Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

The Osiris Star Cluster, an astronomical system composed of eleven stars, as a hive star cluster that has barely survived from the vast darkness of the old night, declared its submission to the throne on the same day that the Imperial Expeditionary Fleet arrived in its orbit, With the empire's early investment, it injected a revitalizing vitality into the stability and continuation of its own political system.

It is precisely for this reason that the sudden rebellion in Osiris was undoubtedly beyond the expectations of the Imperial Ministry of the Interior. These officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who considered themselves the masters of the Empire, had to apply for a more powerful weapon, the Empire's blade - the Space Marines, to deal with this rebellion without warning.

"I would like to confirm that this was your original plan to launch a beheading on Sepetus XII?" Robert Guilliman asked, with Gren Vosotto standing in front of him, separated from the Primarch and More Chapter Masters and Company Commanders. Since the latest batch of pauldrons with embossed and branch logos have not yet emerged from the billowing smoke of the Adeptus Mechanicus factories, these armored warriors have just painted the new blue U-shaped emblem onto their pauldrons. . They lowered their heads, displaying the silent stubbornness of trained children.

"Yes, Lord Primarch," the deputy commander of the Legion replied, "According to intelligence, the administrative and economic center of the Osiris Star Cluster is Sepetus XII. A quick strike against this closed hive is enough to defeat With this rebellion, the rebels will not have time to regroup their forces."

"According to intelligence, there should be no rebellion in the Osiris Cluster." Robert said.

"The Luna Wolves have done this in the past. They have demonstrated the efficiency of this form of attack and the minimal damage to the infrastructure of the hive world caused by beheading operations. In addition, as an affiliate of the Empire, the Osiris Star Cluster reports to the Empire every year Potential military strength and armed levels also help us assess insurgent forces we may encounter..."

"Based on intelligence." Robert said this half sentence for the second time, "Tell me, deputy commander, in the third lesson I taught you, which theory is suitable for this situation?"

"Theory provides a framework for thinking and analysis, and proposes opinions and hypotheses that can be adopted, but reality determines the theory. The theory and hypothesis must be verified in practice before they can exist, and the source of information must be confirmed by practice and concreteness. From Lesson 3 "Ten minutes and thirty-one seconds." Glenn Wasotto answered quickly, so skillfully that Robert felt that he might have memorized every word he said.

"Very good." Robert said, "Now tell me, within a giant hive city that occupies millions of square kilometers and is home to tens of billions of people, will the strength of the rebels that may be hidden be consistent with the strength they report to the empire?"

"I don't know. Real data would have to be confirmed by actual observations," Glenn said, and Robert felt satisfied with his answer.

The Primarch turned his head and looked out through the porthole of the Goliath-class battleship. The excitement of his first voyage into space was hidden in his heart. He used rational analysis and data collection of the vast stars to give practical meaning to the senses and ideas mobilized by his excitement.

The cogitator on the table beeped, and Guilliman opened two new messages.

"Are you ready for the warp voyage?" asked Perturabo. "The 7th Company of the Iron Warriors will protect you."

"The Fourth Company of the Imperial Fist will provide support. The main unit types equipped by this company are assault configuration units, including specialized units for destroying armor and light fortification units, as well as anti-ship heavy weapons firepower groups. The specific unit descriptions are as follows..."

Robert Guilliman smiled.

"Glenn Vosoto stays and tells me later the observation ideas you plan to use. Marius Gage, go ask the navigator about his preparations for subspace navigation; other commanders, return to your respective ships. Ship, waiting for orders."

——

Morse had just discovered that infiltrating the subspace in a physical way was actually an experience he was relatively lacking in. As a powerful enough psyker and a sufficiently special spell-user, it was difficult for him to remain patient enough to follow the fleet in the Warp for months at a time.

However, from the perspective of the physical universe, it is not a bad experience to watch the magnificent illusions swallowing the ship in an incomprehensible way into the brilliant and twisted ether ocean like the colorful film of crude oil; if you want to use the skills of an artist I am afraid that there are many sensitive and romantic souls who are willing to pay all the price to enjoy this moment. To see the subspace can bring direct shock to people's soul. This is why some malignant sources of pollution often pass through The form of works of art and literature appears in the world.

