The Gray Shark rejoined the Carcharodons' void fleet in the Ghoul Stars without incident, sliding back into formation with the quiet efficiency of a ship that had been away and was now returned.
Tyberos stood on the strategium deck and watched three faces that were all the same face, moving through the space around him with entirely different weights and entirely different silences. He had made his peace with many strange things over the course of a long life. He filed this among them and let the awe of it settle where it belonged, alongside his understanding of what the Primarchs actually were. Twenty-two of them had existed. The fact that three iterations of one now occupied his ship simultaneously was, in the end, consistent with the kind of existence a Primarch represented.
What he noticed more than the strangeness was the shift in the Carcharodons themselves.
The shadow-power that Nolan carried had deepened since the Void Stone. It was not visible in any way that could be pointed to. It registered in the behavior of the Chapter's warriors: in the quality of attention they gave him when he moved through a corridor, in the way orders landed when he issued them, in the fraction of hesitation that had previously existed between command and execution simply being gone. The Carcharodons were descended from the Raven Guard. That lineage had always inclined them toward Nolan. Now the inclination had resolved into something closer to absolute.
If any small part of them had previously weighed his commands against the broader framework of the Imperium's expectations, that process was finished. The gene-bond had completed itself in the way that gene-bonds were built to complete when a Primarch was present long enough and strongly enough. The Emperor had chosen this mechanism to accelerate the Great Crusade. It was efficient. It was also irreversible, and its consequences extended in directions the efficiency calculation had not accounted for.
With the Void Stone recovered and secured, the fleet's rhythm returned.
The Carcharodons had been operating at the Imperium's ragged edge for a long time, in regions where the Astronomican's light did not reach with any consistency. The cost of that was visible in their logistics: supply consumption running ahead of resupply, equipment worn to tolerances that the Adeptus Mechanicus would have found alarming, ammunition stocks maintained by creative means. Nolan's regular contributions had helped. They had not solved it.
The Chapter's older habits were simply too deeply set. Squads deployed on frigates and assault boats to conduct what the Carcharodons called harvesting and exploration, and what a disinterested observer might have called raiding. The absence of a planetary home base had produced a way of operating over centuries that sat somewhere on the border between a void-capable military force and something the Imperium officially disapproved of. Several scattered human settlements in the Ghoul Stars region paid what amounted to a tithe, irregular and negotiated, in exchange for the implicit protection of the Chapter's proximity. Others found that simply knowing the Carcharodons were in the area produced results without any direct action being required.
The fleet managed itself, as it always had.
The three Nolans stayed busy.
The first problem was the wolf's armor. The broken black power armor he had arrived in had been functional enough for the arena in Commorragh. It was not adequate for what came next. The technical sergeants of the Carcharodons were capable craftsmen by the standards of a void-fleet Chapter with no fixed forge support, and those standards were not equal to building or significantly rebuilding a set of armor suited for a Primarch-level wearer.
Nolan's instinct was straightforward: bring the wolf back to the home base, where the foundries had the capacity to do the work properly. The wolf thought about it and said no, clearly and without apology.
He had been under Khorne's attention for a long time. The nature of what he carried meant that introducing him to a populated center, particularly one with significant mortal presence and a concentration of people loyal to Nolan, carried risks he was not willing to bring to them. The chainaxe at his side had been with him long enough that it was part of the problem: a weapon with that kind of history did not separate cleanly from what had saturated it. He could not simply set it aside.
Nolan and Cypher both recognized the logic. They did not argue with it.
Nolan looked at the two of them for a moment, and then something shifted in his expression toward the particular kind of calculation that usually preceded him proposing something that served more than one purpose.
"Rather than searching the current timeline for a forge world by chance," he said, "or waiting for an opportunity to come to us, why not run a support mission together? If we pick the right one, we should find a forge world with the capacity to produce exceptional work. Master-level, if we're fortunate."
The wolf's mouth pulled sideways. He looked at Cypher.
"He wants us to earn him throne coins," the wolf said.
"He does," Cypher agreed.
Nolan did not deny it.
"It's still a practical solution," he said.
Cypher reached into the Space-Time Crystal and drew out a set of power armor in Dark Angels colors, the paint worn but the plate intact, and extended it toward the wolf without ceremony. The wolf took it, carried it to one of the technical sergeants, and had it fitted in the efficient, impatient way of someone who had been managing inadequate equipment for a long time and simply wanted the problem resolved.
When the fitting was done and the wolf had the armor running properly, Nolan went to the simulator's storage and produced a C'tan phase sword, its blade throwing off the faint green light characteristic of the material, and offered it across.
The wolf's expression suggested he had hoped for something else.
"Where is Frost Fang?" he said, taking the phase sword with visible reluctance and mounting it on his power pack alongside the Nemesis blade. "Mine has been gone a long time. Lend me yours. I prefer an axe for close work."
"Frost Fang transformed into the chainaxe you're already carrying," Nolan said. "Which is no longer a power weapon in any conventional sense. If that does not concern you, be my guest."
The wolf looked at the axe at his side, then back at Nolan, and said nothing further.
"I carry the Lion Sword on my back every day," Cypher said from beside them, his tone carrying something that was not quite complaint and not quite acceptance. "And even that was given to me by someone else."
Nolan looked at him, and then looked more carefully, and something in his expression sharpened.
"That sword at your waist," he said. "That is not the Lion Sword."
Cypher's expression shifted very slightly.
"You have sharp eyes. I wondered when you would notice."
He drew the sword from his waist and held it forward with both hands for a moment before returning it. The blade had a quality to it that was distinct from the Lion Sword's character: lighter, cleaner, carrying something of the open steppe about it even in a closed room.
"I encountered Jaghatai Khan in the Eldar webway," Cypher said. "It was a considerable fortune. I tried to persuade him to return to the Imperium. He would not. He has his reasons, and he holds them completely. His descendants follow only a Primarch's direct command, which makes him difficult to leverage from a distance." He resettled the sword at his waist. "But he gave me the White Tiger Dao regardless. My reading of that is: when the Imperium faces a crisis severe enough, this weapon becomes a token of return. Something to present that he would recognize."
Nolan was quiet for a moment.
"The Lion Sword, and now the White Tiger." He exhaled through his nose, slowly. "Your responsibilities are heavier than mine, I think."
"Which is why I keep telling you to develop your strength and continue building your capacity," Cypher said. He took the White Tiger Sword back and did not invite further questions on the subject. "Are we doing this mission or not?"
The wolf was already looking ready to move.
Not long after, in an ancient hall deep in the battle barge that the Carcharodons kept set aside for the summoning ceremony, Nolan opened the simulator in front of the other two.
Since all three of them could perceive the simulator's interface, they searched through the available support missions together, filtering by what they needed. They found it before long: a mission that would bring them directly down to a forge world.
The three of them checked their equipment, confirmed their loadouts, and opened the warp portal.
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