02/23/2020 Snippet, ANSTEORRA RANGERS

Fascinating thing, the North American Monsoon. Some, hah, earthy language in the text, but I feel that it’s justified. If anything, it’s probably bowdlerized. Remember: this will be on Patreon this month for subscribers.

“The rain, it is getting shitty, Captain.” From anybody else, that’d be griping. From Mike’s second in command, that was a bit of a warning.

Mike looked up from ‘dinner.’ He liked a joke as well as the next guy, but this one the cooks kept making was older than dirt and half as tasty. It was also technically cold, but he couldn’t remember the last time offhand that the meals had been actually hot. “We talking regular shitty, Jimmy,” asked Mike, “or for-real shitty?”

“For-real, Captain. You can see the traces of mud in it, and it gives off a stink like from the bottom of the river.”

Mike looked over at his lieutenant. Jimmy Monterrey Nemo looked like a southern bandito come north because of one too many local feuds, pretty much because that’s exactly what he was. But he liked to fight and knew how to lead; and while Jimmy happily fought dirty he always fought clean. The Imperium was always ready to find a combat slot for someone like that. Plus, Jimmy didn’t like to bother him with unimportant things.

They got along pretty well, in fact. Jimmy was second-in-command when Mike got rotated in, he’d likely be the S-I-C when Mike rotated out, and that seemed just fine with the man. Considering how hard it was for Mike to get to go along on actual cavalry patrols, Jimmy just might be the cleverer one of the two, at that.

River dirt in the rain was bad news, though. You got that these days, it meant a mud storm was coming through, and had already taken a big bite out of the Old Muddy river bed. It was time to find some damned cover.