Thirty thousand people, Nolan could manage without much difficulty. A space crack of sufficient size, careful timing, and he could move that number through to safety.
Three hundred thousand would have required everything he had, prayers included, and he would have arrived on the other side with nothing left. But it was a number that existed within the range of possibility.
Three million was not a number. It was a condition of the landscape.
He stood and looked at the mortal slaves gathering around the Lamenters' position and did not speak. Their faces carried the particular blankness of people who had survived something by spending everything they had on surviving it, and who were now looking at him with the first real hope they had allowed themselves in what was probably a very long time. He opened his mouth once and closed it again.
Foros stepped up beside him.
"Lord Primarch." The Chapter Master's voice was steady, carrying none of the desperation the situation warranted. "The Lamenters Chapter has been prepared for the annihilation of the entire force. That is our duty as Astartes, and the only way we know to honor the blood of Sanguinius." He paused briefly. "We are grateful beyond words for your personal support. But we cannot leave these people. Perhaps other Chapters would call that stupidity, or weakness, or cowardice. The Lamenters were founded to protect Imperial civilians. We will not abandon that now."
Nolan looked at him for a moment.
"Remember that," he said. "Hold on to exactly what you just said. Do not let it become something you said once and forgot."
He reached back over his shoulder and pulled the C'tan Phase Sword from the back rack. He held it out to Foros without ceremony.
The Chapter Master took it with both hands. Around him, the envious silence of every battle brother who understood what they were looking at was its own kind of sound.
Nolan was already thinking.
The Lamenters' battle group had its flagship and one other battle barge in orbit above the mining world, plus a handful of frigates. Their transport capacity was minimal even by the standards of a well-supplied Chapter, and the Lamenters had never been well-supplied. A dozen Thunderhawk transporters at most, by Foros's account. Moving three million people with that asset pool, against Ork reinforcements that would not wait for them to finish, was not a problem that transport capacity could solve.
He checked the portal cooldown. Seven days before he and David could transit back safely.
Seven days, three million people, incoming Orks, and a handful of Thunderhawks.
"Chapter Master." Nolan turned. "What is this expedition? Who commands it overall?"
Foros blinked. The question had come from somewhere he had not expected.
"The Corinth Crusade, my lord. Commanded personally by Marneus Calgar, Lord of Ultramar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. The objective is to drive the Ork warlord Skagol out of Imperial space." He tilted his head slightly. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I just had an idea," Nolan said. "It will offend a number of battle groups. It will also save all three million of these people."
Foros struck his ceramite breastplate with one fist, the crack of it carrying over the noise around them.
"The Lamenters are not afraid of death, my lord. We are certainly not afraid of causing offense. Whatever you need from us, you have it."
"Contact your battle barge. Have the Astropaths reach the Ultramarines flagship. I want to speak with Calgar directly."
The repair took time. The technical sergeants worked on the communication array with the focus of men who understood that the outcome mattered, and eventually produced something functional enough.
Nolan settled in front of it and waited.
The channel opened with static, and then a voice came through it: deep, unhurried, carrying the specific quality of authority that has been exercised so long it no longer needs to announce itself.
"This is the Macragge's Glory. Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, Commander of the Corinth Crusade. Lamenters, I made myself clear before you departed for this mission. There is no support available for your current operation. Why are you contacting the command channel again?"
"Chapter Master Calgar." Nolan kept his voice even. "I am the Twenty-Second Primarch of the Imperium of Man."
A silence.
It was the particular silence of a very capable mind encountering something it had not prepared a response for.
"I... what? Who are you? What did you just say? Where is Chapter Master Foros?"
"I said: I am the Twenty-Second Primarch of the Imperium of Man, and I am currently fighting alongside the Lamenters." Nolan did not raise his voice. "Chapter Master Calgar, you have two choices available to you. The first: you accept that I am who I say I am, and you dispatch part of your fleet to extract approximately three million Imperial civilians from this world without materially affecting your crusade's operational capacity. The second: you conclude that I am fraudulent, in which case you are still obligated to dispatch part of your fleet to verify the claim, and those ships will still be able to extract the civilians while they are here."
He let that settle for a moment.
"From the beginning of this conversation, regardless of which conclusion you reach, the outcome is the same. Ships are coming. Civilians are evacuated. The only variable is whether you do it as a man who recognized a Primarch, or as a man who needed to send an investigation fleet and found one."
Another silence, shorter than the first.
"And if you are genuinely considering the third option," Nolan continued, "the one where you decide this is a Chaos deception or an Ork trick and choose to forget we spoke, then I will tell you plainly: if I ever have the opportunity to meet the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, I will describe this conversation to him in detail."
The silence that followed this had a different quality.
Then Calgar's voice returned, and it was considerably louder than before.
"Preposterous! A Twenty-Second Primarch? There is no such thing! And how dare you address my father by his given name, whoever you are, I swear on the honor of Ultramar that I will personally..."
Nolan reached over and switched the communicator off.
The sound of the channel closing was very small in the quiet that followed.
He straightened, the power armor's servos adjusting to the movement, and turned to look at the people around him: the Lamenters in their battered dark yellow armor, the mortal slaves still emerging from the mine passages in a continuous stream, David's Terminator frame standing impassive at the edge of the gathered group.
"Calgar's fleet will come," Nolan said. "I am confident of that."
He looked out across the hillside at the horizon, where the dust of more incoming Ork forces was already beginning to show against the sky.
"So. Our only remaining problem is keeping three million people alive long enough for it to arrive."
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