There are also a few hundred of the ChapterвЂ™s serfs to attend to other duties, such as routine cleaning and maintenance, serving the Space M arines during meal times and other such honored tasks. Almost all the shipвЂ™s systems are run and monitored by servitors, half-human cyborgs who are wired into the vesselвЂ™s weapons, engines and communications apparatus. A Space M arine is far too valuable to waste on manning a gun or watching a surveyor screen, and so only the officers aboard a vessel are likely to be Space M arines, as well as the few Techmarines who oversee the engines and perform other mechanical duties. Unlike the vessels of the Imperial Navy, a Space marine ship has a relatively small crew. Inevitably, the wrangling over interpretation of a shipвЂ™s вЂњprimary roleвЂќ leads to some Chapters possessing rather more versatile fleets than the Imperial Navy is entirely comfortable with. M arines would never present a threat to the Imperial navy proper. Only the smallest of vessels would be permitted to act exclusively as gunships, with the larger strike cruisers and battlebarges remaining predominately as aids to invasion, ensuring the Space Instead, a compromise was reached which limited the Space M arines to vessels whose primary role was that of transport, delivery and suppression designed to facilitate planetary assault. Corax, among others, protested strongly that in fact had the Space M arines been better equipped with fleets of their own, his own legion might not have been so horrendously decimated when trapp ed on Istvaan V by Horus and the newly revealed traitors. One of the most extreme options on offer, it was ventured by some that the Space M arines should be denied any vessels at all, barring intra-system transports for movement between homeworlds and attendant moons.

For an Imperium still reeling from internecine Hersey that almost tore it apart, the division of power was a vitally important consideration. A DEPT U S A S T A R T ES DOMINIONS OF THE SPACE MARINES, GUARDIANS OF MANKIND When Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines, set about the long and arduous task of preparing the Codex Astartes, the role of space vessels amongst the Adeptus Astartes proved a particular sticking point.

Space marine strike cruiser