"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 13 - The Sharp End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Coke stepped into an empty cage. A clerk rose from her desk in the administrative area across the
divider and switched on the electronics,
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"Yes sir?" the clerk said pleasantly. "Is there a problem with your assignment?"

The Frisian Defense Forces reassigned scores of officers every week. Normally the operation was
impersonal, a data transfer to the officers present station directing him or her to report to a new posting,
along with details of timing, transport, and interim leave.

This office handled problems. President Hammer, in common with other leaders whose elevation owed
more to bullets than ballots, felt most comfortable with a large standing army under his direct control.
Professional soldiers are expensive, and unless they are used, they either rust, or find ways to employ
themselves — generally to the detriment of the established government.

Hammers answer to the problem was to hire out elements of the Frisian Defense Forces as mercenaries.
This provided training for the troops, as well as defraying the cost of their pay and equipment.

Sometimes the troops engaged were merely a fewadvisers or specialists. When somebody, a planetary
government or the rebels opposed to it, hired a large force, however, the OAB would be standing room
only.

Officers on Nieuw Friesland knew that the only sure route to promotion was through combat
experience. The Frisian Defense Forces had sprung from Hammer's Slammers, a mercenary regiment
with the reputation for doing whatever it took to win . . . and a reputation for winning.

So long as Alois Hammer was President and the commanders of the Frisian Defense Forces were the
officers who'd bought him that position in decades of bloody war, bureaucratic 'warriors' weren't on the
fast track to high rank. You paid for your rank sometimes in blood, and sometimes with your life; but all
that was as nothing without demonstrated success at the sharp end, where they buried the guys in second
place.

Not everybody was comfortable with Hammers terms of employment, but the Forces were volunteer
only and the volunteers came from all across the human universe; just as they had to Hammer's Slammers
before. A certain number of men, and a lower percentage of women, would rather fight than not. Alois
Hammers troops had always been the best there was at what they did: killing the other fellow, whoever
he was.

A draft going out to a hot theater was a ticket to promotion. Officers would crowd the Assignment
Bureau, begging and threatening, offering bribes and trying to pull rank to get a slot. Mostly it didn't
work.

The Table of Organization for a combat deployment was developed by the central data base itself.
Changes had to be approved by President Hammer, who was immune to any practical form of
persuasion. The Assignments Bureaus were open because people prefer to argue with human beings
instead of electronic displays, but that was normally a cosmetic rather than significant touch.