Tarragon stands to attention at the business end of her CO's desk. There's a worn patch of carpet, right where she is; she wonders how much she's personally done to put it there.
"Allow me," her CO says. "Sir, no excuse, sir. I was hungover, sir. No excuse, sir. Do I have that right?"
"Sir," Tarragon says.
Her CO pushes her chair back, puts one boot up on the desk, crosses the other ankle over it, and looks at Tarragon with a glint in her eye that Tarragon doesn't recall seeing before.
"This is your second fuckup this month, Trooper," she says. "Thanks to you, a dangerous insurgent is not in custody or otherwise neutralised. Thanks to you, he's still on the loose. No excuse, am I right?"
"Sir," Tarragon says.
"Don't fucking play with me," her CO says. "You're better than that. You're smarter than that. Any halfway competent commanding officer could only look at this fucking record for so long without concluding you're sabotaging your ops on purpose." She pauses. "And even I'm all out of ways to pretend I can't see it."
Tarragon swallows, and stares at the wall behind her.
"Do you know what they do to collaborators, Trooper?"
"Sir."
"Same thing they do to deserters," her CO drawls. "But they have to catch those, first."
Tarragon lets her eyes slowly, slowly drop until their gazes meet.
"I'm going to order you to report to the brig," her CO says, and Tarragon wonders at the gleam in her eye, who's seen it, how often, what exactly is going on in her head. "You definitely shouldn't compound your offenses by going to the motor pool instead. Definitely don't go AWOL with a walker. That'd make things so much worse."
Tarragon licks her lip. "Sir..." she says.
"Fuck outta here," her CO says, and Tarragon gives her probably the crispest salute she ever gave, and gets the fuck out.
