A Life at War: Twilight Chapter 2: Shady Management

R4 woke up by informing I had an after action report with my commanding officer in twenty minutes. I moved to my bedside cafmachine, one of the best purchases of my life, and poured myself a cup. After chugging the hot beverage I jumped into the shower and got myself into uniform. After pinning my officers badge to my chest I rushed to the comms station and pulled up the holoprojector. R4 joined and ‘handed’ a datapad for to re-read my original report.

After skimming over it again I placed it to the side and waited a few seconds before receiving the holo. A miniature blue woman stood in front of . She placed her own datapad out of screen and looked at . I gave a salute and stood at attention.

“Junior Captain Thraken Dericote?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Very good, I am Director of Investigations Foga Brill. I have read your report and I have so follow up questions from the departnt.” she said.

I waited in silence as she grabbed a data pad from beyond the hologram and started browsing through it. It took about a minute before she continued: “Why did you not assist the ship which was assaulted?”

“Mam, the plan was to have the ship’s cargo seized by the pirates in order to root them out of system. I ntioned this in my report. I thought it most prudent to eliminate this pirate gang as permanently as possible.”

“Very well.” she paused a mont, “The Supre Chancellor has been inford of your conduct and is more than impressed. With rising discontent in the Outer Rim, primarily through the secessionist movent, he believes conflict, even a small one, highly likely. He has a need of experienced officers now more than ever. Though there was so mild discontent, he has deed it fit for you to be promoted to a total captaincy and have you transferred. His excellency has also inford you have the right to promote soone from your forr ships crew as well.”

I was shocked. The head of state had heard of this, rather minor, skirmish? That made little sense. Also while the discontent in the Outer Rim was on the rise even at it’s current rate there shouldn’t be any conflict for another five years at the earliest. In all honesty that was based off of my past knowledge of civil wars and revolts. In fact thinking it over more intently, the entire situation was seeming more and more suspect. Why allow to choose soone to promote instead of going off of my report? Why give that kind of power in the first place?

“Your response please, Captain.” The Director pressed.

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“I accept my promotion. If you have the chance, give the Supre Chancellor my thanks. As for who to promote, I would recomnd my Sensors and Navigations officer Lieutenant Faxe Strom for captaincy, Mam.” I reply.

She glances down at her datapad before nodding: “Very well. You both will be transferred to the 347th Outer Rim Section. You will be given one month of shore leave before taking command of the Dreadnought ‘LittleRevenge’. Dismissed.”

I give another salute before the hologram cuts off, leaving alone in the comms station. Holy shit, that was insane.

I spent the month of shore leave visiting my parents and friends back on Fondor. They were more than happy about my success and survival. Elix teased a decent bit on climbing the ranks too quickly. I bickered with him on getting him hitched, which caused a bit of a scuffle in his apartnt. They were all proud and happy though. I guess I was too. I t up with Luis Sicato on my second to last day of shore leave. He was doing well. He was being tapped for a Junior Captaincy after his last few months in the Academy and was excited to join the Judiciary Fleet.

I told him about the pirate encounter and the boredom of patrol. He told about his exams and new professors. He also ntioned the entire academy had a bunch of transfers last sester which were bloating the final officer lists. I comforted him and promised him, if he didn’t get a command I would get him on my ship sohow. All I got for that was a blank stare and an accusation of cronyism.

I had missed my friend. I was looking forward to seeing him in full uniform soon.

Let tell you military supply ships are not a fun place to be. Most of the ship is inaccessible and the rest is either for the actual personnel or for the few people actually traveling places. So I decided, after seeing I was the only passenger, I would simply hunker down in my quarters and read up on my new command.

The Dreadnought is a heavy cruiser, developed and produced by Rendili StarDrive. It is 600 ters long and about one hundred ters wide and tall. Now there were currently two models in use. The model 1 and model two, shortened to M1 and M2 respectively. With both of them the power generators aren’t great and the sublight speed isn’t the best, but with a Class 4 hyperdrive it could still get hell out of dodge if necessary.

But where a Dreadnought, no matter what model, truly shines is its weaponry. Ten dium turbolaser batteries divided equally between fore and aft, with twenty light quad-turbolaser cannons and heavy laser cannon batteries each divided equally between port and starboard. With its standard contingent of a fighter squadron it could single handedly hold out against two ships if she was to broadside both ships at once.

The only main drawback to the ship was the typical crew size. Worst case scenario it would be a ship of over 16000 crew, as seen in the M1. This was highly impractical for many reasons, mostly logistical. The solution was slave-rigging the ships. This brought crew down to a manageable 2200 to 3000, in the M2. This was still a large crew, but with the master controls at my fingertips it was manageable. Though theoretically, a decent chunk of the work could be done by low level droids as well.

I was lucky in that way. The Dreadnoughts of the 347th Outer Rim Section were both M2s. That was beside the point though. I would be the commanding officer of twenty four hundred mbers of the Judiciary. I had to make them respect at least, and love at best. The only problem was I was unsure how to do that. I was going to be the second in command of the Section and unless sothing drastic happened I would be part of an actual formation. That ant closer oversight and having to do as my commanding officer dictated.

That made grumble a tad. The current Republic Judiciary corps was very strict on chain of command. It didn’t help that about half of the higher ups were political appointnts or got to their positions with more nepotism than competence. From what I got in my briefing my current CO would be part of the nepotism crowd.

Senior Captain George Di-Van was a Coruscanti native and had no noteworthy prior postings or battles despite being in his early fifties. I was not looking forward to serving under him.