Chapter 138 Galaxy Summary Report

"Shall we eat here or somewhere else?" Morse asked, holding his plate.

After another round of patrols to check the progress of construction at each base, they stopped at the side of Invit that never retreated.

Today's lunch was mashed tubers of perennial herbaceous plants of the Solanaceae family, grilled meat patties, stewed meat with boiled vegetables, and a cup of animal milk.

Morse had long given up trying to figure out what these creatures that had undergone thousands of years of gene editing and cosmic radiation used to be. In short, they tasted like mashed potatoes, beef patties, stewed beef, boiled lettuce, and sweetened yogurt.

"You can eat in the cafeteria," said Dorn, holding a plate in each hand, and 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 and his data pad in the other. "A new round of military reports has been delivered. They cannot be read in public."

"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 wrapped the three people's 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 cast an additional small spell to keep warm. Of course, the target was the food, not a few guys who regarded minus fifty degrees as nothing.

When on the ground, people often feel that climbing to the top of a tall building means getting closer to the stars; when they really set foot in the sky, this hidden thought will be stripped of the romantic skin and proved to be nothing more than a transcendent desire of human beings who are dissatisfied with the status quo.

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 handed Perturabo his steaming lunch and took the small cutlery of the size of an ordinary Astartes from him, then sat on the ground, holding it in his hands and trying to carefully use the spoon to scoop up the food instead of spilling it.

Perturabo sat on the ground with him, put the data tablet beside him, and ate with his hands free.

He thought about data transmission again. If data could be directly sent into people's neural circuits, many things would become much more convenient, such as not having to put down the fork after eating a few bites and reaching out to scratch the surface of the data tablet.

And if people really communicate with each other through data... well, this is not necessarily a good thing. Although it is beneficial to talk to someone like Dorn who can always say the facts in a worse form, more often than not, this absolute frankness will place too high demands on people's character. After all, the voice of the heart is often darker than words.

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

"The Emperor mentioned them." Rogal Dorn swallowed the mashed potatoes in his mouth and answered, avoiding food residues that would damage his personal image and the appetite of others. "Horus Lupercal, the son of the First Return, number sixteen. Leman Russ, who returned after you, number six. Magnus the Red, you will bring him back to Terra, number fifteen."

"Why is Magnus the only one with a color description?" Morse poked a piece of cooked vegetable leaf with the tip of his fork, and then stabbed it into a piece of Astartes-sized stew. After gesturing for a while, he felt that it would be a bit difficult to put it all into his mouth.

"Because only he is red."

"Red?" Dorn repeated in confusion.

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

Dorn nodded slightly: "I have remembered it."

Perturabo continued to flip through his data board. The coordination of the Primarch's body ensured that he would not be distracted and cause the mashed potato soup to drip from the spoon onto the surface of the light armor he was currently wearing.

"Horus's achievements are still dazzling." Perturabo said, countless abstract cold data flashed in his mind, gradually depicting the brilliant galaxy scene constructed by hundreds of planets conquered by Horus's Shadow Moon Wolves.

"Two alien occupied areas, one remnant empire of the Old Night, not only defeated the enemy, but also gained surrender. He spent only three hundred Terran days in these places."

In every round of military report exchanges, Horus Lupercal's record is always the most advanced one.

Although in this comparison, Perturabo stopped from time to time to build fortresses, some of Russ's achievements seemed to be not mentioned, and Magnus had constant small problems, but Horus's achievements were unquestionable.

The pearl white armor and skillful diplomatic rhetoric together added infinite glory like the stars to this talented war commander. The flag of the Sky Eagle fluttered in front of his army, and the Shadow Moon Wolves were like real wolves, showing their sharp fangs in the vast galaxy.

Every time he read Horus's war reports, the image of the kind and generous Primarch brother would shine even more brightly in Perturabo's heart.

The wolf god who watched the stars and the moon with him on Bucephalus, and shook his head with him at the gorgeous buildings that the Emperor built everywhere for beauty rather than practicality, and whose eel jelly was snatched away by Russ at a dinner party on Terra, and who left a sincere smile to his loved ones, could also push the supreme majesty like a storm and thunder to all parts of the galaxy, and bite off the throat bones of the rebels in the name of the Emperor.

"Great." Dorn praised without hesitation, just as he did not shy away from criticism. "I want to meet him."

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

"If we regard the Milky Way as a plane like this--" Morse pointed in the air, and a blurry star map appeared in the night, with the edge blurred with the night itself.

He pasted the eye symbol of the Moon Wolf on the left side of the star map, and drew the yellow and black stripes of the Iron Warriors below the star map.

"--it can be seen that it is unlikely to encounter them immediately, unless the Milky Way is a strange sphere."

Perturabo finished his grilled meat pie unknowingly, and Dorn finished the drink that looked like sweetened yogurt.

Rogal Dorn's stern and cold face with deep lines seemed to be destined to be isolated from weak desserts, but in fact, perhaps because of living on a high-altitude cold planet for a long time, Dorn could accept desserts and meat. He could even chew a handful of honey candy that Olympian children found too sweet.

By the way, the last time Perturabo was there, he asked Dorn why he loved gold so much that he painted the entire legion brilliantly. He and Morse both bet that this was the negative impact of the Emperor's aesthetics on his offspring, and Dorn honestly answered that this was because the Invit documents mentioned a golden food called "lemon", which was rich in vitamins and extremely valuable to the Invit people living in the snow.

