[It's like a string of fireworks dropped into a pond.]
This was the first time Morgan truly witnessed a battleship firing in the void.
Although she had been part of the Fifteenth Astartes Legion for nearly a year, the silver-haired female officer had never experienced true war. She hadn't even seen Magnus's flagship, the Invincible, fire its weapons.
After all, though the Great Crusade sounded glorious, as if it ignited wars and created countless bloodied kingdoms across the galaxy every moment, the reality was far from it.
Most fleets spent most of their time constantly traveling, exploring, and transporting. After all, after thousands of years of darkness during the Age of Strife, countless worlds in the galaxy had been reduced to ruins and wilderness, leaving only the remnants of civilizations from dozens of centuries ago, or the dark lairs established by pirates. Ruling these wastelands was meaningless to the Imperium; they had to seize the time to make these worlds again into Imperial territories capable of providing blood for the Great Crusade.
In the boundless void, fleets loyal to the Emperor increased every moment. By this point, over sixty years into the Great Crusade, there might have been thousands of Imperial expeditionary fleets, but most of them were engaged in tasks akin to colonization, exploration, persuasion, supply transport, and defending newly established colonies.
Only the most elite armed fleets would venture into completely unknown territories to destroy xenos empires or reclaim human pocket empires that still maintained their independence. The conquest of the latter often required little force, for as the Emperor of Mankind said:
[When a world burns in the fires of the Great Crusade, hundreds and thousands of human worlds struggle under the claws of savage universes and xenos, awaiting the gospel from humanity's home world.]
For now, this was indeed a timeless truth.
Perhaps the Imperium of Man conducted thousands of battles every minute of every day, but when viewed from the perspective of the entire galaxy, these skirmishes were insignificant. The Great Crusade was more about pioneering, persuasion, amalgamation, alliance, coercion, and genuine surrender. Sometimes, the Imperium would even make compromises that went against its own principles.
Only when facing xenos and transgressors would the Imperium's edge be merciless, even spending vast amounts of time and energy to deploy Death Angels.
After all, the Emperor only had ten thousand Custodes, twenty Astartes Legions, a disgruntled Mechanicum, and numerous auxiliary forces weakened by production and transport issues. With just these forces, if every step was war, how could he conquer the entire galaxy in merely two hundred years?
——————
"I never thought our cannon shells would fall on the heads of the Emperor's subjects. It's like a betrayal."
"I prefer to call it sacrifice, Ahriman. Sacrifice. It's a necessary cost."
Pholix's voice carried the disdain unique to the Iron Warriors: disdain for life, for mortals, for himself.
After all, they considered themselves iron, and in any great military empire, a piece of iron was not worth cherishing too much.
"Of course we could spare them, let them leave, let them live. And then what? In a few years, we would be forced to kill more people, causing more losses due to our momentary weakness."
"I just think we have no reason to kill them, Pholix. We, as the Emperor's warriors, have no right to kill any of the Emperor's subjects from the moment we are born."
"But we also have no right to let them live."
"I know, but this is murder."
"No, this isn't murder. This is mercy, mercy from the Emperor. After all, this galaxy is so absurd that even cold death is a luxury that needs to be specially granted."
"...I never thought an Iron Warrior would have the talent of a poet?"
"That's because you've never truly observed."
"Observed what? Your fortresses? Or your dug-out trenches?"
"You see, this is the kind of thinking. You only see the most superficial things, only the bricks and stones of the fortresses and the mud of the trenches, but you never thought about what we actually put into these things."
"You never considered the most simplified spatial design and stress-dissipation structure of a fortress, nor did you ever observe how the distribution of trenches and the surrounding environment mutually enhance each other. You only saw them for what they were, and then you applied your preconceived notions."
The Iron Warrior's voice was deliberately imitating his gene-father, Perturabo. He deliberately conjured that mixture of coldness, rationality, intelligence, and passion, but he could never quite mimic it, eventually turning into a somewhat affected, preachy tone.
Therefore, when Ahriman turned his gaze, filled with a hint of disdain, the fearless Iron Warrior could only awkwardly turn his head. Then he noticed Morgan also looking at him from the other end.
There was no disdain in Morgan's eyes.
But there was something even worse than disdain.
Perturabo's son simply lowered his head, no longer looking in either direction. This action successfully made Ahriman laugh.
As the Thousand Sons lightly patted the Iron Warrior's shoulder with friendliness, their conversation began again.
Everything seemed so harmonious.
So eerie.
Morgan looked at the scene before her, thinking this.
Unlike Perturabo's flagship, the Ironblood, the Steadfast Resolve they were on, which had guest reception functions, was fitted with large floor-to-ceiling portholes, allowing the void's darkness to invade the ship's corridors, thus creating an incredible spectacle.
