After reviewing the available intelligence, Grey still couldn't draw a direct line back to the Inquisition. There were no sealed rosettes, no intercepted astropathic orders, no captured acolytes screaming about holy authority under interrogation.
But evidence was not the same thing as certainty.
Grey knew it. Anruida knew it. Every surviving officer who had spent long enough under Imperial rule knew it as well. This had the smell of the Inquisition all over it.
The suspicion traced back to an incident from one standard Talon year ago.
As the Talon System developed at a pace that would have terrified most Administratum auditors, rogue traders began arriving to do business. The first had come cautiously, with armed escorts, legal excuses, and contracts written in language dense enough to hide a war crime. Then word spread. Talon was prosperous. Talon paid on time. Talon needed resources badly enough to trade miracles for bulk cargo.
If a captain could bring Ogryn laborers, rare industrial feedstock, medical supplies, or other badly needed resources into the system, he could walk away with an equivalent value in power armor.
That kind of trade did not stay quiet.
Naturally, it drew the attention of the Ordo Hereticus.
Now an Inquisitorial cruiser sat at the Mandeville Point of the Talon System, a black silhouette against the cold edge of the void. A nearby void bastion and Admiral Adam's fleet had intercepted it before it could translate deeper into the system, leaving the vessel stranded in a tense standoff beyond the inner defense envelope.
But being blocked at the system's threshold did not mean the Inquisition was helpless. It only meant they had to use quieter methods.
"They probably infiltrated as crew aboard passing merchant vessels," Anruida muttered. He nudged one of the corpses with the toe of his boot, not hard enough to be disrespectful, only enough to turn the dead man's face toward the light. "Talon still isn't fully self-sufficient. Our resource demands are absurd. Merchant ships from neighboring systems dock every cycle to unload foodstuffs, ore, machine components, fuel additives, labor stock, and whatever else the logistics drones can't fabricate from local scrap."
Grey looked down at the body. The man's clothing was plain worker issue, but too cleanly cut beneath the blood. False papers. False accent. False trade tattoo burned into the wrist after arrival rather than earned over years of service.
Anruida continued, voice low. "Every ship brings thousands of bodies. Dock crews. Cargo inspectors. Bonded laborers. Deck ratings. Pilgrims pretending to be useful. Talon's screening is better than it was, but it isn't airtight. Not yet. A patient cell could slip in one person at a time and build a network before anyone noticed."
"Sounds plausible," Grey said.
Not long ago, Qin Mo had sent a vessel to establish stable contact with Talon's neighboring system.
The place had proved miserable by any sane measure: thirteen planets, only one of them barely habitable, and even that world existed under a sky the color of old bruises. Yet somehow, through a combination of brutal agriculture, imported machinery, and generations of people bred to treat hunger as a normal feature of life, the system produced vast quantities of starch. It fed countless Imperial subjects across the region.
Talon needed that food.
The entire population was also undergoing system-wide identification registration. Until that process was complete, no port authority, no military prefect, and no logistics intelligence engine could verify every visitor's background with perfect reliability. There were too many names, too many ships, too many forged papers, and too many desperate people willing to sell their identity for a ration chit and a bunk.
If someone wanted to enter Talon quietly, this was the perfect moment.
Grey folded his arms, his expression hidden behind his helmet. "But why go through all this trouble just to kidnap a single recruit?"
Anruida did not answer immediately. He crouched beside the corpse, checked the dead man's hands, then the inside of his collar. No oath seal. No obvious cult mark. No visible sanction brand. A professional, then, or someone trained by professionals.
At last, he stood.
"If I remember correctly," Anruida said, "the Departmento Munitorum has standing disciplinary regulations for unreported warp-taint. Any individual found harboring a known Warp-corrupted entity, unsanctioned psyker, witch, mutant, or similar contamination, and any soldier who knowingly fails to report such a case, may be subjected to public flogging, ocular removal, and execution by hanging."
Grey said nothing.
