Welcome back to the worldbuilding section of my monthly posts!
Today I've decided to talk a bit more about the military featured in Miracles of Arx Nubibus. If you have a request for a topic, leave me a comment or tweet at me. I'd be glad to write a post on it!
So when developing Arx, I was thinking of it as a city-state rather than just a city. It has no contact with any other civilizations, or anything outside of it really. It's a totally self-contained system, which was a result of the history that led up to it (which will be explained later in the story).
Now, I knew it needed a policing system of some sort. I just don't have the faith that humans will play nice and follow the rules without some kind of enforcement. I decided to roll the policing in with the people in charge of defense and call it all the military. Partly to be unique, but also partly because I think it works.
And yes, there are people in charge of dealing with outside threats. They don't have a lot to do, but the thoughts of the founders was that such a group was needed in case a foreign power tried to shoot them down or something. Luckily, that hasn't happened. Yet.
The military is split into three branches. Each branch has its own focus and training program. We're most familiar with the Third Division in the story, since that's the only one that has showed up at this point (Chapter 28). This section of the military is in charge of emergency responses and forensics. So they investigate crime scenes like Xavier's (Chapter 6). There are more specialized forensic investigators in this branch, but the first responders (like Courtney was) will always be first on the scene. They then preserve the crime scene and wait for the experts, while taking note of anything noteworthy.
And then of course we've seen them respond to emergency situations (Chapter 8-10). They're also the ones who camped out at the first Legion meeting in case anything went wrong.
The First Division of the military is in charge of defense. They spend their time observing the surrounding skies for threats and are trained to take care of them. Arx's firepower comes entirely from weaponized drones, so they're taught how to operate them. In the case of an attack, citizens will also be asked to take shelter somewhere relatively secure - so somewhere where they won't bounce around too much if the ship shakes. The Third Division would help with directing people.
Since there aren't too many external threats for the First Division to deal with, they also spend a lot of time assisting the Arx Technicians (who are basically the mechanics in charge of keeping the ship afloat) in their work.
The Second Division is perhaps the most mundane. They deal with all the day-to-day stuff, like patrols, dealing with complaints, ticketing law violations and generally enforcing said laws. They're trained in case they come upon an emergency situation. Their response involves calling in the Third Division. Those folks are busy!
So that's the broad strokes of the military branches. The First is the smallest, while the Second and Third are relatively the same size. National defense has been somewhat neglected after a couple hundred years of total peace and isolation. They're not even sure any other humans are out there!
Now we get to the ranks. Each division is headed by one general, who oversees everything in their respective branch. They answer only to the elected ruling council. Below them, they each have two colonels, who spend most of their time doing paperwork. The Third Division's colonels will also provide emergency situation training to all branches for one week each year. Colonels are also generally in charge of the training programs for their respective division.
Below the colonels are five lieutenants per branch. The lieutenants and colonels are not specifically assigned to each other; all lieutenants report to both colonels of their respective branch. The lieutenants are still mostly desk-bound, but they have more influence on their sergeants and officers. Lieutenants will make most non-immediate decisions, such as Third Division lieutenants announcing cause of death for people.
Sergeants are below the lieutenants. Each lieutenant typically has six sergeants who report to them (though the First Division will have fewer). Each branch thus has around 30 sergeants, each with their own squad. Sergeants are more or less in charge of what's happening as it's happening. For example, in a situation where the lieutenant is unable to give orders (such as the Phantasma attack) the sergeants are in charge.
Each sergeant has their own squad of officers. This can consist of anywhere between 3 and 6 officers per sergeant. The officers are the lowest official military rank, and do all the groundwork. The sergeant commands them, but most often the officers do the 'real' work. This is what Courtney was when she was in the military. Officers can choose to change branches, but for the most part they'll stay with the division they signed on with. Because each branch requires different training, transferring is akin to starting from square one.
Below the officers are the unranked trainees. These are people aiming to become officers, but who have not yet passed the training required. First Division trainees might be assigned to help an officer and a tech, or sent to observe the skies with a more experienced officer. Second Division trainees would join officers on patrol. Third Division trainees are usually assigned to shadow one officer to get used to the demands of their work.
And that is an exhaustive description of Arx's military! Now that you've made it this far, you know the broad strokes of each military division and rank. I didn't talk about some of the stuff in the story to keep this from going on too long, but this is what I've kept in mind as I write the military stuff.
Somewhat embarrassing note: when I was writing around Chapter 19 I got Sergeant Barron and Lieutenant Galvan mixed up. It's since been corrected, but I just got their names mixed up! Oopsie.