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  Mind, neither Noodle nor Blueboobs would have been sittin’ in that room amongst troopies and other enemies, jus’ twiddlin’ their thumbs, in the first place…

  ’Cos they didn’t thunk too much beyond rumbles and scavvying and the scarring ceremonies and maybe a squirm together when they got high. Oh, the Spidergobs weren’t dumb at rumbling, look how they lay in wait for those technerds who got one almighty surprise as to who was hunting who.

  But they never thunk far. They never thunk tall.

  Biff’s thunks were a bit different. Sometimes his Spidergob mates gave him a bit of a skragging on account of it; not like what you’d skrag a Mad Dog or a Scarface, if you ever got the chance, ’course. Maybe Biff was really a mutie, ’cos his thunks were weirdo. Recently he’d said to his fellow Spidergobs, “We ain’t scavvies at all, even if others call us so. We’re an undercity gang, got it? We’re on the up and up.”

  In time – a few years’ time – he’d inevitably be boss of the Spidergobs ’cos of his thunks. They didn’t know it – he was just the Kid to them – but he knew.

  The Spidergobs would expand and rise, like froth on a pool of filth.

  Biff couldn’t wait out those years, case he died first. Not that death was anything. But doing was.

  So he’d thunk and thunk. About everything he knew, which wasn’t much. But he already knew it wasn’t much.

  The Spidergobs had once caught a technerd to have fun with, a technerd who could savvy scumlingo, and who’d screamed about how all his gang cousins had been taken into the troopies up at some gateway fortress where the land-trains left, whatever those were. His cousins would hunt the Spidergob bastards if they hurt the technerd too much; they’d root them out.

  Oh no they wouldn’t. For one thing they’d never know. And no troopie in his right noodle would come near the undercity unless forced.

  But it seemed as how you could become a troopie. Troopies didn’t just sprout of their own accord. They weren’t a separate species, as were muties.

  It was almost as though Biff had understood Lexandro’s sardonic advice to Yeremi. Claw your way upwards.

  He’d skived off. He’d climbed on his own, level after level, way up through clanking, pounding, smoking factoryland; which hadn’t been easy. He’d ridden up a shaft, clinging to the outside of a vertical rail-car, overhanging an abyss. He’d crept through Twists and skulked along vaulted Straights, jealously admiring the feeble radiance diffusing from the ends of glass cables, the memory of a ghost of daylight.

  He hadn’t known where to go, but he had a good instinct for direct, and he’d reckoned as how a gateway had to be in the shell, far away from the heat-sink as could be. Then he’d spied troopies and had trailed ’em, but they’d sussed that. He’d been so lucky, so figging lucky. What was a lone scumnik doing up in the habs, acting like some spy? Maybe scum gangs were uniting for some big upward raid, eh? That’s what the troopies musta reckoned. ’Cos they didn’t smear Biff right away, and when he didn’t fight back they took him in for terrorgation…

  “Biff Tundrish,” said the huge man in yellow and blue.

  However, he continued by using swank-words that Biff couldn’t comprend at all. Biff shook his head, rattling his beads, and answered in scumlingo, slowly, to show that he couldn’t savvy.

  The giant nodded. Presently a trooper appeared and translated, after a fashion, glaring hostilely at Biff. “Bigman says: you give him namenz of the Emp.”

  Biff puzzled his brains. He thunk fast. The Emp was the Emp, natch. Techs worshipped the Emp. Even scum swore by the Emp. On occasion; mostly they jus’ swore. The Emp was mega-bossgod. Yet who was the Emp? Where was the Emp?

  Everywhere. Nowhere.

  Somewhere.

  Not here.

  Not in Trazior.

  So maybe nowhere near.

  Maybe the Emp was further away than Biff could imagine.

  And even more mega. What was the most mega thing Biff knew? He stared the giant in the eye, and said boldly: “Emp’s namenz is Bigger-Than-You. Emp’s namenz is Death.” The giant seemed to understand even before the trooper turned Biff’s utterance into swank-words. He smiled faintly.

