This meeting with the White Scars was naturally no coincidence.
Lox was busy. Even though his true body was still on Sotha, working with the Warsmith Dantioch to decipher the Pharos, he still used the capabilities of this alien technology to keep watch over affairs in the Macragge system.
The production facilities on Mustafar were carrying out large-scale manufacturing every second of every minute. Though he did not need to personally involve himself in the specific processes, Lox still needed to adjust the production plans according to the feedback he received.
Once productivity reached a certain level, production plans also needed constant adjustment and revision.
Over the past two years, aside from spending a great deal of time improving power armor and researching anti-psykers, this planetary shipyard in Mustafar's orbit had consumed much of his attention.
Guilliman was desperately short of spaceborne forces. The fleet that had originally ranked among the foremost of the eighteen Legions had lost more than half its strength at Calth. Even after the Adeptus Mechanicus rushed production and the Five Hundred Worlds underwent a complete redeployment, the Ultramarines still needed more warships.
Faced with the constant urging of Nobby Guilliman—no, Roboute Guilliman—Lox was left with a pounding headache.
The lord of the Five Hundred Worlds was the sort to seize hold of one sheep and shear it for all it was worth, refusing to stop until it was bald.
Thus, the Hera planetary shipyard came into being. In truth, this colossal shipyard, as large as a moon, had itself been derived from an STC template for manufacturing large warships.
To provide this STC with sufficient energy and materials, Lox had built hundreds of thousands of space mining ships, nearly emptying the asteroid belt of its scattered metal deposits.
Those mining ships, like locusts in space,