Wow, you mentor someone and push them in the direction of success in your footsteps, and then they just up and leave for new adventures. What if Luke had gone through all the training with Yoda, only to decide to become an Hedge Fund Manager instead?

I dropped this hint quite awhile ago in the comic and decided to follow up on it. Juni has been a “TAMMS Clerk” for awhile (TAMMS: “The Army Maintenance Management System”) and she has decided to switch course and go into a new field instead. I don’t meet a lot of senior TAMMS clerk NCOs so I assume that there’s not much career path for upward mobility in that field. I’ve never been a TAMMS clerk and the handful I knew I’ve lost contact with so I can’t ask.

Chief Ben McCoby hasn’t been seen for awhile, and usually he’s seen in his mechanic coveralls. But for Juni’s promotion he put on a proper uniform. “Master Ben McCoby” is the only Warrant Officer in the Battalion– a Warrant Officer is someone who is highly, highly specialized in one particular field to the exclusion of others. Warrant Officers, frequently called “Chiefs”, have leadership authority only in that particular specialty but don’t have the authority to give orders to soldiers in any other field. He is a Maintenance Chief and runs the shop, unfettered by the burdens of having to perform “command” jobs for the sake of promotions and assignments– he just focuses on being the best Maintenance Chief.

It sounds like a pretty cushy deal, but if you have bad command leadership you also don’t really have the authority or rank to correct wrongs or challenge them (unless they’re interfering in your particular field of endeavor, of course). Still, smart commanders listen to their Chiefs because of the amount of institutional knowledge that person has.

Meanwhile, Juni is going to switch career fields and become an Intelligence Analyst, and she’ll be good at it. She could tell you more, but then she’d have to kill you.