Warhammer 40: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 42 Deserters
"Is someone injured?" Perturabo glanced gloomily at the soldier who informed him. Before the other's legs started shaking, he looked away and cast his annoyance on his machine that got stuck again, and decided to fix it later with the sole of his shoe. Its tattered construction to relieve depression.

"Bring the report, you can leave." He said dullly. "Let the injured return to Lokos. I don't need the injured to fight yet."

After the soldier left, he quickly kicked the machine to tell it to continue spitting out paper tape, then sat back in his steel chair and read the incident report on the small-scale accidental injuries caused by the new laser gun conversion device going out of control.

He hoped in his heart that this was an accidental flaw on the assembly line, rather than a huge flaw in one part of the overall industrial process, so that later he could say it wasn't his mistake—well, Perturabo couldn't lie to himself.

"Another mistake of mine." He said to himself, patted the machine that started to freeze, and began to deduce possible mistakes in his design from the phenomenon described in the report.

In any case, the same kind of laser pistols in the army need to be completely removed and overhauled to avoid more accidents.Since this happened to him, it is his responsibility.

He pulled a few blank manuscript papers to his hand, and the pen was hanging in the air. He paused for a while, put down the pen, covered his face with his hands, and immersed himself in more pure thinking.

Then, after exhaling, he tightened his grip on the pen and started calculating again from the beginning.

Not long after, Didi's call sounded.

Perturabo was obsessed with having the entire interior space of a chariot to himself, so at this moment he had no choice but to answer other people's communications in person, instead of assigning a guard and telling him "you go and Tell the other side that I'm busy and I'm not here."

"What?" He was preoccupied with two things, preparing to replace the scraps of paper that had been cleared by calculations, and at the same time responded impatiently, "Which artillery piece exploded again?"

"At least not yet." Callifeng's voice sounded, "Probably not in the future?"

The movement of Perturabo's pen across the surface of the paper became sluggish.

He immediately replaced the unused scratch paper and slapped the new paper on the center of the table, controlling and regretting his emotions.

Recalling the last time Morse mocked him for being more prone to soaring into the sky due to heat and expansion than Lokos's hot air balloon, Perturabo suddenly felt that there was nothing to be angry about.

"What's the matter, Callifone?"

"Come to ask how you are, Abo." Callifone said softly, and there was also the sound of flipping paper from her side, presumably she was also busy. "I believe that accident was not your fault."

"If you believe in me, you can change the reality?" Perturabo complained a little, and proceeded to the next link in the deduction of the formula.If he couldn't find any loopholes, he felt that it was necessary to re-verify the theoretical formula he had previously summarized.

This is actually a pleasant process for him. There is no need to think about any twists and turns outside the market. Numbers and axioms always present an amazing precision and honesty. They neither satirize him nor deceive him. , let alone worship him, knowledge is knowledge.

Calliphon said quietly: "No. Harkon is among those injured."

"Such a coincidence... no, that deserter!" Perturabo reacted immediately, and anger rushed into his head.

The calculation under his hands doubled again, the brain was nested and whirled like gears, and countless numbers and letters were laid on the draft paper as accurately and quickly as printing.This was how Perturabo drained his rage.

Gun energy out of control?What a shame he could say such a thing!He clearly didn't want to participate in the battle, so he found a way in advance to lie down in the back and sleep.

Carliphon continued: "I know my elder brother. He is probably worried that you will put him to death, so he tried to escape in advance."

She sighed, and her tone was more apologetic: "I sincerely apologize for him, Legion Lord."

"Are you also worried that I will take the opportunity to kill him? Am I so fearsome and narrow-minded?"

Perturabo's nib cut through the paper and snapped against the steel countertop.

He rummaged through the cabinets in search of a new pen, although he knew full well that he had stored his spare writing tools in another drawer.

"No," Calliphon said, "I just admitted that my brother was a deserter."

This sentence made Perturabo quiet for a moment.

He let go of his cabinet, gave the perpetually jammed machine a hard slap, and then opened the top.The wind took away his annoyance.

The young man imitated Morse's posture and sat down, crossing one leg over the other.

He doesn't like it, on the contrary, he will use this awkward sense of incongruity as a reminder to reflect from the inside out.

Kalifon's voice was mixed with some soft rustling sounds, maybe it was the brush of her sleeves on the table, maybe it was the error of the current itself.These trivial movements are not annoying, but become a footnote to Callifon's own temperament.

"Are you wondering why, Bo?" she said.

"I just want him to fight with ordinary soldiers, and I don't want to harm him. Our technology is already so advanced." Perturabo said.

"But he is jealous of you. From the first time he saw you, he secretly compared you with you." Califon said calmly, as if she was not describing an elder brother, but just stripping away private society. A separate individual after a relationship.

"When you first met your father, he was actually beside him, but you didn't even look at him." At this point, Califon smiled, "This is what Harkon told me himself."

"The longer you stay in Lokos, the more dazzling your glory will be. You have already accomplished ten achievements that Harkon could not accomplish before you came of age. My father would occasionally say that if the eldest son had your talent, he would have done it long ago. Let the eldest son succeed to the throne instead of continuing to torture his age with power and government affairs.”

"As the years go by, you leave more and more traces in Lokos. Your endless talents have changed the entire country, which gradually caused my eldest brother to have another worry - whether my father is more important than him. I like you."

"I?"

"He is afraid that his father will ask you to take the throne. After all, Lokos is already your country in a practical rather than a symbolic sense."

Perturabo was silent for a moment, "He's right."

This time it was Kalifeng who was surprised: "Do you want to be a tyrant?"

"I don't want him to succeed. His behavior has ruined people's favor; even if he returns to my army in a few days, I will drive him away."

He continued: "If you could, I'd like you to wear an iron crown."

Callifon immediately laughed: "In front of me, there is Andos lining up under the throne."

"Not Andos, he's too friendly and kind."

"His nature is so pure. I am afraid that for my brother, a beautiful enough butterfly is more valuable than a thousand iron crowns."

Thinking of the overly simple and simple craftsman, the two laughed together.Compared to Harkon, Andos is really both lovable and reassuring.

Perturabo stood up and took a few sheets of paper from the top of the storage shelf: "I wrote a declaration of war speech, listen to it for me?"

Kalifeng readily agreed, and joked: "How many manuscripts did you write for the speech at the naming ceremony?"

Perturabo was unmoved, and looked into the distance: "You can guess."

Although the mountains and the end of the dangerous road were out of sight, Perturabo's calculations told him that Kaldis' fortress was approaching.

　Strongly recommend a family reunion, a family reunion, an original style of rationalized HE hammer "False Gods and Evil Sons", you should read it ()
　　


(End of this chapter)