I knew my first officer, Helmut Allemande, very well – an immense person in every way, but as calm and wise as he was immense, loyal, faithful, professional, and humble to the core. He actually had been in line to be promoted to be captain of the Amanirenas had not a trans-warp emergency cleanup caused me to be appointed instead. I never, not from that day to this, sensed the least bit of resentment from him. His ambitions are simply not of a man grasping for position, and he as an officer is a leader who can be trusted in any role to care for those below him in rank, and serve faithfully under those above him.
Which is all to say that nothing about him except the last name and the kind of ambition prepared me to me to meet hot-tempered, knuck-if-you-buck-and-I-said-what-I-said-in-English-and-in-German persona of Commodore Wilhelm Allemande, my first officer's 95-year-old cousin back out of retirement for a special and consortium-wide mission.
“Cousin Wilhelm,” my first officer said, “is why my father and grandfather always said you have to stay in prayer because you can't wait on emergencies or Cousin Wilhelm's arrival to a situation. So you pray for everyone to heed warnings and choose wisdom so they do not have to flee from the wrath to come wrapped in the consequences himself, Cousin Wilhelm.”
The commodore had returned in deep unhappiness because a discovery of his 60 years earlier would have prevented humanity losing two entire star systems for settlement because humanity could have simply settled somewhere else – but no. Between overlooking the work he had done and my 82-year-old uncle Admiral Benjamin Banneker-Jackson had done 50 years earlier, the consortium had lost three star systems and disrupted the lives of a billion people in order to save them.
The commodore was ready to rhetorically blow up the entire high command and deal with the consequences later – “I will read you back to the Stone Age in English, German, Glagolithic, Latin, and Koine Greek because you need it!” was a conversation I just walked in on between him and a whole consortium governor a little after that – because he had absolutely no patience with people who did not bother to get their facts straight when people's lives were at stake.
“Google and Wikipedia were ancient 21st century tools and half of these people wouldn't have bothered to use that – I'll live a whole lot longer because I'm going to see every one of them mustered out of this fleet!”
But fortunately, Full Fleet Admiral Elian Bodega, in his wisdom, assigned Commodore Allemande to the working group my uncle was leading to get on top of research gaps before disasters happened. The two men hit it off. The commodore came to admire my uncle as much as his commander cousin did, but with even more warmth of brotherly love, for the two were old fleet men together – and that calmed the commodore down, somewhat.
“But the challenge, Captain Niece, is that he is right,” my uncle said to me. “He would not be 'the problem' if everyone at rank got here because of the ambition to serve, and because of the actual skill it takes to do that at higher and higher levels in a galactic fleet. But after captain, some people start to phone it in, to use the ancient term, and when that happens, Commodore Allemande loses all respect and isn't really concerned about restraint. I'm a rear admiral, so, one step above him in rank, but that's not why he listens to me and does not question my orders. He respects me and my body of work. That's it.”
“But, Uncle Admiral, in the end, isn't that why all leaders are respected?” I said.
“In the end, Captain Niece, but in the meantime, a lot of people think their title is the thing people should bow down to. Try that on Wilhelm Allemande at any rank, any title, and he will eat you alive. Have a record of doing the right thing, and he's easy to work with.”
Sure enough: I never had any trouble with the commodore either – he was the ideal superior officer in terms of mutual respect. In conversation with him at a more relaxed moment I realized he was deeply informed about my 10 years manning the station on ecologically healing Aqiiuibi as a commander, and greatly respected my work there.
Which is to say that I was not a victim but sometimes was witness to what happened to other commodores, captains, and landed officials who weren't keeping up with their stuff when it came down to exigencies that he, my uncle, and their science team determined were about two minutes from becoming an emergency.
The creature above was about two minutes short of being the source of an entire human settlement disaster under the seas of Nheptoon 9, but the real disaster was that picture, because to scale, everyone tended to assume because of the picture that it just couldn't do the kind of cutting and suction damage that it was alleged to be doing, and so plans had gone ahead far from observation.
