You give a slight grunt as you toss the offal to the side, sparse tribute for any scavengers once you’re done here. Personally, your eyes tended to glaze over during the Lieutenant’s briefings on the impact this had all had on the Imperial economy. House such and such disgraced, the skyrocket in prices for both raw resources and unskilled free labour, untold factories and merchants beggared or impoverished and so on. At least your trusted Corporal Crane had paid attention and was able to explain to you, without too many big words, just how much the creation of this ‘League of Dis’ had tugged the Savis’ tail. Even with the mines retaken, back then production had plummeted to a halt. It was only now, the better part of a year later, that suitably compliant slaves from other worlds had been transferred or purchased that Dis’ mineral exports had returned to a fraction of their original output. Still, the Savis Empire was a big beast and while no one was using the word ‘hiccup’ to describe this strain on their economy you also don’t think it’s anywhere near breaking their back and will eventually smooth itself out.

You lean back, wiping your brow to remove the sheen of sweat and only managing to make your forehead as bloody as your hands. Frankly you don’t know the first thing about the worth of a credit beyond what odds it’ll buy you, never mind ‘macroeconomics’ or whatever it was Crane was calling it. The same cannot be said, however, for the Savis military. Those part of the briefings you most definitely stayed awake for and it was certainly mixed news on that front. Over the past six or seven months following the Legion’s first bloody noses being wiped after their initial attempts to swiftly crush the rebels dug into the jungle regions, a substantial and still growing portion of the mighty Imperial armed forces have found themselves quagmire in a gruelling campaign of guerrilla warfare against the rebel forces entrenched in the dense tropical zones around the planet’s equator. The League of Dis has some plucky fighters amongst them you’ll admit, but their surprising success against the conventional Savis forces would never have been possible if not for your training and dissemination through their ranks imparting upon an impressive aptitude for jungle warfare.

You allow yourself a smug grin as you lay the strips of good meat out, wrapped and ready to later dry out for bush tack. According to what little leaked Savis intelligence you’ve garnered from your briefings with Lieutenant Boy, one running theory among Imperial High Command is that many of the ringleaders of this rebellion may in fact be disgraced ex-Legionnaires from the Cradler Auxiliaries. This is all well and good for you, because if that remained as their adopted explanation for the rebel’s achievements then your pay bonus for not leaking evidence of outside involvement by your employer (whoever it may be) is all but guaranteed.

[2/4]