Prince Imperator by Fred Hughes

Author:Fred Hughes [Hughes, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Maraya21, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Space
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2024-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10: Fallout

Sol System

Empire Date: June 1046

The Marine corporal standing guard outside Vice Admiral Kong’s office pressed the admittance button as Commodore Jori Goodman walked up. The new chief of staff had only recently joined the staff, and after a two-week turnover with the previous officer was now officially filling the role.

It was unusual for senior flag officers to change out senior staffers. It typically happened for only one of two reasons. One: the senior officer felt the staffer deserved a promotion and more responsibility. For example, command of a task force, etcetera. Or two: the staffer wasn’t pulling his weight.

When Jori had accepted the assignment, he’d researched why his predecessor was getting the boot. He had previously served under Gathii Kong, commanding a dreadnought squadron assigned to the Home Fleet when Kong commanded that fleet’s screening force. In fact, his dreadnought had served as Kong’s flagship.

Jori discovered that it was partly for the second reason. Gathii Kong, or “King Kong,” as the rest of the fleet commonly referred to him, had never been entirely satisfied with the man’s performance. Not that the man did an awful job, but Kong looked around and saw how well other chiefs of staff were serving their admirals and decided that was not what he was getting.

Then there was the personal relationship the two men had. They’d shared a lot of meals aboard Jori’s ship. An admiral spent a lot of time with his chief of staff. Nearly any meeting a flag officer was involved in, his chief of staff accompanied him, because to do his job right, a chief of staff needed to know everything his admiral did.

Jori walked into Kong’s office. The admiral still flew his flag aboard the battleship Kenya. Even though there were larger ships available—for example, there were fifteen dreadnoughts currently in the system, as well as the battle carrier Constellation—making any one of them his flagship would cause a game of musical chairs.

Emperor Hazard had made it clear to Kong that he was in command of the Sol Defense Fleet, and because of that, would seldom leave the system. Hazard King had organized the imperial forces around Earth into three units: a task force built around the battle carrier Constellation; another around the carrier Ark Royal; and the third force was the Sol Defense Force.

Since the emperor routinely deployed the carrier task forces on missions, Kong would need to swap flagships if he used one of the carriers. To negate that problem, he stayed aboard the Kenya.

When the emperor finally turns everything over to Kong, I wonder how that will change.

Though there’d been no official announcement, everyone knew the new emperor couldn’t remain in the Sol System and in command of the imperial forces. He had to return to Britannia so he could rule the empire.

“What have you got for me, Jori?” Kong asked when he saw his chief of staff walk in. It wasn’t one of their scheduled meeting times, so Gathii knew something must be up.

“An update from Rear Admiral Doheny just arrived,” he announced.

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