  THE THREE BOYS sat under heavy guard in a glow-globe-lit room hung with a tapestry depicting the march across the wastes three centuries earlier. The translating trooper was there, too, for Biff’s benefit as though temporarily that man had been transformed into the scumnik’s servant. Yeremi and Biff eyed one another and Lexandro, remembering their previous savage encounter; while Lexandro himself assumed an air of disdain at the presence of two such… companions.

  Then the Space Marine entered, and Lexandro felt far less superior.

  The Marine sergeant, Huzzi Rork, felt satisfied with the day’s work. To take advantage of the press-gang levy had brought dividends in this instance.

  The Imperial Fists recruited principally from two hive worlds, the ice planet of Inwit where cave-cities honeycombed the top ten kilometres of crust worldwide below the armour of three klicks of ice – and Necromunda, the poisoned desert. Not many recruits were usually needed; at full strength a Marine Chapter numbered a thousand able warriors, who might well live for three hundred years and more, and the loss of any one of whom was a tragedy. And, of course, also a triumph; for what was more blessed than efficacious death in battle in the Holy Emperors cause? Yet such triumphant tragedies must needs occur.

  So the Imperial Fists scrutinised transcripts of trials and criminal records involving youngsters, hunting for a special blend of ingenuity, daring, will-power – quite often suitable candidates had already been executed by the time the Fists learned of their existence, now cut short by poison gas or explosive bullet. Such lads of calibre must be sought out early in another respect as well; for bodily modifications must commence as soon after the onset of adolescence as could be. A recruit of eighteen years old was unthinkable; he would become a puissant man but only a runt among his superhuman peers.

  And of course many candidates of seeming calibre failed one or another of the diagnostic tests…

  But not these three promising lads. Not these.

  Who must now be disciplined; who must now be deterred from killing each other, as might otherwise be their natural inclination.

  “Lexandro d’Arquebus,” said Huzzi Rork, “Yeremi Valence, Biff Tundrish: the name of your hive, Trazior, means Three Sisters, on account of the triple spires. Whatever you were before, you will now become as three brothers. Amongst a band of new brothers. If any of you attacks your brother from now on, if not ordered to do so by a superior, that attacker will be enslaved and used for chirurgical experiments in our laboratories for as long as he lives. Do you clearly understand this?”

  Lexandro and Yeremi nodded, but Biff frowned at the trooper’s translation. His brow furrowed with the effort to understand the concept of a laboratory and the arcane art of surgery.

  So, murmuring a quick litany, Huzzi Rork brought a little screen to life, and fed the mouth beneath the flickering blank white face with a data medallion.

  A pastel picture exploded into view, of a pink-skinned adolescent immobilised in a steel framework, with only his hands fully exposed. The pupils of the youth’s eyes were fully dilated to azure marbles. Before him was a bowl of clear liquid, in which lay a complicated puzzle of interlocking rings. The twin arms of that mechanical gibbet forced his hands down into the liquid, which sizzled and steamed. The picture focused upon the questing, flexing fingers. There was no soundtrack.

  “The liquid is acid,” explained Huzzi Rork. “The rings are of uncorrosible adamantium. The disobedient youth has been injected with an experimental drug, though of course his tactile sensations aren’t blunted. For he must uncouple the rings before he can withdraw his hands.”

  They watched a while, till the Space Marine asked, “Can mind and will move the bare bones now that the muscles are gone? This is the subject’s third attempt. He has already undergone two restorations with a new prototype pseudo-f
lesh.” Rork pushed a massive finger at an intaglio button, incised with a skull, on the viewing machine. Its screenface went blank; its mouth spat out the data medallion into his hand.

  “I comprend,” said Biff. “I savvy.”

  “You will proceed from here in my charge,” Rork told them, “by deep military transport tunnel to the Palatine Hive, to our fortress-monastery there. A carrier will transfer you and other recruits into orbit. A jumpship will convey you to the home-base of the Imperial Fists.” The Marine clenched his own fist which seemed almost as large as any boy’s head, though this was not actually the case.

  “How do we become like you, Sir?” Lexandro asked hesitantly.

  “That is all you need to know, d’Arquebus. Henceforth the neophyte cadet will not address any Imperial Fist unless said Marine first addresses the cadet. Punishment for first infringement will be one minute in a nerve-glove. Translate somehow, trooper! What is a nerve-glove, d’Arquebus?”