And now before Morgan's eyes was an absurd sight:
The void was dark, pure black. It was an embellishment from "Nature," the sum of the most complex pigments indiscernible to human vision. It seemed to emit infinite light, yet also seemed to swallow all glowing objects. In this perfect contradiction, its kingdom gently settled into the ship's corridors through the gigantic portholes.
And the corridors were bright, spacious, the purest embodiment of human civilization. They were composed of steel, supports, lights, and the most standard numbers, simultaneously complex and simple, soft and hard. It seemed swallowed by the void just a wall away, yet also seemed to completely resist it from outside. Through the portholes, one could even see rays formed by the strong light of the lamps slowly disappearing into the end of the void.
The light of machinery and nature thus blended before her eyes. They were clearly distinct, yet most truly mingled together, twisting into a canvas both most sacred, most obscure, most clear, and most blurred.
And upon this canvas, walked two of the Emperor's Death Angels, and countless mortals about to fall into hell.
On the left, Ahriman and Pholix. They were talking, smiling, emerging from the thinnest layer of guilt and understanding. Of course, they wouldn't feel guilty for these deaths for long. After all, they had witnessed too many deaths and massacres, most of which they had personally carried out with their swords.
If every life needed to be mourned, then every Death Angel of the Emperor would probably need to mourn until the end of time.
And on the other side, at the edge of Morgan's vision, was a ship, a civilian ship from Dawn Star. It was being betrayed, hit, overturned, killed.
Morgan could feel it. She could feel the fragments and components of the ship shattering, drifting wantonly in the zero-gravity void environment. It was filled with refugees from Dawn Star, probably tens of thousands of them. She could feel their crying, their wailing, their cursing, their disbelief and panic. All of it passed through the boundaries of space, appearing so clear in her spiritual world.
Excessively clear.
She saw Ahriman and Pholix chatting and laughing. They stood shoulder to shoulder, like true brothers, patting each other's armor, with pistols hanging on their other side.
She heard the cries of mortals—the cries of wives searching for husbands, the sighs of friends bidding farewell, the mournful whispers of mothers tightly clutching their children.
She saw the power armor shake. It was two Astartes exchanging punches, discussing each other's strength, debating the merits of steel and psychic power.
She heard the blast of gunfire, heard sharp bullet heads piercing thin temples, followed by the silent thud of bodies falling heavily to the ground, vanishing amidst the utterly chaotic screams.
She saw them vanish at the end of the corridor, saw them bid farewell to her. Their huge combat boots left no imprint on the steel floor.
She heard the sounds disappear, from crying to wailing, from explosions to shattering, from collapsing to dead silence. Finally, everything vanished into eternal tranquility.
She watched it all, she listened to it all: light, darkness, neatness, chaos, laughter, crying, praise, curses...
Everything ultimately converged to one point: a huge steel tomb exploded completely in the void. It made no sound, leaving only a faint flash of light flickering on the corridor walls and portholes, extending the reflection of the departing Astartes for a moment.
Finally.
She turned her head.
Those mortals were dead.
——————
"Lady Morgan, please come to the command center."
[...Okay.]
——————
It was called a command center, but in a way, it was also an exhibition hall for Perturabo's works. The Lord of Iron used the Steadfast Resolve as a vessel for his small vanity, which he was reluctant to easily display. In its overly wide bridge, there were works that Perturabo considered perfect enough to amaze outsiders.
Morgan's path was unimpeded. She advanced in the shadows cast by the towering Astartes, and couldn't help but reminisce about her original appearance: in order to better adapt to her mortal identity, she had been suppressing her overly tall figure.
Finally, she arrived before the gigantic iron door. Morgan could see this automated facility discerning who was approaching, and her avatar and data were clearly the newest among all those allowed self-entry. However, she also discovered an interesting problem: in the column allowing her access, it didn't list Magnus, her direct superior, by name.
Instead, it was Perturabo's personal signature.
She thought of something, and the door had already opened. Morgan narrowed her eyes, organizing her thoughts.
Behind the door, naturally, was...
"What are you doing! Perturabo!"
"As you can see, doing what is right."
"If what you call 'right' is to bring this thing before me, to make me rejoice, and then to utterly destroy it... Perturabo, my brother, I don't want to say this, but this is an atrocity, a cruel atrocity!"
"If it's not cruel enough, then what? How could it leave an unforgettable mark on you, Magnus?"
"You know what the Emperor said, Magnus. Our Father knows far more than we do. He sees further and deeper than we do. If even he believes there are places in the so-called [Immaterium] that he dare not look, then we need to accept that."
"Yes, but! Not necessary! This way!"
"You just lamented humanity's foolishness, thinking they desecrated countless arts. Now, look at what you're doing again, Perturabo!"
——————
The room vibrated, the air trembled, and the Primarch roared.
Morgan blinked.
[...]
For some reason, she seemed, probably, possibly...
Completely unsurprised.
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