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  Currently, no Scouts at all were aboard the fortress-monastery. Those who had already received the carapace and graduated to the status of probationer-superhumanity were elsewhere in the galaxy fighting as terror troops. The carapace required almost a year to become fully symbiotic with the body – and its owner required purification, distillation in the alembic of combat before his augmented natural body could be judged to be fully transmuted in spirit as well as in flesh and bone, and thus worthy of donning complete Marine armour.

  “We are not, we are never berserkers,” stressed the Brother Rhetoricus. “Be not chary of sacrificing your life, should necessity demand! In extremis we can obtain new progenoids slowly through test-slaves. Yet be not rash. An Imperial Fist thinks and plans his every deed meticulously, even in the crucible of combat when our spilt blood hardens like cinnabar, thanks be to Larraman’s Organ. Indeed, let that be your precept: the hot blood gushes forth, yet instantly the Marine is firm as stone in his intellectus – aye, and spry as quicksilver which can flood through a maze of branching routes in a trice, illuminating all possibilities!”

  The power chair hummed back and forth as if the mechanical subhuman was advancing towards its argument, then retreating; and the scrimshaws hanging from it rattled like a sorcerer’s skirt of juju bones.

  “Be it known,” declared the paraplegic, who had been paralysed irreparably in some nerve-eating attack by aliens, “Be it known that some precious organs of the Venerable Dorn have been lost to us utterly during the vast lapse of time. We no longer possess the Sus-An Membrane that would allow a Marine to enter a state of suspended animation. Nor do we have Betcher’s gland, which would let a Marine secrete corrosive poison to spit at a foe.

  “Do we bemoan such losses? No! We are the Fists! We do not need to hibernate or spit venom. We crush our enemies.

  “Be it also known that mutation can twist the rune-signs written in gene-seed. Of this, you have already witnessed one severe example: your former companion whose spine branched uncontrollably and whose fingers fasciated. He was unfortunate. He was an exception. His mutation was a freak event. I hasten to add that no curse caused it – no hex or bewitchment, so far as the Adepts can determine; nor even any lapse in liturgy. The phenomenon merely occurred. Yet we all without exception share a subtler and ambivalent genetic flaw, which expresses itself not in branching bones but in our very behaviour. Can any cadet say what this flaw might be?” The imperious cripple’s gaze raked the ranks of cadets.

  Valence stood to attention, tipping up his misericord seat with a klack. For a fraction of a second Valence’s look darted in Lexandro’s direction.

  “Speak!” prompted the paraplegic.

  “Sir, our attitude to pain, Sir.”

  “Ah, you have studied to some effect… Expound, Cadet Valence.”

  “Sir, an Imperial Fist may become obsessed with conquering pain by force of will. This is a good quality in that we will fight on despite terrible injuries, Sir. Yet if subconsciously we invite such injuries—”

  “Aye, such heedlessness – such invitation to injury, as if to a friendly playmate – can imperil our battle planning, risking loss of personnel and material. We must beware of this tendency, even when we exploit it. For we are not berserkers! On the contrary, we Fists are exemplary planners, fascinated by the minutest detail. You may sit, Cadet.”

  As Valence obeyed, the paraplegic’s fingers clawed at the air, as though inscribing some complex, arcane pattern.

  “We believe in meticulous, scrupulous conduct and tactics. Hence, the renowned courtesy and the artistry of our Chapter. As you mature, the fingers of your fists, when idle, may well itch to scribe wondrous designs upon the finger bones of your dead Brethren, honouring and adorning their now fleshless fists. This is how we love to express our dextrous craftsmanship. Within the mighty power glove which can crush an alien skull like a puffball, there resides such microscopic discipline!

  “Aye, after a battle once you have recited your thanksgivings, or prior to a campaign, while you are girding your soul for a crusade – as now, as blessedly now – many of you may yearn to kneel in your cell with saw and magnilens, with rasp and buffing wheel and carbide graver, with brush and inkhorn. And with the hand bones of a slaughtered or euthanased comrade in front of you…”

  The lecturer’s own hands twitched, and his pallid cheeks flushed red as he recited:

  “Fists of beauty,

  Fingers of death;

  Emperors fists

  With death is our tryst.”

