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Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H

Chapter 26: Nine Offices Down

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"'Captain' Shield, you are not Princess Mi Dolente Cadenza's liaison to us; you are her entourage's handler. Your orders are, as they have been, to keep them from interfering in governance or military affairs," the staff pony said, his eyebrow arched in contempt.

"And yet, my orders - as drafted," emphasized Gleaming Shield, holding her hoof out to Gilda for the document in question, the captain's eyes eyes locked upon the staff pony's face, "state that I am liaison to the Princess's travelling court. There are no instructions, explicit nor reasonably inferable, that I am in any way to control or restrict her and her ponies in the course of their tour."

"It bloody well was implied, if you would take your head out of your posterior, lieutenant!" snapped the staffer. "And this so-called tour is already well overdue for its next stop on… where-ever it is she is supposed to be going. We cannot be expected to feed all of these deadflanks off of our limited supplies!"

"The entourage is not that large," muttered Gilda.

"It includes an entire air squadron, eating its heads off, not to mention that herd of sycophants cluttering up the royal suites!"

"Not to mention the intelligence bureau sore about having been turfed out of their royal suites?" Gilda asked, holding back a smile.

"Exactly! Wait. No. Not that one! This is not about Major Eyeglass's displaced analysts!"

"I thought this was about why we're talking to you instead of the head of operations?" asked Gilda, smirking.

"Lieutenant Shield! What is this corporal doing talking to me?" demanded the red-faced staff officer.

"Winning an argument, apparently," said Gleaming Shield, her eyes glinting. "And if you're quite done being out-argued by my bat-hen, I'd like to talk about your strangely possessive attitude towards the Duchess Celestia's resources. There are no 'EUP resources' and 'princess resources'. It is all the princesses' largess, and nothing else, Major Bureau. This is a royal fortress we stand within, and it is the personal property of the princesses, not the military's."

"Yes. Yes! Of course! We serve at the pleasure of the princess. The real Princess, not that pink mayfly. The one that will grow old, and die, and be forgotten like the last half-dozen of them!"

"Oh, Gilda, we have a scholar. Major, she may not be the Alicorn of the Heavens, the Unconquered Sun, but Mi Dolente Cadenza is royalty, both by common understanding and legal definition. Nothing in the Federated Kingdom Accords says anything about immortality or permanence in the articles on the sovereign power. Simply that 'the congregation of alicorns shall reign sovereign over all the signatories of the confederation, and the chattels thereof, as Princesses of the Realm.'" Gilda had always known that Gleaming Shield had in her this capacity for malicious pedantry, but the captain had never turned the full weight of that pettifoggery upon any pony in front of her bat-hen before.

The two unicorns were now horn-to-horn, trading barbed quotations. From the commentary on the Accords, Gilda suspected from the context, though she hadn't been able to get her talons on those yet. Her moments left unsupervised among the limited library resources available in the service had been few and far between. She barely followed the verbal jousting as they traded chapter and verse, cavil and codicil, like two troopers at spear-practice, or single-stick duelists in the lists.

The day before, Gilda and Gleaming Shield had worked out a compromise with the wary Lemon Hearts and the pink princess and her adoptive sisters. The royals and their suspicious spy would work their sources in Canterlot via the true, immortal princess and their various remote-communication devices - diary and thaumfire camera, fire and magic - while Gleaming Shield and her bat-hen would sally forth into the military bureaucracy and prepare their ground for dealing with the mad party pony of J-13, Special Party Plans.

"Irrelevant!" barked the bristling Major Bureau, as Gleaming Shield backed him into a corner made of citations from the sixth and twenty-third essays on royal dignity and shared authority, respectfully, in the Commentaries. Or so Gilda gathered from the rapid back and forth. "And I would not take that tone with a superior officer, lieutenant, no matter what brevetting the bloody Territorials care to pour over you. You're still junior to any officer in the real army! I don't care what they say in the 100th Hoof. It's a mostly notational regiment these days, with all its officers stuck in shameful colonial roles, shepherding the barbarians and the degenerate savages!"