Anruida let the words settle before adding, "And our planetary governor's 'miraculous' abilities have been common gossip for months. Lightning. Fire. Teleportation. Machines that do not pray before they work. Soldiers wearing armor no forge world supplied."
His mouth twisted.
"We never reported the governor's powers to the Munitorum. We never filed him as a sanctioned psyker. We never filed him as anything, because no category exists that would not immediately invite someone with a rosette, a fleet, or a death wish."
Grey understood where the thought was going now. He disliked it because it made sense.
Anruida looked toward the bodies again. "If the Inquisition, or some faction hiding behind the Inquisition, wanted to dig into Lord Qin Mo, grabbing a recruit for interrogation would be an excellent place to start. Young soldiers talk. Frightened soldiers talk more. A recruit might know enough rumors to confirm suspicion, but not enough discipline to resist questioning."
Grey's first instinct was skepticism. Then he remembered the timing, the forged identities, the careful abduction, and the way the dead infiltrators had carried themselves. This had not been a random kidnapping. It had been a probe.
"Let's report this," Anruida said. "Everything. The corpses, the route they used, the suspected merchant entry points, and our deductions."
Grey nodded once. "Agreed."
....
Mandeville Point, Talon System
Aboard the Inquisitorial vessel, two Interrogators sat at a long table within the strategium adjoining the bridge, reviewing the growing mountain of files on the Talon System.
The chamber was cold, narrow, and deliberately austere. Brass-edged cogitator banks lined the walls. Servo-skulls drifted between data-slates, parchment copies, and hololithic projections of Talon's orbital defenses. Every surface smelled faintly of incense, machine oil, and recycled air.
The ship had remained at the Mandeville Point for weeks, trapped in a silent confrontation with Talon's outer defenses. Beyond the armored viewport, void bastions hung in formation like iron moons, their macrocannon batteries and lance arrays aimed with patient hostility. Warships moved in slow patrol arcs around them. Even at this distance, the anomalous energy signatures from Talon's weapons flickered across augur displays like far-off lightning.
A reminder.
A warning.
An ever-present reminder of why they had come.
The two seated Interrogators looked up only when the strategium doors hissed open. Their attention fixed on the woman stepping inside.
Technically, none of them were colleagues. Even the two already seated were not allies in any meaningful sense. Each belonged to a different Ordo, and each carried the suspicions, loyalties, and private instructions of masters who were far away but never absent.
The Ordo Hereticus the Hammer turned inward, existed to purge witchcraft, sedition, mutation, and treachery from within the Imperium itself. Its agents worked closely with the Adepta Sororitas and with every institution terrified enough to report its neighbors before its neighbors reported it first.
The Ordo Xenos watched the alien and those foolish enough to bargain with it. Rogue traders, frontier governors, Mechanicus expeditions, and entire worlds could fall under its scrutiny for one wrong exchange with non-human hands.
The Ordo Malleus concerned itself with the daemon, the Warp, and the hidden infections that could make a loyal world into a mouth for hell.
All three of them were still Interrogators, not full Inquisitors.
They possessed training, authority, networks, and enough influence to ruin lives by the thousand, but not the absolute mandate of a rosette borne in their own name. If they had been full Inquisitors with sufficient backing, they would not be sitting at the Mandeville Point arguing over reports. They might already have arrived with requisitioned warships, Adeptus Astartes, Sisters of Battle, storm troopers, or worse.
Instead, they were left to scheme in the shadows.
One of the seated men leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. His expression was mild in the way knives were mild before they entered flesh.
"How did your little plan go?"
Before Rena could answer, he lifted one hand.
"To be clear, I don't actually care. But since we are presently 'collaborators,' Rena, I have the right to be informed as a neutral observer. Consider it professional courtesy."
The other Interrogator gave a quiet snort, not quite laughter and not quite contempt.
Rena ignored both of them at first. She crossed the chamber, pulled out a chair, sat down heavily, and propped one boot against the edge of the table.
Neither man commented.
That, more than anything, showed they were paying attention.
