At that moment, Laun still had no idea what was coming.
He strode through the blasted ruins of the Underhive, a desolate maze of collapsed catwalks, twisted girders, and smoke-choked alleys.
Grey silently following at his side as his appointed "escort".
“I thought I was done for.”
Laun exhaled, shaking his head as though to dispel the specter of his near demise.
“But to think someone actually managed to consolidate the defensive line… Emperor’s blessings, indeed.”
Grey merely nodded, the servos of his power armor whining softly as they responded to his measured motion.
Laun scoffed, eyeing the massive ceramite plating that encased his silent escort.
Again, the same terse reply.
Laun chuckled, shaking his head in exasperated amusement.
“Hah. You lot are remarkably lucky.”
Grey gave no reaction beyond another simple confirmation.
Laun chuckled, continuing his casual conversation.
Grey walked beside him in silence.
After trudging through the claustrophobic warrens of the hive for a long time, Laun’s impatience began to boil over.
He halted abruptly, turning to face Grey.
“Why haven’t you called for a transport?”
He gestured toward the endless, winding tunnels ahead.
“How long do you reckon we must trudge through these corridors? A year?”
At that, Laun’s simmering patience finally snapped.
“Watch your tone, soldier.”
His voice sharpened to a razor’s edge.
Grey merely nodded in deference.
Then, with mechanical precision, he raised his arm and activated the vox-net, summoning a transport drone.
In the distance, thrusters roared to life as the drone cut through the gloom, its arrival heralded by a burst of stuttering flame.
“Hmph. Took you long enough.”
As they waited in the oppressive silence, Grey broke the quiet.
His tone was even and measured, yet a disquieting undercurrent lurked beneath the cadence that made Laun uneasy.
Grey tilted his head slightly, his gaze steely as he replied,
“Qin Mo is a prisoner. An unsanctioned psyker prisoner.”
The words, delivered with an eerie calm, sent a chill coursing down Laun’s spine.
Laun nodded slowly, then froze.
Grey pressed on, his tone unflinching.
“He isn’t even a soldier. He was assigned to the 44th Regiment as a convict.”
Laun’s face drained of color, his mind reeling as he struggled to reconcile the impossible revelation.
A psyker? A prisoner at the helm of an army?
It defied every shred of logic the Imperium held sacred.
Grey’s voice remained unnervingly even.
“This war has nothing to do with him. He was arrested simply because he refused to be hunted down like a feral mutant.
So tell me, why should he fight for this wretched world? This crumbling Hive?
Why should he fight for us? Why should we assume he won’t turn around and side with the rebels instead?”
Dread crept into Laun’s bones.
For the first time, Laun truly felt the crushing weight of Qin Mo’s enigmatic presence.
A man who inspired fealty without the need for formal rank.
A man with no rightful sanction to fight, yet who waged war as if driven by divine compulsion.
A man whose latent power defied the cold logic of the Imperium.
Laun couldn’t fathom why Grey was divulging such secrets, but an insidious unease gnawed at his soul.
“Qin Mo protected us,” Grey murmured, more to himself than to Laun.
“He led us in battle. Even when Grot cursed him for ‘not lifting a damn finger to help build the fortifications’ Qin Mo bore no grudge.
Even after the 44th Regiment was wiped out, Grot still received his power armor. There was no exclusion. No revenge.”
He paused, voice shaking. “He ensured every beleaguered outpost received reinforcements. He resupplied those teetering on the brink of collapse. He fought everywhere, for everyone. Without recognition. Without rank. Without reason.”
Grey looked up as the transport drone descended. The torrent from its thrusters whipped up dust and ash, swirling around them like the restless ghosts of the fallen.
With a single, fluid motion, Grey activated his jump pack, soaring onto the drone’s loading platform.
He pivoted, unsealing his helmet to reveal a visage scarred by countless conflicts, and glared down at Laun with the cold, unyielding stare of the Emperor’s judgment.
The turbulent air howled between them as the drone began its ascent, carrying him away from the ruinous gloom.
Grey’s silvered hair whipped wildly in the gale, his eyes burning with an intensity reminiscent of the holy fires of the Astronomican—a sight that churned Laun’s stomach with foreboding.
Then, in a voice as final as an Imperial decree, he spoke.
“Remember my face. Remember that it was I who executed you.”
