“Ma’am? Ma’am? I’m having trouble with my armature, ma’am, I can’t get the boltgun to...”

“WRONG!”

The Sister Superior’s shout boomed like a bolt exploding. All the Novices whipped their heads around to look.

Superior Torres (Order Militant of the Bloody Rose, seconded to the Order Famulous of the Key as Mistress of Novices for Weapons Training at Novitiate Facility Ophelia-VII-Beta-212) was smiling unnervingly down at Novice Ginevra. Poor Ginevra blinked back blankly, paralyzed, with her bolter still dangling like a broken wing from the strength-enhancement armature intended to let 13-year-olds carry the enormous bloody gun. Ginevra might have been crying, just a little, but it was hard to tell in the drizzle that splattered all their faces and made spiky, clumpy messes of the first-year Novices’ hair as they tried to grow it out from their Schola buzzcuts to the more feminine length that was regulation for the Adepta Sororitas.

“Novice Ginevra,” Torres said all too sweetly, “try saying that again.”

“Ummmmmmm....” Ginevra flinched as a particularly good trickle of cold rain ran down the back of her neck. “Um, Ma’am, I’m having trouble getting my boltgun....”

“WRONG!” Torres shouted, then sighed. “Twenty sit-ups in full armor.” She turned to the other stunned Novices. “Can any of you Little Sisters tell me – oh, for Terra’s sake, Ginevra, unhitch your bolter first, it’ll get in your way otherwise.” Torres bent down and, with a subtle twist, effortlessly snapped the gun out of the harness Ginevra had spent ten minutes jamming it halfway into.

The Superior held the weapon above her head. “Can any of you Acne Cadets tell me what this is?”

“Ma’am!” A little brunette with a pinched expression had her gauntleted hand up. Novice Granger. Of course. Torres allowed herself a second sigh and nodded. The girl took one step forward and belted out:

“Ma’am! A Mars-Pattern Godwyn-De'az Boltgun with Novitiate armature attachment, chambered for 0.75 caliber rocket-propelled high-explosive armor-piercing bolts! Ma’am!” The girl smiled smugly and took one step back.

“WRONG!”

All the girls looked shocked. The rain was picking up a little now.

“Granger, you get forty sit-ups, I didn’t get you off-guard like Ginevra.” The increasingly pinched-face girl unhitched her weapon and plopped down next to Ginevra, who stopped her sit-ups just a second to smile at her. It wasn’t exactly a sympathetic smile. Granger just glared back.

“Let’s try this one more time.” Torres held the gun up again. Rain spattered along its metal surfaces and onto her face, but she didn’t blink. “Is there one, just one, of you miserable little Pettanko Commandos who can tell me what this weapon is properly called?”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then:

“It’s a bolter.”

Torres smiled. “Thank you, Novice Luna. ‘It’s a bolter,’ what?”

“Ma’am, it’s a bolter, ma’am.” Luna still sounded dreamy and distant when she said it in the properly military style. She didn’t even seem to notice the rain.

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Torres said. “Girls, I don’t care what kind of crap they drilled into your shaven little skulls at Schola, you’re in the Novitiate now, and you will refer to this by its proper name: bolter. Say it with me!”

“Ma’am, bolter, ma’am!”

“I’m sorry, it must be all this rain pattering down, I couldn’t hear a thing.”

“MA’AM BOLTER MA’AM!”

“Oh, that’s what you call it. Quite right,” Torres said. “And, accordingly, you are not ‘boltgun girls.’ You are ‘bolter....’”

There was a long silence. Torres held the heavy gun aloft one-handed and ostentatiously cupped her other hand to her ear.

“You are ‘bolter....’?”

Silence.

“No one?” The Superior allowed herself her third long sigh of the training session, and it was barely 0530. “All right. Novice Ginevra!”

Ginevra, who had just gasped “twenty” and struggled upright, still gasping, made a horrible choking sound that was possibly the result of her mouth falling open and letting too much rainwater in at once. “Urghk – uh – ma’am?”

“Novice Ginevra,” Torres said, having to shout a little over the ever-harder rain, “what did they call you at Schola, when they learned you were accepted for the Sororitas?”

“Ma’am?”

“What did they call you?” Torres repeated. “You know who I mean. The pretty ones. The ones whose uniforms were always perfect. The ones with the family connections and the cushy Administratum job just waiting for them. The ones who snuck food on fast days, who whispered during chapel, who always lagged behind on field exercises, but never enough to get in trouble. What did they call you?”

Ginevra looked at the ground – rivulets of water running down her forehead – and muttered something inaudible.

“What did they call you?”

“Bolter – bolter bitch. Excuse me, ma’am.”

“No need to apologize, Ginevra. None of you should ever apologize for that.”

“Ma’am, thank you, ma’am.”

“So were they right?”

“Ma’am?”

“Were. They. Right?”

“Ma’am, I don’t understand, ma’am.”

“Well, Ginevra dear, do you have a bolter?”

“Uh – ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

“And are you a bitch?”

“Ma’am!”

“Let me put it this way.” Torres looked around at all the staring Novices. “Are you a pretty little kitty who meows and purrs and slinks away when trouble comes, or are you the dog that stands her ground and barks?”

“I....Ma’am, I guess I’m the dog, ma’am.”

“When the wolf comes down on the Emperor’s fold, are you the cat that hides behind the barn or the bitch that fights it and rips out its throat?”

“The bitch, ma’am,” Ginevra said, and there was something stronger in her voice now, something stiffer in her spine, that showed she finally understood. “I’m the bitch.”

“So what kind of bitch does that make you?” Superior Torres said, so softly all the other Novices stepped closer to hear.

“Ma’am! A bolter bitch! Ma’am!” Ginevra roared above the pouring rain.

Torres smiled and handed the girl her bolter back. Then she turned on her heel and shouted, “NOVICES! WHAT IS YOUR WEAPON?”

“MA’AM, A BOLTER, MA’AM!”

“AND WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?”

“MA’AM, BOLTER BITCHES, MA’AM!”

“Never fething forget it,” Torres said softly. They all heard her anyway. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Okay!” the Superior shouted above the storm, smiling and clapping her hands. “Everybody, 10 kay run, follow me!”

They headed off together into the rain.

That was joke. Have history degree. Know length of Macedonian pike (18-21 feet) and chief strength of Theban Band (gay couples).