When Whales Fight, the Shrimp's Back Breaks (3)
Freesia, who had been watching the nerve-shredding standoff between the Chief of Staff and the Master Chief, felt the blood drain from her face until it was deathly white. She pressed a hand to her forehead, certain she might faint at any second. Daisy looked exactly the same beside her.
“M-Master Chief Martinez, that’s not what I—”
“Did you think that because I spoke to you politely, I must not know exactly why you’re acting like this?”
Freesia understood the anger. Failing the final promotion board would sting anyone. She could even forgive a certain amount of petty obstructionism born from sheer distaste at seeing an admiral’s insignia on someone else’s collar. After all, the word Admiral carried a weight in the military that nothing else could match.
Unlike generals from other branches, an admiral served as both supreme commander of a flotilla guarding an entire star system and its senior field officer. It was a position of honor akin to the Federation’s shield itself—leading countless vessels, protecting hundreds of millions, even billions, of Federation citizens. To lose one’s last shot at that seat… the heartbreak had to be immense.
That was why she had let a few things slide. But there were limits. This had gone far beyond the pale.
“You’ve pinned on colonel’s eagles and suddenly nothing scares you anymore?”
Freesia buried her face in the field manual again. She didn’t know. She simply didn’t know anymore. She had no idea where the fallout from this clash would land, or why these ordeals kept dropping on her head one after another.
“Your words are completely out of line!” the Chief of Staff snapped, voice rising.
He knew Master Chief Frederick’s career spanned decades and that the man was treated with the respect due a brigadier general, but that didn’t give him the right to speak so rudely. The Chief of Staff was still a colonel with thirty years of service, standing on the threshold of his own brigadier’s star.
Frederick merely stared at him with icy contempt, as though the outburst were beneath notice. Even a fleet commander would think twice before handling Frederick carelessly; a mere colonel raising his voice was nothing more than an annoyance to the ears.
“I won’t waste breath. You will submit the report tomorrow. If you object, feel free to say so.”
Part of him wanted to roar that regulations demanded the report today, no exceptions. But he lacked the courage to deal with the consequences. An ordinary battalion master chief could be managed. This was the fleet master chief. In the end the Chief of Staff had no choice but to yield.
Besides, rumor whispered that the Third Operations Commander and Frederick addressed each other as brothers in private. Getting on the wrong side of that connection could easily poison his brigadier general promotion. The admiral track might be closed to him, but he still needed that next star, didn’t he?
The moment the video call ended, a voice thick with unshed tears struck Frederick’s conscience.
“Master Chief…”
The look in those eyes asked whether this had truly been the best option. Frederick swallowed hard.
He had lost his temper watching the young upstart talk back so precisely and let a few sharp words fly. From Freesia’s perspective, however—watching helplessly from the sidelines—it must have felt like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky.
This was not the outcome she had hoped for. She had wanted some brilliant, inscrutable maneuver that would gently persuade the Chief of Staff. Not this blunt display of raw seniority crushing the man beneath a boot.
Frederick himself would be fine. With his storied career, he planned to begin discharge proceedings the very day Freesia left the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion. Once he became a civilian after an honorable retirement, none of this would matter.
But Freesia? A green lieutenant colonel in her thirties who had somehow earned the lasting enmity of a thirty-year veteran colonel on the verge of brigadier general? That grudge would haunt her for years. Even someone as politically naïve as she was could see that much.
“Ahem.”
Did Frederick not realize what Freesia had already grasped? Of course he did—better than she ever could. Sixty years in uniform taught a man to see the future consequences of today’s actions. As long as he remained anchored inside the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion, the Chief of Staff could do nothing immediately, but afterward…
“I’ll make sure this is wrapped up cleanly,” Frederick said.
He would need to prepare safeguards so that even after his retirement the Chief of Staff could not indulge in petty revenge.
“Good grief…”
The three people listening to Freesia’s account of the incident were rendered speechless.
What could anyone possibly say to this poor young lieutenant colonel who had been turned into the proverbial shrimp whose back burst between two fighting whales?
“The whole universe is out to get me. Uuuu… what did I ever do to deserve this?”
At some point Freesia had drunk enough that her complaints now came with the threat of genuine tears. Maylin said nothing, simply refilling the empty glass in silence. Had any other junior officer collapsed into such drunken whining, she would have snapped that they weren’t the only ones suffering. But in this case the words would not come.
