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information, he had sent word to Lord Fulgrim of his findings.
    The primarch stood at the entrance to the apothecarion, the halberd-armed Phoenix Guard standing a respectful distance behind the lord of the Emperor’s Children. Though the white-tiled apothecarion was spacious and high-ceilinged, it felt cramped with the primarch here, such was his presence. Fulgrim had come directly from the fighting, still clad in his purple battle plate, the blood still singing in his veins from the fierce melee. The war was entering its third week and there had been no let up in the fighting, each battle pushing the Laer from their various atolls towards the one the primarch had identified as a place of worship.
    ‘This had better be good, Apothecary,’ said Fulgrim. ‘I have a world to win.’
    Fabius nodded and leaned over the cooled corpse, a scalpel blade sliding from his narthecium gauntlet and slicing through the stitching that held the incisions on its chest closed. He pulled the thick flaps of skin and muscle back to reveal its interior, affixing clamps to hold them open. Fabius smiled as he saw the insides of the Laer warrior, again admiring the perfect arrangement of organs that had made it such a fearsome killing machine.
    ‘It is, my lord,’ promised Fabius. ‘I’ve never imagined anything like it, and nor, I suspect, has anyone else for that matter, save the more extreme genetic theorists of Terra.’
    ‘Anything like what?’ demanded Fulgrim. ‘Do not try my patience with riddles, Apothecary.’
    ‘It’s fascinating, my lord, quite fascinating,’ said Fabius, standing between the two Laer corpses. ‘I have performed genetic analyses of both these specimens and have found much that may be of interest.’
    ‘All that interests me about these creatures is how they die,’ said Fulgrim, and Fabius knew that he had better reach his point quickly. The pressures of leading such an intensive campaign personally were demanding, even for a primarch.
    ‘Indeed, my lord, indeed,’ said Fabius, ‘but I believe you may be interested in how these specimens lived. From the researches I have undertaken, it appears that the Laer are not so dissimilar to us in their approaches to perfection.’
    Fabius indicated the opened chest cavities of the Laer warriors and said, ‘Take these two specimens. They are genetically identical in the sense that they are from the same gene-strand, but their internal workings have been modified.’
    ‘Modified?’ asked Fulgrim. ‘For what purpose?’
    ‘To better adapt them for the role they were to fulfil in Laer society, I should imagine,’ replied Fabius. ‘They are quite marvellous specimens, genetically and chemically altered from birth to perfectly fulfil a predetermined role. This one, for example, is clearly a warrior, its central nervous system designed to operate at a much higher level of functionality than the envoys we captured at the outset of the war, and do you see these glands here?’
    Fulgrim leaned close to the corpse, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the alien stench of it. ‘What do they do?’
    ‘These are designed to release a compound onto the Laer’s carapace, which forms a toughened “scab” over areas damaged in combat. In effect, these organs are a biological self-repairing function that can patch up damage within moments of it occurring. We are lucky that Captain Demeter was able to kill it so cleanly with a head shot.’
    ‘Do all the Laer have these organs?’ asked Fulgrim.
    Fabius shook his head, indicating the scrolling data on the hololithic plates. Images of dissected Laer flashed up, and flickering projections of various alien organs rotated in the air above the corpses.
    ‘No, they do not,’ explained Fabius, ‘and that is what makes them so fascinating. Each Laer is altered from birth to perfectly achieve the purpose for which it is designed, be it a warrior, a scout, a diplomat or even an artist. Some of the earliest envoys we apprehended had