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  Implant of the Omophagea followed, so that a Marine could learn from what he ate, absorbing some memories from the molecules in his meal of beast or sapient enemy. During a further feast, each cadet had to announce some details of the inner nature of his disguised nourishment.

  On this occasion, Biff Tundrish arose and shut his eyes tight to concentrate. Those eyes, like two green beetles which a squirming tattooed spider had now digested…

  “I have four nimble legs,” he announced, an eerie whinny in his voice – and Lexandro almost sniggered. Four nimble legs on either side, perhaps? Had they stewed up a supper of some giant arachnid for Tundrish? But no, for the ex-scumnik continued: “I yearn to run across wide grasslands with a rider on my back, my tail pluming in the wind. Yet I am so little and I live behind hard iron bars, eating synthoats…”

  “That creature is known as a horse,” confirmed the chief adept, consulting his annotated menu codex. “In this case it is a dwarf specimen, cage-bred for succulence. It dreams its genetic past.”

  Yeremi Valence reported that his meal had swum in foetid swamps beneath a blue sun. Its many teeth were sharp; so was its appetite. Its tail was long and armoured. Its thoughts were red with blood.

  Lexandro rose and shut his eyes.

  “I run…” Mist swirled in his mind, a wraith taking shape within the viscous haze, reflecting and congealing his image of that other self within himself. “On two legs I run. My belly is swollen and my… breasts are full.” Could he be wrong? Could he be mistaken? “My loins are… featureless. My skin is a tattooed map of the secrets known to serpents concerning the invisible world… The serpent god came to me in sleep and filled my belly.” Lexandro strained to grasp the memories. “The priestess must be caught and cut, to remove the godling for sacrifice… Yet faceless demons whose hands spit fire have killed my holy hunters…”

  “Enough,” said the Gastronomus. “You have eaten the liver of a feral tribeswoman from a death world.” He clicked his heels and bowed to Lexandro briefly, though ceremoniously. “Always there is one savage human included in this feast. One day you may need to eat an organ of your enemy in order to interrogate him or her, especially if that enemy is alien.”

  NEXT, CAME THE implant of the Multi-lung. Then the Occulobe, to sharpen eyesight and give night vision. Then Lyman’s Ears replaced the cadets’ ordinary lugs, which were sliced away and quarried out.

  And all the while, as it had for aeons and always would, the giant battle-monastery flew onward through the lonely void, towards nowhere at all.

  When the signal for launching crusade finally did come to the Fists’ astropaths, battle-brothers would depart in warp-ships from the jutting sword-deck – to return, perhaps years later in realspace time, as heroes… and some as cripples needing reconstruction by the experts in the Apothecarion… and others as honoured corpses, or perhaps only in the form of retrieved progenoid glands from which new Marines would be kindled.

  Meantime, the brothers exercised, recited litanies, incanted the familiar battle-prayers, meditated, now and then duelled, tested themselves upon algometric pain-meters… and in spare time they scrimshandered the bones of the dead.

  Those Brothers who honed their souls aboard the fortress-monastery were by no means the only Imperial Fists. Lesser expeditions departed by warpship; and returned. Periodically the Fists would assist a planetary governor to put down a troublesome insurrection. Or a great space hulk might be reported drifting in the void or in the warp, harbouring suspected pirates or, worse, those fierce cunning invasive genestealers which could infest a human world just as termites infest a house – so that it seems to remain firm timber until it crumbles apart. Several squads or whole companies of the Chapter would quest for lost worlds and for planets posing a potential menace to the Imperium, as well as for any alien redoubts within Imperial spheres of influence, so as to sterilise those.

  Came the day when the cadets were all summoned to witness the disembarking of one such home-bound expedition, returning victorious, though somewhat mauled.

  Warriors in full armour paraded in the colossal hangar, its walls plated with slabs of heat-resistant mica. Several other cruisers squatted dourly like giant hibernating tortoises. Fluted green columns of synthetic electro-generative tourmaline supported a black-groined vault from which servicing machines hung down like great roosting mutant bats. Floodlighting reflected from the silvery burnt umber cladding of the walls as though ice-ghosts danced there, and set the green columns aglow.

