A series of military/bureaucracy farce books
In Surplus to Requirements, our heroes (a plucky band of soldiers) discover that due to a paperwork foul-up, they've all been assigned together to a small unit that has no mission, no orders, no oversight, and no chain of command. They also have no gear, housing, etc. Worse (or better) yet, the monolithic and impenetrable bureaucracy is byzantine enough that they're pretty much stuck that way - among other things, getting them back on the books properly would require actually admitting that someone had screwed up somewhere, and that's simply not going to happen. As far as Personnel is concerned, they don't exist, and that's that. The story follows our intrepid heroes as they attempt to scrounge up food and housing, figure out what's going on, and bond as a unit. About halfway through, they start to stumble across an Evil Plot (tm) - a treacherous administrator had assigned everyone away from a certain barracks so that the appropriate bits of wrongdoing wouldn't be caught, and they happily bunked down in it because it was the only empty space they could find. In the end, the villain is thwarted, and they find themselves with a patron higher up, who appreciates their ability to get things done outside of normal channels, and therefore *still* won't let them get their paperwork fixed.
In Ventures and Returns, OUr Heroes continue the process of making things better for themselves, accumulating money, contacts, and influence (all deeply unofficial) through back channels and trading favors. "No one's been allowed to do things like that." "Well, I have it on very good authority that I'm no one." About two thirds of the way through the book, their benefactor (who they've been exploiting a bit as the story goes on) calls upon them to do something generally considered impossible - he needs his entire division deployed to a specific far-off world, and he needs it done in a month - where the normal process usually takes a year or more. The world is going to be attacked, and he needs the troops moved post-haste. The rest of the book is a mad scramble to get that to happen, complete with calling in favors, pulling cons, and a few cases of breaking and entering and swapping carefully doctored paperwork. They manage to get it done, their patron gets the credit (and a promotion) and now he does pull them in officially as a specially formed unit working directly for him, with the mission of finding and fixing whatever may happen to be wrong with the other units under his command.
Nothing Exceeds like Excess is the troubleshooting arc - more a collected series of intertwined vignettes than a true story, as the various members of the unit travel across a decent chunk of the galaxy, finding difficulties, figuring out what the real problems are, and coming up with unorthodox solutions (often by swapping resources with one another). In the meantime, they continue working on their web of contacts and influence, eventually running some truly ridiculous tasks on the side and profiting handsomely. Some of the problems get hairier than others, but all are solved by the end of the book, significantly improving the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the units, with the final upshot being that their patron gets put in charge of the Personnel branch itself... and now he wants them to fix *that*.
Elephants all the way down is the story of them digging into the seemingly impenetrable bowels of the Personnel Branch, and trying to figure out (and fix) the source of its dysfunctions, through layer after layer of misdirection.
/-------------/
Eh. Not my best work. Still, I wanted to clear out a few more before I started in on new ones.
Bid the Wind to Blow
Bid the Earth to Move
Bid the Rain to Burn
In Surplus to Requirements, our heroes (a plucky band of soldiers) discover that due to a paperwork foul-up, they've all been assigned together to a small unit that has no mission, no orders, no oversight, and no chain of command. They also have no gear, housing, etc. Worse (or better) yet, the monolithic and impenetrable bureaucracy is byzantine enough that they're pretty much stuck that way - among other things, getting them back on the books properly would require actually admitting that someone had screwed up somewhere, and that's simply not going to happen. As far as Personnel is concerned, they don't exist, and that's that. The story follows our intrepid heroes as they attempt to scrounge up food and housing, figure out what's going on, and bond as a unit. About halfway through, they start to stumble across an Evil Plot (tm) - a treacherous administrator had assigned everyone away from a certain barracks so that the appropriate bits of wrongdoing wouldn't be caught, and they happily bunked down in it because it was the only empty space they could find. In the end, the villain is thwarted, and they find themselves with a patron higher up, who appreciates their ability to get things done outside of normal channels, and therefore *still* won't let them get their paperwork fixed.
In Ventures and Returns, OUr Heroes continue the process of making things better for themselves, accumulating money, contacts, and influence (all deeply unofficial) through back channels and trading favors. "No one's been allowed to do things like that." "Well, I have it on very good authority that I'm no one." About two thirds of the way through the book, their benefactor (who they've been exploiting a bit as the story goes on) calls upon them to do something generally considered impossible - he needs his entire division deployed to a specific far-off world, and he needs it done in a month - where the normal process usually takes a year or more. The world is going to be attacked, and he needs the troops moved post-haste. The rest of the book is a mad scramble to get that to happen, complete with calling in favors, pulling cons, and a few cases of breaking and entering and swapping carefully doctored paperwork. They manage to get it done, their patron gets the credit (and a promotion) and now he does pull them in officially as a specially formed unit working directly for him, with the mission of finding and fixing whatever may happen to be wrong with the other units under his command.
Nothing Exceeds like Excess is the troubleshooting arc - more a collected series of intertwined vignettes than a true story, as the various members of the unit travel across a decent chunk of the galaxy, finding difficulties, figuring out what the real problems are, and coming up with unorthodox solutions (often by swapping resources with one another). In the meantime, they continue working on their web of contacts and influence, eventually running some truly ridiculous tasks on the side and profiting handsomely. Some of the problems get hairier than others, but all are solved by the end of the book, significantly improving the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the units, with the final upshot being that their patron gets put in charge of the Personnel branch itself... and now he wants them to fix *that*.
Elephants all the way down is the story of them digging into the seemingly impenetrable bowels of the Personnel Branch, and trying to figure out (and fix) the source of its dysfunctions, through layer after layer of misdirection.
/-------------/
Eh. Not my best work. Still, I wanted to clear out a few more before I started in on new ones.
Bid the Wind to Blow
Bid the Earth to Move
Bid the Rain to Burn