Vex Chronicles 2: Outbreak

Behind enemy lines

Ede Prime, maglev station 76

Sergeant Jubelius groaned as he unpacked his lunch. Wheat blocks... He had worked on the farms before joining the Planetary Defense Forces. He knew enough to see that this stuff was the old icky one. The color was darker, the paste finer. And then there was the hint of a chemical taste mixed with too much sugar. All just efforts to hide the taste of stale, sometimes even moldy old wheat.

"Ugh... You really have nothing I can trade this for?" Jubelius put all his annoyance into his voice.

Trooper Herdeus shook his head and grinned. "Nope, sergeant. At least I got a fresh block. Look, you can even seen some grains. Myam myam."

Jubelius rolled his eyes. At least those useless train inspections would end. Squad Jubelius would no longer be the training ground for the conscripts. The sergeant had no problem to prepare sprout troopers for the meat grinder. But what he disliked was the additional work this caused...

"The last inspection of 76," Jubelius sighed relieved. "And by the Emperor, I'll desert if they try to move me onto another maglev station!"

"You want to get out there into the mud? Dig trenched and wait for your death?" Herdeus shook his head.

"That is not how a good PDF trooper should talk. If the Examinatii knew about this..." Jubelius words were like ice. But Herdeus knew the sergeant's dry human well.

"Oh yeah." Herdeus looked at their black uniformed company. "And good thing that the Examinatii don't know about you gambling for rations. Or about when you told us how utterly useless this whole 'check maglev shit' is."

"I didn't called it 'shit'," Jubelius corrected his subordinate. "I called it 'wheat rotting shit'."

"And it is good that I wasn't listening," Examinata Faradia replied.

Faradia had been assigned to Jubelius' squad when Ede's high command had made the "3 conscripts, 1 PDF" squad an official thing. Examinata Faradia was a woman in her late 20th. Spunky thing and thankfully far from a "by the book" type. Her face was maybe a bit more plain than the women Jubelius usually preferred. And she wasn't the first superior officer that had fallen to his charm. But the sergeant knew enough about women to know that she took her commissar's duties serious. And Jubelius knew enough to not risk burning himself with her.

As an extension of the police enforcers, examinatii were trained in disciplinary measures. And with the bad morale in the conscript squads, they had been chosen as stand-ins for commissars. Reports of revolt rampaging through all levels of the spire were getting worse by the day. Someone had to keep up morale. And Faradia was one of those someones.

But examinata Faradia was okay. And she had quickly learned that – although unconventional – Jubelius had his team under control. He wasn't a yes-man, he had a cold cynic humor and often gave off the impression of a sluggard. But he knew how to keep his men in line. And that included the now attached three squads of conscripts.

"Hagartus," Jubelius addressed the most prominent sergeant of the conscripts. "Your men ready for our last maglev check?"

The man was only half a head larger than Jubelius. But he was nearly twice as wide. And some of the others had begun to call him the "gentle gorilla." Something Hagartus didn't really minded. Especially since a lot of his figure was actually muscles. He was a worker's man and a good choice to lead the conscripts.

"As ready as I can be, sergeant." Hagartus' pronunciation made clear that he insisted on his rank.

Jubelius twitched his shoulders. "We're friends here, equals. Please don't bring rank into this."