"Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt! Bzzt-bzzt!"
Vick emitted a string of unintelligible electronic sounds, distorted bursts of static, like vox interference. It was as if the crackling noise itself was expressing his outrage.
"Don't be mad. That STC is a gift for you," Qin Mo said as he stepped into the vault where the white metallic sphere rested.
Gift. That word echoed in Vick's thoughts like a corrupted data file. Tech-Priests did not receive gifts. They earned blueprints through toil, through centuries of faithful replication, through communion with the Machine Spirit, not from a man who claimed nothing yet held everything.
"Tell me about the Angel of Creation!" Vick snapped, his voice modulator crackling. "That's the reason I came here."
He followed close behind. As he passed the Iron Man automaton, he gave it a once-over, then silently acknowledged that, from the Inquisition's standpoint, the extermination of the Talon System may have been justified after all.
They had actually dared to utilize abominable intelligences.
The sight should have horrified him. Instead, a part of him, a quiet, corrosive part felt awe.
Still, Vick remained firm in his own beliefs. He had come here seeking knowledge of the Omnissiah, and he would not waste time questioning the abominable AI before him.
Once inside the open vault, Qin Mo picked up the metal sphere and handed it to Vick. Then he turned to one of the Thunderborns nearby and said,
"Its weak points aren't in the cranial or torso units. You should recalibrate the shoulder-mounted plasma cannon to rapid-fire mode. Target the distributed sensor clusters around its body and aim to breach the outer shell with molten shots."
The Thunderborn who had earlier been injured by the Iron Man nodded in understanding. "My bio-processor failed to analyze its vulnerabilities, so…"
"Not all enemies can be processed and broken down like a schematic," Qin Mo replied "You and the others should take this opportunity to train well. Learning to fight formidable foes will benefit you all."
"Yes, my lord." the Thunderborn said, bowing and accepting the command.
In truth, this whole 'STC excavation mission' was just a pretext. Qin Mo's real intent had been to test Vick's resolve and loyalty. More importantly, he wanted to use the Iron Men he built to help train his Thunderborns, and then use their combat data to enhance the Iron Men even further.
For the past year and a half, Qin Mo hadn't merely been overseeing the construction of orbital fortresses and teleportation arrays. He had been… busy.
"Now, uphold your end of the bargain," Vick reminded him.
"Alright." Qin Mo nodded and sat down on the pedestal where the STC sphere had been stored. "Tell me what you know about the Angel of Creation. You've made contact with the Devotees of that cult, haven't you?"
Vick nodded. He recounted what he had learned from the Devotees.
"About a month ago, I established contact with a group called the Devotees," Vick began, his voice crackling with static undertones, not from damage, but from restrained excitement. "They were curious about me... just as I was about them. At first, they were guarded. But when I mentioned the Adeptus Mechanicus, something shifted."
He leaned in slightly, his optics glinting with memory. "Their demeanor changed, became reverent, almost. They said they too worship a god of logic and construction. A Machine God. Not just similar to the Omnissiah… but frighteningly aligned. Their prayers were technical invocations. Their icons were not saints, but schematics. It was uncanny."
Vick paused, the joints in his mechadendrites twitching. "They spoke of a sacred relic they called the Logistic Drone, a construct so efficient and benevolent it delivered food and water directly to the lowest hive scum, bypassing all bureaucracy and waste. They treated it not just as a machine, but as a divine emissary. A servant of their god."
He exhaled, a metallic hiss. "I became obsessed. I had to understand more. Who designed this drone? What logic governed its mind? What protocols allowed it to avoid corruption? I asked questions. Too many, perhaps."
Vick looked down at his hands, as if they might still carry the data he failed to retrieve.
"But when I pressed them about the deity behind it all… they fell silent. Instantly. As if even speaking its name without permission was sacrilege. I followed them for ten days and nights, watched their rites, joined their processions, analyzed their chants, but nothing more was offered. No deeper insight. No hidden code."
He looked back at Qin Mo. "And that silence... terrified me. Because if this Machine God was real, and different from the Omnissiah, then it meant there was another logic, another path. And if it was the same... then why did the Devotees seem closer to it than we ever were?"
After finishing his report, Vick waited for Qin Mo to fill in the blanks.
Qin Mo thought for a moment and then replied, "Assuming the Devotees haven't changed their core beliefs… then the Machine God they were referring to... is me."
Vick stood frozen for several seconds before letting out a gear-grinding laugh. But he stopped midway, suddenly struck by the realization that… Qin Mo might not be joking.
It… might actually be true.
The constructs across the Talon System were vastly different from the majority of Imperial tech. They were more stable, more advanced, even his servo-skull responsible for scanning the teleporters gave off readings that defied logic.