This, Gilda was familiar with. No, not pony racism - officer snobbery about title and rank. The ponies' rank systems were impressively complex, recondite, even obfuscated. Even the ponies themselves seemed occasionally baffled by the welter of provincial volunteer organizational commissions, regular EUP commissions, Guard commissions, and the especially obscure double-layered system of seconding and brevetting which bedeviled the Territorial Corps of the Isles and the New Territories. An officer was seconded from their commissioned regiment, into the battalion, squadron, or regiment they actually were to exercise command. While seconded to their commands, those officers could be brevetted to their appropriate rank, and given promotions accordingly as their responsibilities expanded. An officer could be brevetted multiple times without ever touching upon their underlying commission in their originating regiment; in theory only particularly recognized officers received promotions upon their underlying commission. In practice, promotions in their 'home' regiments occurred according to seniority, retirements, and political pull.

The officers of the Territorials were known to sit around the fire and trade dubious claims about their seniority in the 100th Hoof and the priority of their respective brevetting. They could prattle for hours about degrees of separation from their commissioned ranks, when this commission or that was issued, and on the dating thereof of each brevet and commission. The tokens in the game were the ranks and the dates - after every valid promotion, the clock and the date was reset. To make things even more complicated, sometimes a political benefactor was known to back-date a promotion, making a mockery of the entire process according to the officers thus discommoded, usually with malice aforethought on the part of the patron and their client.

It was possible for a brevetted captain or major of the Territorials to discover herself in command of lieutenants with superior dates of commissioning in their much more prestigious but distinctly junior ranks in the 100th Regiment of Hoof. A regiment which had, as Major Service Bureau had just noted, no actual troops to command, being a now-notational unit composed entirely of seconded officers scattered among some of the provincial regiments and the whole of the Territorial Corps. It was not the only such skeleton regiment left on the books. Many of the regular EUP's Hoof regiments had been thus eviscerated in order to provide seasoned commissioned officers for the distinctly militia-flavored provincial regiments.

Gilda had yet to lay eyes on an actual enlisted regular, aside from the aerial squadrons.

"You see, Major, that's the funny thing. I thought that Princess Cadance had pulled some strings for me in the 100th Hoof, too, or gotten me a brevetting in the Territorials. A little gift to celebrate our reunion after several years of separation. Imagine my surprise when one of her courtiers passed this along." Gleaming Shield gestured towards Gilda again, and Gilda pulled the tube out of her satchel, slapping it into the captain's hoof.

The captain didn't even look at Gilda or what her corporal had put into her frog, and silently hoofed over the scroll tube to the suspicious Major Bureau.

When they'd first laid eyes on the captain's new commission, Gleaming Shield had ordered Gilda to put it into that protective tube, and made sure it was well-hidden. They'd retrieved it before coming into Expeditionary Force Headquarters, because the captain had suspected that she'd need every bureaucratic weapon at her disposal. She'd known this was coming.

Well, she'd had Gilda put it away after a bout of hyperventilation and mild hysteria, but Gilda hadn't held it against her once Gleaming Shield had explained the difference between what that beatific White Sister had given them, and the captain's commission in the 100th Regiment of Hoof or the brevetting certificate they'd expected to have been given.

Major Service Bureau, assistant to the deputy commander of the Princess's Expeditionary Force in the Griffish Isles and Head of Personnel, or G-1, unrolled Gleaming Shield's commission with a look of put-upon irritation, until he saw what was in her hoof.

He made a strangled choking sound.

"This can't be real. How did your forgers fake the seal?"

"You would have to ask the Honorable Miss Mirror, Major," Gleaming Shield said, ignoring the barely-veiled accusation of felonious dishonor. "I was not present when it was sealed, but I must take the scions of the House of Platinum at their word. Absent any actual proof that an ancient, honorable, and immensely wealthy noble clan would stoop to paying forgers to procure what they, obviously, are capable of acquiring on their own merits."

