Chapter 206 Invisible Shadow
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, it arrived when the empire's expedition fleet On the same day as its orbit, it announced its surrender to the throne, using the empire's early investment to inject 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 pen of the Empire, had to apply for a more powerful weapon, the blade of the Empire - the Space Marines, to deal with this rebellion without warning.
"Initiating the decapitation on Sepetus XII, I wish to confirm, was this your original plan?" Roboute Guilliman asked, with Gren Vossotho standing in front of him, Separate the Primarch from more Chapter Masters and Captains. 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 target on this closed nest Du's quick attack was enough to defeat the rebellion, and the rebels would not have time to regroup their forces."
"According to intelligence, there should not be a rebellion in the Osiris Cluster." Robert said.
"The Luna Wolves have done this in the past, and they have demonstrated the effectiveness of this form of attack and the minimal damage to the hive world's infrastructure caused by beheading operations. In addition, as a vassal of the Empire, Osiris The potential military strength and armament levels reported by the Star Cluster to the Empire every year also help us assess the rebel forces we may encounter..."
"According to 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 theory, theories and hypotheses must be verified in practice to exist, and the source of information must be confirmed in practice and concretely. From the third lesson, ten minutes and thirty-one seconds, "Glenn Warsotto quickly answered, So skillfully that Robert felt like he might have memorized every word he said.
“Very good.” Robert said, “Now tell me, inside a giant hive city that occupies millions of square kilometers and is home to tens of billions of people, the rebel strength that may be hidden will be reported to the empire. Are the forces consistent? ”
"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 space voyage 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 Thinker on the table beeped, and Guilliman opened two new messages.
"Are you ready for warp voyage?" asked Perturabo. "The 7th Company of the Iron Warriors will serve as your escort."
"The 4th Company of the Imperial Fists will provide support. The main unit types equipped by this company are assault-configuration units, including armor-destroying units and lightweight units. Defense units, as well as anti-ship heavy weapons firepower groups, the specific unit descriptions are as follows..."
Robert Guilliman smiled.
"Glenn Vosoto stayed and told me later the observation ideas you plan to use. Marius Gage went to ask the navigator about his preparations for subspace navigation; other commanders, Return to your respective ships and wait for instructions.”
——
Morse has just discovered that diving into subspace in a physical way is actually an experience he is relatively lacking. 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 To enjoy this moment as an artist, I am afraid that there are many sensitive and romantic souls who are willing to pay all the price to see the direct shock that subspace can bring to people's soul - this is why some Vicious sources of pollution often manifest themselves in the form of works of art and literature.
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 outer 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 a bit, but he decided not to waste his energy in 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 empty 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 encounters an unexpected situation When an accident occurs, he can show up grandly with unexpected speed and a beautiful image that arrives in time, fulfilling his dream of a perfect Olympian hero such as "lifting up a panting brother and smiling at each other after the war" that 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, maybe he was praising the brother of the father of genes in the Agora Market in the center of the ship where the Iron Warriors used to exchange tips on daily life. An act of friendship and kindness -
A black spot. A brown irregular dot suddenly jumped into the subspace.
Although that tiny dot, which is so tiny that even the Primarch cannot accurately detect it, is hardly worth mentioning in the changing brilliance of colors, the familiar and unique collective soul fluctuations are still there in Asia. The gray void in the reflection of the emotional wave caused by the space quickly 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 Orcs' 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 parts dropping. fall. 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 descendants. Perhaps the Astartes were alert to the unsendered message that suddenly popped up on the datapad: + Morse, it happened. ……+
In the blink of an eye during psychic communication, a violent collision force suddenly hit the side of the battleship directly. The lights were chaotic, the instruments were overloaded, the hull made a loud noise, and all the alarms sounded in unison, as if it was enough to make The huge force of the overturning of heaven and earth made the battleship almost topple, and the chaotic tide of subspace doubled the sensory confusion and human body overturning within the ship. The space warriors supported each other and grasped the horizontal bars to stand firm, enduring the explosion in their ears. buzzing.
The toughness and stability that the Iron Warrior battleship is 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 chaotic mysterious force field. , and what really caused damage that was enough to tear steel was the unparalleled and surreal destructive damage caused by the moment the real universe came into contact with the subspace. Perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by necessity, the enemy happened to be teleported directly into the same coordinates 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, after only 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, and he tried to jump into the ship. The roaring orcs were instantly turned into ashes in the cold and sharp golden flames.
In the next moment, the orc 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 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 the golden runes, just like reversing time.
As the background of the ship being repaired, the fine sequins and shadow embers that fell into the void exploded into the depths of the colorful subspace like a torrential rain of flowing gold and iron, being surged endlessly. The endless non-material waves and the rustling greedy dark charm are 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 ship almost teleported into 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 always Things have become a huge mess, and the creature can be invisible in front of the empire's 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 barrel in his hand, "But they are exactly right. Coming with our fleet."
He pointed the tip of his pen out the window: "Look, another green hulk, Guilliman had better exit the subspace and start chaos in these channels that violate the rules of physics. Fighting is something that even the emperor may not do.”
Following the direction specified 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.
Just a few seconds later, Dantioch sent a reply, telling his Primarch that under Rogal Dorn's faster suggestion, Robert Guilliman had decided to emerge from the warp - yes Yes, Rogal Dorn 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, and two seconds later, he gave the answer: "That is the alien spacecraft."
"Great , let’s tell your company commander to report to Robert Guilliman,” Morse said. "I am indeed a little curious as to why the greenskins suddenly came to us."
Note: In fact, the Osiris star cluster is in the solar star field, but...
This is another world line ( Convinced)
(End of this chapter)