For the Honor of the Captain (Starship Expeditionary Fleet Book 2) by Shane Lochlann Black

Author:Shane Lochlann Black [Black, Shane Lochlann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palace in the Sky Productions LLC
Published: 2019-11-24T08:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Captain Kraul had traversed the fifteen yards between Allegheny Base proper and what most officers called “mahogany row” hundreds of times during his time as the Southern Banner chief of staff. The key reason he had been posted to such an influential position was because it was against regulations for a flag officer to serve in an administrative role under the command of another flag officer. Admirals were rare commodities in Skywatch. Anyone with the career experience, confidence and political skill to rise to a flag rank was considered “wasted” in a role where they were taking orders instead of giving them.

This put every captain in Skywatch into a unique position, as they were the highest-ranking officers eligible to serve on an admiral’s general staff. They were also likely to become commanding officers aboard flagships and fleet executive officers for flag officers serving in the field. There weren’t many true “flag” ships underway in deep space. But for those commands that did have a significant field presence, it was very difficult to find a more productive post for officers with high ranks and ambition to match.

On this particular occasion, however, Kraul was distracted. He was one of those headquarters administrators who lived by the maxim of the “dismissible rumor.” You hear one thing, you let it go. You hear it twice, you let it go. However, if you start hearing the same things following the same themes from acquaintance, colleague and superior alike, you start making provision for it to become part of your every day reality. In this instance, the new reality was the fact the Sarn Star Empire was back on the path to conquest, and if what Kraul was hearing was even partially true, they were going to get there fifty years early.

Kraul had earned battlefield commissions as senior lieutenant and lieutenant commander during the first war against the empire. He served aboard forward fleet bases and on one of his banner’s toughest and most successful minesweepers. His specialty was mine capture through electronics hacking. His team had been responsible for more than sixty such captures. His fleet commendation was a result of his section’s breaking of the Sarn detonator codes that had cost more than 200 other crew members and officers their lives. His practical work had even been published and taught at the academy. But now his job was to help admirals clarify their thinking, and if a Second Praetorian War was in the offing, the themes behind his remarks would have to follow a conventional path.

Truth be told, Skywatch had simply out-manufactured the empire in the buildup to First Praetorian. The war wasn’t as much a match between starships and shrewd captains as it was a match between who started with the largest triluminum and karbunck claims. Skywatch had always operated under the assumption that inter-planetary mining and survey operations were military missions. The Sarn relied on a patchwork of ad hoc suppliers that were almost all civilian mercenaries and freelancers. It gave the

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