Post by masterkiserius on Nov 15, 2010 1:00:53 GMT -5
Faction: Sith
Department: Navy
Rank: Rear Admiral
Name: Victor Suvorov
Race: Human
Age: 43
Height: 6’2
Weight: 250 pounds.
Birth place: Coronet, Corellia
Appearance:
Victor’s appearance could be described as a mix between a ruffian and an Admiral. He is tall, broad, muscular enough for appearances, and his uniform is always impeccable, at all times, but unkempt black hair tinged with grey, a barely maintained beard, and a rather direct and vernacular way of speech spoils the image of a perfect officer. If one is to look carefully, they will notice that the man has rather piercing, attentive brown eyes which miss nothing in their purview, so much so that one can almost feel the gears of a mind constantly at work behind them. He walks with a slight slouch, not in the manner of a depressed man, but rather, a bored man.
His voice is somewhat low and rather gruff, and he usually speaks in short sentences in easily understandable Galactic Basic. He has found this to be the most effective way to communicate, although, in his letters he tends to be far more expressive, hinting at a deeper intellect.
Personality: Victor’s personality can seem to be unpredictable to many. At times, he is serious, focused, and a disciplinarian of the highest order. At others, he is aloof, casual, distracted, bored, and somewhat disinterested with life. A perfect example of this would be his absolute insistence that everything in the CIC be spotless, organized, and ready to be operational at the slightest of notices, but his office is a total disaster, with many assuming a colony of rodents survives solely on the amount of paper he kicks off his desk. This is because his policy towards paperwork is simply to push it off the edge of his desk, and if it is a truly urgent matter, he figures someone will harass him about it anyway. He shuns the use of datapads for files, claiming that it is far too easy to lose data that way, although one has to wonder about that, considering most of his “data” is buried well within the labyrinth of his office.
When on leave or not in any immediate danger of combat, he seems to be a benevolent, despot, letting his underlings do what they will without bothering them too much, as long as what they are doing is not criminal. He will occasionally drink with others he considers his intellectual peers and can often be quite Jovial. It is said he prefers reading the latest works of fantasy and science fiction from Corellia, as well as historical novels. He does, however, seem to have a cruel streak when it comes to administrative tasks, often abandoning his subordinates without guidance to the bureaucrats and paperwork while he uses such time for his own purposes.
When in combat, his personality changes. He is quick, demanding, and will brook no opposition to command. He is noted for always seeing room for improvement and stressing the need for perfection in every maneuver. He is, however, rarely arrogant in command, and tends to play the role of a cautious commander, caring more for the preservation of his forces than killing the enemy, but will not hesitate to do what is necessary to achieve his mission objectives, lessons he learned from bitter experience.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3.5: While he keeps a decent enough figure for presentability, he is by no means the most muscular officer in the Sith Navy, nor would he hold out long against a professional fighter in hand to hand combat.
Intelligence: 8: While he wouldn’t claim to be a genius, he is definitely no dullard, and years of life experience has refined his mind into something to be feared by those who are in his way.
Speed: 4: He is a naval officer, and getting old at that, so he not exactly the most speedy of people. He can, however, manage short bursts of speed, usually from some area on the ship to the CIC, with dexterity.
Leadership: 8: Over twenty-one years of service in various naval positions has given him quite a deal of experience in regards to leadership. Experience that was hard-earned every step of the way.
Unarmed: 4: He is capable enough to be able to take down your average drunk with little difficulty, but he will not be putting up a fight against a Teras Kasi Master any time soon.
Melee Weapons: 2 His experience with a sword or any other melee weapon is chiefly strapping it onto his uniform for official events and occasionally polishing it.
Ranged Weapons: 7: Victor has, in the course of his long career as a naval officer, seen the benefits of using a blaster or projectile pistol. Namely, that no matter how big or scary the opponent is, a few well-placed blaster or projectile rounds are usually more than sufficient to take down most sentient species in the Galaxy. Since he is not particularly inclined to grapple with opponents at melee range, he has honed his abilities with a pistol through long practice and determination, to the point where anything threatening under a hundred and fifty yards is going to be in for a hell of a fight. He will most likely not win a galactic shooter’s competition, but he very well may be within the top fifteen percent range.