  Those returning Marines crashed their arms across their spreadeagle-painted chest plastrons, saluting Lord Pugh who stood up on a high balcony of traceried wrought tungsten.

  Such armour theirs was! Pus-hued, and azure-chevroned. Fanged skulls with potent crosses adorned the knee joints of these warriors’ armour. Yet aside from squad markings there were many individualistic touches too. Campaign badges and honour markings, yes, those of course, on the greaves protecting their right shanks – in many cases quartered and augmented with extra honours. Yes, those. But in some instances artificers of genius had left their mark upon the armour – ten years earlier, or a hundred, or a thousand. Repairs to the thigh-cuisses and groin-hauberks had been plated with damascened silver and gold engravings of the deeds of Rogal Dorn.

  Bareheaded, kitted in their lighter padded armour, three squads of Marine Scouts also hailed the elevated figure of Commander Pugh – who would be no distant eminence once the crusade was launched, but would lead from the vanguard.

  Nevertheless, not everyone’s armour was pristine. Parts had been seared by blistering heat, or buckled by terrible impact. And even in the midst of ceremony, orderlies were already evacuating some severe casualties under the direction of a frater medicus. A few caskets were carried from the docked ship, each bearing upon it a stasis box wrapped in a yellow banner embroidered with fanged skulls, protecting the precious progenoid organs. Were the corpses’ hands honourably amputated during the funeral rites – or later, after the flesh had decayed? Lexandro had no idea.

  And a moment later any extraneous thoughts were driven from his mind – for he saw his first alien prisoner: a mottled green froglike biped of lustrous hue, being marched in chains.

  An itch of fascination at this utterly different, aberrant creature twisted within Lexandro, into rage – at the sly, inhuman intelligence which must have been responsible for the loss of those brave champions of Humanity who now lay lifeless in caskets.

  “That one’s a slann mage chief,” mused a nearby brother. An armoured Marine began to hustle the unclad fettered alien away – no doubt to the diamantine dungeons deep beneath the Apothecarion, domain of the surgeon interrogators. “Once puissant – but no longer,” the brother added thoughtfully.

  Lexandro could feel no such composure. His pulse quickened. Both of his hearts raced. He flushed hotly. He ground his teeth together, lusting to tear the alien apart and eat of its lurid vitals, so as to comprehend something of its strange nature. A hormonal seizure was upon him, triggered by sight of the bare green flesh of that alien foe of Humankind, whom he was most unlikely ever to see again. He prayed to Rogal Dorn to restore his equilibrium.

  Biff Tundrish seemed similarly affected. Tundrish clenched and unclenched his fists, causing the bones to crackle. He reached up to his skull as if to seize the beads which had once adorned his scalp, though those had long since been shorn off along with his excess of black greasy hair; as if to tug those and release an inner pressure.

  And Yeremi Valence? The runes on his cheeks had whitened.

  Lexandro sensed homicidal – xenocidal – pheromones upon the air.

  Another cadet – freckled Hake Bjortson – totally lost his composure. Howling a fervent execrating battle cry, Bjortson broke from the pack of cadets and sprinted towards the alien prisoner. His fingers clawed at the air, his eyes bulged, spittle sprayed from his lips. No command could halt him. Several of the other cadets moved forward inadvertently, as if sucked in Bjortson’s wake.
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  A medic plucked out a needle-pistol and fired with splendid accuracy at Bjortson’s muscle-corded neck. A moment later the frenzied cadet pitched forward and skidded prostrate for many metres, his strengthened fingernails scratching sparks from the plates of the deck before he came to rest. His musculature still spasmed for a while. Briefly the slann mage chief goggled in Bjortson’s direction with a bitter doomed melancholy.

  “Cadets!” bellowed the medic. “Double out of here to your cells, and pray!”

  AT THE END of the first hour of prayer the sergeant who had branded Lexandro – Sergeant Zed Juron – summoned him and Valence and Tundrish and another cadet, Omar Akbar, the number that would make a squad of Scouts, in fact. They proceeded at the double along plasteel-ribbed corridors in the direction of the foundries; and after descending several levels by drop-shaft arrived presently at a fan-vaulted vestibule where power swords, power axes, and other weapons hung.

