Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

During the Great Crusade, most of the technological wonders built and owned by the Legions were tied to the gifts of ancient human knowledge.

The value of the STC templates left over from the dark technological age is immeasurable to this day. Some of them have proven to be valuable and practical blueprints, and their importance is even higher than some of the empire's subordinate worlds with scarce resources and harsh conditions.

However, just as it plays a representative role on many levels, the Iron Warriors Legion is also at the forefront of the entire human empire in the exploration of science and technology.

This is not equivalent to indicating that the Iron Warriors' technology is far ahead of all official and unofficial research institutions of the Empire, but it means that under the leadership of the Primarch Perturabo, the Iron Warriors Legion tends to partially adapt to its own needs. Or completely break away from the technological legacy of the dark technological age and tailor-make independently constructed technological products for yourself.

Cheorwon, one of the most famous giant space fortresses of the Great Crusade era, is a good early example. Although the technical foundation is still derived from the reference and imitation of the Phalanx, anyone who has a little understanding of this behemoth will not equate it with the relics of the old night.

Today, although this historical academic theory has not yet become the consensus of the entire empire, many scholars look back to the past and think about the present, and they are often willing to compare the early days of the Great Crusade, at the end of the 30th millennium, when the Cheolwon departed from the capital of the Olympia system. The time when Olympia left low-Earth orbit and set sail into endless war was regarded as a landmark milestone for the development and progress of the Primarch Perturabo himself, and even the entire empire. It was an event that cannot be ignored in the history books.

——"Narrative of the Great Crusade: The Price of Victory"

Some visitors to Olympia for the games returned too early, thought the remaining guests smugly.

They parked their respective vehicles in the plain grassland extending from Mount Telefus. Some of the visitors who realized that they had almost missed something just after taking off quickly landed their transport ships or transport planes, setting the landing claws and The lifting bracket was supported in the soft soil, and then he left the vehicle and looked at the top of the snow-capped mountains.

At first, everything remained quiet for a long time under the white snow. The clouds and mist surrounded them into clean gauze ribbons. Under the blue sky, they set off the gleaming steel tower and the iconic two-color stripes of the Iron Warriors on the tower. get brighter.

It's like this every sunny day in Olympia.

The number of people waiting continues to grow. As long as they can get permission to enter the Lokos Realm, people are willing to come from all directions and wait on the wild ground for what is about to happen.

Because, it's time.

Above their heads, the huge Cheorwon relied on the multiple supports of ground anti-gravity systems, spaceports and self-locking ship anchors, casting a large area of ​​​​shadow on the ground.

A slight sound sounded from the depths of the earth, and low-frequency vibrations touched people's hearts. Thin steam began to undulate and spread from the top of the metal tower, lingering around the orbital platform, making the network of cables and steel chains blurred in the mist.

Then, in an instant, like brilliant sparks from flint, golden lightning suddenly lit up from the central tower of the Cheorwon.

The golden beam of light penetrates the sky and the earth from the location of the Cheorwon, reaches the end of the sky, and goes down to the base of the space port. It pushes the clouds in the mountains and the layers of high-altitude cumulus clouds to draw an insurmountable perfect circle.

The wind was strong, the air was screaming sharply, and the whole picture of Cheorwon was completely displayed above the earth. Observed from the ground, its ring-like shape has a crisp structure that frames the star system's bright sun within the ring.

The arc of lightning was still accompanied by a hissing sound, illuminating the shadowed part of Cheorwon under natural light, spitting out brilliant light. Soon, after the energy conversion structure was fully activated for the first time, the overflowing arc was condensed and transformed into the light that lit up every window of the Cheorwon.

The chatter in the crowd stopped. Their eyes and eyebrows were condensed with concentration and anticipation.

In the silence, the cables connecting the space fortress began to fall off one by one, plummeting downwards and fluttering in the high-altitude wind.