  “Sir, the cadet postulant does not know.”

  “Correctly answered, cadet.” The Marine paused, as if to allow time for any of the three to speak out of turn. None did.

  Lexandro, Yeremi, and Biff stared at one another silently. The three brothers of Trazior.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LEXANDRO HAD EXPECTED that the Imperial Fists home-base would be on a world. Perhaps fiery hot so as to test their mettle; perhaps crusted with glaciers. Or maybe the planet might be a savage jungle…

  Alternatively home-base could be a vast artificial satellite, a moon of plasteel in orbit around any of those. Devotional vids had hinted at such possibilities.

  Yet not at the reality.

  Or at least, the reality for the Imperial Fists…

  As Lexandro looked through a quatrefoil window in the observatorium of the corvette, what he saw ahead, moving seemingly slowly across the void-gulf far from any suns, more isolated than loneliness itself, was a great glittering leviathan that seemed carved intricately of ice, with fins and ribbed wings and soaring towers whose pinnacles were linked by flying buttresses.

  A long courtyard deck jutted forth like a notched broadsword. Black-armoured shrimps nuzzling there were cruisers and troopships which might well dwarf the corvette that Lexandro and the other recruits were sailing in.

  Straining his eyes, trying to grasp the sheer scale, he noticed larvae that were also ships.

  “Try a lens,” said a voice, mock-ingratiatingly.

  Valence’s voice.

  A score of Necromundans from various hives were staring out through the traceried ports; and by now Lexandro could talk to any of them, whatever their original hive and their hab-level lingo. All of the cadets had been force-taught correct Imperial Gothic under hypno-casques. Even the ex-scumnik, Tundrish, spoke with reasonable fluency, though in his case concepts sometimes seemed to be lacking to accompany the words which burbled from his mouth, as if as yet he possessed more words than meanings. Yet how that former scumkid aspired to grasp those meanings and ideas.

  “A lens magnifies things, d’Arquebus.” The ex-tech couldn’t quite achieve a patronising tone. Valence sidled up to Lexandro, offering a rune-chased oculus.

  “I know that. Thank you… brother.” Lexandro allowed a gentle hint of sarcasm to flavour that last word.

  Through the oculus Lexandro could now see crenellated parapets overhanging space, stained-glass galleries, battle banners springing from the tips of spires stiffly in the void, and the bristling snouts of defence lasers. He realised how huge was that flying fortress-monastery of the Imperial Fists where he would remain for at least several years.

  “Sizes in space are deceptive,” remarked Valence.

  “You don’t say?” drawled Lexandro. An impish perversity made him add, “Why, I warrant that fortress is huger than the entire heat-sink of good old Trazior.”

  The tech boy flushed, then smiled tightly.

  “No, you shan’t provoke me, brother. I shan’t assault you, if that’s what you hope. But I’d make a request that you don’t try to offend Brother Tundrish similarly. He might behave more impulsively – though I could be mistaken. His native intelligence surprises me, for a scumnik. Should you goad him into attacking you, you might find the aftermath disappointing. Odium and opprobium may well attach to a brother who ruins another brother by such guile.”

  Lexandro yawned. “What exactly was your psychosis level in the test?”

  “And of course,” Valence continued airily, “you may merely be masking your own inner poverty by such posturing.”

  “If I want moral advice, Valence, I’ll ask the Chaplain.”

  “And he’ll tell you that each of us would-be Marines is one in a million – one in a billion – except for he who sets himself above the rest of his brothers; and that one is less.”

  “Did you perhaps belong to some heretical revolutionary cult?”

  Just then, the prayer klaxon sounded. The recruits hurried below to pack into the on-ship chapel, where incense burned before a lambent golden ikon of the Emperor and an alabaster idol of Rogal Dorn, the founding primarch of the Imperial Fists. Aye, sculpted in whitest alabaster to emphasise his purity.

  The Chaplain had been so injured in combat that his best continuing contribution to his Chapter was to act as escort and religious awakener to young new recruits. His body was entirely missing below the waist, the stump of his torso being plugged into a cybercart of softly gurgling tubes, which he controlled with his one remaining flesh-and-bone hand. His other arm had been replaced by a damascened prosthetic of plasteel and servomotors. Ormolu-cased sapphire lenses had replaced both eyes. How those lenses pierced the hearts of those he spoke to, seeming to flay the skin and flense any fat to lay a person bare.

