SARGE

Sarge took an ionic shower. He let the warm jets dance on his body. He was so soul-shatteringly weary, a husk of his former self. He cupped the fluid over his face and hair and sighed deeply.

"F*ck!" he spluttered. "God damn them all at Project SWORD!"

The recent shift to Martial Law weighed heavilly on him. Thousands of Casuals and Rejects had been rounded up and brutally interned by SWORD High Command in the vast ruins of stadia left over from the Second Mill. In the Third Mill's tectonic hell there was no room for sport anymore, except the netting of these poor bastards fleeing the advances of trundling Scramble battalions like mad rats.

Only the Warrior Nuns held their ground. Sarge loved those tough mothers. They'd watched the state-run terror from their holy citadels until they could watch no more. The old armouries were unshackled and the nuke pikes and plasma halberds tested on steel scarecrows normally used for scaring rooks. Now the Nuns, entrenched in their sacred domes, alone kept SWORD at bay through sheer bloody determination, spreading the message that SWORD will soon cease to sound.

One nun had emerged to lead the resistance. Clutching her beloved rosary, She rose from her silence like a raging dragon, inspiring her proud sisters to fight the vile injustice of SWORD oppression. The nun's name was Sister Florence Flowers, but in homage to the legendary Boudica rousting the romans in the First Mill, she was known simply as Beads.

God how Sarge would love to help Beads to victory and waste legions of SWORD scum along the way. He got dressed in the puke green garb of convicts. He was under house arrest for punching SWORD Supremo Jansen in the jaw. The electronic tag grated against his ankle and he rubbed his grizzled face. Visions of clashing nitro-falchions sparking on the battlefield filled his head and he vowed to rid himself of his tag and make his way to assist Beads in her war with Project SWORD.