"Anything else, Lady Donna?"
"No, that will be all."
Donna bowed respectfully, turned, and exited the room, closing the door behind her. Her footsteps faded down the corridor with the measured calm of someone who knew exactly how much influence she had used, and exactly how much remained unspent.
Moments later, the door parted once more, allowing the next visitor to step inside.
"Lady Donna is… quite different from the other nobles," Klein remarked as he took a seat across from Qin Mo.
The commander's tone carried more curiosity than criticism. He had dealt with nobles before: men and women who spoke in demands disguised as courtesy, who treated soldiers as furniture until they needed bodies between themselves and danger. Donna did not fit neatly into that mold, and Klein clearly found that either refreshing or suspicious. Perhaps both.
He had originally planned to complain about Donna cutting ahead of him, but upon seeing the Governor engrossed in his work, he decided against it.
Instead, he reached into his uniform's inner pocket and silently placed a parchment-sealed document onto the desk.
The seal had been pressed with care. Not rushed. Not crumpled in anger. Klein had prepared this before entering the room, which meant this was not a passing frustration or a soldier's dramatic gesture after too much drink and too little sleep.
Qin Mo picked it up, expecting a request for promotion or a petition for a noble title.
What he saw caught him off guard.
A letter of resignation.
"You want to abandon your post?" Qin Mo tossed the document back to him, leaning back in his chair.
He did not raise his voice. That made the question sharper. In the wars beneath Tyrone Hive and across Talon II, Qin Mo had learned that Klein was many things: sarcastic, stubborn, politically aware, and far too intelligent to waste on ceremonial command. A deserter was not one of them.
"Creed's military reform plan includes a program for training strategic officers. I had intended to send you to the war academy for a year, after which you'd serve as a senior advisor."
The Talon System's Planetary Defense Force had no formal strategic command.
But Creed had argued that inexperienced officers needed seasoned tacticians to guide their decision-making. Regiments could be trained. Armor could be issued. Weapons could be fabricated. But judgment, the ugly practical kind earned by watching plans collapse under artillery and hunger, could not be printed from an assembly line.
Had Klein remained, he would have been groomed for a position rivaling the authority of a regimental lord-commander.
"But the war is over." Klein smiled, his expression genuinely lighthearted. "If this were still wartime, I would never resign. But the few stragglers left on Talon II won't last much longer."
Qin Mo fell silent, his eyes narrowing slightly as he weighed the man's words.
He did not believe Klein's departure was a good thing.
The system needed officers like him. It needed men who understood why soldiers obeyed, why they hesitated, why supply routes mattered more than heroic speeches, and why a defensive line could collapse hours before the first enemy crossed it. Klein had survived the Underhive not because he was fearless, but because he noticed the things fearless men ignored.
Sensing his hesitation, Klein continued.
"I've always wanted to be a merchant. Honestly, I was never suited to be a commander… My family still has a hidden fortune stashed in the Flower Street District of the Upper Hive of Tyrone. I plan to use it to buy a trade ship."
There was no bitterness in his tone, only the quiet determination of a man who had endured too much war and longed for something simpler, freer.
Klein's fingers rested loosely on his knees, but Qin Mo noticed the small stiffness in them. This was not an impulsive fantasy. Klein had thought about the fortune, the ship, the routes, the risks, and the possibility of dying nameless in the void with the same grim practicality he once applied to trench lines and ammunition ledgers.
His plan was simple: obtain a vessel. Become an unofficial Rogue Trader. Leave the Talon System. See the wider galaxy.
Without a Warrant of Trade, he would never be a true Rogue Trader, but there were other ways to forge his own path in the void. The Imperium was vast, and opportunities awaited those bold enough to seize them. A capable captain with a fast ship, armed holds, useful contacts, and enough discretion could call himself a merchant, privateer, factor, courier, salvage broker, or free captain depending on which authority was listening. The title mattered less than the ability to keep moving.
Though the Hive World was secure, it was a place of loss for him.
His entire family had been slaughtered during the invasion.
Qin Mo could hear the weariness in his words.
He could tell Klein was done with the military.
Not afraid. Not broken. Done. There was a difference. A broken man fled from duty. Klein had carried duty until there was nothing left inside him that wanted command.
"Keep your fortune. I'll build you a ship."
Klein's eyes widened in shock.
"A ship? You mean… you're just giving me a ship?"
"Not just any ship," Qin Mo smirked, a flicker of amusement breaking through his otherwise calm expression. "A heavily armed, faster-than-light-capable merchant vessel."
Klein hesitated.
"A trade ship… with heavy firepower? That's a bit excessive, isn't it?"
He had planned to buy a salvaged vessel, perhaps a decommissioned freighter.