  A stained-glass gallery overhung a cavernous environment-chamber where vine-tangled trees surrounded a meadow of viridian herbage under a sun-globe. Smoke snaked up from a campfire amidst crudely plastered and thatched huts. A dozen men and women clad in furs were polishing axes and broadswords monotonously, mindlessly.

  Obscene daemonic tattoos decorated the features of these corrupted primitives.

  “You will enter,” ordered Sergeant Juron, “and cleanse this chamber.” He gestured to lockers where rudimentary padded armour hung – not quite a Scout’s attire.

  As Lexandro donned a cuirass and strapped greaves to his shanks, he wondered whether their soon-to-be opponents were genuinely members of some feral tribe transported here for purposes such as this? Or were they mind-slaved prisoners, captured during the suppression of some planetary revolt, and sentenced to serve the Imperium usefully by their deaths? Or were they zombie bodies, specially bred and conditioned, and thus essentially unhuman?

  No doubt his fellow cadets were wondering similarly. The sergeant did not say; nor would anyone presume to ask, uninvited.

  THE TRIBESPEOPLE, IF such they were, fought savagely, automatically, instinctively, screaming incomprehensible blasphemies. They outnumbered the cadets by three to one. However, an ordinary axe was no match for a humming power axe which could slice bronze like flesh; nor was a broadsword remotely the equal of a power sword. Nor indeed were many unmodified humans nearly as robust as the cadets had long since become.

  Presently the four cadets stood surveying severed limbs, cloven torsos, decapitated heads, guts, and blood.

  The hormonal tensions had flowed out of Lexandro, earthed through his power sword into the bodies. Calm balmed him: a sense of peace which he knew would encompass him on a return from a devout, loyal, and sensible killing in the future.

  With their armour somewhat stained, they returned to discard it and restore their weapons. In the gallery Sergeant Juron stood by with a neuro-disruptor till they had cleaned and cradled those blades. Then he spoke to the four.

  “You have been foxes in a chicken coop.” They stared at his red face blankly. “You have been feral dogs in a cage of rats.” They nodded now. “You are no doubt successfully purged – as will your fellows soon be. But are you not ashamed of your lack of control and grace? You, Cadet d’Arquebus, what do you say?”

  “Sir, this cadet believes he has indeed experienced the grace of the Venerable Dorn, Sir.”

  The sergeant scrutinised him.

  “During your first combat mission, Cadet, you will learn the ineffable difference; as I learned it during mine. Which was on your own world, in the action against the ork pirates.”

  Never before had a brother confided such a personal detail. Lexandro flushed again, this time with a peculiar joy, and amazement. “But Sir, that was three hundred years ago!” This slab of a man still looked to be in his full prime.

  The sergeant smiled. “And a Marine can live longer than most ordinary men, as you should know. Indeed it is his duty on the one hand to die – yet on the other hand to live as long as he can, compatible with Chapter honour. For we are not rabid dogs, of which the galaxy is full enough, but sacred knights whose deeds the Emperor overwatches… Besides, our journeys through warp space stretch time like an unpredictable elastic. So yes, I was there throughout the desert march and at the storming of the hive now called the Skull.”

  The reminiscent smile vanished.

  “Unfortunately, the Cadet spoke to the Sergeant without being invited. Two minutes in the nerve-glove, d’Arquebus. All cadets to witness punishment. Thou shalt learn self-control.”

  Lexandro stiffened to full attention. Rogal Dorn’s grace would be with him. The “feral dog” would be redeemed for its lack of inner discipline. Drugs and hypnosis were all very well as tools for coping with the hormonal storms caused by the superhuman organs his body housed; but what he must attain swiftly was a superhuman mind which could command the body to fight on irrespective of injury. Then he would be a real Marine, and one day – he assured himself – an officer of Marines, maybe even (could he dream so sublimely?) a commander.

  So he welcomed his punishment.

  How far he had come from the silks and blissful hedonic acid and joyspike of the upper habs of Trazior.

