Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

"Should we eat here, or somewhere else?" Morse asked, holding the plate.

After another round-the-world patrol to check the construction progress of various bases, they stopped at the half of Invite that had stayed away all night.

Today’s lunch consists of mashed tubers of solanaceous perennial herbs, barbecued meats, stewed meat with boiled vegetables, and a glass of animal milk.

Morse had long since given up on seeing what these creatures that had been genetically edited and cosmically irradiated over millennia had long since tasted like mashed potatoes, beef patties, beef stew and boiled lettuce, as well as sweetened yogurt.

"You can eat in the cafeteria." Dorn said. He held a dinner plate in each hand. The amount of food stacked on the plate was visibly heavy.

"Go to a quiet place," Perturabo said, holding two knives, forks and spoons in one hand, holding his datapad in the other. "The new round of military reports has been delivered and is not to be used in public places. reading."

"Then find a corner and squat together... Okay, just kidding." Morse shrugged the shoulder that was not holding the plate, "Let's go to the roof."

The night enveloped the three figures like quicksand, and the ether energy outside the real universe was like a thin rope, pulling them to the top of the office building in the camp. Morse applied a little extra witchcraft to keep it warm, but of course, the target was food, not a few guys who regarded fifty degrees below zero as nothing.

When on the ground, people often think that climbing to the top of a tall building means getting close to the stars; when they actually set foot in the sky, this hidden thought will be stripped of its romantic skin and proven to be nothing more than human dissatisfaction with the status quo. Desire for transcendence.

In any case, for the Primarchs, this top platform hundreds of meters high, where the cold wind blows in the eternal night, is just a secluded place for sharing meal time.

Dorn gave Perturabo his portion of steaming lunch, took the small tableware the size of an ordinary Astartes from the other person's hand, then sat on the ground, holding it in his hand to try. Be careful to use the spoon to scoop up food rather than spill it.

Perturabo sat down on the floor together, putting the data pad beside him and freeing his hands to eat.

He thought about data transmission again. If data could be sent directly into people's neural circuits, many things would become much more convenient, such as putting down the fork and scratching the surface of the data board without having to take two bites.

And if people really rely on data to communicate... well, this may not necessarily be a good thing. Although it is beneficial to talk to people like Donne who can always tell the truth in a worse form, more often than not, this kind of absolute frankness will put too high demands on people's psyche. After all, the voice of the heart is often darker than words.

"Do you know anything about our other brothers?" asked Perturabo.

"The Emperor mentioned them." Rogal Dorn replied after swallowing the mashed potatoes in his mouth to prevent food residues from damaging his personal image and the appetite of others, "Horus Luperkar, First Returned Son, Serial Number Sixteen. Leman Russ returns after you, number six. Magnus the Red, you bring him back to Terra, number fifteen."

"Why is it that only Magnus has a color description?" Morse picked up a boiled vegetable leaf with the tip of his fork, and then plunged it into a piece of Astartes-sized stew. He gestured for a while and felt that it would be a bit awkward to put it all in his mouth. difficulty.

"Because he's the only one who's red."

"Red?" Dawn repeated doubtfully.

"Magnus has red skin and the ability to use surreal spells." Perturabo said calmly, "But he is not an alien."

Dorn nodded slightly: "I have remembered it."

Perturabo continued flipping through his datapad, the Primarch's physical coordination ensuring that he did not become distracted and cause the mashed potato soup to drip from his spoon onto the surface of the light armor he was currently wearing.

"The achievements of Horus are still dazzling." Perturabo said, countless abstract cold data flashed in his mind, gradually describing the dazzling structure of hundreds of planets conquered by Horus's Luna Wolves. Galaxy picture.

"Two alien-occupied areas, a remnant empire of the old night, not only defeated the enemy, but also obtained surrender. The time he spent in these places was only three hundred Terran days."

In every round of military report exchanges, Horus Luperkar's record is always the one with the best lead.

Although in this comparison, Perturabo stopped building fortresses from time to time, some of Russ's achievements seemed not to be mentioned, and Magnus had constant minor problems, there is no doubt about Horus' achievements.