Immediately afterwards, the lock of the first fixed ring was released, and the steel ring decomposed into four arcs, expanding outward to the surroundings. The second fixed ring split into sixteen steel arcs as expected, which were farther and lower than the innermost ring. The accompanying mechanical claws unlocked as the ring sank, leaving the Cheorwon's countless access points one after another.

When the final outer ring separated, Cheorwon remained in orbit.

Stay in the air.

There was nothing more strange, no earth-shattering fire or deafening explosion, nothing seemed to have changed except for the methodically unlocked safeguards.

The Cheorwon's suspension was so calm that even the hum of the engine was reduced compared to when it was powered by the ground. The air returned to stillness after a brief surge, returning the silent space to the Cheorwon's stability as before.

People stared blankly at the fortress in the sky, and were stunned for a while. Everything is silent except for the heartbeat and the pulse of time.

Then, it started to rise. The process of its climb was slow and steady. Within a short time interval, it seemed difficult to observe the changes in Cheorwon's position with the naked eye. But it is moving away, climbing and shrinking step by step, light and shadow flowing unhurriedly on its surface.

The sun shines through the rising smoke, forming a guiding staircase, leading the fortress across the sky to the vast Milky Way.

It accepts its long overdue departure, bids farewell to Olympia's gravity, and approaches the end of the dome.

From a city in the sky, to a distant garden, to a disk as big as the sun, this fortress that has accompanied Olympia for nearly twenty years has finally successfully and officially left Olympia today.

The first person started cheering, then everyone else. They swayed to and fro, hugged each other, chanted Perturabo's name, their faces lit up with laughter like doting parents expressing their congratulations.

With Olympia's blessing, Cheorwon ascended into space, left the surface of the green planet, and disappeared into the dark and cold universe.

——

When designing the Iron Blood, Perturabo only set up portholes in the front half of the ship and in his own office; with the Cheorwon, the Iron Lord completely relaxed the restrictions on the arrangement of windows. Now, from the gallery to the hall, from the top floor to the bottom, there are portholes to bring the stars into the fortress.

After several days of sailing, the planet Olympia was completely out of sight from the window.

The Iron Warriors fleet is not yet ready to start its next subspace voyage. The entire fleet is still traveling freely in the real universe, waiting for the next order from the Lord of the Legion to head to the next battlefield that requires the Iron Warriors to overcome difficulties.

The Iron Warriors never resist a fight within their power, no matter whether the battle is glorious or not, easy or difficult.

For years, Perturabo took great pleasure in putting his own stamp on world after world before handing over the results to the Imperial civil service. Through various methods, he changed planet after planet, finding a just right balance between the improvement of people's lives and the needs of the Imperial War Mobilization.

This seemed to be the greatest reward he needed.

For the Iron Lord, the driving force required for war does not seem to come from anyone's orders or permission, but only from his ideals and requirements for himself.

"I found a problem." Morse said to the sound array sequence.

Whether it's psychic powers or spells, using them is as natural to Morse as breathing or taking a bath.

He is now willing to borrow foreign objects just because he is currently in the energy room of the Cheorwon, looking around the steel engine that extracts the energy of the Star God fragments, and exploring Perturabo with great interest based on his limited knowledge. How to use this unique power.

In this special environment, one would be better off following the laws of the physical world.

Yes, Perturabo did go further than Morse in this field of technology.

Perhaps even further than the Emperor. After all, the Lord of Mankind only needs to rely on his terrifying endless power, rather than occupying several room-sized extraction and calculation facilities, to hold this small fragment in the palm of his hand. Play around.

"what is the problem?"

After a while, Perturabo answered him, but not through the sound array sequence, but the mechanical Perturabo walked over directly, passed the identity verification at the door, and stood next to Morse.

It is worth mentioning that after Konrad Coze reminded Perturabo of the unreliability of genetic verification, the Iron Lord thought about it and finally designed the door locks in key areas to be manually controlled by himself. Without the data cable at the top of the head for access, even if it coincides with Perturabo's genes 100%, it will not be allowed to pass.