"No noble house's dubious claims to merit could possibly pry a Guard captain's commission out of Guard House. Those ponies are jealous of that beyond all reason! There aren't five captains of the guard in the whole army!"

"It isn't a captain of the guard's commission, as much as I would prize that," Gleaming Shield said with an admirable lack of smugness. "Merely a Guard captaincy."

"S-so I see. What in Hades is the Sixth Regiment of Guards? There are only four active Guards' regiments! Including the Royals!"

"We had to look into that ourselves," Gilda offered, happy to talk about her part of the research. It was interesting what dusty old nonsense was included in the substantial if limited libraries carried about by divisional and brigade headquarters. If this hadn't come up, she'd never have known that a history of the Earth Pony, Unicorn, and Pegasus Unified Consular Command were traditionally included in the full collection. She'd immediately 'requisitioned' one for her collection of manuals. "It turns out that the inactive Sixth Regiment dates to the era before the EUP's formation, but was included for historical reasons on the rosters as a notational Guards regiment in the formal structure. One of two such Guards regiments which have never been activated, or ever had officers commissioned into them.

"Until now," Gilda continued, puffing up a bit with self-satisfaction. "The books say that the Sixth Regiment is maintained on the rolls in honor of some long-dead polity I've never heard of."

"The Crystal Guard," Gleaming Shield supplied, joining her bat-hen in a little thrumming chorus of smug satisfaction. "From what little I've been able to pry out of Miss Mirror, Princess Cadance has some sort of ancestral relation to, or magical association with, the legendary Crystal Empire. You can tell by her cutie mark, I gather."

"A new regiment!" marvelled the garrison's head of personnel, sitting down in the chair behind his desk, all of his rancor forgotten. "A new Guards regiment! Has anypony else been commissioned in it?"

"No, Major Bureau," said Gilda, a smirk upon her beak. "Nor any enlisted assigned to it, as of yet. As far as we can tell. Currently, it is a one-mare regiment."

He looked up at that, the gears ticking away in his staff-officer mind. "That makes her colonel of the Sixth Guards by default, until Guards House creates a superior officer. Do you know what that means?"

"The captain ma'am is senior in grade to any other colonel who isn't also a commander of one of the more senior Guards regiments?"

"We don't have Guards colonels in garrison! Or anywhere in the Isles! I think this means we should be putting her in charge of - wait, which brigade is the, the Fifth Territorial assigned? The Third Territorial Brigade. That's Brigadier Falling Water. She's a colonel of volunteers. You outrank her twice over!"

This was fun, but it was starting to get out of control. They hadn't come here to cash in Gleaming Shield's windfall.

"Ahem," Gilda ostentatiously cleared her throat. "Major sir, I apologize for interrupting once more, but I do have to point out that Captain Shield is still seconded to the Territorials, and as such, seniority in grade does not apply in matters of command, only brevetting and appointment. The Brigadier is the Brigadier, and nogriff is challenging her right to her command." It wouldn't do, to accidently put Gilda's captain into an office for which she was neither prepared nor ready, nor had time for, for that matter.

"Quite right!" Gleaming Shield agreed. "The only reason I present my commission is to end this tedious discussion, and to get to the actual meat of this matter, which is my access to the office of the heads of planning or operations. Lieutenant Colonel Pie's activities and plans have come to Princess Cadance's negative attention, and we need to make arrangements for the princess to discuss the lieutenant colonel's- are you quite alright, Major Bureau?"

The staff officer's face had spasmed upon mention of Pinkie Pie, a full-muzzle convulsion that looked revoltingly close to something like an aneurysm, or perhaps a conniption.

"W-why didn't you say this was about Colonel Pie? Gennifer! Bring me my Pie File!" The pony kicked back in his office-chair, and spun around like a loon, with an unnerving grin on his face. "Ha! Is it juicy? Is it actionable? Is it accurate?"

"Is what?" asked Gleaming Shield, warily.

"Whatever you have on the Pie. You wouldn't believe how many ponies bring me things about that pronking disaster area, only for it to come to nothing, or prove to be malfeasance on the part of the accuser, or, - once, a bale of hay fell on the complaining pony!"