He stood by the window of the battleship, opened the heavy iron baffle, and observed with his naked eyes all the changes taking place outside the window at this moment. The flowing brilliance was cut into colorful threads by hundreds of dark sections, and the waves occupying all the colors of the spectrum from low to high were sparkling, and the viscous colors of different shades surged and washed away. The ship was protected by an invisible force field. The shell is like a falling waterfall that wraps hard steel inside extremely flexible strips, and the deep humming from the depths of the ocean that is directly transmitted to the human brain without passing through the air completes the dual shock of hearing and vision.

Morse's fingers moved for a moment, but he decided not to waste his energy on rubbing the scenery in front of him onto a canvas made of special material. He had no interest in destroying an unfortunate enemy by disrupting the Warp Veil's protection.

He sat down again in the small room left for him in the battleship. The Space Marine-sized furniture didn't allow him to get a chair large enough to serve as a sofa - there was just a collection of plain training cushions.

After Perturabo announced that he would send a company to follow Guilliman, he thought again and again and decided to pick another battleship to follow the company, so that if Robert Guilliman encountered an emergency, he could The unexpected speed and the beautiful image that arrived in time made a majestic appearance, fulfilling his dream of a perfect Olympian hero, such as "lifting up a panting brother and smiling at each other after the war", which has not been achieved so far.

Yes, Perturabo never said he wanted it, but he was quietly working in this direction.

The Iron Lord should now be sitting in the office he snatched from his scion, pretending that the steely Primarch didn't need to sit down to rest because the chair was too cramped.

As for Barabas Dantioch, who lost his office, perhaps he was praising the brotherhood and benevolence of the Gene Father in the agora market in the center of the ship where the Iron Warriors used to exchange tips on daily life— —

A black spot.

A brown irregular dot suddenly jumped into the subspace.

Although that tiny dot, so tiny that even the Primarch cannot accurately detect it, is hardly worth mentioning in the changing brilliance of colors, the familiar and unique gray void in the reflection of the wave of emotions caused by the fluctuation of the collective soul in the warp is. The rush caught Morse's attention. And, unlike those organisms in the Webway who have been forced to live in harmony with the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the Iron Warriors since their inception, this group of visitors who crashed into the warp brought more unconscious cheers and thirsty war into the world. On the other side, there is a violent tendency that goes beyond the norm.

No matter where they come from or why they appear, the arrival of these guys must trigger a warning within the fleet.

The Orc's smoking hulk fell out of the subspace after a violent shock. The next time it appeared, it rushed into another point in the subspace, bringing a series of silent small explosions and falling parts. All of this takes place in distant parts of the Warp that cannot be described by conventional spatial positioning. Mors simultaneously psychically contacted the cogitator in the center of the agora and Perturabo himself.

Perturabo himself reacted slightly faster than his heirs, perhaps because the Astartes were alert to the unsendered message that suddenly popped up on the datapad: +Morse, it happened...+

In the instant of psychic communication, a violent collision force suddenly hit the side of the battleship. The lights were chaotic, the instruments were overloaded, the hull made a loud noise, and all the alarms sounded. It seemed that the huge force that was enough to overturn the world made the battleship almost topple over. , and the chaotic tide of subspace doubled the sensory confusion and body overturning within the ship. The Space Marines supported each other and grabbed the horizontal bars to stand firm, enduring the buzzing in their ears.

The toughness and stability that the Iron Warrior battleship was proud of failed in this sudden heavy damage. The hull shell was hit hard by the ramming of the broken Orc hulk combined with a messy mysterious force field, and the real damage was enough to tear it apart. The damage that cracks steel is the unparalleled and surreal destructive damage caused at the moment when the real universe and subspace come into contact. Perhaps it was a coincidence, perhaps it was inevitable, but the enemy happened to be teleported directly into the same coordinates where they were located in the subspace. This is enough to destroy all the shields that human technology can create.

