Chapter 39: Temperance

What followed next was the most gruelling experience of my life so far.

To train under Cadian standards, even very leniently enforced ones, was absolute hell. Kitted out in flak armour, belts, bags and a lasgun slung over our shoulders, we were put through the tests under close to realistic conditions as possible.

We had to run, jump, swim, and exercise in full gear, with all the weight and cumbersome equipment we'd have as soldiers on the battlefield. We were put through an unrelenting barrage of trials, each one far more demanding then the relatively easy tests we had in the first week. Looking back, I saw now how easy that stuff really was. Compared to this, it was easy as hell.

Now, we were forced to perform at an exacting standard, tired, battered, and beaten. Alexei was there with us the whole time, training alongside us in the mud and dirt and sand. He came out of each test ragged but otherwise no worse for wear. Each squad had to train alongside their sergeant, learning how to work together. The sergeant would learn how to lead their soldiers, the soldiers would learn how to follow their sergeant. We got to experience first hand just a fraction, a mere fraction, of the demanding rigours that Cadian's were put through every day back home, and it was absolutely hell.

Whatever thoughts I had about my standards of health and fitness were dashed and destroyed. Was I better then the squad? Mostly, yes. Was I able to keep up with the Cadians? Not at all.

As the day rolled to a close I was utterly destroyed, bruised and wearied, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep the moment I could back in dorms. The ninth day came around, and we were put through it all over again.

This was when the true standards began to reveal themselves. This is when we were really being tested, and we'd find out what we were really capable of. What had come before wasn't really a test, it was a formality, an introduction, a warmup. This was the test, the real test.

And I was not handling it well.

Each day brought with it new hardships, both mental and physical, that the others in my squad endured with quiet strength, barring Desmond. It made sense. They'd lived hard and dreary lives, fighting to survive, struggling to get by, always tired, always hungry, always forced to get by with what little they have and make do with what they could. They were built to withstand the brutal standards we were now being put through. Of course, physically, I had the edge on all but two of them, even if I wasn't as skilled at them, my overall standards were higher. But the burden of dealing with such hardships was getting to me. The thought of spending day after day exhausted and sore was not one I looked forward to. Every new day brought with it new torments, and I was not appreciating it in the slightest.

The effort we had to put in, the effort that I had to put in, to stay in it was hard work. Harder then anything I'd done before. I knew I couldn't give in, that the mental effort was more demanding then the physical. Desmond had made it very plain he was not cut out for this and suffered at every opportunity. He got given the worst tasks, the worst jobs, was singled out and picked on and bullied relentlessly. In training, in the barracks, and everywhere in between, he was put through hell, and never seemed to got the message to toughen up and bear it. I knew that if I showed brief weakness, a temporary failure, I would be forgiven, but if I hit my breaking point, wherever that may be, my reputation, as small and shaky as it may be, would come crumbling down.

I was still the newcomer to my squad, the odd one out, the one who had everything to prove and everything to lose. Acceptance was earned in small pieces. What few friends I had in the group didn't make it easier to get to the rest of them, and what inroads I made with them took time and effort it was hard to find under such harsh demands. Their approval, their respect, their camaraderie, was won bit by bit, piece by piece. I knew I could never stop trying to befriend them, that my survival depended on their support, and such support was not easily won. Prassus and Egeers were my closest friends, the ones who I could always rely on. Evet and Ratfinch respected me, the first for being a thoughtful and respectful individual, the second because I saved his life. But Clauda, Oleev, Burtrus, Temond, Desmond?

They were harder to get to.

Desmond I had no feelings for one way or another, whatever help he could offer wouldn't be much to begin with. But the others, the others were the other half of the squad, who had valuable skills and attitudes that would be of great support if needed. Plus, it was hard to live in the same room as several people who are ambivalent towards you at best.

But under the strain of training, it was hard to find the time and place to win them over. When we weren't training, Alexei had commandeered what little free time we had to lecture us on theory, or to make sure we understand the skills we were taught that day. We got lectures on everything from survival skills to gun discipline to scouting and patrol protocols. When Alexei hadn't the time to lecture us, he gave us tests and books to go over, which he would review later on. He held us to a high standard and expected us to meet it. We had seen glimpses of a different Alexei before, a man who could smile and laugh and joke with his friends, but when he was with us, he was strict and uncompromising, demanding nothing but the best. We knew he wanted us to be as good as we could be, but once the real training started a change seemed to take hold of him. Gone was the robotic discipline of the first week, replaced by a zealous, almost desperate fervour to teach us.

