"Major General Leki!"
The adjutant jogged beside Leki, his hurried footsteps uneven. He clutched a Dataslate in his hands, and a fine sheen of sweat beaded his forehead.
Struggling to keep up, he pleaded, "Wouldn't it be better to stay safely aboard the warship in orbit? You could just let me run these errands! If anything happened to you, none of the senior officers in our 48th Regiment could shoulder that responsibility!"
Leki did not stop walking. He did not even turn his head.
He strode down a ruined street blackened by shellfire, his boots crunching over scattered rubble and spent casings.
The hem of his dark gray general's coat swung around his knees with each step. A silver Colchis Imperialis Militia insignia was pinned to his collar.
A simply designed Bolt Pistol hung at his waist, its holster unfastened so he could draw it at any moment.
"Ridiculous!" Leki's voice snapped back, hard as a stone striking a steel plate.
He still did not turn around, merely tilting his head to glance at the adjutant trailing him from the corner of his eye.
"I fought in the Rangdan Xenocides! The fighting was thousands of times fiercer than this, and I still survived! Back in my day, a cult like this wouldn't even have rated a mention!"
Nearly a hundred years had passed, and Leki had gone from a young, green recruit stepping onto the battlefield for the first time to a middle-aged general with streaks of white threading his black hair.
Several scars of varying depths now marked his face, and fine wrinkles had crept into the corners of his eyes.
Thanks to life-extension surgery and the Imperium's advanced medical technology, Leki, now over a hundred years old, had not looked older at all. Instead, he looked steadier and