  During the journey, the Chaplain had already inducted the Necromundan boys into proper worship, with a strong emphasis on adoration of Rogal Dorn, whose own gene-seed – bred on from generation to generation of Imperial Fists within their implanted progenoid glands – would kindle the neophyte cadets into Marines, true Marines of the Chapter.

  A Chapter of the First Founding. The Chapter which had loyally defended the Imperial Palace on Earth against the berserk, corrupted fury of the Horus Rebellion. The Chaplain had displayed a holorama of the Column of Glory, that tower of rainbow metal half a kilometre high close by the Emperor’s own throne room, which was embedded with the armour of Imperial Fists who had died there and during the teleport assault on Horus’ Chaos-oozing battle-barge nine thousand years earlier. Within those broken suits, their bones; and inside the open faceplates, their grinning skulls. What finer sepulchre of honour could any Marine ever aspire to?

  This was their tradition, one that spanned ten millennia.

  Now that the corvette was in direct radio contact with home-base, the ship’s astropath was free to join this final service of thanksgiving. The Necromundans glanced curiously at that blind, fey figure of a man who was as alabastine as the idol of the primarch – his flesh almost translucent – yet who could speak with his mind from star to star, and could even report directly to the Emperor, should a sufficiently momentous situation arise.

  “Rejoice,” growled the Chaplain. “The Emperor’s Voice is with us today. Rejoice that we return to our holy fortress. Yet wherever we may be in this universe, a Marine’s transformed body is his temple, containing the eucharist of Rogal Dorn; as yours will soon be also.”

  Aye, thought Lexandro, before he was fully inducted his body would house many new wondrous organs. As the Chaplain had explained, that was how a promising human being became a giant invincible Marine. Indeed, a Marine must needs become gigantic to contain within himself – how did the litany run? – the secondary heart, ossmodula, biscopea; the haemostamen, Larraman’s organ, and Lyman’s ear. No, he was forgetting the correct order of implantation…

  And that was why only boys, yet a-growing, could be recruited and not adult men.

  The hormones dripping from the Ossmodula alone would considerably swell the s
pan of the skeleton, would strengthen his bones ceramically, would fuse his ribs into a solid breastplate…

  The Chaplain thumped his pus-yellow, azure-chevroned cuirass with his one remaining organic fist. A purity seal of eye-aching purple was offset by a bilious personal heraldic badge, of a nail transfixing a splayed hand, which almost melted visually into his breastplate as though the ghost of one of his hearts showed through the metal at that spot, the fingers being the pulmonary tubes and the palm the iron-pierced heart itself.

  “This is my temple! As yours will also be!”

  “A shattered temple…” Without moving his lips, Lexandro threw his voice ever so softly towards Valence, imitating the ex-tech’s accent.

  “Cadet d’Arquebus!” screamed the Chaplain, suffused with a righteous rage which he may or may not have been simulating. “What is the function of Lyman’s ear, which will replace your own lug, should you survive so long?”

  “Sir, it prevents the Marine from ever experiencing nausea or vertigo due to disorientation, however extreme.”

  “And?”

  “Sir, the cadet does not know, Sir.”

  “Lyman’s Ear also enables the Marine to enhance and filter background noise. My shattered temple – which remains a sacred and anointed shrine to Rogal Dorn – is not lacking its Lyman’s Ear… The nerve-glove for you, Cadet d’Arquebus! Crime: blasphemy. Sentence: five minutes, pain-level tertius. Punishment to proceed immediately in front of present witnesses. Thus we purify this chapel and all of us, in our hearts.” The Chaplain seemed to relent just slightly. “Cadet: be advised to beware which obscenities you scream during punishment, lest you rate further chastisement.”

  The Chaplain touched buttons on his cart. A hatch in the floor-plates before him irised open, revealing a shaft; up from which rose a steel framework suspending within it a transparent clingtight one-piece tunic elegantly embroidered with fine silvery wires so that an exposed human nervous system seemed to be hanging there, a semi-collapsed anatomy of nerves.