"Wait! Stop! We can discuss this!"
Laun’s arms flung upward in a gesture of surrender, desperation bleeding into his voice.
“There’s no need to be hasty! We can negotiate—”
But before his plea could be heeded, a beam of searing light erupted from Grey’s shoulder cannon, slicing through the darkness.
In an instant, Laun was obliterated; his form dissolved into nothingness as the ground beneath him melted into a crimson, seething crater, the ferrocrete aglow with malevolent heat.
Grey’s shoulder cannon whined as its thermal charge dissipated.
He unleashed salvo after salvo—each burst erasing every trace until no forensic analysis could ever determine what had claimed Laun’s life.
Then, he raised his grav-hammer—
And struck his own arm.
The impact shattering bone and ceramite in a gruesome symphony of destruction.
Grey gritted his teeth, sealed his helmet, and ordered the drone to return.
In the dimly lit briefing chamber of the Fortress, Klein sat across from Grey, arms folded and eyes inscrutable.
A medic methodically wrapped Grey’s ruined arm in bandages as he recounted his grim tale.
Klein listened in silence, his expression unreadable.
“Laun and I engaged an enemy patrol.
I failed to activate my grav-shield in time.
A renegade psyker seized control of my senses and a feral mutant shattered my gauntlet.
If I hadn’t triggered the built-in psyker suppressor, I’d be dead.”
Klein leaned back, his eyes narrowing with measured appraisal, his voice as cold and unyielding.
“Be honest with me... Did you kill him?”
Grey offered no reply.
Klein had seen this before.
When a tight-knit unit was forced to accept an unworthy leader,
That leader is often expunged from the annals as “Killed in Action.”
Years ago, a friend from Klein’s academy days was assigned to command a regiment; he lasted scarcely two weeks before the Emperor claimed him.
The official report read simply, “The Emperor willed him away.”
Grey’s helmet flickered, and a holo-recording projected onto the table.
It depicted his clandestine meeting with Laun—
From the pouring of the ritual wine to the moment he volunteered to “escort” him.
The recording abruptly cut off just before the final, fateful execution.
Klein chuckled darkly.
He shook his head in disillusionment.
“If Laun hadn’t perished, would you have allied with him?”
Grey remained silent.
Klein sighed heavily and rose from his seat.
“Qin Mo is interrogating the Arbites officer in the next chamber.”
He strode to the door.
“I’ll relay everything to him.
You’d better steel yourself for his wrath.”
Grey lowered his head, deep in thought.
In the adjacent chamber, Qin Mo faced Riley with a disarming calm.
Riley was secured to a reinforced chair, but otherwise unharmed.
Officially, her detention was justified on grounds of “suspicion of being an enemy agent.”
In reality—she knew too much.
Qin Mo smiled, a faint curl of his lips betraying amusement.
“You know I was a prisoner, don’t you?”
His tone was almost playful, a stark contrast to the grim surroundings.
You were there when they hauled me in—and your… clumsiness left quite the impression.”
Riley scowled, her expression hardening.
“So that’s why you retrieved both me and Laun?”
Qin Mo casually picked up her data-slate, its screen flickering with encrypted commands.
He planned to purge his criminal record directly from the Arbites archives.
Before he could proceed, the door swung open.
Klein entered, leaning in to whisper into Qin Mo’s ear as he conveyed every damning detail of Grey’s confession.
Qin Mo nodded slowly, his inscrutable eyes revealing nothing.
Psyker suppressors are designed to trigger automatically upon detecting warp disturbances, in turn activating the grav-shield—
A failsafe against sudden psychic onslaughts.
So how could a mutant have “ripped Grey’s arm off” without triggering those defenses?
The answer was simple.
But that was irrelevant.
Grey had resolved the problem.
That was all that mattered.
Riley saw an opening.
She shouted at Klein.
“He’s a criminal! A psyker! You can’t trust him!”
Klein blinked, his features momentarily betraying feigned surprise.
“You’re a prisoner and a psyker?”
He grinned mischievously.
“For a moment, I thought you’d declared him your long-lost father.”
“At this rate, she might as well claim she is the Emperor Himself.”
Klein then exited the room, the heavy door clanging shut behind him.
Riley swallowed hard.
She was alone with the enigmatic prisoner.