He seemed like he really meant when he said he needed us to be as good as we could be, or we would all die. A part of me wondered how much of this was Alexei's wish to please Quentin, to do his duty to the best of his ability and turn us into soldiers. Another part of me suspected he was doing this out of selfish interests, to make sure there were competent people with him in the field. A tiny part of me suspected it was both.

Either way, the way he acted now made us wish for the robotic man we'd met before.

The days rolled on, and the training continued to wear down on me.

Day ten, day eleven, day twelve.

Every day a part of me cried out for release, to escape, to be free of it all, to give up. I knew that could never happen. The only way out was death, and my Psychic experience had planted the seeds of an uncomfortable thought in my head. If all that was real, then perhaps the afterlife was in some form. And if it was, it would be a big risk to go there in anything but the best shape. There were no merciful gods whose judgement I was awaiting, only the cruel and capricious tides of the Warp and its inhabitants. At best I could hope that death brought a quick dissolution of my soul, and I would disappear into the warp, too small and insignificant to be noticed.

Day thirteen, day fourteen, day fifteen.

We had another clergy service, and I sat through the prayers and songs debating how real it really was. Belief was a real power, but what about disbelief? Would an atheist such as myself be protected if they simply denied the existence of the Warp strong enough? I understood that the Black Templars could endure the perils of demons and the warp with the armour of contempt, by literally conditioning themselves to feel nothing but hate and revulsion for them. The Grey Knights took it even further. The Sisters of Silence had special gifts to help them, and particularly loony people like Fabius Bile, whose mind were so disciplined in their own strange ways, could literally repel demons simply by disregarding their existence hard enough.

Could I do something similar?

I knew demons were real, but then again, I also knew what they really were, perhaps more so then most in the Imperium. But on the other hand, there were people like me out there who still struggled with them…demons did have a power of their own, beyond that which you give them. There was an essence of something behind them that allowed them to exist at all, it wasn't all just in your head, no matter how much it may influence them.

Regardless, I'd likely never find the answer, and hopefully never got the opportunity to either.

Day twenty two, day twenty three, day twenty four.

I was growing stronger. Slowly but surely, I was putting on muscle. I could feel myself growing tougher, if not mentally, then at least physically. Everyone else in the squad was growing, too. Putting on weight, enough to make them look normal skinny, rather than underfed skinny, with muscles of their own. They seemed to hold themselves higher, seemed surer of themselves. They weren't dropping as fast, either. Even Desmond was thinning down, complaining less, and slowly starting to accept he was stuck here like us. He'd learned not to leer so openly, though he still did stare at times, and was even beginning to make jokes which weren't meant with a barrage of insults in reply.

Under the constant pressure to perform, we all started to get along, better and better, day by day.

And little by little, I began not only to tolerate the training, but soon I was starting to earn myself a bit of a name. Nothing amazing, nothing more then noteworthy, really, but my skillset, as unusual as it was, was varied enough that even Lieutenant Quentin had taken notice at times. The other sergeants would scoff and turn their nose up at me, all but Andermark, and Alexei would nod in approval whenever I did something well, but as the weeks went by, I started to become seen as the guy that's 'pretty good', at least by the standards a Cadian would see a total novice in.

Pretty good was pretty damn amazing in my books.

The rest of the squad had some moments to shine as well. Clauda would constantly prove she could outperform just about any other Practican, and even keep up with Cadian's at times. Ratfinch surprised the Cadian's by being able to outrun them, even in full flak armour. Burtrus and I earned ourselves applause from the Cadian's by beating one of their own in a two on one fight, with the defeated Cadian laughing at a battle well fought as Burtrus and I struggled to catch our breaths.