"That doesn't sound like it should have caused-" Gleaming Shield started to object.

"Off of an air delivery van, from a thousand feet up! Whistle Blower is still in recuperative care. They think maybe she'll be able to talk in six months, if the aphasia responds to this new treatment - irrelevant! The point is, everypony has objections to the Pie, but none of them ever make it to a hearing. She's a menace, but she's an arrowproof menace! Gennifer! Where's my Pie File, you lazy hen!"

The thick-breasted griffon civilian who had been sitting in the outer office filing her talons when they'd come in, sashayed into the personnel officer's inner office, carrying a modestly thick file in her well-manicured grip. Gilda supposed she might have found the hen attractive if she was inclined that way.

Which Gilda wasn't.

At least, not when it came to hens.

The hen popped the gum she was chewing, and dumped the heavy file on Service Bureau's desk, twitching her tail in irritation as she left.

"Why… don't you have a proper military secretary, Major?" Gleaming Shield asked, staring at the strange hen's display.

The head of personnel was already muzzle-deep in his 'Pie File', muttering. "Eh? Oh, my last five secretaries had to be cashiered for trading favors. She might be useless and insubordinate, but she has no friends in the army. And doesn't care about bribes because I pay her twice what she's worth."

If the foolish pony thought he'd found the only honest griffon in the Isles, Gilda wasn't about to correct his understanding. And the hen's rates were far cheaper than the first three secretaries Gilda had approached this morning before bringing her captain into staff headquarters.

"Ah, here we go. Would you describe your issue with Colonel Pie's behavior as material, organizational, moral, or operational?" asked Major Bureau.

"P-pardon?" Gleaming Shield stuttered.

"Has she offended you by misappropriation of materials or supplies? I have eleven reports of such misapprehensions, every one withdrawn by the accusers not long after their respective filings. Office furniture, baking supplies, a battalion's head cook, a stapler from one of the joint task force operatives, a 152mm chemical mortar from the Royal Artillery, six bedframes from the prison infirmary, forty reams of paper, a portable printing press - I'm still waiting on that last one, but the printing office warrant officer who filed that was sweating pretty heavily, I expect that'll be withdrawn, too, if I give them a couple days.

"Organizational! Six complaints, all of them withdrawn, aside from poor Whistle Blower, whose complaints had to be filed inactive until such time as she can string words together again, poor mare. There was that accusation of mass kidnapping from Brigadier Dark Brew, but Pie apparently managed to produce the paperwork showing that the pioneers were properly seconded to her section. What does a bureau of special party planning need with a thousand sappers and siege engineers, I ask you?! Wait, six hundred and thirty. Why did we get a short battalion?

"Irrelevant!" the section chief spat, putting the offending papers aside. "Where was I?"

"Moral," Gleaming Shield prompted, sickly fascinated.

"Ha! Three testimonials about Colonel Pie confessing to, or bragging about - depending on which pony you ask - massacre, conspiracy to commit atrocities, or invitation to commit atrocities against civilians."

"Those sound serious," Gilda observed.

"Useless! The rebels are civilians, by the laws of war! Nopony cares about massacres of the enemy! Nopony brings me testimony about Pie actually saying this about the general public, just 'grumpy insurrectionaries' and so forth. The one pony who was ambiguous in her testimony, recanted upon further investigation!"

"Operational?" Gleaming Shield asked.

"Oh, every one of the brigadiers, and three of the division commanders have filed complaints about Pie's interference in field operations. Ever since she got here! But she's always right, Discord take her, and it never gets to the court-martial stage. She's a thorn under my saddle, Pinkamena Diane Pie! Sent here by Celestia herself, for my sins, I swear.

"SO! If you have something novel, something I can take to the deputy commander, which you won't back off on once that lunatic starts staring you down and giving you that look, I will back you one hundred percent! Give!"

"Uh…"

"Oh, come on, don't get me all excited and then balk, Captain Shield. It has to be something! It's always something!"

