"?"
The Hunter's words caught Lin off guard. He turned to look at Lieutenant Admir — and found that Admir was already nodding in confirmation.
Admir even added to the thought: "In fact, when we boarded that derelict space hulk, the specimens of those creatures also struck me as deeply unsettling. We had confirmed at the time that they were different from the primitive Zerg found on Zerus — but looking back now, I always felt those specimens pointed toward some future possibility. If our gene-sire is still alive, I believe he must be conducting experiments of that nature somewhere unknown to anyone."
"Exactly."
The Hunter Dreadnought nodded in agreement. "As a hunter of humanity's enemies, I will never permit my gene-sire to continue developing threats aimed at mankind. That is why we must return to the Imperium — and we must do so in disguise. We need to investigate from the shadows, to find evidence that our gene-sire still lives, or that he left some contingency behind. And even if the Emperor truly ground his bones to dust and scattered them to the wind — I will not rest until I have seen those ashes with my own eyes. This is my purpose now!"
The Hunter's words clearly stirred the blood of the assembled warriors. Those who had been adrift and uncertain moments before were now alight with purpose:
"I've had it with our father for a long time — back then we just left. Now I want a chance to actually put a bolt through him!"
"Something that desecrates humanity dares call itself our father? If I ever get my hands on him, I'm ripping his skull off and using it as a chamber pot!"
Unlike the warriors who had let hot blood go to their heads, the Dreadnought had clearly weighed his words carefully before speaking. He did not join in the gleeful collective rebellion against their gene-sire. Instead, he turned back to Lin and pressed forward:
"First and foremost, we need a means of concealing our identities and integrating into the Imperium legitimately. We need the Imperium to supply us with weapons and ammunition, and many of our investigations will require official Imperial credentials before anyone will cooperate with us. Magos Lin — I can see that you are no ordinary man. Do you have any ideas on that front?"
"It won't be easy," Lin said, hesitating slightly.
"The gene-sire of the Thirteenth Legion, Roboute Guilliman, sought to prevent a repeat of the great rebellion — where multiple Legions turned traitor simultaneously — and so he issued the Codex Astartes, breaking the great Legions apart into Chapters of roughly a thousand warriors each. But not long after he promulgated the Codex, he was gravely wounded in battle by a traitorous gene-sire, and like his father before him, he was sealed away in a stasis field indefinitely."
Lieutenant Admir pressed a hand to his forehead — now he understood why his claim to be from the Thirteenth Legion had been spotted as wrong so immediately. He had simply been hoping the Legion's size would help him bluff, never imagining it was the Thirteenth Legion's own gene-sire who had broken the Legion apart.
No one had any attention to spare for Admir's chagrin at the moment. Everyone held their breath as Lin continued: "With that, the authority to found new Chapters and to audit existing ones effectively fell into the hands of the High Lords of Terra — the supreme council of human lords that, as you knew it during the Great Crusade, held no Astartes among its membership."
"As you can imagine, they have always been especially wary of the Astartes. Every Chapter is recorded in their registers, and they conduct rigorous purity inspections on a regular basis…"
"Meaning it's not impossible?" the Hunter pressed.
"It depends on how much you are willing to pay." Lin did not deny it. "You might make for a fringe sub-sector and assume the identity of some thoroughly obscure Chapter. Or you could seek out a Chapter that has suffered catastrophic losses — they rarely refuse an influx of fighting strength, though your standing within such a Chapter would not be high…"
"We need a better solution, Magos Lin."
The Dreadnought's resolve was absolute. "We need a complete Chapter standing of our own. To that end, we are willing to place you at our head — and to incur a debt of honor toward you that can never be fully repaid. So long as it does not conflict with our purpose, the new Chapter we build will follow you forever."
Lin's eyes lit up.
To be honest, most things didn't particularly concern Lin. What he cared about was unearthing more knowledge and technology — recovering the science of other worlds to fundamentally transform the Warhammer universe. That had always been his one unwavering goal. But the road of discovery was never without its threats, from within the Imperium and without.
For Lin, who spent his days tomb-raiding across the galaxy, the dangers of the void were far beyond what his personally assembled fringe forces could handle on their own. And now, here before him, sat a group of Space Marines with no legitimate path back to the Imperium. Who could look at that and feel nothing?
It would be a lie to say Lin hadn't had some thoughts from the very beginning — but what he had originally imagined was simply keeping this hundred-odd Space Marines hidden away. With a large enough ship, tucking away a hundred men was trivial.
But now they were actively proposing to found a Chapter themselves. That was no small thing — yet a Chapter with legitimate standing could be expanded to over a thousand warriors. A hundred Space Marines becoming a thousand Space Marines… how could anyone say no to that?
His mind raced ahead, cycling through the great events he knew were coming: from the Ecclesiarch formally claiming a permanent seat on the High Lords of Terra, to the War of the Beast that would shatter humanity's false prosperity, to Abaddon the Despoiler's second Black Crusade… within moments, a rough plan had taken shape in Lin's mind.
But founding a Chapter required considering a great many things. The problem he had just heard about from the Hunter Dreadnought — the hereditary flaw of flesh-mutation running through the Second Legion's bloodline — was already a serious concern.
If it were only these hundred or so individuals, that issue was manageable. But if he was going to build a Chapter that would endure and propagate across generations, stability in the gene-seed and its legacy was a baseline requirement.
What Lin needed were warriors — not unstable time bombs. So he did not lay out his rough plan just yet. Instead, he shifted the subject.
"Perhaps we can arrive at a deeper partnership — but not today. We now know each other's stories, but whether we can walk the same road into the future… I think both sides need a fuller assessment of the other."
Lin raised a fist toward the Hunter.
"But for now, at the very least, I will show you that I have the means to get you off this planet. And in return, you must trust me completely and without reservation until the moment we leave. What do you say, Captain? Do we have a deal?"
The Hunter Dreadnought regarded Lin. Slowly, he nodded — and extended his power fist, bringing it to meet Lin's raised hand.
"We will prove our sincerity in kind," he said.
[Author's Note: The Imperium losing track of how many Chapters it even has is something that only happened after the Cursed Founding — right now, the Second Founding has only just taken place, and Imperial records on this subject are still quite clear. That said, even later when records grew murky, the Imperium did develop a dedicated system for testing Chapter loyalty and purity — one could say they became rather professional about it (even if it still couldn't stop rebellions from happening).]