  AND SO, SOME hours later in the Punitor Chapel, Lexandro was immersed in the ocean of pain once more – as were two other cadets, who had offended subsequent to their own detoxification through bloodshed. Those two screamed, but they were well able to walk to the refectory afterwards, and eat. Lexandro did not scream, though – not outwardly. He endured, moltenly striving to remake himself.

  Neither of those two others had been Hake Bjortson. Indeed his fellows were not to see that cadet again. Bjortson’s instability had proved too extreme, so the group was informed before servitors distributed their victuals. He had been honourably mind-wiped; his body would be dedicated to research.

  After the prayer that ended their silent repast that evening, the cadets were filing out of the refectory to return to their barren cells.

  “Beware,” Biff Tundrish said to a glowing Lexandro. “You’re in danger of becoming a flagellant.”

  “And what might that be?” Lexandro asked loftily.

  “Someone who scourges himself excessively.”

  “Ah! So you’ve been educating yourself again.”

  Tundrish ignored this jibe. “Such a person is psychotic. He would not become an officer of our Chapter. I’ve seen how you dote on officers.”

  “You’re trying to befuddle me. Undermine me.” Lexandro laughed lightly. “Is not much of the universe psychotic, so we hear?”

  “And so we must be sane. You came from luxury, d’Arquebus. I came from the very opposite. I do not romanticise agony as a virtue, nor imagine that it makes me superior. Be warned.”

  “How kind of you to concern yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t want a flagellant on my flank in combat.” Lexandro stared at the spider-tattoo which was leering at him, and experienced a flash of deja vu – a piercing memory of Tundrish in the undercity, unmasking him.

  “Rogal Dorn has blessed you with wisdom,” Lexandro said airily, knowing full well that Tundrish spent much more time in the scriptories than praying in cell or chapel.

  “He has been with me too, brother,” Tundrish replied simply. “He isn’t your private patron saint. He manifests himself to each of us uniquely.”

  “To me too,” said Yeremi Valence, sidling close as they proceeded along the grey, gargoyle-ventilated corridor past rows of sconces bearing scrimshaws mounted in silver reliquaries. “Why, he was with me when I brought order to that chamber of savages.” Was there a tremor in Valence’s voice?

  “In the same way that you hoped to impose order on the undercity?” asked Tundrish sarcastically.

  “No,” replied Valence. “The savages were doing nothing to disturb us. If they were truly savages. That I should simply destroy them arbitrarily… and, yes, willingly, enthralled by slaughter.” Again, his voice faltered. “His Will
is strange.”

  “Look, Valence,” said Tundrish, apparently sympathetic now. “Death is the Boss – of this galaxy, of a million human-settled worlds. You obey the Boss. That way, Humanity survives as a whole against terrible odds. Far worse than death is disorder, the tool of Chaos.”

  Valence shuddered at the mention of Chaos. In his sermons the Chaplain of Cadets had only hinted at the existence of terrible ultimate anti-gods which stalked the warp, seeking to spill through into the cosmos to corrupt precious reality – the antithesis of all that the Emperor stood for; forces which Marines should pray that they never encountered. Never. Ever.

  The Chaplain had only delivered veiled hints as to the nature of this “Chaos”, which special psychic personnel were equipped to expunge: the Inquisition… Librarians… the legendary Grey Knights… Sufficient unto the hour was the ordinary evil thereof. Lexandro was instantly alert.

  “Have you by any chance stumbled upon classified data during your delvings in the scriptory?” he drawled. “That surely verges on the crime of heresy.”

  Did Tundrish seem discomfited? Did he seek to change the subject?

  “A Marine is worth ten ordinary soldiers, Valence,” Tundrish quickly continued. “He is worth a hundred workaday mortals. That was the meaning of our lesson today. Let us be worthy of that lesson, and not flinch at deaths which are needful to protect a thousand billion other mortals. For we may seem to be many here, but we are few. There are a million human worlds, untold millions of alien planets – and only a million Marines amongst all our Chapters. As I have learned in the scriptory, studying the Index Astartes, as a Marine should.”