Anita Thomsen has never been this close to a senior officer before and she's determined to get a good look, especially when the "brass-hat" is the fabled Leonore Koopman. Perhaps, "The Harpy", the Sergeant-Major, will bawl Anita out for disrupting the neat, marching lines of SpaceMarines filing into their assault-shuttles, but this is a real combat-mission, not a parade, and Commander Koopman is a famous fighting general, not one to obsess about parade-ground drill. Oddly enough, she looks more like a "civ": impractical boots, an energy handgun from an era long gone and a skinsuit that corresponds in colour to no known uniform in the StarCorps. She doesn't even wear a helmet. It's an act, of course. Koopman strikes the cavalier poses, but wouldn't send even one startrooper planetside without having meticulously plotted the eventualities - and the SpaceMarines know it. She remains a mere StarCorps Commander, long after earning promotion to Fleet Prefect. Her superiors deny her the rank she deserves, for her abrasive personality, but the rank and file adore her.