One hundred and fifty Astartes standing at full height, shoulder to shoulder beneath the decontamination showers, was a sight that would have stopped most people cold. With an average standing height of 2.34 meters and frames built like architectural supports, the Lamenters occupied every square meter of available space with a kind of effortless physical authority that had nothing to do with posturing and everything to do with simple biology.
Nolan and David had both seen it before. Neither of them looked twice.
By the time the last Astarte had completed the final stage of the spore removal protocol, David had already arranged temporary clothing for all one hundred and fifty of them, distributed one set at a time, and personally assigned each battle brother a private room within the base. He had also ensured that an automatic servo-robot was assigned to each room on continuous standby, ready to respond to any need at any hour.
For the mortal servants who had previously handled those duties, the arrangement left them with very little to do.
For the Lamenters themselves, it was almost disorienting. These were warriors who had spent years doing everything themselves out of necessity, whose cursed fortune had stripped away most of what other Chapters took for granted. The idea that a machine would simply wait, ready to serve them without complaint, produced an awkward kind of gratitude in several of the battle brothers. A few stood in their doorways for a moment longer than necessary before stepping inside.
Nolan, meanwhile, had shed the vibranium power armor and passed through his own round of disinfection before crossing to Second Son Island.
The foundry was warm even from the corridor outside, the kind of low, steady heat that came from forges that never fully cooled. Inside, Reditus was hunched over a workbench, the anti-gravity engine of its servo skull spinning in short, idle rotations as it worked through some calculation that had clearly been occupying it for some time. The skull looked up the moment Nolan entered, and within seconds it was darting back and forth in front of him with the barely contained energy of something that had been waiting for exactly this audience.
The armor arsenal it had constructed with Doom's assistance took up most of one wall. Power armor components were organized by type and catalogued by size, each piece racked and labeled in a manner that allowed the automated servo arms overhead to retrieve any of them within seconds. It was a practical system presented with a craftsman's pride, and Reditus made sure Nolan saw every section of it.
Nolan let the skull have its moment. He asked his questions about the Terminator armor component reserves methodically, listening to the answers and making notes in his head. When he had what he needed, he offered a few words of genuine encouragement, enough to satisfy without being excessive, and left the foundry feeling settled about what came next.
His intention was clear enough in outline. All one hundred and fifty Lamenters would eventually be equipped with Terminator plate: full Tactical Dreadnought configuration, the heaviest personal armor in the Imperium's arsenal. For engagements that demanded speed over protection, assault variants could substitute. The current production capacity of the Twin Islands base was more than sufficient to supply both a reinforced company of Lamenters and the ongoing operational needs of the Man-Eating Shark Chapter simultaneously.
It was a question of time, not material.
Within a few days of the Lamenters settling in, the Gang Dogs noticed them.
The training grounds on Primogenitor Isle were busy at all hours, and the Gang Dogs who rotated through daily drills had grown used to a certain rhythm. What they had not grown used to was looking up mid-exercise to find a cluster of giants watching them from the edge of the ground with expressions that were not cold, exactly, but carried a density of attention that made the air feel heavier.
These were not the gray-white Astartes from the Carcharodons. These warriors wore the dark yellow of the Lamenters, and where Tyberos's warriors had carried an almost elemental distance from the world around them, these battle brothers were, in their own way, trying to close the gap.
Several of them were bald. Most of the rest kept their hair cropped close. Their manner was considerably warmer than the Space Sharks had ever managed, and within less than twenty-four hours of arriving, some of them had already made functional progress in learning the language patterns the Gang Dogs used among themselves.
David had been prepared to assign translation servo-robots. He quietly shelved the plan.
Nolan was not surprised when he heard. The Astartes were more than their combat records. Their enhancements extended to cognition, memory, and pattern recognition in ways that made language acquisition on a compressed timeline entirely plausible. He filed it away and moved on.
He let himself consider, briefly, what the situation might look like if the Lamenters had been Ultramarines instead. With that Chapter's organizational discipline and administrative tradition, he might have been able to step back entirely, hand off the operational management of his growing forces, and simply wait for the right moment to act. Marneus Calgar was not a man who missed implications, but Nolan's earlier hints in that direction had apparently not landed as intended. Calgar's rigidity had its uses, but flexibility was not among them.
What he had was what he had: one hundred and fifty Lamenters, and they were not nothing. Far from it.
Among them were technical sergeants, one assigned per company as standard practice within the Chapter's structure. More importantly, there were two Apothecaries, both of them experienced in the full range of Astartes surgical procedures, trained and practiced in ways that the base's other biological researchers simply were not.
When Nolan learned this from David, he called them in immediately.
The two Apothecaries were precise men. They did not waste words. Nolan had barely finished outlining his intentions before they began, calmly and without apology, explaining the constraints.
The Gang Dogs met the physical baseline. Their conditioning, after months of intensive training under the base's regimen, was sufficient to qualify them as viable Astartes recruits. That part of the assessment was positive.
The problem was gene-seed. Without a stable and sufficient supply of the correct genetic material, the creation of new Astartes could not proceed regardless of how capable the candidates were.
And even setting that aside, the timeline was what it was. The Lamenters had built their own forces under the shadow of the Cursed Army designation, always short of resources, always fighting the numbers. A ship-based battle group working under those conditions, without the infrastructure of a fortress-monastery, still required five to ten years to produce a single Astartes capable of battlefield deployment, assuming no complications during the implantation sequence. Complications were not rare.
"Understood," Nolan said. "I will arrange for a biological researcher with expertise in biotechnology to work alongside you and learn the surgical procedures. You are dismissed."
The two Apothecaries left without ceremony. The door closed.
David waited. The blue light behind its optical sensors shifted slightly, and it drew breath to speak.
"Don't," Nolan said, before David could begin.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head once and turned toward the window, where the ocean light came in flat and gray off Second Son Island's coastline.
"I'm not frustrated. Not really." He exhaled slowly. "I'm thinking."
Another pause.
"If I can't produce my own line of Astartes in any meaningful timeframe, then I need to think bigger. Every Astartes in this warband can be mine, in the way that matters. And our homeland is full of warbands on the edge. Chapters on the verge of destruction, or betrayal, or both. Some of them can be pulled back. The Cursed Army period alone is full of them."
He turned back. His expression had settled into something that wasn't quite a smile but was in the same territory.
"If the Emperor gives me the right openings, I can become the father of hundreds of thousands of Astartes. I just refuse to accept the title of Warmaster while doing it. That name has never once led anywhere good."
David regarded him for a moment. Then it spread both metal palms outward in a gesture of careful, measured acceptance.
"My lord," it said, "as long as you are satisfied that the method is sound."
"I think it's very sound."
"My lord."
A pause.
"My lord, there is a situation in the circular plaza."
The blue light in David's eyes had sharpened. Its posture shifted almost imperceptibly, the kind of adjustment that meant it was already pushing data through the base network.
Nolan had already felt it: a brief vibration from the simulator. He pulled up the page and scanned it.
His expression relaxed into something close to satisfaction.
"Tsk, our dedicated Carcharodon Squad has delivered the 'goods' to your door!"