"You sign the order, and I'll go!"
Rena slammed her fist onto the strategium table, her voice resounding across the chamber like a thunderclap, resolute and unwavering.
"We're at a standoff. The so-called 'Lord of Talon' dares to slaughter my operatives. He dares to ignore our demands. But does he dare destroy an Inquisitorial vessel? Does he dare kill any one of us? If he does, then I will gladly die. Because the moment he does, the Imperium will brand this entire System as a heretical insurrection. And when that happens, the Astra Militarum and the Adeptus Astartes will descend upon this place and cleanse it utterly!"
Silence filled the bridge.
Rena stared at her two "useless colleagues", her eyes filled with defiance.
But the other two Inquisitors merely exchanged glances. One shook his head, while the other chuckled in amusement.
"I'm saying, hypothetically," one of them spoke up, "that if the Adeptus Mechanicus learns Talon is harboring an STC, and if the Fabricator-General himself takes interest and sends a representative to handle the matter... then your death will mean nothing. No one will care. If the choice is between a trillion of you and a single fragment of an STC, you will be discarded without hesitation."
Rena clenched her jaw, forced to accept the cold, pragmatic truth.
An STC.
A Standard Template Construct.
The holy grail of the Adeptus Mechanicus. A relic of the Dark Age of Technology. A piece of knowledge so sacred, so powerful, that its mere existence could change the fate of the Imperium. Weapons, armor, ships, entire civilizations had been built upon the scraps of STCs recovered in ages past.
A system capable of restoring the Imperium's lost might, of undoing millennia of technological stagnation.
Some Imperial historians and forbidden archivists had theorized that the scientists of the Age of Technology foresaw the coming Age of Strife, and created the STCs to ensure their knowledge would not be lost to future generations. A final gift. A machine-mind capable of guiding settlers, allowing even the most primitive colonists to construct shelters, weapons, transports, and tools without prior knowledge or expertise.
To the Tech-Priests, no life was worth more than even the smallest fragment of such a construct. The Fabricator-General himself would move entire forge worlds for a mere whisper of one.
Compared to that, what was an Inquisitor's life worth?
What was the fate of a single System worth in the grand machine of the Imperium?
She sat back down, though her mind refused to release its conviction.
If the Talon System was not purged now, then it would bring calamity upon the Imperium.
A sense of duty burned in her heart.
The duty to save the Imperium.
She felt that her hatred for this System was not without cause. Perhaps it was divine intuition, a guiding hand from one of the Emperor's saints.
If the situation remained stagnant, then the Imperium, and all of mankind, would be doomed.
"We can't just wait here," Rena pressed. "We need to escalate the situation. We need to ignite a war. We need to burn this entire System to ash until no trace of these heretics remains! We must fight."
She turned to the first Inquisitor.
He said nothing.
Then she turned to the second, who simply smirked.
Finally, she looked at the last empty chair, where only she saw emptiness.
But in reality, someone was seated there.
Someone who was watching.
That someone was Qin Mo.
"You can certainly try, you wretched woman," he muttered.
Rena, of course, did not hear him. In her eyes, the chair remained empty.
She turned back to her two colleagues and asked, "The Mechanicus priest-advisor isn't here?"
"He's planetside. Conducting his investigations."
"Yes. He's the only one among us who has been granted permission to enter the underhive of the hive world. So don't make trouble, Rena. If they revoke his access, we'll lose our best chance at gathering intel."
Rena did not like being told what to do, but she had to admit they had a point.
Their only means of infiltration was through the Tech-Priest assigned to their expedition. He was responsible for assessing the System's technology, its wargear, and its unknown advancements, all of which would be evaluated for potential value to the Imperium.
She had no idea how he had secured permission to enter Talon's domain, but if his access was revoked, they would truly be blind.
"Where is this Tech-Priest from?" she asked.
"No idea."
"Not entirely sure," one Inquisitor said with a shrug. "But I'd wager he's from one of the Mechanicus' more radical factions."
Rena's eyes narrowed.
The radicals within the Inquisition were those willing to use any means necessary to achieve their goals, even xenos technology and warp-tainted artifacts.
So a radical of the Adeptus Mechanicus would be...
"A Tech-Priest willing to obtain knowledge at any cost," she muttered.
That would explain why he was getting along so well with the Talon System.
....
Meanwhile.
Qin Mo stood within a conjured illusion, an artificial reality crafted by the Shapeshifter.
The illusion projected the Inquisition's ship in near-perfect clarity. Its gothic arches, lumen-fires, and servo-skulls were rendered with painstaking detail.
Within the illusion, he saw the three Inquisitors sitting at their table, discussing every step of their plans.
Qin Mo was there, seated among them, listening to every word as if he were truly present.
Thanks to the Shapeshifter's abilities, he could see each of them in perfect detail.
Of course, an illusion was still an illusion.
He could not reach across the table and punch Rena in the face.
And she could not see him either.
"Can you probe their thoughts?" Qin Mo asked the Shapeshifter beside him.
At that moment, the Shapeshifter had taken on Rena's appearance, sitting across from him with a smirk.
"I wish," it replied. "If I could read minds, I would have already figured out whether you're really planning to help me, or if you're just using me as a convenient tool."
"You can mimic her appearance, but you can't copy her speech patterns," Qin Mo noted, pointing at Rena's projection.
The Shapeshifter nodded without a word.
"Then let's try something else. You claim to predict the future, so tell me what she will do next."
The Shapeshifter fell silent, processing the request.
After a moment, it spoke.
"She will organize an assassination attempt against you. Others who oppose you will support her. It will be a large-scale operation involving shape-shifting assassins and anti-psyker operatives."
"And the result?" Qin Mo asked.
"If you want a long-term prophecy, you'll have to reconstruct me. Right now, I can't see that far ahead," the Shapeshifter admitted. "But what do you think the result will be?"
Qin Mo thought for a moment.
He was certain of one thing.
Her assassination attempt would fail.
But the assassination itself would not be the only problem.
At worst, the Talon System could be officially declared traitorous. If that happened, the Imperium would launch a full-scale invasion.
If this had happened when the System was still weak, Qin Mo might have been forced to compromise.
But now?
Now, he had no reason to compromise.
The massive warp gate orbiting the system's star was complete.
The void fortress was nearly finished.
The System had ten million battle-ready troops, with another twenty million in training. If necessary, the entire population could be mobilized to form a billion-strong army.
And the Imperium?
The Imperium was already stretched thin, fighting wars across a thousand different battlefronts.
Considering all factors, Qin Mo judged that full-scale war was unlikely.
The real threat came from Rena herself.
If she was not stopped, she would be the one to ignite the war.
"I need to remove her," Qin Mo muttered, his gaze locking onto the illusory Rena.
"And how do you plan to do that?" the Shapeshifter asked. "Blow up their ship? Teleport in and kill her?"
Qin Mo considered his options.
Then, suddenly, inspiration struck.
"I just remembered something. The Tech-Priest they mentioned. I can start with him."
"...Wait, what?" The Shapeshifter tilted its head. "You're going to ask that Tech-Priest where Rena's quarters are? You do realize you can just ask me, right? You can literally see her through this illusion."
Qin Mo did not answer.
Instead, he left the illusion, his mind already focused on his next move.
...
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