Even a barely functional hulk would have sufficed. He had already prepared himself for bad air recyclers, overworked plasma conduits, a machine spirit with personality defects, and bulkheads patched by crews who believed paint counted as structural reinforcement.
Yet Qin Mo was offering him a new, custom-designed ship.
"Take it," Qin Mo said, waving a hand dismissively. "Consider it a reward. You were the first regimental commander to support me back in the Underhive."
Klein hesitated.
His loyalty had been unwavering, but he had never expected such a grand reward.
For a moment, the old commander's composure slipped. He looked less like the officer who had argued over fortifications and more like the exhausted man on a ruined rooftop, listening to impossible stories beside a smoky ration fire while trying to decide whether Qin Mo was a salvation, a disaster, or both.
"Accept it," Qin Mo continued, his tone softening slightly, "and in return, do something for me. When you leave the Talon System, keep an eye out for people like Yoan." Qin Mo's voice dipped into a cryptic murmur. "And… discreetly bring them to me."
Klein frowned.
"Yoan? You mean… pariahs?"
Qin Mo nodded.
Pariahs. Blanks. Untouchables.
Humans who lacked a warp presence, feared and reviled by the masses, yet indispensable as shields against the Immaterium and its horrors.
The Imperium treated such people as omens, weapons, curses, or tools depending on who found them first. Most common citizens simply recoiled without understanding why. Priests muttered prayers. Psykers suffered. Bureaucrats made records. Inquisitors made claims. Qin Mo intended to find them before less careful hands did.
Klein's frown deepened, puzzled.
"Why do you need more…?"
"That's for me to know," Qin Mo replied. "But that's not your only task. Gather intel on the surrounding sectors. I don't even know where the Talon System is located within the Imperium."
That admission would have sounded absurd from any ordinary planetary ruler. From Qin Mo, it was merely another problem waiting to be solved. He had armies, shipyards, teleportation arrays, dimensional engines, and technology that would make half the Mechanicus scream. Yet he still lacked a reliable map of the greater political, military, and warp-route environment surrounding his own system.
Klein exhaled, nodding.
"Understood."
His expression changed as he absorbed the shape of the task. This was no longer retirement. It was reconnaissance wearing the coat of commerce. Trading routes, port gossip, salvage claims, astropathic rumors, Navy patrol movements, xenos sightings, rogue psyker reports, missing populations, suspicious cult activity, everything a merchant captain heard while pretending not to listen.
He stood, fist to chest, offering the Aquila salute.
"Thank you, my lord. Truly."
Qin Mo smiled.
"Then it's settled. Go make your preparations, Rogue Trader Klein."
A moment of silence passed before Klein inclined his head.
"Yes, my lord."
And with that, he turned and left.
The door closed behind him with a soft metallic click. For several seconds, Qin Mo remained still, looking at the resignation letter on his desk. Klein had arrived asking to leave. He had departed with a ship, a mission, and a future that might carry Talon's reach farther than any formal expedition could.
As the door closed, Qin Mo pondered the design of Klein's ship.
First, it needed a Dimensional Engine.
Second, it required formidable defenses. A merchant ship, no matter how unassuming, could easily draw the wrong kind of attention: Chaos reavers, alien corsairs, Dark Eldar raiders, even the predatory Rogue Traders who prowled the void.
Finally, it had to be versatile, capable of independent operations beyond the Talon System.
This would be a singular honor.
No other merchant in the system would receive a ship personally designed by the Lord of Talon.
But it was deserved.
Klein and the 47th Regiment had been among Qin Mo's earliest supporters.
From the Underhive wars against the Genestealer cultists, to the sieges of the Lower Hive, to the final campaign on Talon II, they had never failed in battle.
Even when not deployed, the 47th Regiment had been entrusted with fortress security and vital garrison duties.
Klein would receive his ship.
And the 47th Regiment had already been integrated into Creed's military reform program, its veterans undergoing officer training, ready to command the next generation of recruits.
Other regiments in the First Army were receiving the same treatment.
Qin Mo had not forgotten their sacrifices.
Names changed in official ledgers. Regiments were reorganized. Veterans became instructors, instructors became staff officers, and boys who had never seen the Underhive learned how to clear corridors from men who still woke at night hearing claws on ferrocrete. That was how an army became more than a collection of uniforms. Memory had to be built into doctrine before time sanded it smooth.
With the last of his obligations concluded, Qin Mo could finally turn his attention to what truly mattered: creation.
The first priority was Klein's vessel.
It would be based on an escort-class warship, with the following modifications:
First, it needed a Dimensional Engine.