Alignment: +2.5: He generally tries to get by in life without causing too much unnecessary harm to others, and will even go out of his way at times to shield people, but years of experience and seeing how the Galaxy truly works has tempered his idealism quite a bit, and he has far more realistic goals on living and improving the state of the Galaxy then he did when he was young.
Bio:
The Early Years and the Republic Naval Academy:
Victor was born as the first child of an upper-middle class family in Coronet, Corellia. His birth was soon followed by that of his two younger sisters. Life went well, with Victor being a happy, if somewhat odd boy who much preferred talking to his elders than talking to his peers. He enjoyed spending time with his family and his somewhat limited circle of friends, and this would be perhaps the most happy time in his life. Then, his father became an alcoholic, or perhaps revealed a long hidden habit, to the family and started to beat his mother.
This continued until Victor was sixteen, when he could no longer take it anymore, beat the living hell out of his father, and promptly saw him thrown into jail. While relieving the stress on his family, it did cost them their livelihood, and in order not to be a financial burden on the family and eager to escape from his past, Victor studied hard and was granted entry into the Republic’s Naval Academy with a full-ride scholarship.
He departed Corellia at the age of eighteen, much to the tears of his remaining family, which he reciprocated for the most part (except he shed no tears for his father, whom till this day he has been unable to forgive). He had mixed feelings about leaving, but decided to press onwards in order to redeem his family name, which had been sullied by the knowledge that his father had done such things.
He promptly showed brilliance for strategic and tactical planning as a naval officer, but was seen as incredibly dull when it came to the study of advanced mathematics and science required. This dilemma, however, was solved by befriending people who were actually good at such things, and in return he assisted them with strategy and tactics( This relationship seems to have carried on to the present day, with his subordinates being notable for being mediocre strategists and tacticians, and Viktor being mediocre at advanced mathematics and science. When combined, however, they serve as a truly magnificent force). He graduated within the top ten percent of his class, not having the ambition or drive to become the best, but definitely not willing to be associated with imbeciles, either.
Years as a Republic Officer:
Viktor initially was stationed in the Outer Rim, and was granted command of numerous small cruisers and frigates on criminal crackdown missions and anti-terrorism operations. He initially preformed such operations with a great deal of idealism until he, while in pursuit of a pirate ship, ignored the warnings of his subordinates and decided to chase after a pirate ship jumping off into hyperspace in order to apprehend the criminals. When his ship jumped out of hyperspace, his frigate was immediately assaulted by four pirate cruisers, who had lain in wait, and he barely managed to send off an emergency beacon and make it to the escape pods before his frigate was destroyed. Four hundred crew went down that day, and the rest only survived because a Republic fleet was doing a patrol nearby and managed to respond quickly to the beacon.
This event seemed to have a psychological effect on Victor; forever after he has always erred on the side of caution, never chasing after glory or needlessly endangering men or doing much more than what he was given orders to do.
After that debacle, he was assigned to numerous logistics positions, where during his three year command exile he learned the value of accurate logistical planning and support. He learned to strip away everything major that wasn’t strictly necessary to the running of a starship; to this day, his ships are noted for a lack of amenities or decorations. Even his office has nothing more than what was provided with the ship, with the exception of a few novels, a large amount of alcohol, and the endless piles of paperwork on the floor.
After his return from effective exile, he was given command of a small taskforce consisting of a single capital ship and a few frigates and cruisers near Tatooine with the objective of wiping out local criminal resistance. After carefully reviewing the ships in his fleet, painstakingly arguing for the necessary logistics to carry out his campaign, and gaining sufficient intelligence on when exactly the pirates would be most vulnerable, he launched a swift, surprise attack on a pirate stronghold on Lok. He was in luck: It was the very same group of pirates who had cost him four hundred of his men years before. He managed to catch them by surprise and ordered a merciless orbital bombardment on their camp, turning an area twenty-five square miles in diameter into blackened soil. He was later reprimanded for this by his superiors as an excessive use of force, but Victor calmly responded by saying that if the pirates were dead, they could no longer be pirates, and that trying to apprehend them would have potentially cost the lives of Republic soldiers, which he considered to be far superior to that of an average pirate.
