Ichor

Major General (Part I)

Year 9 - Major General
Planet Primae

° ° ° °

"Part of your duties as a Chaos Soldier is to mentor a civilian. These civilians are highly interested in enlisting. Usually, this program is done with colonels, but I wanted to hold off with you until you became a major," General Morgan Rook explained to the chosen second.

Percy was quite confused about this. He didn't see any reason to postpone the mentorship. In fact, his two years as a colonel were pretty easy. So he asked, "Why, General?"

"That's for me to know, Major Ichor," was Morgan's only response.

"Yes, General," Percy relented, knowing he wouldn't get any further with this line of questioning.

"Major, why did you join the Chaos Army?" Morgan questioned. There was sincere interest to hear the answer, but a clear one wasn't expected.

"That's classified, General."

"Fine. Why do you try so hard?"

Percy was genuinely confused and said as much. "I don't catch your meaning, General."

"Look, people come here, they put in the work, they keep their heads down, they follow orders, they do good. But you do more. You have improved the entire system and it seems like you don't even realize the impact you've had."

Percy didn't know how to respond, so he just didn't. He remained silent until Morgan spoke again.

"What motivates you to improve the army?"

"I'm not trying to improve the army, General."

"I don't believe that, Major." But even as that was said, Morgan knew there would be a deeper explanation from the second.

"General, if the army improves, that's great. But my only goal through all of it was to help people, to protect those who can't stand up for themselves. I care about those I work with, probably more than I should. That's all."

After a moment of contemplation, Morgan said, "That may be all, Major, but that is not insignificant."

Once again, Percy remained silent as he had nothing to say on that claim.

"Major, I will put the files of who you can mentor on your desk by this evening. Because you're a higher rank, you get priority, but the colonels have already chosen their mentees, so if you want someone already reserved, just put in the transfer request. You should know, by the way, that your success is partially determined by their success."

"Understood, General. Will that be all?"

"For now. You're dismissed."

The two saluted each other as required and went separate ways to get work done. The higher your rank in the army, the more paperwork you had. Fun.

° ° ° °

Percy got to his desk after dinner to find a neat stack of files in black folders. After flipping through the first ten, he quickly became bored. They were all the same: good families, good grades, interested in "helping others", experienced in their desired career. What mentorship did these kids even need? And why was the army targeting kids like this? They weren't the ones who needed help or guidance or whatever.

But he went through all of the files even though he wanted to simply choose at random from the sea of papercut children. Also, why were these files on paper? Primae was very technologically advanced, even if the army still used melee weapons. All of this could've been sent digitally. But maybe that was the point. Having it on paper forced the mentors to actually read the file instead of putting it through a selection algorithm.