by John Ringo
Now they wanted him again. But all that time in staff meant that, compared to many of his fellow lieutenant colonels, he had a relatively low point score. Heck, the only reason that he was a lieutenant colonel was that he’d been retired as his original rank. What that meant was getting a staff slot, maybe XO of a regiment. But command was unlikely. He might work his way back into it and, given the way that they were going to have to ramp up the Army again, he might even get back to being a general. But he suspected there were captains with more of a chance.
He wanted a battalion, he craved a battalion. Battalion command was one of the best slots in the Army. A battalion was just independent enough to be a functional unit on its own. In combat, a battalion commander made real decisions about operational methods. But it was still close enough to the fighting that you could know your troops, their strengths and weaknesses. You could command in a way that you never could as a general or even a brigade commander.
He’d be lucky to get a slot as assistant S-4 (Logistics) in one of the divisions.
“Incoming message from Captain Thomas Cutprice,” his Buckley said.
“Buckley, check the Board. Is that former Colonel Cutprice of the Ten Thousand?” If it was, somebody had seriously fucked up. Cutprice. A captain. Words failed.
“Yes, it is,” the Buckley said, gloomily. “You don’t want to answer. It’s Cutprice. We’re both gonna die if you answer. I can list the ways if you’d like.”
“Just put me through, Buckley,” Simosin said.
“It’s text,” the Buckley intoned. “He’s using a Dell LinSoft Forty-Four which is, in simple terms you might understand, the equivalent of a Model T Ford. You don’t want to get involved with anyone who uses one of those, right? You’re not that stupid, right?”
“Buckley, just show me the message and shut up.”
Cutprice: General Simosin?
Simosin: Colonel, Captain. What can I do for you?
Cutprice: Got a proposition. You got wheels?
Simosin: Yes.
Cutprice: Rod and Gun Club if you’re interested. We’ll be here most of the rest of the night.
Simosin: What’s this about?
Cutprice: What’s every conversation these days about? The Board.
Simosin: I’ll be there.
“Bad, bad, bad idea!”
“Shut up, Buckley.”
* * *
“Thank you for coming, sir,” Cutprice said as Simosin slid into the booth.
Arkady Simosin could not have looked less like the captain. Where Cutprice was tall and light haired, Simosin was short and barrel-built, looking something like a dyspeptic bear.
“Despite the moanings from my Buckley, I’m hoping for good news,” Simosin said.
“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” Cutprice replied. “Here’s the deal, sir. You saw the new regiment go up on the Board?”
“Fourteenth,” Simosin replied, nodding. “But all three of the battalion slots have already got bids against them. Bids that, quite frankly, I cannot top.”
“Yes, sir, I saw that,” Cutprice said. “But I think I’ve got enough points to push you into the running, sir.”
“Go on,” Simosin said, accepting a mug of beer from the silent master sergeant next to the captain.
“Without expending too many of my points, I’ve gotten a tiddly little company built,” Cutprice said. “But a good company doesn’t mean squat if the battalion is fucked up, sir. I’ve looked at the guys bidding on the battalions in the 14th and I’m not impressed. But if we get the right mix in our battalion, others are going to cluster. People will start looking at the 14th who are ignoring it, now.”
“Which will drive up the points for battalion commander,” Simosin pointed out.
“Yes, sir,” Lt. Norris interjected. “But if we get the other company commanders on board, and a staff, we can probably shave points from all of us.”
“Okay, given,” Simosin said. “But why me? I’m not going to be wagged, Captain. I know your reputation as a combat commander. I also know your reputation in general. You’re not going to get a battalion commander that’s going to accede to your every whim. I may be a bit battered, but I’m not going to be bought.”
“You got screwed in Dalesville, sir, and we all know it,” Cutprice replied. “And, just to check, I looked at your battalion command records and you were a damned good battalion commander. Like I said, I’ve looked at the guys bidding on the 14th and I don’t like them. The thing is, sir, we need to stack the deck. We need a really good regimental commander. Preferably one with some points. I can’t carry this all on my shoulders. And we need to get some better people bidding on the other battalion slots. I didn’t pay much attention to good generals during the War. I saw way too many bad ones, though. I figure you probably have a better read on who the good ones are. If we do this right, we can build the whole unit from the ground up.”
“And you playing spider in the web?” Simosin said, finally smiling.
“Just trying to get good people around me, sir,” Cutprice replied. “Wouldn’t you prefer a good unit to a bad one?”
“Frankly, Captain, it would be a novel experience.”
* * *
“Anything else?” Mike said, sighing. It had been another long day of making bricks without straw and after the meeting with Tam he’d be working on paperwork well into the night.
But things were finally starting to come together. In a week, the SS would be shipping. The Legion was on the way along with the Second Division. With those three forces in place, and a bit of luck, they could bottle up the ground attack.
He’d had long conversations with Takao before the latter left for the Gratoola system. Most of the ship-wrights had been evacuated but enough were left to do the minimal necessary upgrade to the current fleet ships gathering in the system. With those minimal upgrade, Takao thought they might be able to manage the mission.
