"Can someone 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 named Horst. Chak couldn't even confirm whether Horst was a true name, 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 fragments 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 meddling 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 Mechanicus, hoping the priest might offer some actual insight.
"The situation has deviated from all predicted trajectories," Vick admitted, flatly."The Inquisition does not serve any single Imperial arm, yet... some 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 is no data. No profile. No pattern. No forecast. His emergence lies outside all simulations."
Qin Mo fell into thought, his eyes lingering on the plague biomass sample, still spinning within its containment 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 name of purity. If the Grey Knights followed him, the outcome would be apocalyptic. Even a deployment 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 comes as ally, we welcome him; if he comes 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 remembered something else.
The Angel of Creation.
The odd cult that had begun to form, some 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 Iron remnants? Or something darker?
Vick had tried to investigate, but the machine-cultists had shared only scraps of knowledge, and only after the Omnissiah and the Cult Mechanicus were mentioned. 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 immediately 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 gleamed 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 medicae processes. And this, this was not some crude field-mix. It wasn't something you could cobble together from dissected biomass and a medkit.
Then Qin Mo inserted the vial into another strange piece of equipment. It scanned the contents, and in the next moment, began replicating the substance, filling dozens of empty vials with perfect copies.
Vick had no idea what this device was, nor where it came from, but he did know one thing: it was not of standard Mechanicus 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 Men 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 met Qin Mo's eyes, and what he saw was unsettling. That gaze seemed to pierce time itself, unraveling both past and future.
In that moment, 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 medical 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 mechanical jaw didn't move, his vox-emitter conveyed speech with clarity.
"Governor, may I now request that you honor your earlier promise? You said that if I 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 fragmented revelation. Was it the Emperor Himself, resplendent in divine might, restoring a fallen God-Machine with a mere 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 something utterly profane? Could it be Warp entity Vashtorr the Arkifane, the twisted Demigod of dark innovation.
Perhaps it was all of them. Or none. Perhaps the Omnissiah was something 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 Omnissiah did exist. And it held sway, whether subtly or overtly in both the material realm and the Immaterium alike.
"Most in the Mechanicus care for the Talon System only because they believe it contains many STC fragments," 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 the truth of 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 fragment 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 me more about this… Angel. I beg you."
"Come with me," Qin Mo replied, smiling faintly. "Help me retrieve the STC fragment 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.
Something clicked in his logic-nodes.
He suppressed his urgency, clenched his mechadendrites tightly, and nodded in silence.
He would go.
Even if the STC itself was meaningless… if the journey revealed truth, that would be enough.
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