After his mission on Lok, Viktor was shuffled around the Galaxy, being promoted to the rank of Commodore at age 37 and tasked with dealing with pirates, criminals, and insurgencies in the Mid-Rim.
Disillusionment and defection to the Sith:
After serving for years rooting out numerous pirate groups and criminals, but becoming increasingly frustrated by what he considered archaic laws preventing him from dealing with them more effectively, and by numerous interventions by Senators who had rather suspicious reasons for raising objections against proposed missions to deal with large criminal syndicates, Viktor became disillusioned with the Republic. The way that arrogant politicians looked down upon the military, always wishing to cut the budget for more tax breaks, always trying to skim on some parts here or there, always blocking real action against criminals for their own interests began to grate on him. At the same time, they praised the military for their services and were the first to take credit for the accomplishments of it. They praised law and order, while subverting it the entire time. They railed against taxes levied against them, but had no problem raising taxes on their own people for their own luxuries.
Then the Sith Empire launched its attack on the Republic, scoring devastating strikes against Dantooine, Mygeeto, Mon Calamari. The Republic military crippled before the war in Viktor’s opinion by the Republic itself and only more crippled by the reluctance of the Senate to quickly respond and by the Jedi’s passive stance, suffered multiple large setbacks. Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Chancellor was killed. The balance of power in the Galaxy was shifting, and with it Viktor saw his chance.
A chance to attain the power necessary to change the Galaxy. A chance to be given a free hand at commanding his forces, without the restrictions of democracy, laws, and petty men seeking their own power. A chance to gout the corrupt, bulky, archaic Republic and with a sleek, efficient government that could provide better security for the people at large.
After the fall of Dantooine, and noting the Republic’s failing grip on its domain, Viktor formally resigned his position as Commodore, along with sixty percent of his officer core, forty percent of non-commissioned officers, and thirty percent of those enlisted and left the Republic for Sith-occupied territories. It is notable that he did not take any of his military ships with him, only transports, nor did he compel any soldier or officer to follow him that did not wish to do so. The only things of value he took with him were numerous files of the Republic’s defenses in the Outer and Mid Rims, which he had access to before, and knowledge of criminal contacts and informants he had built up as a Commodore. He used this as a bargaining chip to secure a favorable position among the Sith Military, arguing that they needed competent, experienced commanders for the influx of new forces joining them and that such intelligence would prove crucial for success against the bloated and corrupt, but still formidable, Republic.
His offer was accepted, and he was promoted to Rear Admiral due to a lack of senior officers in the Sith Navy.
Present Time:
At present, Rear Admiral Suvorov is building up a fleet and training the crews necessary to operate that fleet for combat operations. He estimates that his fleet will be ready deployment in the near future. His flagship, which is rumored to be a hybrid between a supercarrier and a dreadnought, has been said to be unique in that it eschews traditional turbolaser batteries for Railguns and Missiles, with only the point-defense systems retaining laser capability.
RP Sample:
*Knock*
There was a small rustle within the Rear Admiral’s darkened office.
*Knock* *Knock*
“Sir? Are you there?’
Silence.
*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
A small rustling, and then a crash.
Damn it, thought Victor if I had only managed to stay quiet a little longer, he would have thought I was on an inspection or something.
“Sir! We really need to get that report on the environmental sustainability of our fleet to Central Command. It’s been four months past the deadline sir.”
Sighing, Viktor turned on the light, and pressed the button on his desk,
allowing Ensign Kursk, his personal assistant, to enter.
“No. Whoever even bothered to come up with such a report should be shot dead.”
“Sir, I don’t decide policy.”
Sighing, Victor took out a small pen and began to fill out the form.
“And then you have to decide whether or not we wish to participate in the Healthy Hearts program.”
