Carmine Petit (pə.ti)

Commissar

"Michael?" "Colonel-Commissar Petit?" "You saved my life, and spent a month at my bedside, you've earned calling me Carmine, if anyone has." Gulp. "Sure Carmine, so you're going back to Terra now?" "Yes, Rajiv needs me to put together the Van Doos the right way. Besides, it's my job, I'm told you only get dual-ranked if you are founding the regiment." "Like the old man?" "The old man?" "General-Commissar Oktar , who founded the Division?" "Oh, you were there for that?" "Kinda, I was junior-commissar to him though, different situation." "Oh, right when I was sent to the Van Doos." "Yeah, he'd apparently scouted all three of us in scholam, but felt I needed more personal finishing." "Finishing?" "Apparently, you and Rajiv he had no worries about, but he felt I would be too indecisive to be a commissar, and set about correcting that about me..." "I didn't see any of that when the Fusiliers came to my rescue, at all, if anything, you were looking quite dashing, at the head of that mob, what was it, your Velites?" "No, it was the grenadiers, detached from their usual commander, because she was minding the artillery sections. I just slotted in at command and got them where they could be useful..." "Does she do that often?" "No, my sister tries very hard to be in two places at once, and almost succeeds." "What, that's 'that' Cynthia?" "You were sent away to the Van Doos, who trained independantly for some time before being reunited with us, or you'd know most of the fusiliers are from our old scholam, a few succeeded, like Cyn and Wanda, the others might not have passed for the elite sections, but The Old Man basically sieved everyone worth keeping, and put them in appropriate jobs in the Fusiliers." "So you have heavy weapons sections, integrated engineering platoons, artillery, but you're mechanized infantry?" "No, we're heavy unmechanized infantry, hold and stay types. The Van Doos are the mechanized to our plodding." "You go into battle with the great enemy, without armor?" Her eyes were shining, Michael had never sounded quite so interesting as today.