Space Marine Read online

  “Why don’t the kids all phoo off?” a scrawny, shaven-skulled youth who was lacking a little finger, remarked at the ceiling.

  One of the boys in question leaned forward and drawled in an upper-hive accent, “Shame, having to hack off one’s pinkie to say sorry to one’s boss for a blunder. Or maybe the pinkie was skragged as a trophy? What a trooper that one’ll make.”

  The razorhead leapt up, but the troopers levelled their guns, so the youth sank back swearing vengeance. A few of the Dorcas gang chortled appreciatively. However, the reckless, well-bred show of bravado did not exactly endear the utterer to two other boys of like age. All three had glanced somewhat poisonously at one another during the hours of waiting.

  Nostrils had only been gone for ten minutes before the speaker announced:

  “Next: Lexandro d’Arquebus.”

  At this revelation of the boy’s upper-hab name, many of those in the room who weren’t of the Dorcas persuasion whistled scoffingly or spat resentfully. Ignoring this show of dislike from possible future comrades, he who had mocked sauntered nonchalantly towards the door.

  A SERGEANT WITH a crudely reconstructed pink blob of a nose – obviously bitten off at some stage in his professional or previous career – sat at a damascened bronze data-desk stained green with cupreous patina. At his side a fussy grey-faced scribe was penning details about Zen Sharpik into a leather-bound ledger. A high-backed iron chair caged with copper filigree and equipped with adjustable iron helmet, as if for crushing the occupant’s skull, stood vacant. A tech murmured incantations as he stroked the wires running from this to a bone-framed screen where runes and formulae flickered; the man’s left hand had been replaced by a baroque prosthetic voltmeter with electrode claws. Much of the room was reflected in a silvered one-way window behind which a vague shape loomed.

  The sergeant seemed distinctly unimpressed by Lexandro.

  “What kinda cadet would you make, pretty boy?” he jeered in a coarse accent. “Can you polish boots with your tongue?”

  “I’m fourteen, sir.” The honorific stuck in Lexandro’s craw but he managed to utter the word.

  “Upper-spire brat, eh? Fallen low, is it?”

  “My father’s enemies conspired, sir. I despise him.”

  “Can hardly understand your fancy words, boy. And now you aspire to climb back somehow… Too many enemies of your own down in the lower levels of our hive, eh? From your happy days of tech-skragging and scum-hunting?”

  Aye, thought Lexandro, they’re sitting in the very next room. He nodded, hoping that this would be evidence of his character.

  “Bit young for that, weren’t you, even so, pretty fellow? Brat gang mascot, eh?”

  Lexandro felt cut to the quick, and wished he could kill this impertinent – if perceptive – sergeant.

  “Why we give you sanctuary, eh? Probably soft, from all that luxury and real food. What’s real food taste like, eh?”

  “I’m not soft, sir. You could ask a couple of other kids—”

  “Well, pretty boy, Trazior’s a little hive, as hives go. Three million, four. The pop of all Necromunda’s hives is uncountable. We don’t need any spare high-hab boys, not even as bait for nomads in the wastes.”

  Just then, the shape behind the window moved. A door opened; and into the assessment room stepped a giant of a man. A red lens in ormolu casing was clamped over his left eye, and perhaps had replaced the original jelly organ. His other cheek was tattooed with a winged fist in the act of crushing a moon, from which tattooed orange lava dripped like alien blood over his chin, down his neck. His grizzled hair was cropped tight, a pad of wire upon a rock-like skull, and implanted in his brow were two shiny steel studs.

  Lexandro’s heart lurched, and a certain awe invaded him. From devotional vids broadcast by the Ecclesiarchy, and memory of a stained-glass window in a chapel where his mother had taken him when much younger to drone prayers, he recognised a Space Marine…

  A fur-trimmed dark blue cloak embroidered with unfamiliar ikons and sunbursts hung to lap the Marine’s heavy jackboots, partly concealing a pus-yellow uniform chevroned in azure – a uniform bulging with slabs of muscle. Fanged skulls within potent crosses adorned his knees. The giant was wearing an engraved power sword and a similarly enchased boltgun in a holster of brass lined with slithery lizard hide.

