"Can soone just explain clearly, who the hell is Horst?" Grey asked, still completely out of the loop. His voice carried that mix of irritation and unease unique to soldiers who knew they were being left out of the bigger picture, yet also feared learning it.
It wasn't that Chak was being cryptic on purpose, truth was, he didn't know much himself. He'd only ever heard whispers of the Lord Inquisitor nad Horst. Chak couldn't even confirmwhether Horst was a true na, a moniker, or perhaps a legacy title passed through silent succession within the Ordo, carried like a cursed torch from master to apprentice.
In this room, only Qin Mo had even a partial understanding of Horst, and that was limited to fragnts of what the man had done, not who he really was.
What Horst would do upon arriving, whether he'd prioritize purging the plague or ddling in the affairs of the Talon System, remained unclear. Was he an ally or a threat? Qin Mo couldn't say.
He turned toward Vick, the Tech-Priest from the Adeptus chanicus, hoping the priest might offer so actual insight.
"The situation has deviated from all predicted trajectories," Vick admitted, flatly."The Inquisition does not serve any single Imperial arm, yet... so Inquisitors fall under external influence. The Archmagos foresaw two potential agents arriving, capable of delivering either salvation or annihilation."
"…However…" Vick paused. "The Archmagos did not foresee Horst. There isnodata. No profile. No pattern. No forecast. His ergence lies outside all simulations."
Qin Mo fell into thought, his eyes lingering on the plague biomass sample, still spinning within its containnt field.
Unlike Chak or Rena, an Interrogator without formal sanction, Horst was a true Lord Inquisitor, a figure of absolute authority. He could mobilize entire armies. With a single word, he could unleash Exterminatus, burning worlds to ash in the na of purity. If the Grey Knights followed him, the outco would be apocalyptic. Even a deploynt of Sisters of Battle would be disastrous, their faith-fueled zeal enough to shatter entire planetary uprisings.
"You know what your real advantage is in the Talon System?" Chak suddenly asked, his tone unusually sharp. "It's not your military might. It's not even that tech you're hiding. It's your unity. The Inquisition can't divide you, and that makes you dangerous."
"I agree," Vick nodded with rare emphasis.
Even Grey gave the young Inquisitor an approving glance.
"When Horst arrives," Qin Mo said calmly, ""I'll place the entire Talon System on high alert. Every bastion, every fleet, every forge-cell. If he cos as ally, we welco him; if he cos as judge, we endure. But he will not find us unprepared."
Vick wanted to warn him, crossing the Inquisition was never wise, but considering what he'd witnessed within this system, he suspected Qin Mo still had cards left unplayed.
Then, he rembered sothing else.
The Angel of Creation.
The odd cult that had begun to form, so citizens of the Talon System had started venerating strange construct-deities, and rumors had reached Vick about worshippers of automatons.
Qin Mo had promised to explain the matter after Vick helped locate Rena on the ship. But that promise had gone unfulfilled.
Who or what, was this so-called Angel? Why were there cults forming around machines that didn't bear the Omnissiah's mark? Could they be xenos relics?Man of Ironremnants? Or sothing darker?
Vick had tried to investigate, but the machine-cultists had shared only scraps of knowledge, and only after the Omnissiah and the Cult chanicus were ntioned. Still, even the smallest revelations hinted at a strange kinship, an unsettling similarity between the cult and his own order.
"It's done," Qin Mo suddenly said, breaking Vick's train of thought.
Under the Tech-Priest's watchful gaze, Qin Mo removed a vial of clear liquid from a biochem array and dripped it onto the plague-ridden biomass Grey had extracted.
The green, necrotic tissue imdiately began to bubble and decay, dissolving entirely within seconds.
"What is that?" Vick asked, voice calm but curious.
"A defensive counteragent," Qin Mo replied. "It forces infected cells into rapid apoptosis, killing the infection before it can spread further. Think of it as teaching the body to end its own corruption, cell by cell."
He swirled the transparent vial, letting the liquid catch the light. It glead with a purity almost offensive in contrast to the foulness it destroyed.
Vick wasn't a magos biologis, but he'd seen his share of dicae processes. And this, this was not so crude field-mix. It wasn't sothing you could cobble together from dissected biomass and a dkit.
Then Qin Mo inserted the vial into another strange piece of equipnt. It scanned the contents, and in the next mont, began replicating the substance, filling dozens of empty vials with perfect copies.
