"Sergeant Ro... Was this some kind of a joke? By the Emperor, she had decided on these men
before she had come out here, and now she had already met two of them out of a crowd of thousands. What was next; would the man that bumped into her be one of hers? Would she find two Cadian troopers here, playing cards and drinking? Perhaps this was the Emperor's way of telling her she had made a good choice, perhaps not.
"A pleasure to meet you, now, if you'll excuse me for a second..." The captain had noticed something as she spoke to the brawny sergeant. There, a small, diminutive trooper had been scurrying away from a campfire like a rat caught out in the open. Having excused herself, she would stomp across the rockrete, each footfall deliberately emphasised so soldiers knew to stay out of her way. Just as the soldier finished gawking at whatever it was they were gawking at and made to run away once more, her arm would shoot out, catching the soldier by their collar- quite literally so in this case.
"Good evening private. What's got you in such a furtive hurry." Despite being phrased like a question, it didn't sound like one.
"R-restroom!" the little soldier squeaked in a woman's voice. Her oversized helmet slid back, revealing a head of poufy brown hair. "I've got the shits something fierce, comm'sar!"
"Commissar?" The woman looked down at her uniform. She supposed, in this light, to someone not used to seeing the uniforms of Mordia, she could be mistaken for a commissar. "I'm hardly a commissar, and if you were dashing off like that you spent an awful long time staring at that Krieger there." She turned to look at Zhatka, then back down to the small soldier captured by her hand. "Name and regiment please, private."
The scamp didn't skip a beat. "Mordecai Tharn!" she answered quickly. "O-of Cadia, marm!" She saluted quickly and just a bit sloppily, her fingers making an audible 'thump' as they impacted with her forehead.
"Mordecai Tharn? How interesting, I had placed you into my company command squad. What a coincidence that I would be finding you out here." Seriously, this was getting a little ridiculous... Or, was it? Mordecai Tharn was a Cadian trooper, and despite the fact that this weasel of a soldier was dressed in Cadian fatigues, her scrawniness and the fact that she lacked those distinctive purple eyes...
"Tell me Mordecai, how did you find the battle then?"
"Not to my liking, marm?" answered the little trooper with a shaky, nervous grin. "Emprah be praised and what-not, but them orks was mighty ornery, if I do say so, marm!"
"Indeed, they were... But remind me, what was your regiment again? I can quite well tell you're a Cadian." She smiled- but this wasn't a friendly smile, oh no. This was the Mordian pattern soulless officer smile, guaranteed to thoroughly creep out any soldier unused to it, and quite a few that were, and creep the little trooper out it did. Her grin twisted about until she looked like she'd passed gas.
"Marm, i-if I may request the permission?" she stammered. "I've got a need what to deposit these bowel contents of mine, else I'll be defenestrating 'em out the back of me pants, marm."
"Then consider it your punishment for failing to answer a superior officer's direct line of inquiry twice. I had been content to go away with your regiment, private, but now I'd quite like to know your trooper ID, squad number and platoon." The smile continued once she had finished, as if it had been that way all along.
There was an uncomfortable pause. The little soldier twisted about in place, looking around. She swallowed. Then she asked quite sincerely...
"How do I check all that, again?" The words were of honest confusion. 'Mordecai' cleared her throat. "I-I
really just was given a gun and told to shoot or die, ya ken?
That there convinced her that whoever she was dealing with, they were not Mordecai Tharn. No Cadian trooper was just 'given a gun and told to shoot or die,'
no Cadian trooper she had ever met used 'ken' as slang, and
no Cadian trooper would have ever been caught dead not knowing their own trooper ID. "Private. Unless you tell me who you actually are right now, I'm going to drag you to a muitorum office, shit in your pants or not, and get them to tell me who you are so I know if I have the authority to get you executed, is that understood?"
The pale girl looked even
paler as the threat was made. She swallowed audibly, and sweat rolled down her forehead, teeth beginning to clatter against each other. If she wasn't afraid before (and she was), she was most definitely afraid at that moment. "Charlene!
Charlene!" she said quickly. "Charlene-McDinny-Cadian-one-hundred-seventh-something-I-don't-
know!" She shook quite visibly. She did everything short of sobbing. "Don't have me executed! I just want to go
home!"
The Mordian's eyes visibly boggled. There was absolutely no doubt that the woman was telling the truth, but... Looking upwards for a brief moment, she would mutter 'are you fucking with me,' to the sky, before releasing her grip on the soldier's collar. "Private Charlene, report to the drill grounds tomorrow at 1200 hours sharp, sober, and with your uniform in good condition. It's a mess." She crossed her arms behind her back. "And welcome to my command squad. I expect to have to make a soldier out of you."
The dazed little trooper stumbled as she was released. She shakily raised her hand up in a terrorized, half-assed salute, then started scampering off. "Private," called the captain after the retreating soldier, who stiffened to a halt. The tiny soldier listened with a look of dread plastered on her face, somehow managing to make milk look full of colour in comparison. "Did I say you were dismissed at any point during that conversation?" There was a brief, if ominous pause. "I expect you to know your trooper ID and old regiment by tomorrow." An even longer pause.
"Dismissed."
Charlene didn't wait a second longer.
With that matter handled, the Mordian would turn back to where the squad was. She was going to have to whip this squad into shape if what she was seeing was actually true. Lying, cowardly Cadians, feral worlders... By the bloody Emperor. Nonetheless, she would come into the light of the fire and look down towards a set of cards sitting on an overturned crate. She'd give one of the soldiers around it- a lanky, dark-skinned man with what appeared to be a blackened mop placed on his head a death stare, before squatting down and taking the cards into her gloved hands.
"So. What are we playing here?"
Member
datadogie
Silent Showers
Noctis
LightningLynx89
ClocktowerEchos
Metadude
ButtsnBalls