"What about the other fleets?" Morse asked while cutting the oversized stew with a knife - because he held 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 'having an unusual savagery'," Perturabo said, "Although this obscure derogatory name gradually disappeared in the years after Russ returned, his wolves still adhered to habits that were completely different from those of another team of wolves."

"Is it normal for the Imperial Expeditionary Corps to name the legion after a species?" Dorn asked, seeming to have more thoughts on his decision to name the warriors "Fists".

"Canines and the 12th Legion." Morse said, taking out a can of pepper from the air and sprinkling a layer of pepper on the mashed potatoes. "I don't know about the others. In addition, I remember that the 9th Legion was called the Ghouls or something. Last time I checked their genes, they were as bad as the 3rd Legion. I locked the genetic spirals of this batch of Astartes to prevent more collapse. How the legions will develop in the future and how to deal with the genetic problems of the new Astartes will be left to their original gene masters to figure out after their return-does anyone want pepper?"

"What is that?" Dorn asked.

"Try it." Perturabo said. Dorn took the glass jar that floated in front of him, thought about it, turned the jar, and sprinkled a layer on the mashed potatoes, and stirred it evenly with a table knife like mixing cement.

"I will pray for the soul of the mashed potatoes, may it see the tolerant father of potatoes in the kingdom of God." Morse muttered in a low voice and threw the glass jar back into the air.

"In any case, Rus's road to conquest is still going on." Perturabo said, his words suddenly stopped, and his eyes widened slightly.

A new message popped up on his datapad.

"It looks like Russ may have found a new Primarch." Perturabo read Russ' message almost word for word. "He was a tall giant, Russ said, and seeing him made his blood seem to touch a quiet and insightful power. They haven't really communicated yet."

"Well, that sounds interesting." Morse said, briefly speculating whether it was the second Primarch.

When Morse was looking at thousands of pasts and futures in the depths of the Crystal Maze, he found that there were only two beings who should be very important to the Empire, and their images were different in each tributary of the long river of time. These were the second Primarch and the eleventh Primarch - except for the almost doomed disappearance and removal, it seemed that every different fate could befall the two.

Considering the present, most of the time, the second Primarch will return in the first twenty years of this millennium, but exceptions do exist, so this is just a speculation of Morse - even Sigismund joined the Imperial Fists at least twenty years in advance, so what kind of reference value do the countless recorded historical turning points have?

"If it is a coincidence, we may meet him when we return to Terra." Perturabo said, "Or in a future battle that requires cooperation."

"Maybe." Morse ate his mashed potatoes with normal pepper content. It was a pleasant surprise that the Mechanicus could restore the Imperial pepper with a closeness of more than 50% to normal pepper, which made him have a much better impression of the Om Messiah. "Any new news?"

Perturabo put down the half-lightened dinner plate, and the steaks piled on it finally stopped crumbling like the illegal buildings in the hive.

"Magnus and his Legion's reputation is changing in an unknown direction." Perturabo said, and his expression became subtle when he mentioned Magnus.

"Many planets conquered by the Thousand Dust Suns claimed that they were being ruled by a hypocritical sorcerer until the imperial officials cleansed or nurtured the opposition in an orderly manner; other planets claimed that they had seen the true savior, and the golden and red magic and divine arts that were as bright as the sun cleansed their sinful souls."

"Magnus had to issue a psychic ban on some particularly heretical planets, and claimed that he was just a slightly more powerful soul among the trillions of souls in the galaxy - if he really thought it would work."

"Does anyone here find that description familiar?" Morse asked, gilding the surface of his fork to reinforce his suggestion.

"Magnus is absolutely different from the Emperor," Dorn said, surprisingly understanding the hidden line in Morse's words, "Perturabo said that Magnus's skin color was red."

"Is this a joke?" Perturabo's spoon almost slipped from his hand. He caught it in time and accidentally twisted it into a ball of oily metal due to the Primarch's superhuman strength.

Dorn paused, realizing in silence that Perturabo was talking to him: "What I stated is a fact, and the most obvious way to distinguish Magnus from the Emperor."

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

"One-eyed? What hurt him?"

"Himself." Perturabo snorted. "The cost of spellcasting."

"So he can't blame others for thinking he's suspicious." Morse said, "In the cultural tradition of the Old Night, sacred and glorious images are often associated with being worthy of reliance or even worship, while aliens, incompleteness and witchcraft are equivalent to ominous. Especially after experiencing an era of chaos and disaster, human trust in psykers has long fallen to the bottom."

"For other brother legions that have experienced the Unification War, psykers are just tools for emergencies. Considering their dangers, perhaps execution would be a better choice - so I am surprised that the Emperor would establish a psyker legion and not disguise them with any official rhetoric such as "they use secret ancient technology". Their curious magical characteristics since their birth are destined to attract clouds of distrust and even hostility as their power grows. This will be a difficult test."

"The Primarch has a firm will." Rogal Dorn said.

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

Perturabo glanced at Morse.

"You're still okay." Morse replied, and Perturabo took a sip of his drink with satisfaction.

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

"Rogal Dorn." He called the white-haired primarch by his full name, which attracted the other's face full of shadows in the eternal night, but because Dorn's eyes were still bright and focused, Perturabo was able to find a familiar sense of trust in this face.

"Tomorrow, the Phalanx will be briefly awakened from a long sleep in orbit." Perturabo said, "Are you ready for the test?"

"All test equipment and engineers are in place."

"How do you feel?" Morse asked.

"This is the largest engineering project I have ever participated in, and its importance is obvious. But in the test process, the probability of casualties is close to zero. Therefore," Dorn thought for a while and felt his own mood, "I feel good."

Take a day off tomorrow, take a day off orz