  How could any man be so huge and powerful in the flesh? How could he radiate such ruthless adamantine presence? Lexandro’s wilful, wayward, snook-cocking soul was seared for several seconds.

  In Necromunda pidgin, with a guttural accent, the giant growled, “Test him for me. Fully.”

  AS LEXANDRO SAT caged and almost stupefied in the humming iron chair, his naked body suffering intermittent shocks and needle pricks while spinning flashing lights disoriented his vision, he distantly heard the reports of the tech.

  “Musculature potential, point eight seven…

  “Drug use readings. Nil blitz or stimm or frenzy. Nil spook. Nil dream-bat addiction. Routine traces of halcyon, hedonic acid, and joyspike…

  “Psychosis level, point four two…

  “Psychic profile, point zero one…

  “Ocular reflex…

  “Intelligence…

  “Ballistic skill…

  “Pain tolerance…” Agony flooded through Lexandro momentarily as if molten iron from a smelter had been diverted through his veins and his intestines. Perhaps he shrieked aloud – but the terrible instant was already past.

  Eventually the grille swung away from the iron chair, and the helmet from his head, releasing Lexandro. Yet he did not rise. The giant loomed over him.

  “Lexandro d’Arquebus,” demanded the possessor of that extraordinary physique, “what is the name of the Emperor?”

  “I d-don’t know, sir,” Lexandro stuttered; and for once the title of Sir came sincerely to his lips. He gritted his teeth, angry at his tongue for having tripped him. He had never stuttered before, neither during his humiliating initiation into the Lordly Phantasms, nor on any subsequent hazardous escapade with them. Nor even when the d’Arquebus family was demoted. However, this was different. Goose bumps pocked his bare flesh. He felt genuine awe at this superhuman man, at once so puissant, so self-possessed, so monomaniac in his demeanour.

  How could he answer? Surely no one knew the name of the distant, immortal Lord of Mankind – in whom Lexandro had only ever felt the most casual interest since his early catechisms.

  “Awesome is His name, sir,” he suggested, and the giant almost smiled.

  “So I am your Emperor here, it seems. True enough. In His name I can crush you – or increase you. Think carefully: would you become a Space Marine in His service?”

  Lexandro quailed, surveying the physique before him. “How could I possibly match you, Sir?”

  “Oh, that is no problem. You are not yet too old. Your body still grows. We shall assist it to grow. And assist you to grow, as a human being.”

  Lexandro didn’t understand. He imagined bone-wrenching exercises and an accelerated real-food diet, such as had been distinctly lacking since his father’s shaming. Whenever he had happened to notice devotional vids, he had presumed that the Space Marines recruited exceptional adult fighters, not… he swallowed his pride… not boys.

  “Is this a cruel joke?” he asked.

  All hint of smile vanishing, the giant cuffed him across the side of the head – only lightly so, yet Lexandro’s teeth rattled and the iron chair rocked.

  “I guess not,” he gasped. “But how, Sir?”

  “Strangers are listening,” was the giant’s only answer to that. And Lexandro’s spirit swelled, as he conceived hazily of an initiation rite far beyond that of any Necromundan gang, and infinitely more potent.

  “I think you understand,” said the giant. “Would you forsake your family and your hive and your world? To be sent wherever the Imperium wishes; to be done with as the Imperium chooses?”

  “Yes—” Did Lexandro’s voice quiver?

>   “Immediately, with no turning back? No doubts?”

  “I came here… hoping… I bribed my way into a gang that I heard would be—”

  “Recruiting into the Guards. Aye, I believe you have shown a peculiarly passionate intensity. Yet this is a very different proposition – sacredly so. The time for your vow is now; though I may add that your family will be notified. They will learn of your choice with pride; and the reflection of that pride may help protect them. In twenty years, thirty, you may return; with tales to tell. Though this I cannot guarantee. For your heart will change wondrously.”

  The giant was addressing Lexandro now as man to… potential man, potential equal. “I vow,” Lexandro whispered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AS YEREMI VALENCE sat in the iron chair an hour later, he heard distantly:

  “Psychosis level, point three nine…

  “Psychic profile, point zero two…

  “Dexterity, point nine four…”

  On and on.