“What in the H-“
“It’s a petition to remove all desserts at the mess and all snacks from the vending machines from your ship in order to improve fitness.”
“No.”
“They’re willing to give everyone a one thousand credit bonus.”
Viktor stared at his assistant with such a look on his face Kursk involuntarily took a few steps backward.
“Let me explain something to you, Ensign. See, it is important as an officer to notice the little things. Little things such as how we are often sent out on missions lasting weeks, months, and even years without stopping at a port. And, as you can notice, there is not much in the way of luxury on a warship. Now, to a bureaucrat sitting in his office receiving reports from scientists that sweets are not conducive to physical fitness, the logical thing to do would be to simply remove sweets from the menu and make them unavailable. But as an officer, I have to consider other things. Things such as the fact that most of my crew will not be seeing a significant other for a long time. That they are stuck doing largely boring, monotonous work, day after day, to simply to keep this vessel running. Men need things to keep them going. Patriotism, appeals to values, rhetoric, that can all work in the heat of the moment. But in the long term, Ensign, men look forward to the little things. Little things such as that single chocolate chip cookie after dinner. Remove those little chocolate chip cookies from people’s lives, Ensign…and, well...you learn that they will do whatever it takes to get them back.”
Kursk stared at him. That was the single longest speech he had ever heard from his commander, in the six months he had worked with him.
Viktor noticed the stare.
“Yes?”
“Ah…nothing sir.”
“Good. I’m going to go to the CIC. Deal with this for me, will you?” said Viktor, gesturing to the pile of paperwork on the floor and getting up from his chair and walking past the Ensign.
“Si-Sir! I need your signature!”
“But you don’t need me there to fill out the forms, right?”
“Well, err, no, but sir, I’m supposed to ask for your opinion and write it down in them!”
“My opinion is the same as your opinion.”
“Sir this is unf-“
Ensign Kursk’s complaints were cut off as the office door closed behind him. He clicked a small controller on his belt. The door locked. He figured leaving Kursk in there for eight hours doing paperwork would maybe leave just enough space for him to take a nap there and relieve the small, guilty pang he sometimes felt about being grossly neglectful of such things.
Department: Navy
Rank: Rear Admiral
Name: Victor Suvorov
Race: Human
Age: 43
Height: 6’2
Weight: 250 pounds.
Birth place: Coronet, Corellia
Appearance:
A recent shot of Rear Admiral Suvorov, evidently displeased about more paperwork being sent his way by Central Command.
Victor’s appearance could be described as a mix between a ruffian and an Admiral. He is tall, broad, muscular enough for appearances, and his uniform is always impeccable, at all times, but unkempt black hair tinged with grey, a barely maintained beard, and a rather direct and vernacular way of speech spoils the image of a perfect officer. If one is to look carefully, they will notice that the man has rather piercing, attentive brown eyes which miss nothing in their purview, so much so that one can almost feel the gears of a mind constantly at work behind them. He walks with a slight slouch, not in the manner of a depressed man, but rather, a bored man.
His voice is somewhat low and rather gruff, and he usually speaks in short sentences in easily understandable Galactic Basic. He has found this to be the most effective way to communicate, although, in his letters he tends to be far more expressive, hinting at a deeper intellect.
Personality: Victor’s personality can seem to be unpredictable to many. At times, he is serious, focused, and a disciplinarian of the highest order. At others, he is aloof, casual, distracted, bored, and somewhat disinterested with life. A perfect example of this would be his absolute insistence that everything in the CIC be spotless, organized, and ready to be operational at the slightest of notices, but his office is a total disaster, with many assuming a colony of rodents survives solely on the amount of paper he kicks off his desk. This is because his policy towards paperwork is simply to push it off the edge of his desk, and if it is a truly urgent matter, he figures someone will harass him about it anyway. He shuns the use of datapads for files, claiming that it is far too easy to lose data that way, although one has to wonder about that, considering most of his “data” is buried well within the labyrinth of his office.
