PLACEHOLDER, standing order
"He's huge! Not like our placeholder at all..." Esteves said, conversationally.
"I can see that, when someone isn't pinching my glasses, I can see..." Marsha's tone was tart.
"Sorry bout that, Chief Warrant."
"This benighted theatre has a chief warrant?"
"Division!" Marsha interjected, heatedly.
The taller man recoiled, as if struck. "Sorry, Chief Warrant, still getting used to the stripes, myself." His own Master Warrant Officer rank was so fresh it squeaked, like his NCO friends liked to say.
"Well, don't give them ideas, I kinda like these parts." She meant 22nd Imperial Division "Terra" and its headquarters, mostly. Giving them ideas of promoting her upwards, and away from her beloved fusiliers gave her a headache.
"Been around a while, I imagine."
"I own the plate for my regiment." Meaning she was the original senior NCO assigned to it at founding, traditionally gifted the plaque, along with responsability for 'petty cash'. Petty cash for an organization of six thousand people could be a lot, and so most NCOs that senior had accounting training or background, for that reason.
"So do I, but..." He tried to go on. There was a reason he was so new...
"I was there, Master Warrant. I was with HQ Company when we picked up your survivors for medical evac." She had nightmares for weeks, so much blood and other fluids... He'd been there apparently, probably as a private, since he had the triple-skulls now.
"An NCO with HQ Company?"
"HQ Company is where we put our senior medicae, they just picked anyone 'loose' from the mess on their way to your location. If I'd been on duty, Placeholder would have prevented me from going, but I was at liberty, so there I went."
"I thought 'anyone loose' meant mostly the physical types..."
"Thankfully, my medicae knows I know a thing or two about leverage, also, she wanted my access to the backup medical supplies before we went anywhere...
"Oh, you're backup corpseman? Err -woman?"
"Triple-backup corpswoman, yes. That comes with placeholder too."
"I heard some stories..."
"Oh, like?"
"That you're the reason they put placeholder in." He'd heard so many rumors about why they put a regulation called placeholder in place, pun unintended, and most of them mentioned a petite terran woman, almost dainty.
"I can confirm nor deny, Master Warrant."
"Clyde, please call me Clyde, it's clear I got a lot to learn... Can I buy you a drink?"
"I imagine I can be spared for another hour, Clyde. Why don't you lead us off to Braganza?"
Blyde gulped. "Braganza? That NCO-only club? That's a myth."
"You have so much to learn, baby-warrant..." Marsha decided to stop calling him Clyde, he was too precious, too innocent for even that name. "Anyways, baby-warrant, you're going to hail us a taxi..."
"Why me?" He objected, reflexively.
"Because they have a much better chance to see a baby-warrant the size of a gorilla than my petite self, at half the size of an overgrown rabbit!"
"Oh." And he did what he was told. Inside the taxi, the directives were labyrinthine, until three-quarters of the way through, the cab driver said: "Mercy, if you wanted to go to Braganza, all you had to do was ask."
"I do want to go to Braganza, and there's a 25% tip if you get us there in a quarter-hour."
To this day, Clyde cannot remember what happened on the way to Braganza, but they made it in 14 minutes.
"That was a ride..." Marsha's collarbone had taken a hit from the cab's doorhandle, and smarted powerfully.
Clyde's coat had gotten tangled over his head, and he'd needed help just getting out from under it. "Yes, yes it was." They were in a nondescript alley, in one corner, fetid water pooling before flowing down into the sewers, in another two scrawny, mangy cats were engaged in a staring contest. Marsha headed to the middle of the brick wall, and knocked, politely, on a brick about mid-height.
"Password." A small windowed opening had cleared up about eye-height to Clyde.
"That's chief password, to you." Marsha shifted her shoulder, using a shoulderboard to glint light at the opening.
"Ah, that's a new one on me. You may enter." The door shifted, the bricks sliding smoothly, the masonry exquisite.
The door-ogryn held out a hand to clyde, who dropped two coins.
"Enjoy your stay, we were never here."
"We were never here, and nothing happens at Braganza that you can talk about elsewhere."
"I reckon you have a story to tell, chief. A story about..."
"The story of what happened at 22nd division HQ, when the blood pact hit us on Gherappan."
"Ok, so this was at rest?"
"Yeah. And they shelled our HQ building, our plaque-owner was caught by a falling piece of ceiling, and died."
"Marsh, I don't think you should be telling this story..." Sniper-Warrant Sty Hume interjected.
"Oh, stuff you, it's not that secret..." Marsha looked belligerant.
"No, I mean, let me tell the story, and instead, just nitpick the important bits... I was there too..."
"And I should let you tell this story because?"
"Besides the fact that in Braganza, the story is always better told by the person who's drunk the most? No reason.". He wasn't visibly drunk, but he'd clearly had a few. "And you're still dry, baby-warrant is slipping..."
"I'll give you this point."
Clyde, visibly chastised, returned with two drinks, and Sty continued the story:
"We were on Gherappan, in the 22nd imperial division hq building. Master-Sargeant Durlon bought it in front of a pair of newly minted Sargeants, me and Marsh here."
"I'm following."
"She picked up his keys, telling me: 'come on, we gotta get some weapons'. I wanted to say something, but shut up, and let her lead me to the armory."
"We went there, picked up two grenade launchers, a sniper long-las, twelve backup magazines each, two regular las-rifles each, a pair of backup pistols, and locked it up."
"How'd she carry even half that?"
"She didn't have to carry them far, we made two caches in a nearby collapsed corridor's two ends, I laid out with the sniper in the far corner, she hugged her grenade launcher in the other." He wet his tongue with his drink, then continued.
"The blood pact came down the stairs in two platoons and headed for Marsh's side immediately."
"I waited for my shot, maybe too long... But when I took my shot, I aimed for the back of the head of the leader of the back platoon. My long-las hotshot went through his chest, one of his mates', then the leader of the back platoon's head."
"Wow, three with one shot?"
"It's the only ones I got. And if you ever make Marsh angry, you're on your own, son. That distracted them long enough for her to switch to her grenade launchers, three pairs of shots later, there was only blood pact paste in that corridor. We got reinforced two minutes later."
"That's it?"
"Then she compounded her crime, she wrote a report that said she shouldn't have needed to do that, but had no choice, the division's pay safe had been exposed, and she didn't want the blood pact to steal her pay. My report only said: 'Do not make Marsh mad, ever', oh, and how did they get in? We had patrols out! Turned out they had magicked up vox interference, our patrols had seen them, tried to call it in, but couldn't. And it was all part of their plans to get someone in close, maybe steal documents, maybe take hostages. HQ has lots of valued targets. Anyways, at that point, the senior warrant or nco of any force larger than a company has responsability for securing lodgings, code books, valuables, and the like. Which made Marsha divisional postmistress, too.""Yeah, yeah, I can't read them, but if you can't either, I'm not letting you look at it crosswise, Sty."
"Hey Marsh, you know I'm not the one behind those rumors that you pinch the hot romantic letters from home to people, don't you?"
"I do know that, but I'm still not letting you look at crypted stuff, Sty, that'd be just stupid."
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