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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Ralts_Bloodthorne on 2024-08-08 07:21:18+00:00.

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Awards may be declined to be worn by a service member at the service member’s own discretion. However, the service member may wear no awards earned during the posting during which the service member earned that award. Only certification and school badges may be warn in such cases. - Confederate Armed Services Telkan Award Presentation, TMR 3329

Gunnery Sergeant Zolpad of the Telkan Marine Corps was considered by many a Marine’s Marine.

Sixty-three years in service just to start. Combat awards fighting against those who pushed against the Confederacy’s borders in some of the most backwater and worst postings the Confederate Armed Services had to offer.

He even had a five year tour of the Clownface Interdiction Station Line.

He had fought everywhere. Jungles, forest, blasted moonscapes, outer space, shipboard, tundra, ice worlds, everywhere and anywhere.

His career packet showed nothing but valor and dedicated service. He was known as a Marine who volunteered to go where he was needed. A Marine with ice in his veins.

He had even faced down Terran Phasic Shades and lived to tell the tale.

There was, however, a little part of his record.

It was in the beginning.

Two years after he graduated from Advanced Individual Training as a Marine Power Armor Combat Specialist. Three months after earning his Advanced Rifleman Badge. A month after he rotated to a new unit. His second unit in as many years.

It had been a prime posting.

First Telkan Marine Division.

That’s where the records ended.

They picked up eleven years later.

Drop pod certification. Heavy weapons certification. Telkan Marine Force Recon qualification. EVA Combat Badge with four awards. Zero-G combat badge with 8 awards. Stellar Boarding Operations: 22 awards. Urban Combat Badge 32 awards.

No date. No place. No award letters. Just the same code after each school, qualification, certification, or assignment.

Over and over.

The first thing that was able to be referenced by a Division Commander or lower was his assignment to the 1145th Marine Rifle Battalion stationed out past the Treana’ad Hive Zone.

His record picked up with awards for valor. This time with certification and award letters easy to look up and read.

A sharp eyed commander would have noted that after the redacted section, where he was reduced in rank from Staff Sergeant to Lance Corporal, Marine Zolpad seemed to draw some of the most brutal, out of the way, hardship postings known to the Confederate Armed Services.

He had even fought a six month campaign against a rogue Dark Elf noble.

But the award for valor.

Only awards for time in service, attending schools (Professional NCO Development Ribbon: 5 awards), and certifications.

A few officers had noted his date of entry. That he had entered on Telkan-2.

Then the dates of the redaction.

Starting two months prior to the Telkan Civil War.

Ending six months after the war was officially over.

Gunny Zolpad reappeared signing in at Empty Carton Station, Treana’ad Hive Zone as a mere Lance Corporal.

Even his medical records were redacted.

They showed the medical treatment he had received. They showed the injury in clinical terms but never how the injury was received.

Never where the injury was received. Never where it was treated. Never any unit or physician attached.

There were no physician notes. No nurse’s annotations.

Just cold, clinical data.

A few of his officers had noted that.

Noted that he wore no ribbons, no awards, from those years.

One sharp eyed Sergeant Major had noted that Gunny Zolpad, then Sergeant Zolpad, did not even wear his service chevrons for those years.

A few officers and senior non-commissioned officers had pressured Marine Zolpad about those awards.

He merely went to attention, staring above the questioners head, staying completely silent.

General Trucker and others like him would have understood.

He didn’t know them well enough to talk about those years.

But Gunny Zolpad was a Marine’s Marine.

He had a thousand stories. From getting caught with a neo-raccoon in his ruck while climbing a cell tower to the time he had held onto the landing strut of an enemy striker even as he had gutted it with his chainsword, realizing too late he was damn near past the limit of the Icarus System.

Just his silent presence could stiffen the men’s backs.

Which is why he stood nearest to the back deck so that when it dropped down into the loading ramp he was first off the boat, the first targeted, and the first boot on the ground.

The heavy dropship shuddered as it banked hard and everyone’s stomach lurched up into their throat as the retros roared, pasting the landing with heavy radiation from the thrusters.

