The Sages' Little Scheme

At the two Sages' words, Calando and Adrian turned to look at the two robed Sages of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

"I heard what you just said. The Dark Angels once obtained our Power Armour and passed themselves off as Ultramarines?"

The two Sages saw the distinctive Victrix Laurel and the red-and-white sergeant's helmet and immediately realized their mistake. The Ultramarines before them were not Dark Angels in disguise, but the genuine article.

As Sages who worked with the Imperial Inquisition, they knew all sorts of strange stories.

Those tales were not necessarily true, but every story came from somewhere—even if the people who first spread them tended to vanish into thin air soon afterward.

"Ah, you must have misheard. I never said the Dark Angels had impersonated Ultramarines."

Despite saying that aloud, the two Sages were frantically exchanging messages over their private communications channels.

They don't impersonate Ultramarines, but supposedly they've done plenty of impersonating other Chapters.

Of course, since the Sages were communicating through their own channels, and in Binary Holy Writ at that, no one else knew what they were saying.

Neither Sage wanted to say much about a Chapter that seemed deranged even to the oil-soaked minds of Adeptus Mechanicus Sages.

The Adeptus Mechanicus enjoyed an exceptional status, and their rank as Sages afforded them extraordinary treatment, but none of that meant things would end well for them if they crossed the Dark Angels.

No one wanted to vanish into thin air, die on some inexplicable mission, or meet with a bizarre accident.

Besides, however deranged the Dark Angels might be, they would hardly impersonate an Ultramarines sergeant and a veteran of the Victrix Guard.

That would not be keeping secrets. It would be creating them.

Calando paused briefly at the Sages' sudden arrival and their disclosure