The additional forming units were beginning to take shape. Training camps were being stood up, the cadre for units was ready to be set. Even if they lost Gratoola, there would be another wave of human infantry and armor to face the Hedren. Better armed, hopefully as well better trained. More ships, more troops. It was going to be a war of attrition if he didn’t watch it.
“The recall program,” Tam said. “Not the whole thing, just an interesting idea.”
“Go for it,” Mike said, leaning back. He felt the need to pump some iron. He spat out his dip and started to pack down another instead.
“We only recalled the highest E and O grades,” Tam said. “And then we bumped them down, more or less, three ranks across the board.”
“Oh, that must have been interesting to explain,” Mike said.
“Because the personnel system knew it was going to be… interesting to explain, they tossed a cookie to the ones that seemed really good,” General Wesley added.
“I saw the thing about the point system in the Fleet Strike Times,” Mike said. “Now it makes more sense.”
“The thing is, when I signed off on it, and I take full responsibility, I didn’t realize the monster I’d created,” Wesley said, shrugging. “The bidding and bid rigging has gotten fierce and due to what one of my boffins called ‘games theory’, there’s going to be some really good units and some that really suck. Basically, the good guys are gathering around each other and pushing the marginal ones out.”
“If units end up marginal enough, we just won’t stand them up,” Mike said, frowning more than habitually. “Good regiments are made by good officers.”
“I have a group working on a matrix for that,” Wesley admitted. “If a unit’s total points fall below a certain minimum, they’ll be held for stand-up until the next pass. But.”
“But?”
“We only recalled the highest grades,” Tam said. “We figured, why call in guys who are going to be privates? We can use them later for positions they’re more prepared for. But we’ve had a lot of volunteers in those grades. T
o the point where personnel set up a website explaining that anyone coming back would be subject to a severe drop in rank. And we’ve still got volunteers. By a rough analysis, enough to fill at least one regiment.”
“Or you could spread them around,” Mike pointed out.
“We’re going to have more as the word gets out,” Wesley said. “And we’ve got a certain momentum towards stand-up. We know, more or less, who is going to what unit in the ranks of E-1 through E-5. Some of those E-5 slots could be filled with returnees, for certain. But we’ve still got… ”
“All those volunteers,” Mike said, frowning. “I don’t think it would be wise to have one regiment which is heavy on rejuvs in a division. The term ‘elite’ comes to mind.”
“Which is why the idea is to stand up a regiment with them,” Tam admitted. “Probably a separate one initially.”
“I’ll sign off,” Mike said. “But make it an RCT. I’m sure all the volunteers aren’t infantry.”
“No,” Tam said, furrowing his brow. “But we don’t have a TOE for a Regimental Combat Team.”
“Find a smart major and tell him what you need,” Mike said, looking thoughtful. “A regiment which is crewed by juvs is going to need good officers. Any idea what the cadre is going to look like?”
“I haven’t looked at the Board lately,” Tam said. “But if we have to, we can always override and direct appoint. Or we can pick the regiment that has the strongest cadre. There’s already one regiment that, for the time being, is notionally separate. If that one has the dregs, we can always shift it to one of the divisions and pull out a better one to fill.”
“What’s the regiment?” Mike asked.
“The 14th,” Tam said. “It’s called the Golden Dragons.”
“Not familiar with it,” Mike said, frowning.
“Let’s put it this way, it got that moniker in the Peking assault. It’s motto, ‘Right of the Line’ comes from the Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac.”
“Oookay,” Mike said. “One of those. Well, history and tradition are like your family tree. It doesn’t matter worth a flip what your umpteenth grand-dad did. It only matters what you’re doing today. Hopefully, the officers in the unit understand that.”
* * *
“It reminds me of the NFL draft,” Colonel Tobias Pennington said, looking around the echoing room.
As the REMFs in personnel began to recognize the beast that had been created with the points system, they’d also realized that the last few minutes were going to get murderous. Perhaps to confine the murder to one area, they’d had a large and previously empty warehouse refitted to marginal levels of comfort. The most important thing was that there were tables, chairs and a lot of electronics. The room had about the same internet pipe as an AT T main node and the walls were lined with floor to ceiling screens showing the updated bidding totals on all units and personnel.
There was also an ample supply of coffee. For when it was done renting, there were portapotties installed at one end. Minimal comfort.
“It is the Draft, sir,” Cutprice said, grinning. “Just bigger.”
Pennington was an unknown quantity to the captain. But he’d checked him out, both on the Board and through contacts. The former 14th Army commander had led the latter part of the defense of the Monterey Campaign. The Posleen had done well by themselves in the Valley and seriously wanted to complete their conquest by levelling San Francisco. Pennington had been sent in to relieve the commander that lost most of the Peninsula, a battle that should have been a no-brainer given the defensive conditions. The first Corps commander and later Army commander had not only held the final defense line he had, over time, pushed back as far as the terrain would allow.
Personally, the Colonel was just about the most laid-back individual Cutprice had ever met. Nothing seemed to faze him. Since Cutprice tended to be on the aggressive side in everything, he wasn’t sure they were going to get along. But one of the things that didn’t faze the possible 14th Regiment commander was Cutprice.
