Order of Battle
“Your job,” Tom said, walking through the door of their cabin, “Will be to keep our order of battle up to date at all times.”
“Our what?” Illoia asked. She had been searching the newsy’s for articles about her husband and quickly flicked to a new screen.
“Our order of battle,” he said. “It should be at the top of our shared docs.
Illoia went to her docs and, sure enough, “Order of battle.”
“But what is it?” she asked, opening it up. It was in a strange program, old fashioned. And triple coded closed, too.
“It is our order… it is our list of soldiers, and their place in the ranks.”
“All I see is a bunch of titles,” she said, having gotten through the security.
“That is because you haven’t ordered them yet. Click on ‘input’ then ‘default’.”
She did and the names, all twenty of so of them, suddenly organized themselves into two columns, with a head to each column, both of which was filled with the letters XXX instead of a name, and another XXX hovering between and above both of them with lines going to both columns, and several other lines and empty slots all over the place.
“There, you see?” He asked. “In the end we will have nine squads, each led by a Mid Ranker, and each company, which is made up of three squads, headed by a Top Ranker. And a headquarters ‘squad’ with ten men. A hundred rankers in total, usually.
The computer, seeing we didn’t have many men, has formed only two squads, each led by a Mid Ranker… altho we have only recruited one Mid Ranker, you remember, that one with two unit citations? And the Top Ranker. Their names don’t show up yet, as I can’t officially recruit them, they have to be ‘assigned’ So those slots just show up with just XXX, as a mandatory position. All of the other positions just show blank, as they would be if we had taken casualties.”
“What would happen to the Mid Ranker slot? And the Top Ranker slot?”
“I would have to fill them with a ranker, or field promote a Midddy to be Top Ranker.”
“Field promote? I thought that you had to serve your term in order to get a promotion? Or get ‘jumped’, like you did. Is this another way to get jumped?”
“Oh, no. This is just field rank. The minute we had ‘real’ Middys or Tops the rank would just evaporate… along with the pay,” he said, chuckling. “Not the back pay, luckily.”
“Oh. So, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go through and find the special talents, and how good they are at various things, and balance the squads out. And balance special jobs… like your secretary. Don’t put your secretary and my XO in the same squad, for example.”
“You have an XO?”
“Not yet, but when I get one. And balance families.”
“Oh, for housing?”
“Yes.”
“What else do I need to take into account?”
“Everything. Just read through their files and try to balance them. Only God can get an OOB right, so the rest of us just read and guess.”
“Ummm, Ok…”
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Von
Article 17 is a military science fiction story with aliens and romance. It is set in a future reminiscent of Napoleon era Britain. The war was going very poorly until the military installed a dictator. This story follows one of the dictator’s great men: Cladin Tomirosh, Leader, and thrice decorated hero.