When on leave or not in any immediate danger of combat, he seems to be a benevolent, despot, letting his underlings do what they will without bothering them too much, as long as what they are doing is not criminal. He will occasionally drink with others he considers his intellectual peers and can often be quite Jovial. It is said he prefers reading the latest works of fantasy and science fiction from Corellia, as well as historical novels. He does, however, seem to have a cruel streak when it comes to administrative tasks, often abandoning his subordinates without guidance to the bureaucrats and paperwork while he uses such time for his own purposes.
When in combat, his personality changes. He is quick, demanding, and will brook no opposition to command. He is noted for always seeing room for improvement and stressing the need for perfection in every maneuver. He is, however, rarely arrogant in command, and tends to play the role of a cautious commander, caring more for the preservation of his forces than killing the enemy, but will not hesitate to do what is necessary to achieve his mission objectives, lessons he learned from bitter experience.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3.5: While he keeps a decent enough figure for presentability, he is by no means the most muscular officer in the Sith Navy, nor would he hold out long against a professional fighter in hand to hand combat.
Intelligence: 8: While he wouldn’t claim to be a genius, he is definitely no dullard, and years of life experience has refined his mind into something to be feared by those who are in his way.
Speed: 4: He is a naval officer, and getting old at that, so he not exactly the most speedy of people. He can, however, manage short bursts of speed, usually from some area on the ship to the CIC, with dexterity.
Leadership: 8: Over twenty-one years of service in various naval positions has given him quite a deal of experience in regards to leadership. Experience that was hard-earned every step of the way.
Unarmed: 4: He is capable enough to be able to take down your average drunk with little difficulty, but he will not be putting up a fight against a Teras Kasi Master any time soon.
Melee Weapons: 2 His experience with a sword or any other melee weapon is chiefly strapping it onto his uniform for official events and occasionally polishing it.
Ranged Weapons: 7: Victor has, in the course of his long career as a naval officer, seen the benefits of using a blaster or projectile pistol. Namely, that no matter how big or scary the opponent is, a few well-placed blaster or projectile rounds are usually more than sufficient to take down most sentient species in the Galaxy. Since he is not particularly inclined to grapple with opponents at melee range, he has honed his abilities with a pistol through long practice and determination, to the point where anything threatening under a hundred and fifty yards is going to be in for a hell of a fight. He will most likely not win a galactic shooter’s competition, but he very well may be within the top fifteen percent range.
Alignment: +2.5: He generally tries to get by in life without causing too much unnecessary harm to others, and will even go out of his way at times to shield people, but years of experience and seeing how the Galaxy truly works has tempered his idealism quite a bit, and he has far more realistic goals on living and improving the state of the Galaxy then he did when he was young.
Bio:
The Early Years and the Republic Naval Academy:
Victor was born as the first child of an upper-middle class family in Coronet, Corellia. His birth was soon followed by that of his two younger sisters. Life went well, with Victor being a happy, if somewhat odd boy who much preferred talking to his elders than talking to his peers. He enjoyed spending time with his family and his somewhat limited circle of friends, and this would be perhaps the most happy time in his life. Then, his father became an alcoholic, or perhaps revealed a long hidden habit, to the family and started to beat his mother.
This continued until Victor was sixteen, when he could no longer take it anymore, beat the living hell out of his father, and promptly saw him thrown into jail. While relieving the stress on his family, it did cost them their livelihood, and in order not to be a financial burden on the family and eager to escape from his past, Victor studied hard and was granted entry into the Republic’s Naval Academy with a full-ride scholarship.
He departed Corellia at the age of eighteen, much to the tears of his remaining family, which he reciprocated for the most part (except he shed no tears for his father, whom till this day he has been unable to forgive). He had mixed feelings about leaving, but decided to press onwards in order to redeem his family name, which had been sullied by the knowledge that his father had done such things.
He promptly showed brilliance for strategic and tactical planning as a naval officer, but was seen as incredibly dull when it came to the study of advanced mathematics and science required. This dilemma, however, was solved by befriending people who were actually good at such things, and in return he assisted them with strategy and tactics( This relationship seems to have carried on to the present day, with his subordinates being notable for being mediocre strategists and tacticians, and Viktor being mediocre at advanced mathematics and science. When combined, however, they serve as a truly magnificent force). He graduated within the top ten percent of his class, not having the ambition or drive to become the best, but definitely not willing to be associated with imbeciles, either.
