Prince War Leader (Prince of Britannia Saga Book 3) by Hughes Fred

Author:Hughes, Fred [Hughes, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15. Raising the Stakes

The captain of the fleet dreadnaught Devastator greeted Vice Admiral Julie Adams after she had passed the entire company of Marines who were part of her reception ceremony. The flagship of the entire fleet had rendered full honors to the commander of the First Strike Fleet. The Devastator’s captain was an academy classmate of Julie’s, and the two swapped information and gossip about other classmates as they traveled to the flag conference room.

The two officers had not been friends at the academy, just acquaintances, but Julie wondered what her classmate thought about the difference in rank between them. The two had both been captains just two years ago, but Julie had been promoted three grades since then. Part of it was good fortune and good performance—she had done very well as the captain of the Shinto. But part of it was academy hierarchy. Each cadet submitted a wish list for their first assignment before graduation. The chances of getting the position you desired were based on the availability of the job and your class standing.

First, the choices were divided into specialties: command, engineering, science, logistics, and administration. Every academy class had a handful of students who already had a specialty, such as doctors, dentists, and other medical disciplines slotted under the science branch and lawyers under the administration branch. Most students attended the academy to become combat officers and thus entered the command track, where they had more options, such as whether to lead escorts, cruisers, or heavy units.

Each career path has its pros and cons. Officers serving in escort units like frigates and destroyers would become ship captains sooner, primarily because there were a lot of frigates and destroyers in the fleet. But those same captains would only hold the rank of commander and find that promotion to captain came very slowly; becoming a flag officer would be practically impossible. Heavy units were at the opposite end of the spectrum. While your classmate was the commanding officer of a ship with the rank of commander, you’d be just a department head on a battleship or dreadnaught. But when you received your promotion to the rank of captain and command of a battleship, you were just a short step away from becoming an admiral. Cruiser officers were in the middle. You could become a ship’s commanding officer in a reasonable amount of time, and flag rank promotion was faster than for a heavy unit officer. However, the core of any fleet is its heavy units, and typically only heavy unit officers are promoted to three- and four-star ranks.

Lost in thought, Julie was surprised when she realized they had arrived at the Fleet Commander’s conference room. The Devastator’s captain quickly ushered her into the room. The space wasn’t as large as Julie expected it to be and was surprisingly spartan. The conference table was an elongated oval with one chair at each end and six along each side. Admiral Winfred Mason sat at one end, and Julie took the seat opposite him, with her chief of staff taking the chair to her right.

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