Dreadnaught

And they would be looking to him, wondering why he didn’t fix things and get promotions going again. Field promotions. Maybe headquarters forgot to restrict my ability as fleet commander to promote officers in the field for exceptional performance. But I’ll have to make a bunch of those all at once because once I do it the first time, headquarters and the government will realize that loophole still exists.

He paged down deep in the message and saw the crew lists. Sure enough, every man and woman, officer and enlisted, was assigned by ship, duty, and berthing compartment or stateroom. Can I really just ignore this? He wondered for the first time about the fleet status reports that went out when the fleet was in home space. He knew the reports he received from each ship were accurate, but what got forwarded to headquarters?

Desjani blinked at the question after he called her. “It’s a simulation,” she explained. “You don’t have to do a thing. The fleet database is set to automatically generate a simulation based on headquarters messages like that one. It gets updated by real data when necessary, like combat losses and damage, but administratively it’s an alternate universe that gets fed back to headquarters to keep them quiet. Didn’t you do that a century ago?”

“No.” Should he be horrified? Or thankful that a cure for bureaucratic meddling had been discovered by the operational forces? “Why hasn’t headquarters figured out what’s happening?”

“They know it’s happening. Of course, operational units are so far away, it takes headquarters a while to figure it out. Then they tell us to do what we’re told and stop running the simulation, and the simulated fleet agrees and tells them everything is fine. After a while, headquarters figures out they’re still hearing from the simulation and tell us again, and the simulated fleet agrees again. And so on and so on. Officers at headquarters vow to change the system, but if any of them ever get out with the operational forces, their perspective changes.”

It made sense, but it could also be an enormous practical joke on him. Geary studied her intently, looking for any sign that Desjani was pulling his leg. “Nobody ever talks about it?”

“We don’t have to talk about it much. It’s all automatic on our end though I guess headquarters devotes a lot of effort to telling our simulated fleet how to behave. Haven’t you heard anyone talk about the Potemkin fleet? I don’t know where the name came from, maybe it was the name of whoever first designed the system or maybe it was a name someone found in a database that seemed to fit. The point is, it means the fleet that headquarters wants to see, so that’s what we show them. We follow operational orders, of course, but the micromanagement of everything else is just ignored.”

After he had ended the conversation, Geary still spent a few minutes staring at the message. Despite Desjani’s ease with the situation, part of him still revolted against the idea of feeding headquarters a lot of simulated data. But then he took another look at the detailed instructions, focusing on one line pertaining to one officer on one ship. Ensign Door should make reports twice each week to his department head Lieutenant Orp on his progress in qualifying as an emergency damage repair party leader per fleet instruction 554499A. Should Ensign Door fail to make adequate progress, reports documenting his shortfalls should be prepared weekly using form B334.900 . . .

Geary deleted the message from his queue.

Naturally, it was only the first of many from fleet headquarters.

The next arrived the following day in the form of a high-priority alert flashing an angry demand for attention. That alone gave Geary a bad feeling since he was busy reviewing the readiness state of the ships assigned to the First Fleet. With a sigh of resignation, he tapped receive, seeing the image of the new chief of fleet headquarters for the Alliance, Admiral Celu, appear standing before him. Celu had a strong chin, which she jutted out as if challenging Geary.