The mission itself was already borderline impossible. Now this disaster on top of it? And a power struggle between a master chief with sixty years of service and a colonel wielding real authority, no less. Just imagining being caught in the middle made her skin crawl. That colonel was an elite on the fast track to brigadier general at a relatively young age. In truth it was a clash between a grizzled master chief and a future one-star. No thank you. She would rather retire.
“Master Chief Frederick said he would handle it, so I’m sure he’ll smooth things over as amicably as possible,” Bastien offered.
“But the Master Chief plans to retire the exact day I leave the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion. While he’s still there it might be fine, but afterward…”
Freesia didn’t believe the Chief of Staff would try anything strange while Master Chief Frederick remained in the battalion. The problem would come after his departure. If the Chief of Staff rose higher—fleet headquarters, perhaps, or one of the operations commands—then no matter where Freesia was assigned, the odds of ending up under his authority increased.
There were only six operational commands across the entire Federation. At best, she faced a one-in-six chance of landing beneath him. Once there, any lingering grudge could be used to pick apart her career until it was ruined.
“That may be so, but Master Chief Martinez has spent more than sixty years in uniform. His network is hardly ordinary. And if you shift your perspective slightly, there are ways to escape the Chief of Staff’s reach entirely.”
At the mention of an actual solution, Freesia’s drooping ears perked straight up. In a situation that looked hopeless no matter how she turned it over, there was still an answer?
When she glanced around, the other battalion commanders were nodding. It seemed there really was a way.
“Broadly speaking, two paths exist. The first, though it sounds absurd, is to simply promote faster than the Chief of Staff and match his rank.”
The hopeful sparkle in Freesia’s eyes died instantly. The man was a colonel on the cusp of brigadier general. She had only just pinned on lieutenant colonel. Unless he somehow stalled out as a permanent colonel, he would make brigadier within a few years. Catching up was virtually impossible.
Her own promotion to lieutenant colonel had been unusually rapid; under normal circumstances, colonel would take at least another decade, and general another ten after that. The Chief of Staff would almost certainly promote again in the meantime. By the time she caught up—if she ever did—he would already have retired with honor.
“Don’t look at me that way. The second option is far more realistic.”
The second path Bastien proposed was to abandon the command track entirely and pivot toward a ship captain’s career.
Minimize time in battalion and flotilla command billets at lieutenant colonel and colonel, then accumulate as much experience as possible serving as executive officer and captain aboard space carriers. Above flotilla level, admiral and captain roles were strictly separated. Unlike admirals, who were tightly intertwined with every staff position, captains had almost no overlap with staff work outside of logistics, maintenance, and technical branches.
Unlike an admiral overseeing an entire flotilla, a captain’s duties were limited to the operation and management of a single vessel.
“However, unlike the admiral track that can reach full admiral, the captain track caps at major general. No matter how high you climb, the flagship of an operations command is the ceiling,” Maylin added.
As she said, it was not without drawbacks. One might avoid the hair-loss-inducing stress of managing an entire formation, but the promotion ceiling was far lower than that of the admiral path. The highest realistic posting was a major general’s flagship at operations command.
There were well over a hundred flotilla commander slots for brigadier and major generals, yet across the entire Federation only nine vessels carried major general captains. Promotion to general rank as a captain was a brutal knife fight. Even for immediate brigadier consideration, the available slots were limited to executive officer positions on those nine flagships or captaincies of roughly forty guard ships and destroyers.
Moreover, while admirals generally served until retirement barring the loss of their ship, captains rarely completed full terms. Most carrier captains could not withstand the strain on their mana circuits and retired in their early to mid-seventies at the latest.
In the end, the choice was this: endure hair-loss levels of suffering, enjoy a high promotion ceiling and guaranteed retirement, and continue being tormented by the Chief of Staff—or escape his grasp and shed countless administrative burdens while accepting a lower promotion ceiling and uncertain health that might cut retirement short.
“Neither option looks particularly bright,” Freesia muttered, expression sour.
Bastien gave a small laugh and refilled her empty glass, as if to say drink this and forget the pain for a while.
“Where in the world would you find a choice that is only good? All we can do is avoid the worst outcome as best we can.”
Freesia drained the glass with the face of someone on the verge of tears.