  THE IMPORT OF the art of scrimshandering as a meditative pastime for the Imperial Fists Chapter became more evident to Lexandro when, on a later occasion, he happened to pause near two battle-brothers who were disputing courteously though passionately not far from the Librarium.

  A servitor with a tracked, snail-like body and padded hands that secreted fragrant antiseptic polish was buffing the floor of the rib-vaulted passageway where electrocandles flickered on sconces in front of scrimshaw-framed ikons; and Lexandro must halt, so as not to incommode the two Marines.

  He had been thinking, as he frequently did, of pain, and of how it almost seemed as though Rogal Dorn had singled him out for special benediction even before the primarch’s germ-plasm had been introduced into his body…

  The two Marines paid no attention whatever to him as he stood waiting to pass. What he overheard provided his first insight into the intimate sentiments of mature Fists who had been warriors for over seventy years – as the seven long-service studs on the craggy crewcut forehead of each star-knight signified.

  “But, brother,” said one, “suppose you soak a finger bone in hot paraffin after the fine-sanding stage – once the surface has attained a frosted finish, as you say – you are introducing a foreign substance into the relic of a comrade.”

  “Bone possesses a certain porosity compared with horn,” argued the other, “even though a brother’s bones are strengthened ceramically.”

  “But—”

  “That porosity is perceptible to me! Perhaps my occulobe organ grants me keener micro-eyesight than yours? Immersion of the bone in melted paraffin wax fills any pores and so stops the ink of the design from bleeding.”

  “But those pores are already occupied with ceramic, brother!”

  “All the myriad pores? Always?”

  “Perhaps your occulobe is overstimulating your vision so that you see details that do not quite exist. In battle that might prove perilous.”

  “Brother, one must study a bone intently, not merely scrawl upon it. Shall we duel over this?”

  Each man bore several nicks and scars upon his cheeks.

  “I believe we must,” said the other. “Shall we resort to the Solitorium first to fast and search our souls in silence about your accusation?”

  Stiffly, arm in arm, the brothers walked off towards that place of deprivation which was in a dark gondola jutting below the fortress-monastery into the lonely void.

  The gastropodic semi-automaton moved over reverentially to polish the section of ancient riveted floor where the two Marines had stood for a while.

  Yes, this was the closest that Lexandro had yet come to communion with elder brethren. The older cadets were another matter…

  FOR THE FIRST six months, those who were further advanced towards full Marinehood had simply treated the latest Necromundan intake as juveniles, as sprats who might or might not grow into sharks. There was no question of the younger cadets acting as servitors to the older ones by, say, scrubbing out their cells, however.

  Yet now, as Lexandro began to wax burly, he detected a tension mounting between those even burlier youths and the freshmen neophytes. It was as if those brawnier possessors of more organs were impatiently awaiting a signal, a pheromone in the air…

  One evening two hulking boys delivered a summons. The new Necromundans must accompany them immediately.

  Without further explanation, their escorts led the puzzled party away from their quarters. Soon
they were passing through a domed concourse, ruddily lit and scented with smouldering camphor – then through another. Techs who were squatting outside their rune-daubed dormitories quailed as the boys passed by.

  A gloomy, whale-ribbed corridor led after half a kilometre to a moist cloacal side-passage aglow with lichen where ventilator gargoyles exhaled dazing smouldery fumes. Now they were passing by the foundries, the guides choosing neglected routes to disorient the younger cadets, so it seemed. Occasional mute mind-wiped drones trudged by on some robotic task, perhaps simply ordered to exercise their zombie limbs prior to cleaning out a toxic sump; and cyborged servitors trundled here and there.

  Finally, in a remote zone of the fortress-monastery, the guides ushered Lexandro and company into a scarcely-lit, groin-vaulted chamber – and promptly skipped back out, slamming the plasteel door that was wrought with the face of a carnivorous lizard.

  Glow-globes brightened. The chamber proved to be very long. A score of older cadets were waiting at the far end behind what was evidently a transparent plascrystal wall.

  Another wall of the same crystal – unbreakable by any unaided human body – stretched across the chamber close by. Linking the two walls was a transparent tunnel perhaps six hundred metres long, and of considerable girth, sufficient to accommodate at least five people side by side, and banded periodically with control hoops.

