Oops, Who Left the Green Needle on My Desk?

(Thanks to Tian Ce Hong Kai Sheng Ru Ya for the tip and bonus chapter.)

Chaplains, Librarians, and Apothecaries: almost every proper Astartes Chapter needed all three. They were a Chapter's indispensable trio.

Apothecaries were the doctors of the Astartes, walking repositories of medical knowledge and mobile laboratories.

Turning an ordinary person into an Astartes required nineteen plus three surgeries. Chapter Apothecaries performed them.

Beyond that, Apothecaries conducted all kinds of medical research and prepared drugs.

Some Astartes had genetic defects, and Apothecaries had to make special drugs to ease them.

And no one should mistake an Apothecary for a desk worker. They were formidable fighters.

On particularly brutal battlefields, Astartes fell. Apothecaries then had to enter the fighting and recover their Gene-seed.

Gene-seed was essential to creating an Astartes. If the other modifications were a computer's hardware, Gene-seed was its software. Without software, the hardware could not run.

Gene-seed also retained genetic memories.

If an Astartes was a master swordsman, a recruit made with his Gene-seed would take to swordplay naturally.

Culturally, this was considered a form of inheritance, too.

When an Astartes died in battle, his soul returned to the Golden Throne. A new recruit made with his Gene-seed would take up his duty and keep fighting!

That made the importance of an Apothecary's work obvious!

Several large medical synthesis machines stood in Apothecary Desai's room. He wore white Power Armor fitted with an array of medical devices.

He was concentrating on preparing a drug while Li Qinwu watched from the doorway.

Without turning around, Desai said, "Earl, that Green Injection you provided is miraculous. As long as someone isn't dead, it can heal almost any injury!

"But the moment they die, even if they've only just stopped breathing, the drug loses all effect. Not a trace of