  How had that fancily-named high-hab brat come to be here at the garrison block? Mingling, what’s more, with Dorcas gang members, or so it seemed? He remembered that one bitterly. Yeremi’s amazement at being tested in the presence of none other than a Space Marine was spiked with bile at the recollection of how that brat and his fellow high-life hooligans, who stood so contemptuously above any law, had hustled injured cousin Yakobi away to a vile death, crowing and bragging. Aye, coupled to a scum gangster, as though there was no difference between Yakobi and some undercity vermin – whereas Yakobi had been helping hold the line against such vicious filth, on behalf, yes ultimately on behalf, of those selfsame upper-spire revellers!

  And how come there had been a scumnik kid present too in the crowd of possible recruits? One whose spider-tattooed face Yeremi recalled clearly from that fateful night!

  As stabs of current stimulated Yeremi’s nerves and sinews, the runes on his cheek itched fiercely. He prayed silently to the Emperor, for his was a pious family. In the land-train carburettor factory where they lived along with some ninety tech kin, an electrocandle flickered before a precious polychrome ikon in every dwelling cubicle along the gallery that overhung the greasy, acrid furniture of lathes and drills and grinders and the carpeting of swarf like dirty silver snow. Yeremi knew the catechism of the Imperial Cult by heart; and that was the rock of his faith – a faith to the effect that far beyond Trazior Hive, and far beyond Necromunda and its bilious sun, was one who watched divinely from afar, one who had already rescued the galaxy from terrible strife, and whose incomprehensible mind surveyed and sifted, ever vigilant, the terrible redemptory Godfather of All.

  In their factory, so essential to the prosperity of Trazior – to its trade and supply routes forever preyed on by vicious nomads – the Valences lived their whole lives, many of them adapted by surgery to their specialised tasks. There they laboured and ate and prayed and slept and raised their kids, and treasured their stockpile of bolt guns and heavy stub weapons with which they must defend their domicile and livelihood against families not allied to them nor owing fealty to Lord Spinoza. Aye, and against the scavenging scum of the undercity, from which the Valence factory was not so very far removed.

  Oh, to remove oneself further away from the savages beneath! The Valences had held their carburettor factory for fifteen generations, and showed no signs of ever being able to seize a higher niche in Trazior. Yeremi’s father had said, “It is His will that we cleave to our station, where we are safe, and thus secure the safety of our hive.”

  His will.

  The He in question was an amorphous blend of the remote Godfather of All – and of Lord Helmawr, the dynastic Imperial commander ensconced in his palace in the central spire of the Palatine like some great spider plucking at the strands of Necromunda, harkening to how those twanged – and of Lord Spinoza of Oberon too…

  His will, their will. Their will, his will.

  Oh why, then, did that Will allow the armed anarchy of industrial life in lower-hab territory? Why did it allow nomads to raid land-trains, and scumniks to raid techs, and upper-hab brats to descend wreaking wanton mischief?

  The triple, bleached spires of Trazior arose from deep drifts of desiccated industrial excrement to pierce foul clouds on the far southerly fringe of the Palatine mega-cluster. Nevertheless, no Valence would ever be likely to travel to the central Palatine Hive. No more would they rise above their place within Trazior.

  So Yeremi would hardly even be likely to climb a spire within Trazior itself to ask humbly of Lord Spinoza, “Why are we thus?” A question which might be callow, yet which was far from childish. For children accept their circumstances, by and large. Being born into such circumstances, how can they conceive of any other conditions?

  Unlike Trazior, some of the mountainous stalagmitic hives of Necromunda were wholly disconnected from any neighbour, isolated across immense metallic dunes of glittering despair, across seas of eerie chemical sludge. Trazior did overlook such a desert, as southerly sentinel of the Palatine cluster. However, Trazior also formed part of a mega-complex of hives densely crowding a poisoned terrain, interlinked by transport tubes supported on pylons or suspended from cables. Whoever looked out northward from the massive protective shell of Trazior might suspect that some giant world-spider, nourished on venom, had swung from hive to hive spinning ropes, and depositing multi-millions of hatchlings in each domain.