Sure, one could claim these machines were all based on powerful STC templates. But if the Talon System truly had access to such vast and powerful STC data, then the hive worlds here would rival Mars itself.
And that was not a claim made lightly. Mars was not just a Forge World, it was The Forge World. The beating heart of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Its hives pierced the sky with spires of sacred industry; its priesthood preserved machine rites older than the Ecclesiarchy itself. To suggest a distant frontier system could match Mars was like claiming a backwater shrine world could outshine Terra.
It was theological treason.
Mars revered the past. It did not innovate, it replicated. It did not question, it obeyed. Knowledge was sacred precisely because it was ancient, fossilized into dogma and ritual. And here, in Talon, Vick saw machines that weren't bound by that reverence. They did not hum with worn-out litanies or sluggish machine-spirits, they functioned smoothly, efficiently, as if they understood themselves.
In the end, Vick concluded that these technologies weren't ancient relics, they were newly invented.
They were creations.
His creations.
After a moment of silent contemplation, Vick asked, "Are you saying… you are the Omnissiah?"
"No. I never said that," Qin Mo replied, shaking his head. "And I never claimed to be the Angel of Creation to the Devotees, either. You asked a question. I answered it. That's all."
Vick nodded slowly, thoughtful.
A flicker of something dangerous stirred in Vick.
Not rebellion. Not conversion.
Possibility.
....
Qin Mo, having completed what he needed to do, stood up and began walking toward the tunnel exit.
Vick glanced down at the spherical STC still in his hands, then followed.
Out on the open ground, Qin Mo gestured toward the STC. "This is your reward. Since you arrived in this System, you've shown no hostility. You've negotiated between inquisitors, even had that Inquisitor, Chak, was it? 'accidentally' leak word of Horst's impending arrival. You've earned this."
Vick nodded, silently acknowledging the truth. Indeed, he had been the one who passed that info to Chak. There was no way a bumbling low-level Inquisitor like him would've known about Horst otherwise.
He had bent the Inquisition's leash. Manipulated the very mechanisms of the Imperium.
And now he held a device that could alter entire worlds.
But the fact that Qin Mo had seen through it, that surprised Vick.
"Thank you," Vick said solemnly. He stepped forward and activated the STC.
The template immediately scanned Vick's biometrics, confirmed his authorization, then dissolved into blue motes of light that gathered at a specific spot on the ground, forming a cubic box.
The cube detected nearby metal and instantly began constructing a metallic chamber, printing industrial-grade equipment inside it.
With each section completed, the surrounding metal deposits diminished, until, just before completion, the process abruptly halted.
The STC projected a message: ["Program error."]
"Hold on, let me fix it," Qin Mo said awkwardly, walking over and lifting the STC sphere. He could feel subtle structural flaws inside, it was something he'd thrown together in his spare time. The reliability wasn't exactly… optimal.
Closing his eyes, he manipulated its internal structure, repaired the faulty circuits, and reinforced the whole design.
The STC resumed printing the chamber and machinery until the entire unit was complete.
As it resumed, Vick was no longer watching the process.
He was watching Qin Mo.
"This one is for producing synthetic crystals, like the ones used in lasguns. The principle is based on restructuring the atomic lattice of the raw materials. The upside is rapid mass-production. Downside? Crystal quality depends entirely on the quality of the materials used. If you're using junk from the hive surface, the output's going to be… passable at best."
Qin Mo explained, handing the STC sphere back to Vick.
"O blessed Omnissiah… This is a miracle," Vick murmured as he snapped out of a trance, extending both arms and all his mechadendrites to receive the STC. He opened the containment vault built into his cybernetic heart and locked the STC away inside, securing it with reverence.
After accepting the gift, Vick looked at Qin Mo with newfound complexity in his eyes. "I cannot accept this without repaying you. Is there any way I may serve?"
"You could become a Archmagos Dominus of the Mechanicus. Someone like Belisarius Cawl. You're just a senior Tech-Priest now, but I can help you get there," Qin Mo said with a grin. "Next time the Inquisition knocks on my door, you'll arrive aboard a Ark Mechanicus and lend a hand where it matters."
Vick gave a final glance at the Underhive sky. The Machine Spirits did not speak.
But his own heart, full of wires and contradiction, whispered its verdict.
Not heresy. Not truth. Something else.
His own creed.
"For the Omnissiah."
Vick saluted, not with the Aquila gesture common across the Imperium, but with the cogwheel gesture of the Cult Mechanicus: a clenched right fist placed over the heart, then rotated slowly in a small circle, mimicking the turning of sacred machinery. It was a sign of loyalty, intellect, and reverence to the Omnissiah.
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