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Yellow Jade Stone
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: The Unofficial Company Protocol Guide has this to say on the topic of the FXAD:
The FXAD, or Frontier Xenoform Acquisitions Department, was better known as the Company Marines. They were a Company-sponsored and Company-directed militia of sorts, famous for pioneering and subsequently showing all the flaws of a very specific type of novel military structure.
Xenofauna and xenoflora are a typical obstacle standing between the Company and areas with large amounts of resources. From space carp drifting between mineral-rich asteroids, to adaptive swarms resting below fertile colony soil, the Company faces a daily challenge to fight in the frontier for what it takes back to the core worlds. It also, notably, can't afford to do so while paying for truly professional military services from core world governments, given that so few remain and so few are willing to deal with the Company.
Enter the new type of armed force that the Company could deploy at will. Recruited marines were paid on commission per xenoform threat neutralized, and logistics workers paid from the funds of those marines. But the most ambitious of them could recruit their friends at startlingly varied levels of combat experience or logistics experience into acting as their subordinates and providing a portion of their profits.
By recruiting, say, ten veteran combatants that one knows who are in need of employment, the promise and premise went, one can double their paycheck through portions of the commissions of their new squad. And if each of them recruit their own subordinate squad, well, portions of portions of that money can earn their new lieutenant a well-earned comfortable lifestyle. And with all of those squad-members recruiting their own squad, that could make you a captain of your own company, becoming independently wealthy. And so on.
A savvy reader may recognize the issue with the structure of a "Multi-Level Military", but in the height of blood-lust enthusiasm for the war effort against aliens, this was missed by most soldiers who pledged themselves to exterminate the alien threat. The unsustainable growth-based model collapsed quickly and violently, but unintentionally bolstered the Company's Department of Antagonism, resulting in minimal financial loss for the Company as a whole.
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