Across the entire void fleet, the Carcharodons Astra had held their numbers at roughly five hundred Astartes for some time now, organised into five companies. The fifth of those was the newest, composed of warriors who had only recently completed their transformation surgery and were still working through advanced training. Their combat capability was nowhere near the veterans of the older companies.
Tyberos had been authorised to collect blood tithes from each world the Carcharodons liberated and use the recruits they yielded to build a sixth company, eventually a seventh. The problem was not gene-seeds. The Chapter had enough to support the expansion, if only just. The problem was time. If Nolan simply pushed for numbers, the quality of the new Astartes would suffer accordingly, and a half-trained warrior in the field was often worse than no warrior at all. To compound matters, the batch of Primaris recruits and the associated implantation technology that Regent Guilliman had been dispatching to understrength Chapters across the Indomitus Crusade had never reached the Carcharodons. Whatever the reason, none of it had arrived, and none appeared to be coming.
That left Nolan with a cleaner answer than the recruitment problem: find them already made.
The prayer support missions had always offered the possibility of recovering Astartes who would otherwise be lost. Every brother pulled out of a collapsing battlefield was a warrior who required no surgery, no years of conditioning, and no expenditure of gene-seed. They simply needed to be given a reason to keep fighting, and Nolan had no shortage of reasons to offer. After his rest period ended, he began reviewing the available support missions with that specific objective in mind. When nothing on the current list justified the attempt, he waited, watching for the Golden Throne's next refresh.
The Carcharodons, meanwhile, had developed a functioning operational system without being asked. Their forces had been divided into graduated response tiers based on the severity of each psychic distress signal received from the worlds they patrolled. A single combat team would be dispatched first to assess the local situation directly. From there, reinforcement was determined by what that team found.
Harassment by alien raiders or scattered heretic rebels: one team, perhaps two, was sufficient. A Necron force awakening in earnest, or an Ork warband with momentum behind it: a full company was deployed. Situations where no quick resolution existed and a protracted engagement would cost the Carcharodons more than the world was worth received a different kind of answer entirely. The Carcharodons would deliver a precise orbital bombardment, then withdraw and mark the coordinates on their star map. They did not consider these worlds abandoned. They considered them pending.
None of that required Nolan's direction. He left the Chapter Master to run his own campaign as a Chapter Master ought to be allowed to run it, and turned his attention back to the Golden Throne interface.
When the page refreshed, the answer was almost immediate.
A prayer support mission associated with the Raven Guard appeared in the listings, flagged with a location marker Nolan recognized before he had fully read the text. Damocles Gulf. The Tau Empire.
He sat back on the metal throne and narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Damocles Gulf," he said quietly. "The war against the Tau. If I remember correctly, the Imperium came out of this one badly."
The contemplation stretched for a few moments, but the conclusion did not take long.
The Raven Guard were a strong choice on multiple grounds. From the perspective of Primarch kinship alone, Nolan's affinity with shadow power placed him closest in nature to Corvus Corax of any Primarch whose lineage he could claim connection to. The Carcharodons themselves had come from Corax, shaped by his methods and sent into the outer darkness carrying his gift, and that bond translated directly into the gene-reverence that every Raven Guard would feel when they looked at Nolan.
He would not need to spend time earning their trust. The moment they recognized what he was, they would follow. Beyond that, the Raven Guard's combat philosophy had never fundamentally conflicted with anything Nolan valued. Surgical, patient, efficient: warriors who understood that a battle won without unnecessary cost was worth more than a battle won at full strength. If a large number of Raven Guard ended up returning to his fleet afterward, integrating them would not be difficult.
He let out a slow breath and rose from the throne.
"Very well. Let it be the Raven Guard."
"And let the Primarch brother most entangled with the Raven King be the one to show them a different path forward."
He stepped off the dais and performed the Shadow Step without transition, his form dissolving into the dark passage outside the ancient hall faster than a man could track. Within moments he had moved through several corridors at speed.
It did not take long for the Lamenters guard and the Black Templars Crusader squad, both restored and rearmed after their rest period, to form up in the hall. Nolan gave them a brief account of the enemy they were about to face: the Tau, a xenos species organised around a philosophy they called the Greater Good, compact and well-disciplined, dangerous in ranged engagements, less so in close quarters, currently contesting the Damocles Gulf with Imperial forces. Then he opened the simulator and selected the mission.
A low hum filled the dry air.
A Warp portal tore open above the cracked ground ahead of them, the edges shimmering with contained energy. The first thing to step through was a magnetic boot catching the dust, the impact sending a small ripple of grit and smoke outward across the pale surface. Nolan followed it, straightening to his full height in the Starfire Glory power armor, the Warscythe in his left hand and the Dawnbringer at his back.
The world around him was desolate and unfamiliar: broken ground under a colourless sky, the air still, the landscape silent in the particular way that battlefields go silent between exchanges of fire.
Behind him, heavy footsteps multiplied. Terminator-armoured Lamenters fanned out in a perimeter sweep, bolters raised. Black Templars Crusaders in their robes followed hard after them, moving to cover the approaches before the portal had finished collapsing.
Nolan looked across the terrain and made two quick decisions.
"Black Templars: detach a reconnaissance element. I want the local geography assessed. Lamenters: access the Imperial communication channels. Find out if there are any friendly forces we can raise."
Both groups moved immediately.
The Crusaders sent a small team forward into the broken ground. The Lamenters began working through the available vox frequencies. It did not take the Lamenter long. He drove his Terminator armor across to Nolan's position a short time later and delivered his report with the flat economy of someone relaying facts rather than interpreting them.
"Lord Primarch. The communication channels are chaos. From the fragments I can isolate, the local command structure appears to have collapsed. The senior commander has ceased exercising any meaningful control, and the mortal troops are fighting independently. The current situation is deteriorating."
Nolan absorbed this without visible surprise. He had expected something close to it.
"Then we wait for the Black Templars' reconnaissance before we commit," he said. "If the situation on the ground is bad enough by the time they return, we move directly into the fight and try to salvage what remains."
He paused, then added:
"The Raven Guard Astartes should be operating somewhere in this theatre. If we can locate them and assume tactical coordination, it changes the calculation entirely. The Tau are disciplined and dangerous at range, but they are not unbeatable. Even facing a force several times our size, with the Raven Guard alongside us and proper command restored, I do not intend to let the Imperium lose this one again."