Vick had no idea what this device was, nor where it ca from, but he did know one thing: it was not of standard chanicus design. It operated far too efficiently. The contrast between this device and his own sacred tools was like the difference between a Servitor and a n of Iron.
"There are traces of immaterium corruption in the plague," Qin Mo said. "But as long as it remains in the Materium, and doesn't fuse flesh with machine, this formula will hold."
He pulled a fresh vial from the machine and held it out to Chak.
The Interrogator stepped forward, cupping it in both hands. "The Inquisition thanks you for your cooperation, Governor."
"That's not a gift," Qin Mo said. "It's for you. A failsafe. A cure, if you get infected."
Chak t Qin Mo's eyes, and what he saw was unsettling. That gaze seed to pierce ti itself, unraveling both past and future.
In that mont, Chak understood: Qin Mo already knew his loyalties.
"…Much appreciated." Chak muttered, tucking the vial into a reinforced holster on his chestplate, designed specifically for storing dical agents.
He opened his mouth to request a copy of Qin Mo's research, but Qin Mo spoke first: "Leave."
"…Right." Chak shut his mouth, turned, and left the subterranean chamber without another word.
Now only Qin Mo, Vick, and Grey remained.
Vick turned to Grey briefly, then looked back at Qin Mo. Though his chanical jawdidn't move, his vox-emitter conveyed speech with clarity.
"Governor, may I now request that you honor your earlier promise? You said that ifI helped you locate Rena aboard the vessel, you would share information about the so-called Angel of Creation."
"Oh, that," Qin Mo said, feigning surprise. "I almost forgot."
But instead of answering, he countered with a question..
"Why do you care so much? Was this a mission from your Archmagos?"
"No," Vick replied. "Both the Archmagos and I walk our own paths. Our goals are not aligned."
"What's your goal, then?" Qin Mo asked.
Vick did not answer directly.
"I have offered all that I am to the Omnissiah. I wander the stars, seeking signs, echoes, remnants, forgotten truths. I have even walked within the Eye of Terror itself..."
Qin Mo raised an eyebrow.
Even he didn't fully understand what the Omnissiah truly was. The Machine God's true identity remained a mystery, wrapped in dogma, fear, and fragnted revelation. Was it the Emperor Himself, resplendent in divine might, restoring a fallen God-Machine with a re touch of His golden hand before a congregation of Tech-Priests and Skitarii?
Or perhaps the Omnissiah could be none other than the slumbering C'tan shard buried beneath the red sands of Mars, whispering secrets of necrodermis and forbidden algorithms into the minds of the first settlers? A god not of Man, but of the long-dead Necrontyr, its voice mistaken for divinity by desperate pioneers driven mad by the silence of the void?
Or, worse still, was the Omnissiah sothing utterly profane? Could it be Warp entityVashtorr the Arkifane, the twisted Demigod of dark innovation.
Perhaps it was all of them. Or none. Perhaps the Omnissiah was sothing entirely new, a synthetic divinity, born from belief, code, and the overlapping shadows of gods both ancient and unborn. All he knew, all he could say with certainty, was that the Omnissiahdidexist. And it held sway, whether subtly or overtly in both the material realm and the Immaterium alike. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NoveI★Fire
"Most in the chanicus care for the Talon System only because they believe it contains many STC fragnts," Vick continued. "They'd see the entire sector purged, so long as the patterns were preserved. But I am different. I seek more than blueprints. I seek thetruthof the Omnissiah. And in this Angel, I see a reflection of that truth."
Vick's voice was quiet, but each word struck with the weight of devotion.
As a priest of Mars, he had purged his mortal emotions long ago. But impatience, he could not purge. He felt he was close, so very close. If Qin Mo would just give him a bit more…
Yet, just as Vick waited eagerly for a revelation, Qin Mo changed the subject entirely.
"I know of a location in the Underhive. There's an STC fragnt buried there. I can take you to it."
"I don't care for STCs, well, I do, but what I need is more pressing than even that," Vick said. "Tell more about this… Angel. I beg you."
"Co with ," Qin Mo replied, smiling faintly. "Help retrieve the STC fragnt first. Perhaps you'll find what you seek… down there."
Vick was about to insist that Qin Mo could keep the STC to himself, but then he stopped.
Sothing clicked in his logic-nodes.
He suppressed his urgency, clenched his chadendrites tightly, and nodded in silence.
He would go.
Even if the STC itself was aningless… if the journey revealed truth, that would be enough.
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