“I’m thinking about scamming Norris out from under Arkady,” Pennington said, looking over at the lieutenant. The LT had three laptops open and two Buckleys going simultaneously. Former sergeants major as well as former generals and colonels were running messages to the group gathered in one corner of the building.
None of the officers and NCOs who had been recruited for the 14th had posted their bids, yet. Not their final bids. All were on the board as looking for open positions. It was not going to be until the last moment that they all jumped on the 14th. Security on that had held, Cutprice was pretty sure. And it had been Norris’ idea.
The lieutenant, it turned out, had spent most of his post-service career as an IT guru on various boards of trade. He knew how to game a system like the Board from decades of experience. He’d written code to automatically update bids as the final hour approached. Essentially, all of the recruited cadre for the 14th had put their points up for the team. It was Norris’ job, right up to the last moment, to make sure that they all got into the slots they preferred.
There’d been a personal side to that as well. Cutprice had visited the various officers bidding on him and explained what a miserable pain in the ass he would be as a junior officer. “I mean, it’ll be horrible, sir. I never listen unless I want to. I do what I want to do and everyone else can go to hell. And I’m clever, so half the time you wouldn’t even suspect what I was up to until you were well and truly screwed by it. Sir, the word ‘insubordination’ in the dictionary? It has a two by three color glossy of me next to it. Sir, you have no idea just how difficult… ”
All but one had dropped their bids. That, as Norris pointed out, had dropped his effective ‘price’ on the boards. Now nobody wanted to touch him. Others had done the same thing, although in a few cases it had meant losing people when an old commander sweet-talked them into jumping ship. Nobody serious, but a damned fine company commander in the notional Second Batt had jumped over to the Eighth Regiment. Cutprice wished him well and they’d found someone just as good to replace him.
Norris tapped his main laptop one more time then leaned back, letting out a sigh.
“Looks as if he’s done,” Pennington said. “Let’s go see what he’s done.”
“There’s fifteen minutes left, Andrew,” Cutprice said, walking over to the table. “What’s up?”
“Oh, things haven’t really started, yet,” the lieutenant said, still leaning back. “But my job is done. I got all the personal information entered. At the stroke of five til, all the bids will submit. Then the program will start running interference. I think there are two other units using bots, but not at the regimental level. Fifth is pretty tight, but they don’t have anyone doing bots. We should be good to go. We may lose a few minor slots, but no company commanders or above and their respective NCOs. Frankly, I think we’ll be good down to platoon sergeants and operations NCOs. Probably platoon leaders.”
“I just love your priorities, Norris,” the possible regimental commander said.
“Do you disagree, sir?” Norris asked. “Because it’s a bit late to do so.”
“No, actually I agree,” the CO said. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Uh, oh,” Norris said, grinning. “Second Batt, Fourth Infantry just jumped the gun. They’re going to get hammered.”
“I don’t get that,” Cutprice said. “Where?”
“Bunch of specific unit requests,” Norris said, gesturing with his chin at the screens. “Looks like they’re trying to game the system but without a bot. Watch the slot values for the Fourth fall like a rock.”
“That’s good, though,” Cutprice said. “If value goes down, your points go further.”
“Nope,” Norris said. “No clustering and aggregation. What that means is that the group has just created conditions where the lousiest are going to cluster around them. The bot kicks off in three minutes. Probably every other bot in the place will start at more or less the same time. Watch the Bo
ard go nuts, then. Whoever set this up has never worked a market board before. I hope their servers are up to it or they’re going to crash in an instant.”
Cutprice waited somewhat impatiently for the real bidding to begin and he didn’t have to ask Norris if the three minutes were up. The boards, which had been showing occasional changes, suddenly went into overdrive.
The west wall had units with all their TOE slots, the east wall held a list of names of all the personnel up for assignment in alphabetical order. But were starting to flicker so fast, Cutprice couldn’t follow them. So he concentrated on watching his own name.
“Why’d I just put in a bid for a position in Seventh Regiment?” Cutprice said, unhappily. “That is me bidding, right?”
“Pump fake,” Norris said. “I dumped bids from notable members to other units, trying to get them to cluster.”
“I thought you said clustering was good,” Pennington said. “And Simosin is up on the 14th. Lots of points, too.”
“There’s good clustering and bad clustering,” Norris replied. “Since we’re all working for the same goal, we’re already clustered. If you want to draw people to you, you want to cluster. But a bad cluster is when you have a group that is drawn to a particular unit by a particular leader who then deserts the unit. Or where a group self-clusters then draws in a bunch of marginals around them. If they’re not clustering by bot, which most of the people here aren’t, they’re not going to have time to switch away. That keeps them from driving up the point price in the good cluster you’ve created.”
“Oh,” the colonel said. “I don’t like the word deserted.”
“Sorry, sir,” Norris replied. “They’re using an AID.”
“Excuse me?” Cutprice said.
“The system team doing this is not using a human server, they’re using an AID. I’ve seen them work before. There’s a subtle… nuance to the way that they refresh data.”