Jeannissa
Content warning:
mention of suicide.
"I hate to give her up for adoption, I wish there was a way, Gramps."
"If she goes in there with the knowledge of her parents, it will be unfair to all the others, and they will make her life hell..."
"Are you at least sending her to a decent Scholam?"
"I am sending her to Springfield, upon Terra, where I graduated, and where those of your relatives who became Navy Officers, Commissars, Sororitas, Tempestus went..."
"That's horrible! I barely escaped that place with my life!"
"We all just barely did, that's the only way I know it's fair. She is not getting a favor, she is getting the opportunity to be evaluated, impartially.
"How impartially?"
"Only the Dean, the seniormost Drill-Abbot in the place, will know."
"Is he trustworthy?"
"She, and she is."
"How much do you hate me, Michael?"
"No, I don't hate you, not at all..."
"But you make me responsible for keeping one of your secrets..."
"No one but a senior officer of the Officio Praefectus as you would know the need for secrecy, and the necessity to keep any candidates' pedigree. It's thanks to you I have this job."
He pointed at the ornate sash across his chest, the 'second sash' of the Commandant of the Schola Progenium, a deceptively high position, answering only to the highest levels of the Departmento Munitorum, the Administratum, and The Fabricator-General of Mars. "If I can't trust you with it, I'll quit, and do it myself...""Are you out of your mind? Drop from Commandant to Drill-Abbott on Terra? You won't even have the excuse of going off planet..."
"Everyone who knows me knows I'd prefer eating my gun to doing more politics..."
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