"You may have put too much pressure on the captain ma'am, major sir," Gilda interceded. "It's a simple matter, really."

"No it isn't, Gilda!" Gleaming Shield objected. "It's never simple when it comes to Pinkie Pie!"

"It's morally simple, but operationally complex?" Gilda offered, squinting.

"Not even that!"

"OK, there's the whole 'plotting to murder gang bosses' thing, I guess that's somewhat morally ambiguous."

"See?" cried the staff pony. "That's exactly the sort of thing that tripped up moral complainant number two!"

"But she's recruiting guildmasters and criminal masterminds!" Gilda exclaimed defensively.

"I don't know if you can call any of these griffons masterminds," complained Gleaming Shield. "They're not that bright."

"Captain ma'am, by your standards, Haycartes was a slowcoach," sniffed her bat-hen.

"I don't care!" snapped the staff pony. "Get to the complaint!"

"Murder!" Gilda said, "Political plots! Putting all the bad eggs in one basket, and dropping the basket. Or blowing it up. Maybe burning it down? We're not sure of her planned mass murder method."

"I suspect she's planning to lure the rebels into attacking the building the council is going to meet in," Gleaming Shield opined. "It's what I'd do if I was her. And a sociopath."

"Wait, what?" asked Major Bureau. "What's this about a council? What council?"

"We don't even know where the new council will be convened." the captain said, distracted by a thought. "Were there any notes from Lady Rarity in today's mail?"

"Wait, what council?" demanded the chief of personnel.

"The mail hadn't arrived before I had to come down here and bribe the secretaries," Gilda said by way of an excuse. "Didn't you check your own mail?"

"That's what I have a bat-hen for!"

"Stop ignoring me in my own office! You aren't talking about the Governor-General's plan to re-establish the Griffish Tribal Council in Trottingham, are you?"

"The... what?" asked Gilda. "What the hades is a tribal council?"

"Old tradition! I was in the conference where the Governor-General's eager young assistant put forward the plan."

"If it's an old tradition, I've never heard of it!" Gilda objected.

"Neither have I," Gleaming Shield agreed.

"According to both of your files, neither of your are native to the Isles. Yes, the Tribal Council is an old Trottish tradition. Very interesting. Mr. Sandwich was quite erudite on the subject. No, no, this sounds like another dry hole. Colonel Pie didn't have anything to do with this plan. It's entirely a creature of the Governor's office."

"Who's this assistant?" Gleaming Shield said, confused.

"I don't remember, hold on -" Major Bureau reached over to a thick planner/journal he had stored on a side-shelf.

"Ah. Here we go. One Mr. Cheese Sandwich. Odd looking duck, for an earth pony. But he certainly knew his stuff. I'm told he's a rising star in the Prime Minister's party. No, I'm afraid this won't do at all. I can have Gennifer make an appointment for you, hrm, looks like the chief of operations will be available a week from Tuesday."

"That'll have to do," Gilda's captain said, looking deflated and confused. "If we haven't even heard where the council will be meeting, it isn't an immediately pressing crisis."

"Oh, I know that one," Major Bureau said. "They're renovating the Cathedral of Labour, in Ironmonger's Square. That's what Colonel Pie requisitioned that battalion of pioneers for. One thing rock ponies and combat engineers are excellent at, it's construction and reconstruction. I had a meeting this morning with Operations about when we could expect the pioneers to be freed up. The Cathedral should be ready for Mr. Sandwich's council meeting next Monday.

"And I really do think we need to meet with your brigadier about this Guards commission business, Captain Shield."

Gilda cringed. She'd hoped that the staff pony had been sufficiently distracted to have forgotten about that.

"It's far too irregular, having a Guards captain serving under jumped-up politicians and common 100th Hoof trotters. I'm going to have to put my own hoof down, either we transfer you to the staff, or put you in charge of something large and more appropriate to your new status. We had to send Major Coil home, there's an opening in G-6!"

Author's Notes:

Thanks for editing and pre-reading help to Shrink Laureate, Oliver, and the general Company.

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Good Trooper Gilda

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