“We don’t know where we are. We don’t know what we’re going to do. We barely know who we are,” Gunny Zolpad called out over the linkage when the dropship’s engines reached a screaming pitch. “We only know who the enemy is but we don’t know how many of them there are.”

“ALL WE KNOW IS WE MUST KILL!” his Telkan Marines roared back.

The back deck slammed down and Gunny Zolpad stepped out into the thick mist that had been present in a blast driven crater the last time he had boarded one of the enemy ships.

Again, the blast had driven past the ship’s armor, leaving the edges of the crater curled up and out. There were multiple levels, debris and tangled machinery and structural members everywhere. Electricity snarled and arced, mist poured out of several breached corridors, pooling into the bottom of the crater as the enemy ship’s artificial gravity did its work.

Captain Nakwel quickly portioned out his Telkan Marines with the Terrans that had come along.

Gunny Zolpad had not blinked when the CO assigned him to work with two massive Terrans in black armor that was covered in spikes and twisting, burning runes that hurt the eyes to look at for too long.

“Brother Zolpad,” one rumbled over his speakers and the comlink, nodding. “You are known to us.”

The other just stared, then nodded slowly.

Two of the other Telkan ran up. Both riflemen clad in the gray spiked Helreginn Mark VI Type IX Anti-Mar-gite Full Contact Powered Combat Personal Protective Equipment Systems, AKA Hell Suits.

“You know these guys, Gunny?” PFC Gel.prek asked.

“I know of them,” Gunny Zolpad said. He flashed an emoji for silence. “Keep it zipped.”

“Objective loaded. Recon in force,” one of the Terrans said.

Gunny Zolpad and the two others followed as the big black armored Terrans clanked toward a breach in the crater wall that exposed a corridor.

“Fingers on the triggers, boys. Keep your smart-trigger set, make sure your friendly profiles are loaded,” Zolpad reminded everyone.

The other Telkan just flashed icons nodding.

The two Terrans were silent.

The corridor was wide enough the Terrans could advance shoulder to shoulder, tall enough that they did not have to duck under the loops of wiring and the broken pipes hanging from the ceiling. The mist swirled around the five boarders, but high technology in the visors and sensors of the power armor all five wore cleared it away and presented a picture as clear as if they were in vacuum.

The BATTACNET icon flashed, then went red with a lightning bolt through it.

“Tactical net offline. Enemy contact imminent,” one of the Terrans growled over the short range comlink. Both lifted their rifles, easily as long as Zolpad was tall, to their shoulder pauldrons, the barrel pointing down slightly.

Gunny Zolpad tensed slightly. “Fingers on the triggers,” he restated, checking his smartlink and his reflex trigger.

The group advanced down the corridor, heading toward an intersection.

“Enemy contact,” one of the Terrans said, their voice over the comlink heavily synthesized. The Terran stepped out into the intersection, leveling the rifle as he turned to face to the left. The other faced to the right.

Rounds whipped down the corridor, hitting the heavy armor of the Terrans and exploding in shower of sparks as lasers, plasma rounds, and crystalline rounds hit and were shrugged by thick armor. The two Terrans started shooting back. Short, controlled bursts even as they took a single step forward, parting the way for the three Telkan.

“Advance under fire, brothers,” one of the Terrans said.

The rate and intensity of fire was slacking as Gunny Zolpad ran through the gap, between the massive forms of the Terran. His battlescreen snarled as rounds impacted it from both sides, but he made it across the corridor. The two other Telkan with him sprinted across, Private Nelmaken stumbling slightly as an armored hand interposed itself between him and an oncoming round that exploded against the thick armored gauntlet, doing no damage to it.

Zolpad saw it, somehow, he wasn’t sure how. It was a flicker, a twisting slightly of the air, or maybe his perceptions of the air.

“CONTACT!” he bellowed out, lifting his magac rifle and firing. Both privates glanced at him like he was crazy until the rounds hit something in midair, exploding and snapping, some rounds bouncing off to explode again…

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