Chapter 422: Oh Hey, Who Left a Black Needle on My Desk
Chaplain, Librarian, Apothecary, practically every properly functioning Astartes Chapter kept these three roles filled, the Chapter's core trio of specialists.
The Apothecary was the Chapter's physician, a walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge and a mobile laboratory in one. Turning an ordinary human into an Astartes required nineteen plus three separate surgical procedures, all performed by the Chapter's Apothecaries. Beyond that, they handled ongoing medical research and drug synthesis. Some Astartes carried genetic flaws, and the Apothecary was responsible for developing specialized treatments to mitigate them.
And don't mistake the Apothecary for a purely administrative role. Their combat capability was extraordinary in its own right. On especially brutal battlefields, when Astartes fell in the field, it fell to the Apothecary to recover the gene-seed of the fallen. Gene-seed was the essential material for creating a new Astartes; if the other implant procedures were the hardware of the process, gene-seed was the software. Without it, none of the hardware meant anything.
Gene-seed also carried genetic memory. If an Astartes had been a master swordsman, a new recruit implanted with his gene-seed would find swordwork coming naturally to him too. Culturally, this was regarded as a form of legacy. When an Astartes fell in battle, his soul returned to the Golden Throne, but the gene-seed he left behind lived on in a new recruit, carrying his duty forward into the next fight.
Given all that, it wasn't hard to see just how vital an Apothecary's role really was.
Apothecary Desai's quarters held several large medical synthesis machines. He wore white power armour fitted extensively with medical augmentation gear and was focused entirely on compounding a batch of medicine when Kian appeared at his door and watched him work.
Without turning around, Desai said, "Count, that green compound you supplied is genuinely remarkable. As long as the patient isn't already dead, it can heal nearly any wound. But the instant death occurs, even the moment breath stops, the compound loses all effect instantly, no trace of it detectable in the body afterward, as though it simply vanishes."
He finished the batch he was working on and turned to face Kian.
"That compound isn't a small thing, Count. It feels almost like something operating on rules beyond ordinary science. You really do seem to hold onto quite a few extraordinary secrets."
Kian smiled. "Can't help it. His Majesty just happens to favor me quite a bit."
Desai thought it over. "Count, is there any way to mass-produce this compound? If it could be produced at scale, the implications for humanity as a whole would be enormous."
Kian shook his head. "It's a bit like His Majesty's own will. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't, and there's not much I can do to control it either way."
Desai let out a sigh. "That was greedy of me to ask, I suppose. It's simply that compound this precious, a single injection healing even our brothers' worst wounds, could keep so many of them from ending up crippled."
Something sharp glinted in Kian's eyes.
"My lord, sure, we only have a limited supply of the green compound, but that doesn't mean we can't get infinite mileage out of it. Think about it, gene-seed's basically an organ, right? Take an Astartes, give him a shot, then just keep cutting him open and yanking the gene-seed out. Grow one, harvest it, grow another, harvest that too. Endless supply of gene-seed from then on."
Desai's eyes went wide. Could you actually do that? Then, thinking it through, he shook his head.
"No, that's not it. Our numbers aren't limited by gene-seed. They're limited by the Imperium itself."
Astartes were unstoppable on the battlefield, capable of crushing nearly any human enemy outright. Producing one required enormous resources, sure, but across a million human worlds, that resource cost was nothing at all. If the Imperium truly wanted to, it could churn out billions, tens of billions of Astartes without breaking a sweat.
And yet, even now, total Astartes numbers sat only in the millions. The reason wasn't material, it was fear. Fear that the mortal-run Imperium held for its own super-soldiers rebelling against it. And that fear wasn't unfounded, it was backed by precedent, plenty of it, on a genuinely absurd scale.
The great schism that fractured the Imperium at the height of its power saw nearly half of all Astartes turn against it outright. Some had even developed a full ideology of Astartes supremacy, aiming to rule mortals as their rightful subjects. In the long centuries since, Astartes had staged more than one armed intervention, marching straight to Terra itself, blades drawn, to press their political demands directly against the throat of the High Lords, phrased, of course, as a "gentle suggestion."
It had happened often enough, and dramatically enough, that the Imperium had grown genuinely terrified. Better to worry about Chaos and xenos wiping them out than to hand their own Astartes the means to do it first. So the Imperium clamped down hard, capping every Chapter at exactly a thousand members. Exceed that number, and you were a traitor by definition, ready for war.
Which meant Kian's plan, farming endless gene-seed and pumping out unlimited troops, was never going to happen. What decided Astartes numbers wasn't gene-seed, wasn't the superhuman organs themselves, it was policy, pure and simple. If any Chapter suddenly ballooned from a thousand men to a hundred thousand, the High Lords would probably lose their appetite entirely.
And, worth noting, overseeing Astartes numbers happened to fall under the Inquisition's jurisdiction, and Kian, at this exact moment, was working for an Inquisitor.
