Nolan's head turned.
The movement was small, a degree or two, the kind of adjustment that happens when someone is processing sensory information rather than searching for something visible. Cyrus noticed it first because Cyrus noticed things. Orion noticed Cyrus notice it, which produced the same response a half second later.
Martellus did not notice anyone noticing anything, but he read the room correctly and the tempo of his servo-arm's work increased without being asked.
Nolan stood, the warscythe and Forgebreaker in his hands, the wolfskin cloak draped over his unarmored frame.
"Not daemons," he said. "No Chaos psychic signature. No warp-stench." He turned to Cyrus. "Astartes, from the number and their pattern of movement. Moving as a coherent unit, not at full speed." He paused. "Go forward. Check quietly. If they're Blood Ravens with no sign of compromise, bring them in. If anything reads wrong, give us a signal."
Cyrus was already moving before Nolan finished. He collected his rifle from where he had set it against the wall, was through the gap in the ruins, and was gone into the blizzard without visible transition.
Nolan and Orion held their positions.
The wind was the loudest thing in the space for the next several minutes, and then it was not.
"Safe." Cyrus's voice, from somewhere not far outside. "One of ours."
Eleven Blood Ravens came in from the snow, led at the front by a warrior who was slightly taller than the others and who carried a large war hammer with the ease of something he had been doing for a very long time. The power armor of all eleven was the deep red of the Blood Ravens, marked with battle damage at multiple points, and the company markings on their pauldrons matched the third.
The warrior with the hammer stopped. He looked at Nolan directly, and something in the quality of his attention changed: not slowly, but in the way that understanding arrives when it is something you were already reasoning toward.
He went to one knee.
"Captain of the Blood Ravens' 3rd Company: Gabriel Angelos." His voice had a density to it, the voice of someone who has been giving orders in loud environments for a very long time and has calibrated his vocal output accordingly. "I meet the Primarch."
Ten warriors hit one knee behind him in the same motion.
"We serve the Lord Primarch."
Nolan looked at them for a moment. Then he gestured, once, toward the standing position.
"Get up. All of you." He turned and walked back into the shelter.
Gabriel came in under Cyrus's direction and took a position near Nolan, with Orion across from him and Martellus working in the background. The captain's excitement was visible in the way that a very controlled person's excitement is visible: present in the eyes and nowhere else.
He spoke without prompting once he was settled, because he understood what a Primarch would need to know and in what order.
His team had been separated from the other vanguard groups during the early engagements on Aurelia Prime, he said. The sequence of events had followed the same pattern that Cyrus's account had described, which was consistent enough to be meaningful rather than coincidental. Before reaching this location, responding to the distress signal on the chapter comms, his team had made contact with Black Legion forces and had briefly engaged their commander.
The Chaos Lord's title among his own forces was Huntmaster. His name was Araghast. He commanded the Black Legion contingent on Aurelia Prime, which meant he was likely the principal architect of the Chaos operation here rather than a subordinate actor.
During the engagement, Gabriel said, Araghast had said things.
Not threats. Threats were common from Chaos Lords. Araghast had said things that implied knowledge he should not have had. Specific knowledge. About Blood Ravens tactical dispositions on the planet, and about the Chapter's internal information structure: the psychic planning sessions, the prediction methods, the command protocols that the Librarians managed. The kind of knowledge that came from inside the Chapter.
He had been thinking about it since.
"There are traitors among us," Gabriel said. He said it clearly, without the vocal modulation of someone who was still deciding whether to believe it. "I reached that conclusion before receiving any external confirmation. The pattern of attacks we've suffered since arrival is consistent with an enemy that knows us from the inside."
Nolan looked at him. "Cyrus reached the same conclusion independently."
"I'm not surprised." Gabriel glanced at the scout sergeant. "The question is who."
"The question of who can wait," Nolan said. "The question of Araghast cannot. A Chaos Lord with a mandate on your homeworld is the more urgent problem, and removing him removes the operational structure that the traitor is reporting to. We do it in that order."
Gabriel considered this for a moment. Then he nodded.
"Agreed."
The armor repair continued while the plan took shape.
Nolan opened the storage interface and the distribution began: a steady flow of weapons and equipment coming through in sequence, each item assessed against the warrior receiving it and allocated accordingly. Assault cannons for the heavy weapons carriers. Cyclone missile launchers for those whose armor already integrated that mounting system. Storm bolters distributed across the line as standard load. The Blood Ravens received each piece with the particular quality of attention that very experienced warriors give to unfamiliar equipment: functional assessment first, questions after.
When Nolan placed his hand on the Volcano Cannon's entry in the storage interface, Orion spoke.
"Lord Primarch." His tone was considered rather than urgent. "The traitor or traitors are still communicating with the enemy. If we deploy strategic-scale weaponry now, Araghast will know we have it before we need it most. Better to hold it for the moment when it changes the outcome of the engagement rather than its premise."
Nolan held the interface open for a moment.
Then he closed it on the Volcano Cannon's entry.
"Noted," he said.
The weapons distribution continued.
Martellus came forward when the work was done.
The Techmarine's servo-arm had been running continuously for nearly two hours, and the lines of fatigue in his face were the kind that stimulants do not fully address. But the expression that accompanied the fatigue was not frustrated.
"Most systems are restored," he said. "Not the full specification. Some of the electro-fiber bundle architecture in the wing drive mechanism is beyond what I can fabricate here. But the servo-assistance is functional, the joint response is inside acceptable parameters, and the medical system is at eighty percent capacity." He paused. "It will hold for the engagement ahead."
Nolan picked up the armor section by section and began fitting it.
The familiar weight returned piece by piece: the leg sections, the torso housing, the pauldrons, the helmet. Each piece settling into contact with the next, the suit's internal systems beginning their initialization sequence. He moved his arms through a range of motion, tested the grip response in both gauntlets, rolled his neck once against the gorget.
The vibranium wings extended and retracted, fully, on both sides.
He looked at the Blood Ravens assembled in the shelter. Eleven warriors and three survivors, and the three survivors standing alongside them. He picked up Forgebreaker and the warscythe.
"Blood Ravens." His voice was level, not elevated. It did not need to be, for the space. "I will tell you plainly: I cannot confirm whether I am your genetic father. I cannot confirm it today. What I can tell you is that it does not change what happens next."
He looked across the group.
"I am the Primarch, and before I fall, I will be in front of you. Every enemy that has betrayed the Emperor and threatened the Imperium will account for it at our hands. That is what we are here to do."
He raised one gauntlet.
"For the Emperor."
Fourteen Blood Ravens answered with one voice:
"Knowledge is power. For the Primarch."