The twin islands were still and white under their permanent layer of ice and snow.
Nolan walked into the base hall while the Thunderhawk was still cooling on the landing pad and called an impromptu meeting at the round table before he had even set down the vibranium helmet.
David was there, the blue of his optical sensors steady in the low light. Procellas had flowed in through the connecting passage, her enormous metal-caterpillar body coiling at the room's edge. And Reditus had been pulled away from whatever it was dismantling, arriving with the faint mechanical smell of a T'au XV battlesuit's internals and the look of a servo skull that had been interrupted mid-thought.
The reason for all three of them being here was simple.
Nolan placed one hand flat on the table, rubbed the side of his jaw with the other, and looked at them.
"We have a decision to make. The miracle produced rewards. The first option is a brand-new Cobra-class destroyer, available immediately. The second option is a single opportunity to acquire an Emperor-class battleship: not the ship itself guaranteed, but a chance to go and get one, using whatever method works. I need to know what each of those actually costs us before I choose. Opinions."
David's eyes shifted to Reditus without comment.
The servo skull settled its anti-gravity engine into a low hover above the table surface, extended one short mechanical arm in a gesture that managed to communicate something like preparation, and began.
"Congratulations first, to the Primarch, on once again receiving the Emperor's direct favor. This is an honor worth recording."
"Understood. Continue."
"The Adeptus Mechanicus philosophy holds that large is superior. On that principle alone, there is no comparison between an Emperor-class battleship and a Cobra-class destroyer. However." Reditus's optical sensors flickered red as it shifted into calculation mode. "Practical constraints require honest discussion.
"Our current total servo robot count across all sub-bases, including the Latveria installation, sits at approximately seventy to eighty thousand. Including foundry reserves, call it one hundred thousand. If the Primarch selects the Emperor-class battleship, the first requirement is a low-Earth orbit dock capable of permanent parking and ongoing maintenance. This is not a small structure. The foundry production lines would need to halt entirely for the construction period. Metal throughput requirements for the dock alone are substantial.
"Since the Primarch does not recruit mass mortal labor for construction work, the servo robot pool would need to expand several times over just to handle the basic work. Even if we were willing to use large-scale mortal labor, our current controlled population is insufficient for that scale.
"This is also not the end of the problem." The short mechanical arm waved once. "An Emperor-class battleship at minimum operational status requires approximately twenty-five thousand trained crew members simply to activate the Warp drive. To bring the void shields online and operate the weapon arrays at meaningful capacity, one million would be a more realistic figure."
The silence that followed was Nolan's expression changing in small increments.
"I can confirm those numbers are substantially correct." Procellas's voice carried the particular quality of a mind that had spent a very long time inside a ship considerably larger than what was being discussed. "The carrier I occupied full-time had more than two million mortal servants in permanent residence. Daily maintenance alone required the majority of them."
Nolan held the number for a moment, then exhaled through his nose.
"And if we set aside the Emperor-class and chose the Cobra-class destroyer instead?"
Reditus's optical sensors brightened as it shifted into what was clearly more comfortable territory.
"The Cobra class: one and a half kilometers in length, point three kilometers wide, approximately five point seven million tons displacement. No near-orbit dock required. Any of our existing sub-bases can be converted into a serviceable berth with moderate effort. The smaller hull also means many manual-operation stations can be converted to full automation during any refit. Under those conditions, the standard crew requirement of fifteen thousand drops to somewhere between three and five thousand. A genuinely manageable figure given our current population."
Nolan nodded once. "Thank you both. That's enough. Meeting closed."
Reditus rose off the table on its anti-gravity engine and did a few slow circles around Procellas with the energy of something that had discharged all its prepared material and was now simply in motion, then disappeared into the base passage. Procellas extended one large limb, retracted it, and followed.
David remained.
He leaned slightly toward Nolan with the deliberate care of a Man of Iron who had learned that certain things needed to be said without the audience.
"My lord. If the Emperor-class battleship is genuinely what you want, taking it now is not wrong. Everything Reditus said is accurate, but none of those constraints are permanent. Population grows. Capacity grows. What cannot be used as a ship immediately can still be used as something. The option will not return."
"I know." Nolan looked at him with the expression of someone who had already been through this reasoning and come out the other side of it. The slight tension in his brow had gone. "But my actual goal isn't an Emperor-class battleship, David. It's a Gloriana-class. The Emperor-class is the step between where we are now and that. Tying up everything we have in the infrastructure for a ship we can't crew or move, on the chance that its Warp drive functions in the native world at all, is the wrong use of this moment."
He straightened and looked out toward the passage Procellas had taken.
"There are no threats in the native world that require an Emperor-class to answer. The enemies we have are on a smaller scale. A Cobra-class destroyer that can actually be used is worth more to us right now than an Emperor-class that becomes a very large piece of stationary architecture."
He turned back to David.
"The old Antarctic Hydra base. What's the current status of that installation?"
David's optical sensors brightened slightly. "The installation has been maintained by the Intelligent Control Corps contingent posted there. The servo robots and mechanical constructs assigned to it have been running base-expansion and maintenance protocols since we took it over. They have been stable. If you want to designate it as a primary dock, the ground there should be suitable. The underground sections in particular have space that could be adapted."
"That's what I'm thinking." Nolan turned the idea over. "It's isolated, it's already ours, it's operational, and Antarctica has direct precedent for the kind of construction work we'd need. Start the preliminary assessment. If the ground can support it, I want the dock in place before we bring the Cobra in."
David inclined his head. "I will have the survey underway before morning."
"Good." Nolan picked up the vibranium helmet from the table and held it loosely at his side. "One more thing. If we ever do reach the point where an Emperor-class makes sense, we'll want to have already built the infrastructure for something smaller. This isn't a step back. It's the step we needed to take before the next one."
He walked toward the passage without waiting for a reply, but he was already thinking about what the dock survey would show.