"It really had been a long time."
Qin Mo studied Cawl and found that he was exactly as he remembered, unchanged in the slightest.
The two were not close, but they had crossed paths long ago.
Back when the Tyran Sector was not yet a sector, Cawl had accompanied the immortal Inquisitor Horst to the Tyran System. Officially, they had come to investigate heretical technological forces within the Tyran System, but both Inquisitor Horst and Cawl had their own agendas.
Qin Mo had helped Cawl solve the cooling problem of the Primaris Dreadnoughts and established the special alloy trade terms that remained in place to this day.
Moreover, Vik, the Arch-Dominus of Agripinaa, who now had an excellent relationship with the sector and considerable influence within the Adeptus Mechanicus, had merely been one of Cawl's underlings back then.
It was also Qin Mo who had persuaded Cawl to arrange a more promising path for Vik, indirectly leading him to become Arch-Dominus by a twist of fate during the invasion of the Chaos Lord Korax, the prelude to the Battle of Cadia.
After that came Guilliman's journey to Tyran before he went to Terra to meet the Emperor following his revival. Cawl had accompanied him to the sector then.
They could be said to share quite a bit of history.
As for how Cawl viewed him, Qin Mo had never been able to figure it out. He could not say whether Cawl regarded him as a friend or an enemy.
Compared to Arch-Dominus Vik, who believed the Lord of Tyran to be the true Omnissiah, Cawl was a staunch "Emperor" loyalist. Qin Mo felt that Cawl's view of him was probably closer to that of those who prioritized the Imperium's interests.
"You arrived later than we expected for the main fleet."