Commodore Allemande took one look at that picture and said to my uncle, “Isn't that what they used to colloquially call Fish Bigmouth a decade or three ago?”
“Yep, but that picture is the reason nobody not actually observing the situation realizes the danger today,” Admiral Banneker-Jackson said.
“All they had to do was check in with our sea fleet!”
“Now you know that 'let not the left hand know what the right hand is doing' is a command, Commodore.”
“That is not what that verse means!”
“We know that,” my uncle said, “but we paid attention in Sunday School. Not everyone goes, and not everyone paid attention.”
This tickled the commodore for the time being, but it was no laughing matter for the self-assured community planner who came in a condescending way to explain why he sent over that picture and how said creature's mouth did not have the capability of doing what the report said. That set Commodore Allemande off.
“Well, how would you even know that when you don't know the mouth from the tail?”
Owing to what we think a fish should roughly look like, said community planner had looked at the specs on the back end of this creature and realized it could never do on the back end what its mouth was reputedly capable of. There was no hydrochloric acid coming out back there, no pincers that were the composite equivalent of a billion drill bits going at the molecular level. All this was true. The problem is, he hadn't checked the sea fleet records and realized: the creature was dainty, and never had its front and back ends open at the same time. So, the actual picture that should have been looked at was this one:
When you consider that each such creature was the size of a fleet shuttle, you can understand why, looked at from the correct perspective, they would get the nickname Fish Bigmouth, and why a school of them, comprising hundreds of creatures who could bite through titanium if given a rough surface to grip on, could be so dangerous to all human building prospects.
Of course, said official found out all of this the hard way, capped off with, “My problem is not even that you didn't know by looking what end you were looking at – my problem is that with thousands of lives at stake, you didn't bother to climb far enough down Mt. Stupid to get enough information to send something over here to let us know you even know your elbow from your own a –.”
“Commodore,” Admiral Banneker-Jackson ordered, “as you were.”
“Yes, sir,” the commodore ordered, and subsided partially, but if looks could kill that official …
“Although I am not as voluble as Commodore Allemande,” my uncle said, “in substance I am not in disagreement with his remarks. You are relieved of your duties, sir, and ordered to report to Star Base 3 and remain there through the inquiry into your activities as site commander. You may wish to retain counsel, and if you cannot afford counsel, the consortium will provide that to you.”
There was a moment in which this poor man laughed.
“What makes you old dudes think you are still running anything?” he said.
“The security officers coming up behind you,” my uncle purred as said officers came and got the official and, while he used all the words that my uncle would not permit the commodore to utter, led him away.
“You know, you could have just beamed me over there, Admiral!” the commodore said. “I would have gotten him completely straightened out!”
“Waste of your blood pressure and your time, and would have complicated his court martial,” my uncle said.
“Yes, sir,” the commodore said, with a sigh.
“We have so much work to do we must marshal our strength,” my uncle said. “One down. Potentially hundreds and thousands to go.”
“Right, Admiral,” the commodore said, and refocused.
“I don't even know why people are worried about any front or back end of a Fish Bigmouth,” Ensign Pushkin at navigation said to Lieutenant Morimoto at tactical. “What they better learn how to do is get their stuff straight and stay out of Commodore Allemande's mouth.”
“Ate that man alive with his whole career,” the lieutenant said. “I'm just going to run some diagnostics real quick to be sure, because if that man ever takes command and there's a lag on literally blowing some enemy away –.”
“Yeah – no,” the ensign said. “I don't even see how our first officer even deals with it!”
I knew. I didn't even have to see my first officer's face. His whole body was in prayer.
“Because my father and grandfather told me: 'God forgives, but if you don't keep your life together, Cousin Wilhelm is the consequences!' It is my constant prayer that everyone get and keep their lives together!”