Sargent Sarah McClintock

The transport is a claustrophobes nightmare, no windows, a steel frame pinning each occupant to their seats, as though such a mechanism would save the passengers from harm should the metal box be shot down or punctured in space.

Sarah is the only person on the transport, not that she wanted to speak to anyone right now anyway. She never had much love for small talk.

15 years in the corp, and 7 of them spent in a command position, it’s at this point most in her shoes step down one of two paths, either they get hooked on booze or Naproleve… or alternatively they turn to stone, no feelings, no brothers in arms, just the mission, orders, regulation.

Sarah had always been satisfied with her choice. Love is saved for shore leave, for furlough, for her.

The transport comes to a halt, the first physical sensation throughout the entire trip, a small moment of momentum that pulls Sarah against the steel frame holding her in place.

“We’ve arrived” says a voice in her ear, confirming what she already knew. Sarah hits a chunky orange button on the side of her seat and the mechanism gives, clicking out of place and allowing her to rise to her feet before pulling the headphones that connected her to the cockpit off of her head.

It’s only now that she hears the sounds of space, the humming of the transports engines, the faint siren of the docking procedures and finally the squeaking whine of hydraulics, the doors of the transport forcing themselves open.

Foreign light spills in between the ever expanding gap, creating an opening big enough to step through, into the hanger.

The USS Warden; a Conestoga class frigate, a Frankenstein’s monster of design, once upon a time these ships served a singular purpose as a carrier, it excelled in rapid deployment of Cheyannes and other vehicles but over time, it got retrofitted again and again, now it serves as a light **** ship that is also responsible for controlling portions of space all by its lonesome.

Warden in particular rests in orbit around LV-114 a pioneer world on the ass end of nowhere, the whole star system has a population of 5 billion, thanks almost entirely to the Wey-Yu shipping colonists from the core worlds out to these “Shake and Bake” colonies of theirs, apparently some pencil pusher in some office complex decided that there’s something worth money in this system and so here the Warden sits, doing a whole lot of nothing.

However despite the odds apparently some action took place some time ago, at least enough to lead to the **** of a field Sargent among the company stationed out here.

What’s strange though is that instead of promoting one of the grunts already on the ship, the lieutenant sent a requisition order for a replacement soldier, and it so happens that the soldier chosen was Sarah.

She steps down a small ramp and down onto the steel floor of the hanger, arrayed along the side of a APC are men and women, the grunts of the USCM, 12 in total. They wear crew uniforms, not the armor that the Colonial Marines are famed for.

Standing not far from them is a woman, dressed similarly to the soldiers however upon her head rests the cap of a USCM lieutenant. And standing beside her is a synthetic, one of Wey-Yu design by Sarah’s reckoning though what model evades her.

“Marines, this is Sargent McClintock, she’ll be my mouth out in the field, you listen to her like you’d listen to me.”

“So not at all then, Kelly?” Asks one of the marines with a lazy grin as he leans back against the ACP.

Sarah cannot count the amount of violations the man had just committed, speaking without being spoken to, referring to a superior officer by their first name, flagrantly disrespecting said superior officer.

What’s more, the Lieutenant makes no attempt to discipline the grunt, no reprimand, no penalty.