The drastic change in air pressure brought terrible dizziness and deathly pain. The air escaped from the lips of the Space Marines. The head exposed outside the armor and the body inside the armor were torn apart from each other. They were directly exposed in the gap between subspace and reality. For mortals, it is equivalent to the most painful death in the world.

However, just half a moment before even the nerves had time to react, the cracked battleship shell was forcibly fixed by the chains of golden runes, and the light film blocked all the twisted vortices of the etheric ocean, while the roaring orcs who tried to jump into the ship were The cold and sharp golden flames instantly turned into ashes.

In the next moment, the orc's hulk was mercilessly devoured by golden and blue fire. The runes cut through the dark void, burning the entire attacking ship and all the living creatures on it into white-hot fragments and a rain of molten iron. At the same time, the damaged dark gray battleship metal shell began to recover rapidly from the edge of collapse. The steel plates were closed, the burn marks faded, the pipes were reconnected, and the atoms were connected. In an instant, the trend of destruction was transformed into a miracle of repair under the influence of golden runes, just like reversing time.

As the background of the ship being repaired, the tiny sequins and shadowy embers that fell into the void exploded into the depths of the colorful subspace like a torrential rain of flowing gold and iron, being swept away by the endless surging immaterial waves. With the rustling greedy dark charm, it is nibbling and devouring.

And Perturabo's mind was still in the psychic communication circuit, and he said the words he had not yet finished as if inertia: +...What happened? +

+It's okay now. + Morse said, ignoring the electronic lock and pushing open the door of the office commandeered by the Lord of Iron. His voice also returned to the range that reality can touch from the strange sense of isolation attached to the psychic sound transmission. "The orc's ship almost teleported inside our ship. I traced it back and it was a coincidence."

Perturabo recovered from the momentary panic when the battleship was almost intercepted, and regained his logical thinking: "Is it a coincidence that the orcs appeared?"

They came to track down the rebellion of Osiris. If the rebellion was the work of the orcs, based on Perturabo's understanding of the orcs, he did not think that this group of creatures, who always made things huge and chaotic, could be in the empire's Invisible in front of the intelligence system, even if the empire's intelligence system is as bad as the harmony of the entire empire's civil service system.

"It was a coincidence that they almost hit us. The level of these chaotic Orks traveling through the warp is a complete disaster." Morse turned the golden pen in his hand, "But they are coming towards our fleet. ”

He pointed the pen tip out the window: "Look, another green-skinned hulk, Guilliman had better exit the subspace. Starting a chaotic battle in these channels that violate the rules of physics is something that even the Emperor may not do."

Following the direction designated by the tip of his pen, the subspace tide suddenly erupted into a manic riot, ruthlessly tearing the intruding ships apart.

Perturabo immediately gave a brief order to Dantioch, advising Robert Guilliman to quickly exit the warp and return to the real universe. Mors glanced at him, knowing that Perturabo was not yet ready to tell Guilliman that he was in the battleship that had been nearly pierced.

Mere seconds later, Dantioch sent a reply, telling his Primarch that Robert Guilliman had decided to emerge from the warp at the suggestion of Rogal Dorn - yes, Rogal Dorn. En also came with his fourth fleet.

"Follow Roboute Guilliman and leave the Warp," Perturabo commanded through a cable attached to the Thinker.

He then looked at Morse: "You have a clue about the orc attack."

"Not sure yet. But I saw something else, the ripples left by some kind of psychic power fluctuations in the subspace, and the phantom image it presented." Morse waved his pen, and it appeared in the air. Create a light colored hourglass. "This is the source of the attack."

Perturabo stared at the hourglass closely, and two seconds later, he gave the answer: "That's an alien spaceship."

"Great, let's tell your company commander to report to Roboute Guilliman," Morse said. "I'm actually a little curious as to why the greenskins suddenly came to us."

Note: The Osiris Cluster is actually in the Sun Sector, but...

This is another world line (sure)