Thought it might be time we heard from JKB
Let me know what you think:
*****
A self-professed female. In the 222nd.
Damn Vance. Or Valance. Or whatever it was. Some girly name for a girl. Not like tough, masculine JKB, that's for sure, JKB thought with a snort.
JKB sighed and swigged back far more rotgut than was good for her. Or anyone. Even that arrogant tosser, Sigmund.
"Oooh, look at me! I'm a tank commander in my pretty pink tank! Please. I got more balls than all the tankers put together" she muttered to herself in her tent.
Emmy..empty. She tossed the bottle and fished around in her kit bag for another.
Leaning down, the toe bumped against her chest. She smiled and kissed it for good luck. Psyker Toe. That's gotta be some lucky charm. Finally she found the alcohol, it's stark, clear and dangerous looking liquid and turpentine smell reminding her of why she was drinking alone in her tent and her mood became morose again.
Feth 'em all. Valence. Lucky damn b-<buurp>-broad. How'd she manage it, eh?
JKB got here the hard way.
She remembered she was fourteen and out getting some exercise by trying to gather the noxious spiker berries that unlike the rest of the plant that tries to kill you, can be quite tasty when the poison was stewed out of them. After managing to outmanouvre a Mantrap and outwit a Mamorph she took a Flying Mamba in the eye with her dagger. It was a good shot. She'd have prefer to shoot it, rifles were second nature in her hands, but the noise might attrack the Mamorph again.
Feth this. Risking death for the Glory of the Imperium and Honour of Catachan was one thing. Risking death for a handfull of berries sucked Grox danglies.
"Here, here!" JKB toasted herself in her reverie.
After returning home and sitting with her mother to eat, Jayne professed that she was over it, it was well time to join the Guard.
"Robbie was thirteen when he joined up. And Brant was the same age as me. And Brom left last week."
"All right. But you know the recruitment for the female regiments doesn't come around as often. We've not had one here for years. You'll need to go over to the star port. I heard there was a female regiment recruiting there. You'll have to hurry though, it's a three day hike."
Jayne wasn't overly excited. She was a Catachan. It was what she was born and bred to do. Fight for the Emperor and most of all survive under any natural condition any planet couldn't possibly throw at a human and still live. And even some of the veterans considered that sissy.
So she packed some rations, a change of clothes and every weapon she could carry and left before first light the next day.
She avoided killing local flora and fauna except when she absolutely had to, lest the killing attracted attention and leave a trail where other things wanting to hunt her in turn might track her.
Half way through the second day she smelt an odd smell, one that didn't even belong in the jungles of Catachan. It was sort of a like the worst BO you could possibly imagine, distilled, condencesed so thick it was almost down to nothing, locked in a tiny vial, then released into a very small locked room. The grunting and shuffling she heard was like no native of Catachan. She carefully and silently climbed a nearby tree, making sure to avoid the poisonous spines that peppered its trunk, killed the adder in the gnoll of the tree and stowed her kit. Moving stealthily along the branch, she scouted out a sturdy looking branch on the next tree and leapt, silent as a cat, and landing as softly, the tree barely wavering with the sudden new weight. She moved like this until she could see what made the sound. It was perhaps the ugliest thing she had ever seen, except for Brant's boogers that he used to always show her. It did, however, look similar.
A giant, hulking, smelly, snot-green monstrosity, far taller and broader than any man of Catachan but at least much smaller than a Mamorph and nothing compared to a Devil.
Born and bred to fight for the Emperor, she knew this must be an Ork. One of the hated xeno to be expunged from the galaxy. Now seemed like a good a time as any to start.
Being most unfortunately of the gender that doesn't have quite the brute strength of other certain genders, Jayne thought of how to take this creature on. She was a damn good shot, impressive even to the locals. She doubted though that las would go through that thick hide. There was nothing for it but to try the softest targets.
Jayne crouched against the trunk of a tree, perched on a tree branch and took careful aim, blending into the tree and slowing her breathing. Patience, patience, patience, wait for the perfect shot.
FPPTTZZT!
Dead on, her lasrifle shot pierced the creature's hideous, red piggy little eyes. The ork bellowed and turned to see where the shot had come from, squinting through its last remaining eye. Jayne was no longer there, already sighting up the xeno from another angle. She was surprised and disturbed that the loss of an eyes neither seemed to slow it nor hinder it. She took out the other eye with pinpoint accuracy. The creature howled and began dashing madly through the jungle.
It would die very quickly like that but this was Jayne's kill and she wasn't letting the damn thing get away. Leaping from tree to tree, she managed to overtake the blundering beast and with a shot born more of luck than skill, managed to shoot straight down its enraged, open mouth, finally blowing off enough brian to drop the damn thing.
Please with herself, she severed the teeth out of the thing's skull for proof, found her kit, and continued on to the star port.
Three days was the average time for that trip. Even with her orkish encounter, Jayne made it in two and a half.
She reported the ork, providing the teeth as proof and made her way to the recruiting officer. Just in time to be told tha the all female 221st Catachan regiment had embared half an hour ago.
Jayne was not amused.
She was quite cheerfully told that the next female recruitment would begin in six months.
Jayne grew less amused.
After pleasing, threatening and begging for some way to join the Guard, Jayne did what any teenager would do and sulked outside the office. People came and went, the hours ticked past, a new sign was put up.
"Now recruiting for the 222nd Catachan!"
....stupid male regiments. Why does it matter? We're Catachans? Why can't they have just have mixed regiments? Not like anyone would no....would notice. Noone would notice.
JKB smiled to herself. "Noone'd notice" She took another swig of the clear rotgut, and belched loudly, wiping the corrosive alcohol from her moustache in case it ate away the glue.
A shaved devil dog and a lot of duck tape later, and Jayne was back at the recruitment office.
"By the Throne, lad! You are scrawny!"
"Fourteen, sir! Old enough for the Catachan Guard, sir!"
"Hmmm....I guess. Name, boy?"
"Jayne, sir?"
"Jayne? You a girl?"
"No, sir! Of course not, sir? See the moustache and lack of girly chest, sir? Umm..Jayne is short...for Kate - I mean Bob."
"..JayneKateBob it is, son. Welcome to the Guard, shuttle leaves in four hours."
"Welcome to the Guard" JKB saluted herself and drained the rest of the bottle before falling into a stupor.
