. "As a modern, structured and complex military, the Imperial Service maintains a fixed rank structure, in order to easily assign tasks, duties and responsibilities within its organization. Being a combined service since 2904-2906 great reforms, the Barrayaran rank structure has some its own particularities. Barrayar retains all the names of the various ranks when it went to a combined service: the name of the rank interchanges depending on his assignment of the moment: however, some departments merge the ground ranks and the spaceborne ones, such as ImpSec or Ops. It is keen to note that the shape or placement of the functional designator is more important than the rank denomination. So an junior officer could be rather more prestigious than a senior officer, if that is assigned to a low level service, although this occurrence is very rare and ranks tend to coincide with the importance of the tasks assigned. By definition, the Imperial Service is under the overall command of the reigning Emperor or Regent as commander-in-chief. Consequently, in his role as the Emperor's Voice, any Imperial Auditor can command military forces as he sees fit. Only the Emperor (or Regent) could override him. All the ranks are gridded to a strict numerical ranking with seniority rates factored in. The rank insignia (collar tabs) reflect the equivalence between various ranks. The military hierarchy was reformed several times: the last reform was conducted by the Military Hierarchy Reform Act, of 2999."@en . "As a modern, structured and complex military, the Imperial Service maintains a fixed rank structure, in order to easily assign tasks, duties and responsibilities within its organization. Being a combined service since 2904-2906 great reforms, the Barrayaran rank structure has some its own particularities. Barrayar retains all the names of the various ranks when it went to a combined service: the name of the rank interchanges depending on his assignment of the moment: however, some departments merge the ground ranks and the spaceborne ones, such as ImpSec or Ops. It is keen to note that the shape or placement of the functional designator is more important than the rank denomination. So an junior officer could be rather more prestigious than a senior officer, if that is assigned to a low lev"@en . . . "Military ranks of Barrayar"@en .