Calgar had known from the moment he first looked at Nolan.
The golden blood drying on the vibranium shell was not something that could be faked or misidentified. The accounts said only one class of being in the Imperium's history had ever bled that color, and Calgar had read those accounts more than once. He knew what he was looking at.
He still sent for the Chief Librarian and the Chief Chaplain and let them conduct their examinations, because that was the kind of man Calgar was, and because some things needed to be confirmed through proper procedure regardless of what your own eyes told you.
The results confirmed what the blood had already said.
Nolan raised a hand before the assembled Ultramarines could go to their knees, and the gesture stopped them cleanly. He turned to Foros and gave the order to begin: count the Lamenters' losses, count what remained of the mortal population, and begin moving survivors to the transport fleet.
Calgar fell into step beside him without being invited, keeping pace through the ruined position with the particular attentiveness of a man who had a great deal he wanted to ask and had not yet decided how to begin.
Nolan let him follow. He said nothing.
The numbers Foros brought him were precise and did not improve on reflection. Nearly a hundred Lamenters dead. Two hundred remaining including the disabled. Of the three million mortal slaves who had entered the siege, more than one point two million had not survived it. Many of the dead had not fallen in combat. Hunger, thirst, and the exhaustion of the final days had taken a significant portion of them in the hours before the fleet arrived.
Nolan read the numbers and was quiet for a moment.
It was the limit of what he had been able to do. He had known, somewhere in the middle of the second day, that this was the ceiling: not the perfect outcome, but the one that was possible from where he had stood when he arrived. If Calgar's fleet had come two days later, the ceiling would have been lower by roughly half. If the portal had been the only exit, he could have taken the Lamenters and a fraction of the mortal population, and the rest would have died waiting.
He closed the report and turned to find Calgar waiting at his shoulder.
"Chapter Master." Nolan kept his voice level. "I know what you want to ask."
Calgar said nothing. He waited.
"I cannot tell you the specifics. Not to be evasive, but because unexpected knowledge, in the wrong hands or at the wrong time, can alter outcomes in ways that cannot be corrected afterward." Nolan looked at him steadily. "What I can tell you is this: count forward from today by several centuries. What you have been waiting for may come to pass within that span. I may be present when it does. I may not."
He paused.
"What I want to arrange with you now is a recognition signal. If I do come, and if you hear that signal from me directly, I need you to follow my orders without reservation, regardless of the circumstances at that moment. No matter what is happening, no matter what you have been told by anyone else. Can you agree to that?"
Calgar's expression had not changed. His eyes had.
"You are speaking of the father," he said quietly. "Are you telling me that he is certain to return?"
"I am making you a promise in the name of a Primarch," Nolan said. "I am also telling you that from this moment forward, you must not think about this conversation. You must close it away completely and leave it there. When the time comes, the signal will open it again." He held Calgar's gaze. "Do you understand?"
A long silence.
Calgar nodded once, slowly.
They established the recognition signal between them, the exchange brief and private, and then let the subject close.
The evacuation consumed the hours that followed. Air vehicles moved in continuous cycles between the mining world's surface and the fleet above it, carrying mortal survivors in batches to the Lamenters' battle barge and the Ultramarines vessels. The Lamenters held no planetary home to receive three million displaced people. Calgar resolved the problem without being asked, arranging transport to Ultramar for the entire surviving population. It was not a small offer, and he made it without ceremony.
As the portal's reopening window approached, Nolan went to find Foros.
He stated the request plainly: he wanted to bring part of the Lamenters Chapter back with him.
Foros did not refuse. He also did not agree without reservation. His other flagship still held battle brothers who could not be abandoned, and his responsibility as Chapter Master extended to all of them. He worked through the numbers with the careful attention of a man who had been counting lives for five days and had not lost the habit.
In the end Foros selected one hundred and fifty Astartes from the two hundred still capable of movement, and handed them to Nolan. Nolan made a counter-offer: he would return the lightly wounded in exchange for the most severely injured, the ones whose prognosis without intervention was poor. Foros understood the reasoning when Nolan explained what panacea would do for them. The exchange was made.
Before they parted, Nolan spoke quietly to Foros about what was ahead.
The Lamenters would face worse battlefields than this one. When orders came from Terra directing them to garrison the Maelstrom Zone, those orders needed to be refused or delayed by any means available. And contact with the Astral Claws Chapter, whatever form that contact took, needed to be avoided entirely.
Foros did not understand the warning in full. He received it anyway, with the gravity it deserved, and committed it to memory.
The Ultramarines and Mortifactors withdrew to the expedition fleet in good order. The crusade against Skagol was not finished, and Calgar had a war to return to. He and Nolan exchanged no particular farewell. The look between them was sufficient.
Foros led the remaining Lamenters to the battle barge and the work of moving the surviving mortals toward Ultramar.
Nolan activated the portal.
The space crack widened and steadied, and he sent the one hundred and fifty Lamenters through one by one, watching each dark yellow figure step into the light and disappear. When the last of them had gone through, he looked at David. David looked back.
They stepped through together.
The circular square received them in bright light and the sound of weapons being raised.
The Lamenters on the other side of the portal had found themselves facing Scyllax Guardian Automata who had not been expecting them, and the tension in the room had the specific quality of a situation that was three seconds from becoming a different kind of situation.
Nolan raised his hand and his voice simultaneously, and both sides held.
David moved quickly through the assembled force, taking identification from each Lamenters Astartes and entering them into the base's recognition system. When the process was complete, the weapons came down on both sides with the slightly relieved quality of people who had been prepared to do something they would not have enjoyed.
Nolan distributed panacea personally, working along the line of injured Astartes from the most severe cases forward. The Lamenters who watched their battle brothers' broken bones knit and their severed tissue close stood very still and said very little, which was the correct response to seeing something they had no framework for processing.
When the medical distribution was complete, Nolan directed them all to the decontamination room. The armor came off in pieces under the careful work of the servo robots, and the Astartes followed his instructions to the spore purification procedures without resistance.
The Catachan experience had been educational in this regard. Nobody who had been through that process needed to be told twice why you did not skip the decontamination step.
The last thing anyone in the base wanted was to discover, some weeks from now, that the Lamenters had brought passengers.
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