  “Despicable neophytes,” jeered a loudspeaker, “welcome to the Tunnel of Terror. This is an amusing variation on the nerve-glove. You will enter naked. An energy membrane denies access to anyone wearing any protective garments. Along the tunnel there exist a few modest zones of safety. Between these are zones where you will experience mischievous phenomena such as incandescent heat, absolute cold, airless vacuum, induced agony, and such. Oh yes, and gravity increases the further you proceed. It will be interesting to see which safe pockets you end up cowering in. Should any puny neophyte reach our end, which seems unlikely, you will be rewarded with a brand of honour on your buttock. You will of course all enter the Tunnel of Terror because, commencing now, the air is to be exhausted from your end of this chamber. Proceed, and entertain us!”

  Ventilator gargoyles started to hiss, sucking in instead of breathing out. Hastily, the reluctant guests began to shed their tunics, loincloths, and boots.

  “For Quinspirus hive!” shouted one lad, and charged into the tunnel, followed by two others.

  They stumbled, shrieking, till they reached the nearest safe zone, and stopped.

  “Come on, before it crowds up,” Biff Tundrish said, with something of a sneer, to Valence.

  “For Trazior!” cried Valence. Both raced into the tunnel.

  “For Rogal Dorn!” shouted Lexandro, hot on their heels.

  Incandescently hot…

  Lexandro looked back. His Secondary Heart pounded, as well as his first. His nerves screamed at the shocking transitions his body had endured. Somehow he had traversed the latest scorching zone, feeling that he was being utterly consumed. Those zones were the worst, but Rogal Dorn was with him then. As well as in the agony zones; though not in vacuum or in utter chill.

  Tundrish and Valence had reached the previous safe zone, and appeared done for. The other Necromundans were further behind. The kink in the primarch’s gene-seed might indeed confer will power in regard to enduring pain, even a fascination with torment – how else could any of the cadets have progressed any distance at all, let alone as far as they had proceeded? – yet plainly there were limits, which this tunnel – so bland in its appearance, so hideous in its effect – seemed designed to test to snapping point. Aye, by varying the nature of the stimuli so contradictorily, unpredictably, and totally – so confusingly that the mind could not concentrate upon one species of ordeal, but was assaulted instead by a menagerie of martyrdoms: a zoo of torments.

  Gravity dragged terribly, increasing Lexandro’s apparent weight threefold or more. Would he be able to stagger onward? He already knew, from collision with it, that the very next zone was of a frigidity so intense that it too would burn like fire.

  Sucking air into his lungs, he called back along the tube: “Can’t take the heat?”

  “No, damn you,” shouted Tundrish. Lexandro prayed passionately.

  And it seemed to him that he heard a voice answer him from within.

  “In torment you fly, Lexandro. But do not fly alone.” The voice appeared to issue from the extra primarch heart inside himself.

  He considered. If he did reach the end of the tunnel, did he wish to be seized naked, and branded? The brand might be no mark of honour at all – but a culminating cruel humiliating jape.

  Rage consumed him. How he yearned to attack and injure those burlier youths who stood watching, grinning. What if he were to be punished for his vengeance by a plunge into the nerve-glove? That might yield a perverse bliss compared with his present adversity. Would those older cadets actually report him for such an infringement, on Lexandro’s part, of cousinly courtesy? When they themselves were responsible for inflicting such an assault upon fellow cadets?

  Yet could he mount such an assault on his own?

  “The one hand: a Fist,” said the voice within. “The other hand: held out to your brother.”

  He had once been an upper-habber, with the upper hand… If he extended that hand graciously, he would still keep the upper hand. He imagined himself as an officer, in command of Valence and Tundrish.

  “I’m coming back for you,” he called. “I’ll drag you through the heat.”

  “I shall make you superhuman,” vowed the voice. Lexandro returned.

  FIRST, HE HAULED Valence. Returning once more, he dragged Tundrish with him. The spirit of Rogal Dorn must indeed have granted him supraphysical strength to wrestle with such weight as well as with his own.

  Together, the three hunched in the safe zone.

  “Would you be branded?” gasped Lexandro. “Or would you brand them with your fists – and your feet and your foreheads? For Trazior now, brothers, eh?”

