Even the Inquisitors were bewildered, let alone anyone else. Ten Chapter homeworlds lay in the remote reaches of the Calixis Sector, yet the Ultramarines had sent so few men that they had effectively made a token tour and changed the flags.
They had established almost no military control.
Moreover, the Primarch's orders had merely been to reclaim all the homeworlds around Calixis. After a tentative round of Imperial Tithe collection, they had announced their return to the Imperium.
Virtually no purges had been conducted within the Calixis Sector itself.
Publicly, they claimed they needed to concentrate their forces to support the Great Crusade and reinforce Terra's defenses.
Chaos Cults began proliferating wildly, and the eyes and ears of the Chaos Gods began appearing frequently near the Rebel Zone.
The First Expeditionary Force suffered several deceptive attacks.
Enemy warships appeared above the fortresses they garrisoned. That was normal enough. But after a ferocious bombardment, the enemy apparently decided that the fortresses' anti-aircraft fire was too strong and deliberately deployed Drop Pods into empty wastelands.
There were actually no warriors aboard those Drop Pods, but the warriors of the various Chapters stationed there had no way of knowing that.
They hurried over, found empty Drop Pods, and inevitably panicked, believing their fortresses had been infiltrated.
Massive, high-profile hunts for infiltrators swept across entire planets, effectively tying up the attention of most of the Astartes on the ground.
That kept them busy down there.
Drop Pods were expensive, but we had dropped them, not destroyed them. A few days later, we would either seize them back or leave them to the Dark Angels.
We had stolen plenty of their ships, too.
After several years of war, the Light of the People carried a great many Dark Angels vessels, including some Escort Ships the