The pearl-white battle armor and skillful diplomatic rhetoric together add star-like glory to this talented war commander. The flag of the Sky Eagle is fluttering in front of his army, and the Shadow Moon Wolves are like a real wolf pack, in the vast galaxy. Showing extremely sharp fangs.

Every time I read the battle report of Horus, the image of the broad-minded and forthright brother of the original body would be even more brilliant in Perturabo's heart.

The one who admired the stars and the moon with him on Bucephalus, who secretly shook his head at the emperor's construction of gorgeous buildings that were more beautiful than practical everywhere, and who had his jelly eels snatched away by Russ at a dinner party on Terra, left his sincere smile to The dearest wolf god can also push the supreme majesty to all parts of the galaxy like a storm and thunder, biting the throat bones of rebels in the name of the emperor.

"Amazing." Donne did not hesitate to praise, just as he did not shy away from criticism. "I want to see him."

"The Luna Wolves and the Iron Warriors' legions are moving in completely opposite directions," Perturabo said. "It's not easy to meet."

"If we think of the Milky Way as a plane like this -" Morse stood a little in the sky, and a blurry star map appeared in the night, the edges blurred with the night itself.

He affixed the Luna Wolf's eye symbol to the left side of the star map, and the Iron Warriors' yellow and black stripes were drawn below.

"——It can be seen that it is really unlikely to encounter them immediately, unless the Milky Way is a weird sphere."

Perturabo finished his kebab without realizing it, and Dorn finished his drink, which looked like sweetened yogurt.

Rogal Dorn's stern, cold face with deep lines seems to be destined to insulate him from weak desserts. However, in fact, perhaps due to living on a cold planet for a long time, Dorn is very fond of desserts and meats. Even the Olympian children found honey candies too sweet, but he could chew them in handfuls.

By the way, last time Pertura was so excited to ask Dorne why he loved gold so much that he painted his entire legion in radiant glory. Both he and Morse bet that this was the negative impact of the emperor's aesthetics on his heirs, and Dorn honestly answered that it was because the Invet literature mentioned a golden food called "lemon", which is rich in vitamins. , extremely valuable to the Invites who survive in the snow.

"Where are the other fleets?" Morse asked as he cut the overly large piece of stew with a knife - since he was holding the plate in one hand and the fork in the other, the knife could only fly in the air by itself.

"Leman Russ and his Space Wolves are often recorded as 'possessing an unusual savagery,'" Perturabo said. "Although this veiled slur gradually dissipated in the years following Russ's return, But his wild wolves still have completely different habits from the other wolves.”

"Is it normal for the Imperial Expeditionary Legion to name the legion after a certain species?" Dorn asked, seemingly thinking more about his decision to name the soldiers "Fists".

"There is also the Twelfth Legion among the canines." Morse said, taking out a can of pepper from the air and sprinkled a layer of granules on the mashed potatoes. "I don't know about the others. In addition, I remember that the Ninth Legion was called For the Ghouls or something, the last time I checked their genes, they were as bad as the Third Legion. I locked the genetic spiral of this batch of Astartes to prevent more collapse. How will the Legion develop after that? How to deal with the genetic problem of the new Astartes will be left to their genetic masters to figure out when they return - does anyone want pepper?"

"What's that?" Dawn asked.

"Try it." Perturabo said. Dorn took the glass jar floating in front of him. After thinking about it, he turned the jar, sprinkled a solid layer on the mashed potatoes, and stirred with a knife. Mix evenly like cement.

"I will pray for the mashed potato soul that it will meet the tolerant potato father in the Kingdom of God." Morse muttered under his breath, tossing the glass jar back into the air.

"No matter what, Russ's road of conquest is still going on." Perturabo said, his words suddenly got stuck, and his eyes widened slightly.

A new text message popped up on his datapad.

"It looks like Russ may have found a new Primarch." Perturabo read Russ' text message almost verbatim. "It was a tall giant, Russ said, and seeing him made his blood boil." It’s like tapping into a quiet, insightful force they haven’t really communicated with yet.”

"Hmm, that sounds interesting," Morse said, briefly speculating whether it was the Second Primarch.