  The spider and its web were potent symbols of Necromundan life. In the secret sign language of the Valence family gang, a hand imitating a spider signified many meanings. Which was why that scum kid’s tattooed face had angered Yeremi, as a mockery.

  What infuriated Yeremi even more was that upper-hab boy’s insolently unblemished features…

  It was the incident of the heat-sink which made Yeremi pray that he should no longer stay in his place, but might somehow enforce a different sort of order, however paltry his contribution might turn out to be. What could he do but pray – to the utterly remote, barely imaginable Emperor? To the God on Earth. Great Godfather of All.

  And his prayer seemed to have been amply answered when the Guard came for the Valence gang; though, as is the way with prayers which are answered, there was cause for woe too – for the Valences were to be stripped of their best young fighters.

  Could it now transpire, wondrously, that his private entreaty to the Godfather of All had only begun to be granted?

  “Somatic resilience quotient, point eight five,” recited the operator of the iron chair finally.

  The grille swung away; the helmet lifted. The huge Marine – so much more distinguished in his uniform than any motley planetary trooper – planted himself before Yeremi like some human pillar that ten such troopers would be hard put to tumble, should they be so suicidally inclined.

  Until now, to Yeremi, Space Marines had been virtually legendary figures. Though utterly distant from his own life, he was nevertheless aware from the confusing gossip of his elders that Marines did maintain a fortress-monastery in a spire of the Palatine. Some centuries earlier, piratical alien space nomads – called orks – had landed on Necromunda. Allied to the native nomads, those brutish aliens had seized a remote hive cluster. A dozen Valences of those days were among the host of drafted hive gangs and planetary troopers who fought their way across the ash wastes, spearheaded by a company of Space Marines, to relieve and purge those ravaged hives, which ever since had loomed abandoned like smashed skulls.

  Only one Valence had returned, to die slowly of poisons he had absorbed during the long march. The episode had become part of family lore, as well as suggesting that the best place to be was Trazior itself.

  Despatched to Necromunda at the request of an ancestor of the present Lord Helmawr, those Space Marines had maintained a fortified base in the Palatine ever since.

  “Yeremi Valence,” said the Marine, “what is the name of the Emperor?”

  “Of the Godfather of All?” whispered Yeremi, haunted by the memory of Yakobi
being forced towards the heat-sink. “Willpower: the Godfather’s name is that. Willpower supreme.”

  “A good answer to a question that has no simple answer. A reverent answer. A forceful answer.”

  “Why, then, Sir, is it His will that we in our hive are beset by so many enemies within? Above and below. Why does Will not breed stronger Law?”

  The Marine regarded Yeremi with increasing interest. “For thus, Yeremi Valence, is the condition of the galaxy itself. As above, so below! Enemies fester everywhere. Foes and traitors. The miracle is that His will prevails generally across a million worlds. And it shall prevail, indomitably! Through death, through blood. That is the only universal law.”

  Yeremi thought of the remote Lord Helmawr plucking the strands of the web of Necromunda. The Imperial Governor could only ever heed truly weighty wasps that sought to tear that web apart – not the myriad mites that bit one another.

  In the Godly mind of the Emperor whole worlds might well be mere mites… A yawning, awesome, black perspective opened within Yeremi’s soul.

  “Would you yield yourself to Him utterly Yeremi Valence, to help impose His will?” asked the Marine.

  “Psychosis level, point four nine…

  “Hubbard-Nietzsche intelligence quotient, point eight eight…”

  Biff Tundrish heard the mystic swank-words without fear. The incomprehensible incantations would cast no spell over him, any more than the tattoo of the spider had glued him forever to his gang.

  How long was forever in the undercity? Twenty years, thirty at most. Then came death from a wasting disease such as took his scavvy parents, if not death in a rumble with some other undercity gang or with habbers from above, better armed though not wise in the ways of the drekzone…

  No one else seemed really to thunk but Biff.

  For instance, he hadn’t attacked that smooth-faced kid in the other big room, the kid whose mask he once snatched, the kid who lasered Biff’s hand, the kid whose cronies dragged Crackpot away to a fiery torment. Noodle or Blueboobs would have flown at the kid to avenge Crackpot. But Biff had sat, and thunk.