Second, it required formidable defenses. A merchant ship, no matter how unassuming, could easily draw the wrong kind of attention: Chaos reavers, alien corsairs, Dark Eldar raiders, even the predatory Rogue Traders who prowled the void.
Finally, it had to be versatile, expanded cargo holds with modular pressure-sealed compartments, allowing Klein to carry trade goods, passengers, salvage, refugees, or sensitive "cargo" without forcing every problem into the same storage bay.
A false civilian profile layered over military-grade systems, so auspex scans would see a stubbornly overbuilt merchantman rather than a private warship unless the ship chose to reveal its teeth.
Independent fabrication and repair bays, because a vessel operating beyond Talon's supply network could not limp home every time a plasma coupling failed or a pirate shell tore open an outer deck.
The vessel would not be beautiful in the way Imperial admirals understood beauty. It would not bristle with cathedral spires, gold statues, or kilometer-long processional galleries. Its lines would be compact, armored, and purposeful. A ship made for distance, discretion, and sudden violence.
Satisfied, Qin Mo uploaded the blueprint to the orbital shipyard, his command codes instantly unlocking high-priority construction queues.
In orbit, the shipyard accepted the order without ceremony. Fabrication arms shifted from routine production to specialized assembly. Material allocation changed. Hull frames were reprioritized. Drone-tugs began moving refined alloy, reactor components, shield vanes, and dimensional drive housings into position. Where an Imperial yard might have demanded petitions, incense, oaths, approvals, and three generations of clerical ancestry, Qin Mo's machines simply began building.
With Klein's ship under construction, Qin Mo turned his attention to another critical project.
A new power source, one capable of sustaining planetary-scale teleportation.
Currently, the teleporters relied on his direct energy input.
The issue? The sheer magnitude of power required.
The Master Control AI had to precisely lock onto the targets. The device then opened a dimensional corridor and expended power to transport the subject.
Even small-scale teleportation, such as deploying ground troops, required ten times the energy of a starship jump.
And that didn't even account for civilian applications.
Military teleportation was already difficult. Soldiers carried weapons, ammunition, armor, drones, vehicles, wounded men, command equipment, and all the small irregularities that made "mass" a polite engineering fiction.
Civilian transport would be worse in different ways. Civilians panicked. They brought luggage. They moved at the wrong moment. They stood too close together. They carried pets, tools, relics, contraband, children, medical implants, and sometimes unexploded stupidity.
If teleportation became a system-wide utility rather than a battlefield miracle, it could not depend on Qin Mo standing nearby and personally feeding energy into the network like a living reactor.
The solution?
A device capable of harvesting stellar energy.
Qin Mo began designing a structure that could draw power directly from the Talon System's sun, then integrate this energy supply into the teleportation network.
Not a crude solar collector. Not a field of mirrors drinking surface light like some ancient planetary array. He needed something far more direct: a stellar siphon capable of drawing controlled streams of plasma, radiation, magnetic flux, and exotic particle output into a stabilized conversion lattice before transmitting that energy across dimensional conduits to planetary receiver nodes.
The first problem was restraint. Harvest too weakly, and the project became ornamental. Harvest too aggressively, and stellar behavior changed in ways that would become visible to every auspex station in the system, every navigator watching stellar references, and every paranoid priest looking for signs of divine displeasure.
Would it shorten the sun's lifespan by a few million years?
Perhaps. But Talon's star had billions of years left, more than enough.
He could feel its lifespan.
A C'tan's instinct, buried deep in his core.
After all, Star Gods did not merely consume mortal souls.
They also devoured suns.
Qin Mo paused with one hand above the half-formed schematic. For an instant, the star was not an object on a chart. It was heat, mass, pressure, fusion, balance, age. He could sense it the way a starving man sensed food through a closed door. Not as light in the sky, but as stored existence. A furnace large enough to feed worlds. A heartbeat made of plasma.
Though Qin Mo was not yet hungry, he knew that one day… he might be.
But he would never consume Talon's star.
That decision required no speech, no oath, no witness. Talon's star warmed his worlds. It powered their weather, their crops, their oceans, their orbital cycles, and the fragile rhythm of ordinary human life. To the thing inside him, it was fuel. To the man he still chose to be, it was home infrastructure.
Instead, his fleets would sweep outward into the void, harvesting alien suns from hostile systems, bringing their energy home.
Or dead systems. Or xenos-held systems. Or stars whose only witnesses were worlds already stripped barren by tyrants, raiders, or monsters that had never once wondered whether humanity deserved mercy. The galaxy was full of enemies, and many of them lived beneath perfectly good suns.
And in time, a new warning would spread across the galaxy.
"The Talon Fleet is coming. Hide your stars."
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