Morse was silent for a moment, without turning around, and spoke directly to the polyhedron container containing the fragments of the sleeping Star God in front of him: "Don't you think there is one thing I don't need to do now?"

If he chose to face Perturabo to speak, he would have to raise his head or float entirely, so the craftsman would rather choose to simply abandon the common conversational etiquette commonly used by humans.

"I'm not sure," Cyborg Perturabo said, taking a moment to reply to an approval document on the data pad against the clock. Even during the Olympiads, Perturabo did not neglect military and political affairs, but the work inevitably accumulated on his desk.

"But I think there's one thing you can choose not to do," he said, giving Morse a quick glance.

"I guess we're talking about the same thing, Perturabo." Morse considered, tapping his chin with a cloth-wrapped finger. "But none of us wanted to say it first."

Perturabo's long-repaired mechanical face expressed an expression of vivid distress that was easier to identify than the facial expressions of his original body.

He thought for a while, flicked his finger, let the touch screen pen installed in the index finger poke out the fingertip, and then quickly wrote a line of words on the data pad, and then raised the data pad higher, so that Morse would have to fly up , otherwise it would be impossible to see.

"You speak first," Perturabo said, "and then I'll show you my dataslate."

Morse shrugged: "I don't think I need to follow the Iron Warriors Expedition Fleet all over the universe, Perturabo."

The distress on Perturabo's face turned into an imperceptible smile.

He handed Morse the datapad. "Maybe you don't have to follow the Iron Warriors fleet, Morse," it read.

Since Morse completed his body, he can actually do one small thing, which is to snap his fingers without relying on runes to slap the air.

The black cloth disappeared from his hand for a moment, followed by a clear snap of his fingers.

"You probably feel that if you speak first, it will look like you are chasing me away." Morse laughed.

"If you speak first, it will sound like you don't want to be in the same boat as me," Perturabo said.

"Of course, I believe no one would like to have a mentor staring at you eagerly at all times while writing reports and placing flags on the sand table. Imagine that I am writing my third-rate script, and the emperor has two students every day. He was within five meters of me for fourteen hours, drinking his bottom nest brew..."

Morse's face twitched under the stimulation of his own description, and he immediately cut off the possibility that did not exist in reality but was horrifying enough.

"It seems that the nostalgia of twenty years of separation is only enough to extract the total amount of patience required for two people to be in the same place for one and a half months." He concluded. "After this, some organisms will evolve from rare species to invasive species."

"My fleet will always welcome your stay, Morse," Perturabo said calmly, "but recently, in every corner of the Cheorwon, the number of abnormal signals and abnormal situation description documents I have received has increased rapidly. , do you have any clues?"

"Do I look like someone who would actively cause trouble?" Morse smoothed his fluffy hair. "Obviously, the threshold for detecting the psychic concentration that Magnus designed for your fortress was set too low."

"But you are not human." Perturabo blurted out. Before he finished speaking, he finally couldn't hold it back and immediately turned his head. The muscles in his ears and cheeks trembled slightly, and his chest rose and fell due to rapid inhalation and exhalation.

"You stole my catchphrase, Lord of Iron," Morse said. "It's me who should tell the joke."

"Sorry," the Primarch said with a smile, "but you were still human thirty thousand years ago. You made that clear."

"What do you think of that ancient story? Let me remind you first, you'd better not say that I have a common language with Leman Russ."

Perturabo exhaled, regaining his iron-clad demeanor and finding his deep voice again.

"An ancient legend," he said seriously, "belongs to a mythical era."

"A long time from now, what we are doing now will also become a myth."

Morse replied simply that he knew all about the tricks scholars used to make history.

"Anyway, lend me the smallest empty boat and I'll go out for a walk. As before, I left a body in my room, and you can continue to stuff it in the closet. If you need anything, come to me. "

"where you go?"

"I'm not sure." Morse said, "Maybe go look for Coca-Cola's STC. Or those in the illusion of nothingness. It's best to go to the planet to confirm the situation for your respected father. By the way, you have them on the ship. A human-sized gas mask, right?"