These moments almost made up for the unbearable shit we had to endure every other day. One day, we were forced to do some target practise after being pushed through the UTAC, and were punished for failing to perform after we were exhausted and chilled to the bone. Another day, we had to clean out latrines in the training area because we'd screwed up somehow or other in a timed challenge. Another, we were forced to clean all the practise dummies on the target range because we didn't assemble our lasguns fast enough.

Oh, what hell that was. Weapons assembly and maintenance.

I was quite good at that, a general familiarity with technology made it easier to get my head around then the rest of the squad, but it was still a very precise and fiddly job at times, which Alexei was sure to remind us of every time we screwed up. The amount of lectures we were given on the quality of our weapons was enough to drive one mad. They almost did, in fact.

But still, I grit my teeth and endured it, no matter how much shit was flung my way. I had to. I don't know what I hoped for, but I just knew that giving up would be worse then sticking with it. I had no idea where that sense came from, but it was there, ever present, whenever I felt like giving up, whenever I wavered. A thought of giving in, a fleeting sensation of submitting, was always met with a sudden sense of stern discipline, a spontaneous bout of energy to push through it. Was it merely adrenaline, or was this linked to the mysterious flame that lurked in the depths of my mind?

That was a thought that haunted me more than anything else. It was proof, real, tangible proof, in so far as a sensation in your mind could be, that there was something…else in my mind. I know the Psyker said there was no hint of psychic potential in me, and I believed him. After all, that was something which humans had evolved to be able to do. We weren't supposed to have such powers in the year 2020. So, that ruled out the possibility of me being a latent psyker. That meant whatever that flame was, it had to come from somewhere, or someone, else.

The list of possibilities was small.

The Emperor stood out as the most obvious one, since his own powers manifested in a similar way to the white-gold flame I saw in my vision and could feel in my mind if I really concentrated. What his rationale behind that, who knew? Perhaps he believed I was a saint in waking, or there was some great plan in mind that required me to work. If that was the case, I was going to seriously question his judgement.

Other options included some minor warp deity, the remains of the spirit of an Old One, or something I had no knowledge of.
The last one concerned me the most.

Ultimately, I had long decided it made no matter, not right now. What mattered was making it through the here and now, the immediate training, the concern right here in front of me.

The weeks went by, and it was nearing a month to the day since I arrived. One month in this terrible, wretched hellhole of a universe. And I hadn't even set foot of this ship yet! I could only dread to imagine what lurked out there, waiting for us. As much as I wanted this training to end, I knew it'd only end when we got into a situation far, far worse than this. Something real, something dangerous.

Sergeant Alexei's constant push to be better was firmly ingrained into us. His insistence we learn as much as we could had been taken to heart. The squad had changed, finally beginning to commit themselves to this role we'd been given. We didn't just train to satisfy Alexei or to check something else off the list, no, we trained because we knew we had to. Because our lives depended on it. Everything we did was all about one goal, becoming as good as possible.

Still, Alexei pushed us, Quentin demanded more, and the other Cadian's laughed at us. But we didn't care. We knew what we had to do. Shared misery fostered a spirit of teamwork and cooperation, even among those who at first hated the mere idea. Even Desmond began to work with people, even if it was done so begrudgingly on both ends. Cooperation became the norm, teamwork a given. No one went at anything alone anymore, everyone supported everyone through these hardships. Just as Alexei had said he would do, we began to turn into cogs in the machine, well working pieces in something bigger than us.

As the first month of our four-month voyage came to an end, our squad was recognised as being one of the better Practican squads. A name spoken even outside the platoon as an example to follow, despite our rough beginnings. I felt proud at that. Not at what we were, no, being soldiers still didn't sit right with me, but what we'd done. We'd made an effort, and it had paid off. Even Quentin afforded us a begrudging level of respect. Well done, he'd say, which was good enough for us.

And as our training continued, I began to realise that it was starting to feel…well, not exactly normal, but achievable. The stress began to recede, the exhaustion fade, my body's tolerance grow. I felt I could handle it, and maybe even the next level of what they had in store for us. I might not be a Cadian, and probably never would be that good, but compared to what I was when I got here, well, now I was well and truly on my way to becoming a soldier proper.

With weary recognition, I welcomed the second month of our voyage. Whatever was coming, I looked to it with a sense of anticipation, rather than dread. Whatever it was, I could do it.