Faced with Vulkan's fury, Guilliman had no choice but to first try to quell his anger and soothe his emotions.
After hurriedly ending the transmission, Guilliman immediately tried to contact Cawl, hoping to find out exactly what had happened.
Cawl, however, was busy handling the machine intelligences sent by Iax. These machine bodies, repaired by the Men of Iron, contained many lost technologies. Their workings were much easier to understand than those of the military machine bodies under Iax's command. Absorbed in his research, Cawl never noticed Guilliman's repeated attempts to contact him.
Unable to reach Cawl, Guilliman carefully recalled everything that had happened since his resurrection.
When Cawl had demonstrated Primaris Space Marine technology to Guilliman, he had shown him a special individual.
That exceptional warrior had been called Alpha Primus.
Guilliman knew of Cawl's ambitions. Cawl had once attempted to recreate the process by which the Emperor had created the Primarchs.
Guilliman had even personally placed the Sangprimus Portum in Cawl's hands.
But Cawl was clearly far bolder than Guilliman had anticipated.
Beyond these immediate problems, Guilliman had plenty of other troubles to deal with.
Although the crisis in the Pariah Nexus had ended, vast swathes of Imperial Worlds had become dead worlds and still needed to be cleared and rebuilt.
The Necrons were locked in bitter fighting in the central Ultima Segmentum.
The T'au xenos seemed to have suffered several attacks by the Men of Iron and were behaving themselves for now. But secret reports from the Inquisition brought Guilliman more bad news.
Within the Ork Empire at the edge of the Milky Way, countless Orks had been drawn to the wars raging across the galaxy and were gradually moving closer.
Although the Mechanicus Ship fleets of the Men of Iron had eliminated many hidden threats to