted as allies, people who have chosen to work with us under current conditions, may find their position very different when the context shifts to one of conquest."
Nolan was quiet for a long time. The kind of quiet that has content in it.
"David." He turned to look at the Man of Iron with a measured, entirely serious expression. "Create a memorandum for me. No time limit attached. Call it."
He said the name.
"The Earth Unification War."
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