  THEY STAGGERED TOGETHER from the tunnel, whimpering with agony…

  Abruptly the source of pain vanished. Gravity lightened so much that the trio almost felt afloat. They prepared to launch themselves at the waiting cordon of brawnier, no longer jeering, senior cadets.

  And then they noticed the Marine sergeant standing in an alcove, out of sight of the tunnel, with a view screen aglow beside him. The sergeant was a meaty slab of a man, of fifty years’ service, ruddy-faced as though surfeited with a Marine’s haemoglobin-plus blood; and through one Lyman’s earlobe he wore an alien foetus pendant.

  Rage and vengeance warred with respect.

  Biff Tundrish was the first to stiffen to attention, clasp his fist across his bare chest, elevate his arm outward and upward, then crash his arm back again over his twin hearts. Lexandro immediately followed suit; as, a moment later, did Valence.

  “You have endured ordeal, Cadets,” rumbled the sergeant. “And I see you have mastered your inner mania. You have also helped purge the hormonal tensions of older cadets in whose bodies the new glands strive to balance. You have achieved the respect of your elders.”

  Unbelievably, the Sergeant saluted the naked trio.

  YET STILL, THERE was to be a branding upon the leather-tough buttocks: an imprint of a clenched fist, no larger than a fingernail only. This was indeed to be an honour – for the sergeant himself personally wielded the electro-iron when Lexandro, Yeremi, and Biff bent over to flex the great gluteal muscles of their rumps.

  Did he himself bear such a brand, hidden beneath his uniform?

  Had he too once conquered the Tunnel of Terror? He must. He must have. Surely. This was one of the arcane rites of passage of the Chapter.

  Only after this rite was completed did one of the elder cadets de-activate the control hoops of the tunnel, liberating the other Necromundans who had gazed wonderingly from their sanctuaries within.

  The sergeant could not but have noted how Lexandro had taken
the lead…

  From this time onward, a kind of oscillating magnetism seemed ever more to bind the three brothers of Trazior, attracting each to one, and one to each, yet also – as well – repelling each in a bizarre negative of friendship.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SOON, THE CADETS had catalepsean nodes implanted in their brains. No foe should ever sneak up on an exhausted Marine slumbering during prolonged combat. The node allowed one side of the brain to sleep while the other side stayed aware of the environment.

  At the same time a stringent course of hypnotherapy commenced in the Apothecarion. Without this, the Node would remain inert. The enchantments of the Mesmer Adepts, accomplished by incantation and hypno-helmet, served another vital purpose too. As ever more exotic organs and glands entered into a cadet’s body, dripping and squeezing their juices and secretions into his system, so the cadet became liable to wild emotional fluctuations. Homicidal rage at abhumans. Pain-freaking algolagnia. Crazy bliss. Umweltschmertz. Void mania. Hypnotherapy helped steer him through these squalls towards the final harmony that he should achieve before the final crowning implant of the black carapace.

  Hypnotherapy… and drugs, and prayer to Rogal Dorn.

  Still, the tensions a-building within a maturing cadet begged for venting at times. Hence, the type of teasing that the older youths had been permitted to inflict on their juniors in the Tunnel of Terror.

  By now, a number of younger recruits had arrived from the savage and melancholy ice-world of Inwit. Within six months, they in turn would be ripe for constructive torment by Lexandro’s peers.

  Next came the grafting in of the Preomnor, the second stomach seated within the chest that would let a Marine eat poisonous victuals, if need be, and nourish himself upon mere roughage.

  To celebrate the success of this implant, a feast of foul unfood was held in the banner-decked Assimularum Hall, presided over by Commander Vladimir Pugh himself and the Masters of the Chapter. The cadets, who had fasted for five days, now gorged themselves on toxic fungi from a death world specially grown in the hydro-culture vats, slurped up glutinous soup made from decomposing venomgland fish, devoured foul cadavers heaped with stenchful excremental sauce, and chewed their way through discarded parchment and leather, while officers, battle-brothers, and older cadets dined more modestly on fresh fruit and vegetables. After half an hour, if each junior cadet was able to fill a three-litre vessel with vomit, the celebrants cleansed their palates with avocado and mango, eggplants and gloryberries.