Watching Kian's expression shift subtly, Desai's suspicion sharpened. Wait a minute, is this bastard fishing for something?
Kian caught the look immediately and understood exactly what was going through the Apothecary's head. He hurried to clarify.
"You're overthinking this. I'm strictly temp labor here, contract work, no official standing whatsoever. I'm not part of the Inquisition proper. If I actually belonged to an Inquisitor's inner circle, you think I'd be handing something this valuable straight over to you Astartes?"
Regulators and regulated rarely got along, and if there was one group Astartes universally resented, it was probably Inquisitors. There'd been plenty of friction before, an Inquisitor once went to war outright with the Space Wolves, blockading their entire home system with a full fleet. From how tense that standoff got, both sides were reportedly ready to start trading extinction-level weapons before someone finally talked them down. If it had gone any further, the whole galaxy would've had a story to laugh about humanity's own internal civil wars for centuries.
After some back-and-forth, Kian managed to convince Desai he wasn't here on the Inquisition's actual business, and the Apothecary relaxed.
Kian steered the conversation elsewhere, pointing at a black needle-canister sitting on the desk.
"What's that black one for?"
Desai picked it up. "Oh, this? Traded formulas with another Chapter's Apothecary once, and he passed this one along to me."
Kian asked, "What does it do?"
"It burns your life away to unlock your full potential. High odds of outright death using it. If you survive, though, your physical capability and mental fortitude spike dramatically for an extended stretch afterward."
Kian let out a startled gasp. "A superman needle!"
Desai laughed. "Fitting name, honestly. That's exactly it, use this and you become a temporary superhuman. But the cost is severe. You might die instantly. If you don't, you become a superhuman, sure, but your life force keeps burning away rapidly the whole time, and eventually you die anyway. This is a last-resort item, only used when there's genuinely no other option left, a gamble to trade your own life for a fighting chance to save your brothers."
Kian held out his hand. "Give it to me."
Desai pulled it back protectively. "What are you planning? This compound is genuinely dangerous. Inject it and you're all but guaranteed to die."
Kian reached behind himself, pulled out a stack of ten green Regen-Bolts, and set them down on the desk.
"Give it to me."
Desai swallowed hard. Ten green needles, in his eyes, represented ten of his brothers' lives, potentially saved. After a moment of hesitation, he finally handed the black one over.
"Fine. It's yours. But listen carefully, do not inject yourself with it. Whoever uses this dies, without exception. There's no saving them once it's done."
Kian wasn't listening to a word of it. He pulled up the item's description through his own system instead.
Name: Death Roulette.
Description: A compound synthesized from a highly volatile stimulant, containing a substantial lethal component. Upon use, unlocks the user's latent potential, boosting strength, vitality, and endurance.
Effect: Upon use, a single roll is made. 50% chance of instant death. 50% chance of gaining the Death Superman effect.
Death Superman: +1/3 to Strength, Endurance, and Vitality, permanent -1 HP per second decay.
Note: Death Roulette is a gamble against Death itself. Death doesn't mind if you pull the trigger a few extra times. The Death Superman effect stacks.
Reading through it, Kian sucked in a sharp breath. This thing was insane. A single dose boosted three core stats by a third each. At his current strength, one shot of this and he could throw down toe-to-toe against a full Astartes.
And the note made it clear, this wasn't a one-shot deal. He could keep dosing, keep gambling, over and over. This was practically a rules-tier weapon in its own right. Get some ridiculously lucky bastard to survive a hundred rolls in a row, and he'd walk away a literal demigod. He could fly straight to Terra in the flesh and tell the Emperor himself, seated on the Golden Throne, "Hey, old man, go grab me some tea. I'll take it from here on the throne."
Kian's eyes burned with excitement as he stared at Desai.
"You said you know the formula for this, right? Teach it to me?"
Desai shook his head. "What do you want with this? It's useless to you. Too dangerous. Whoever injects it dies."
Kian didn't bother arguing. He simply uncapped the needle and jabbed it straight into his own arm.
"WHAT THE HELL! What are you doing?!"
Desai stared, genuinely horrified. Was this man out of his mind? He'd just injected himself with something that killed its user outright.
Kian bounced on his feet a couple times, grinning.
"Guess I really am blessed. First roll, right through the death check—"
He never finished the sentence. Blood burst from his mouth, and he collapsed to the floor with a strangled cry, body convulsing, blood pouring from every orifice, foam bubbling from his lips, eyes fixed with wide, furious disbelief on the horrified Apothecary.
"Tell... tell my wife... I... I love her... I'm sorry... I'm hun—"
His legs gave one final kick, and he died. Just like that.
Desai clutched his own head, mouth hanging open in a wide, frozen O.
Guilt, helplessness, disbelief, and the unmistakable sense of what the hell did you just do washed over him all at once, a psychological blow deep enough to shake even a genetically-engineered super-soldier to his core.
"Ah... ah... by the Emperor's own throne!!!"
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