The Astartes Legion reconstruction was proceeding in an orderly fashion.
As for progress?
New Folder.JPG.
For the past few days, Bonar had been buried in gene-seed implantation procedures on Astartes candidates.
Training a qualified Space Marine had to start from childhood.
Typically, a Chapter would select children between the ages of eight and fourteen as candidates for Gene-warriors.
After undergoing the nineteen gene-seed implantation procedures passed down from the Emperor of Mankind, an ordinary human being would be transformed into a two-hearted, three-lunged demigod.
Under normal circumstances, one of the biggest bottlenecks on Astartes numbers was the scarcity of a critical organ: the Gene-seed.
Each candidate received a Gene-seed implant — a small organ packed with vital genetic material, and the most important thing any Astartes Chapter possessed.
It carried the combat experience of predecessors, accelerating a new recruit’s development into a qualified warrior.
Once an Astartes reached maturity, he would produce another Gene-seed, achieving a kind of biological reproduction.
But…
It was too slow.
Not everyone had the right genetics or the iron will to survive the lengthy implantation process.
Add in the fact that Astartes spent their lives bleeding on the front lines, and the transmission of Gene-seeds was anything but smooth.
For a rebel Imperium holding only a single desolate Sector, the current method of inheritance was nowhere near enough to build an Astartes Legion to Great Crusade standards.
And that was exactly the experiment Bonar was running.
With the help of two Adeptus Mechanicus Archsages, a simple but fully functional genetics laboratory had been assembled.
“So how do you plan to modify the procedures?” Horus sat on a crate nearby, watching Bonar work.
“One wrong step and everything goes to waste.”
“I performed gene-seed implantation on the Thunder Warriors once.
As long as you don’t touch the core organs, it’s nowhere near as hard as you’d think.”
“Oh?
Walk me through it.”
Bonar picked up a rod and rapped it against the plan pinned to the wall.
All nineteen modification procedures for a Gene-warrior were listed there.
Two large crosses had been drawn over the chart.
The crosses covered the Neuroglottis and the Progenoid Glands.
The Neuroglottis was an organ that helped an Astartes instinctively acquire survival skills, and could extract memories by consuming the flesh and blood of other creatures.
After observing the Blood Angels up close, though, Bonar had noticed that theirs was overdeveloped — and the Blood Angels’ genetic flaw, their craving for blood, clearly had everything to do with it.
He remembered how rushed their father had been when establishing the Astartes Legions.
So many genetic flaws baked in.
Whether the man had left them there intentionally, Bonar still wasn’t sure.
The most absurd part was that with a flaw that glaring, not a single person in the entire Imperium of Man had dared fix it.
Then again, given that every last soul in the Imperium worshipped their father as a god, maybe that was exactly normal.
“I can understand removing the first one,” Horus said.
“But why delete the Gene-seed?
That’s the most important organ there is.”
Bonar clapped his hands together.
“Not convenient for mass production?”
“What does that mean?” Horus didn’t follow.
“I’m going to use the Adeptus Mechanicus’s Clone cultivation technology to mass-produce Gene-seeds.
Cheap, controllable Clones, cranking them out at scale.”
Horus’s face twitched.
He wanted to object, but…
The Gene-seed shortage really was desperate.
Heretic it is, then.
They were already branded rebels anyway.
“So what are those five things you’ve added?”
“These?”
Bonar glanced at the five new procedures he’d written in.
“See for yourself.”
Horus took the Dataslate Bonar tossed over and studied it carefully.
The first was an implanted organ called the Gene Foundation, which would occupy the same location formerly held by the Gene-seed.
Its essence was a gene-class extract derived from the Thunder Warriors, refined through ten thousand years of iteration.
The Thunder Warriors who had once undergone gene modification were now among the most genetically stable superhuman warriors alive, rarely suffering Warp mutations and demonstrating a remarkable ability to overcome genetic conflicts, significantly raising the success rate of modification procedures.
The robust Warp resistance it provided not only made corruption far more difficult to achieve, but also served as the theoretical foundation for the four organs that followed.
The second was called War Bones.
It would replace the original Astartes bone marrow, greatly enhancing blood production while flooding the system with stimulatory hormones during combat.
The third was called the Calming Tree, to be placed in the Astartes’s lumbar region.
By activating and strengthening the stem cells of the kidneys, it granted regenerative abilities akin to a starfish, severed limbs restored, and aging halted entirely.
The fourth was called Human Foundation.
Its purpose was to unlock the emotional brain cells that had been excessively suppressed in Astartes, allowing them to more readily perceive the feelings of ordinary mortals, rather than remaining killing machines that knew nothing but war.
The fifth was called The Few, seated within the cerebellum.
It would teach an Astartes to consider both sides of any situation in a short span of time and approach problems from multiple angles, enabling more comprehensive and rational thinking.
Horus’s brow furrowed deeply.
Those last four clearly bore the traces of the four Chaos Gods.
“Where did those last four come from?”
“Taken apart from my own body.”
“What?
When did you do that?
How did I not know?” Horus stared at him.
Bonar gave him a flat look.
Then he picked up his Boltgun and fired a shot into his own left palm.
BOOM!
Flesh and bone shredded in an instant.
White bone flashed in the open air.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the entire missing palm regrew at a breathtaking speed, dead tissue sloughing away at a visible rate, fresh skin rising beneath it.
In seconds, it was indistinguishable from before.
Horus stood there with his mouth open and nothing to say.
“If there’s nothing else, stop bothering me.
If you’re bored, go find Archsage Dokoson and Antona and ask how their progress is coming along.”
Watching Bonar’s figure moving busily at the workbench, Horus wanted to say something.
The words wouldn’t come.
He felt that Bonar was becoming more and more like their father.
Loving everyone, yet cruel to all — even to himself.
“Get some rest.
Take care of yourself.”
He didn’t know why he said it.
He walked out.
Bonar looked up from his work at Horus’s retreating back, genuinely puzzled.
What had gotten into him?
Horus had been getting increasingly bothersome lately.
Bonar was actually considering whether to track down a few of Horus’s brothers to give the man someone to talk to.
But who was actually close to Horus?
Emmmmm.
The only name that came to mind was Roboute Guilliman.
It was only when something cold touched his hands that Bonar noticed he’d spilled a reagent.
He furrowed his brow.
Let out a quiet sigh.
Start over.