When he looked through thousands of pasts and futures in the depths of the Crystal Maze, Morse discovered that there were only two existences that should be very important to the empire, and their images were different in each tributary of the long river of time. This was the third one. The Second Primarch and the Eleventh Primarch - except for the almost certain disappearance and delisting, it seems that every different fate may befall the two.

Just thinking about the present, most of the time, the Second Primarch will return in the first twenty years of this millennium, but exceptions are not non-existent, so this is just a speculation on Morse-even Sigis Mondstadt joined the Imperial Fists at least twenty years in advance, so what reference value do the countless recorded historical turning points have as a reference to destiny.

"If there is enough coincidence, we may encounter him when we return to Terra." Perturabo said, "Or there may be a battle in the future that requires cooperation."

"Maybe." Morse ate his mashed potatoes with a normal amount of pepper. It was an unexpected surprise that the Adeptus Mechanicus could restore Imperial pepper that was more than 50% close to normal pepper. This also made his impression of the Ohm Messiah much better. "Anything else new?"

Perturabo put down the half-weighted dinner plate, and the steaks piled on it finally no longer looked as shaky as the illegal buildings in the hive.

"The reputation of Magnus and his Legion is changing in an unknown direction." Perturabo said, his expression becoming subtle at the mention of Magnus.

"Many planets conquered by the Sun of Thousand Dusts claimed that they were being ruled by a hypocritical sorcerer king until imperial officials purged or reared the opposition in an orderly manner; other planets claimed that they had seen the true savior, as bright as The golden and red magic and magic of the blazing sun cleansed their sinful souls."

"Magnus had to impose psychic bans on some particularly heretical planets, claiming that he was only slightly more powerful among the billions of souls in the galaxy - if he really thought it would work."

"Does this description sound familiar to anyone here?" Morse asked, reinforcing his suggestion by gilding the surface of the fork in his hand.

"There is an absolute difference between Magnus and the Emperor." Dorn said, surprisingly understanding the hidden line in Morse's words, "Perturabo said that Magnus' skin color was red. ”

"Is this a joke?" Perturabo's spoon nearly slipped from his hands, but he caught it in time and, thanks to the primarch's superhuman strength, accidentally twisted it into a ball of oily metal.

Dorn paused, aware in the silence that Perturabo was speaking to him: "What I state is the truth, and it is the most obvious of many ways to distinguish Magnus from the Emperor."

Perturabo picked up the plate again, "Overall, Magnus's reputation sounds like that of a one-eyed king who should be wary of."

"One-eyed? What hurt him?"

"Himself," snorted Perturabo. "The price of casting a spell."

"So he can't blame others for finding him suspicious." Morse said, "In the cultural tradition of the old night, sacred and glorious images are often associated with being worthy of dependence or even kneeling, while alien, mutilated and witchcraft are equivalent to ominous . Especially after experiencing the era of chaos and disaster, humankind's trust in psychics has already reached its lowest point."

"For other brother legions that have experienced the Unification War, psykers are just tools for emergencies. Considering their dangers, execution may be a better choice - so the Emperor will establish a psyker Legion, and the fact that they do not pretend to be official in any way, such as "they use secret ancient technology", is surprising to me. Their magical characteristics that have attracted curiosity since their birth are destined to grow with their power. It will be a difficult test to attract distrust and even hostility.”

"The Primarch possesses a strong will," Rogal Dorn said.

"You have this valuable trait, but the Primarch may not have it," Morse said.

Perturabo glanced at Morse.

"You're okay," Mors replied, and Perturabo took a satisfied sip of his drink.

After moistening or sticking his throat with a high-sugar drink, Perturabo coughed lightly.

"Rogal Dorn." He called the white-haired original by his full name, which attracted the other person's face covered with shadows in the eternal night. However, because Dorn's eyes were still bright and focused, Perturabo was able to see this picture. I found a familiar feeling of trustworthiness on my face.

"Tomorrow, the Phalanx will briefly wake up from its long sleep in orbit." Perturabo said, "Are you ready for the test?"

"All testing equipment and engineers are in place."

"How does it feel?" Morse asked.

"This is the largest engineering project I have ever participated in, and its importance is obvious. But during the test process, the chance of casualties is close to zero. Therefore," Donn thought for a while, feeling his own feelings, "I feel good."

I have a day off tomorrow, please take a day off orz