Only after a long silence did Rena speak.
"It failed."
Her voice was controlled, but anger lived beneath it. Not panic. Not embarrassment. Anger at wasted time, wasted assets, and the particular humiliation of returning with nothing but dead operatives and unanswered questions.
"I spent months inserting nearly a thousand assets into the Underhive. Informants, cutters, bribed dockhands, void-born ratings with altered papers, ex-penal scum, two trained cells, and enough local intermediaries to poison half the hive's rumor market."
She tapped one finger against the table.
"Now they're dead. Probably all dead, at least. I couldn't confirm every loss, but I know that when I last spoke to Sael, that fool was in the middle of being slaughtered by Talon's elite guards."
To the other two Interrogators, this was not entirely bad news.
"You know what I admire most about your Ordo Hereticus?" the first man said, a smirk creeping across his face. "Your honesty."
The second looked down at the file in front of him. "Frankly, it's fortunate you failed. If you had succeeded in abducting the wrong person, we might already be at war."
Rena shot him a glare. It contained the promise of future inconvenience, if not immediate violence. But she did not waste energy arguing. The failure mattered more than their mockery.
Ever since they had arrived to investigate the anomalies in the Talon System, these two had been deadweight in every visible way. They gathered information, questioned traders, compared augur data, and spent the rest of their time undercutting her efforts with the practiced ease of men whose caution could always be defended as wisdom after someone else took the risk.
But Rena did not think they were fools.
There were fools in the Imperium. There were even fools in the Inquisition, though they tended to die quickly or get promoted somewhere disastrous. These two were not fools. That made their obstruction intentional.
More likely, they represented competing factions within the Inquisition, or within the Imperium itself. Different masters. Different desired outcomes. Different calculations about whether Talon was a threat to be destroyed, a resource to be seized, a weapon to be studied, or a miracle to be concealed until the right hands could claim it.
The three major Ordos were not unified blades. They were arsenals full of knives pointed in different directions. Each Ordo contained factions, philosophies, patronage chains, secret compacts, private wars, and ancient grudges dressed in theology.
Rena could imagine what was happening on Holy Terra even now. Somewhere behind sealed doors of marble, gold, and armed silence, powerful figures were arguing over Talon. Cardinals, Lords, savants, generals, fabricator-representatives, and Inquisitorial patrons would be weighing the same question from different angles: was Qin Mo a servant, a weapon, a heretic, a xenos infection, or something that did not fit any sanctioned category?
Once a faction gained enough leverage, it would send representatives with authority, ships, soldiers, and doctrine. Then Talon's real reckoning would begin.
And if the whispers were true, elements within the Adeptus Mechanicus had already taken an unhealthy interest in Talon's technological anomalies. That rarely ended well for the world being studied.
Rena had no intention of waiting for distant old men to decide how much fire was politically convenient.
"Don't either of you find this system strange?" she asked. "They use unknown teleportation technology. Their industry functions without visible Mechanicus oversight. They manufacture power armor in volumes that should be impossible for a backwater hive world. Their void defenses are expanding faster than our projections allow. Their governor displays abilities that local records do not explain. And we do not even know whether they remain loyal to the Emperor."
The two seated Interrogators looked at her. Neither seemed impressed.
"So?" asked the Ordo Xenos man.
Rena's eyes narrowed. "So we issue a formal demand. Summon this so-called Lord of Talon aboard our vessel for questioning."
For a moment, there was only the low hum of cogitators and the distant vibration of the ship's plasma drives.
Then one of the Interrogators stood and walked to the viewport. He gestured toward the distant blockade, where Talon's void bastion hung with its weapons facing them and its shields awake. Beyond it, warships drifted in disciplined patrol patterns.
"By all means," he said. "If you can personally march past that blockade, infiltrate the inner system, descend into Tyrone Hive, find this 'Lord of Talon,' and place your summons into his hand…"
He turned back to Rena with a thin smile.
"…then when you return, we will jointly recommend you for promotion to Lord Inquisitor."
...
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