Years as a Republic Officer:
Viktor initially was stationed in the Outer Rim, and was granted command of numerous small cruisers and frigates on criminal crackdown missions and anti-terrorism operations. He initially preformed such operations with a great deal of idealism until he, while in pursuit of a pirate ship, ignored the warnings of his subordinates and decided to chase after a pirate ship jumping off into hyperspace in order to apprehend the criminals. When his ship jumped out of hyperspace, his frigate was immediately assaulted by four pirate cruisers, who had lain in wait, and he barely managed to send off an emergency beacon and make it to the escape pods before his frigate was destroyed. Four hundred crew went down that day, and the rest only survived because a Republic fleet was doing a patrol nearby and managed to respond quickly to the beacon.
This event seemed to have a psychological effect on Victor; forever after he has always erred on the side of caution, never chasing after glory or needlessly endangering men or doing much more than what he was given orders to do.
After that debacle, he was assigned to numerous logistics positions, where during his three year command exile he learned the value of accurate logistical planning and support. He learned to strip away everything major that wasn’t strictly necessary to the running of a starship; to this day, his ships are noted for a lack of amenities or decorations. Even his office has nothing more than what was provided with the ship, with the exception of a few novels, a large amount of alcohol, and the endless piles of paperwork on the floor.
After his return from effective exile, he was given command of a small taskforce consisting of a single capital ship and a few frigates and cruisers near Tatooine with the objective of wiping out local criminal resistance. After carefully reviewing the ships in his fleet, painstakingly arguing for the necessary logistics to carry out his campaign, and gaining sufficient intelligence on when exactly the pirates would be most vulnerable, he launched a swift, surprise attack on a pirate stronghold on Lok. He was in luck: It was the very same group of pirates who had cost him four hundred of his men years before. He managed to catch them by surprise and ordered a merciless orbital bombardment on their camp, turning an area twenty-five square miles in diameter into blackened soil. He was later reprimanded for this by his superiors as an excessive use of force, but Victor calmly responded by saying that if the pirates were dead, they could no longer be pirates, and that trying to apprehend them would have potentially cost the lives of Republic soldiers, which he considered to be far superior to that of an average pirate.
After his mission on Lok, Viktor was shuffled around the Galaxy, being promoted to the rank of Commodore at age 37 and tasked with dealing with pirates, criminals, and insurgencies in the Mid-Rim.
Disillusionment and defection to the Sith:
After serving for years rooting out numerous pirate groups and criminals, but becoming increasingly frustrated by what he considered archaic laws preventing him from dealing with them more effectively, and by numerous interventions by Senators who had rather suspicious reasons for raising objections against proposed missions to deal with large criminal syndicates, Viktor became disillusioned with the Republic. The way that arrogant politicians looked down upon the military, always wishing to cut the budget for more tax breaks, always trying to skim on some parts here or there, always blocking real action against criminals for their own interests began to grate on him. At the same time, they praised the military for their services and were the first to take credit for the accomplishments of it. They praised law and order, while subverting it the entire time. They railed against taxes levied against them, but had no problem raising taxes on their own people for their own luxuries.
Then the Sith Empire launched its attack on the Republic, scoring devastating strikes against Dantooine, Mygeeto, Mon Calamari. The Republic military crippled before the war in Viktor’s opinion by the Republic itself and only more crippled by the reluctance of the Senate to quickly respond and by the Jedi’s passive stance, suffered multiple large setbacks. Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Chancellor was killed. The balance of power in the Galaxy was shifting, and with it Viktor saw his chance.
A chance to attain the power necessary to change the Galaxy. A chance to be given a free hand at commanding his forces, without the restrictions of democracy, laws, and petty men seeking their own power. A chance to gout the corrupt, bulky, archaic Republic and with a sleek, efficient government that could provide better security for the people at large.
After the fall of Dantooine, and noting the Republic’s failing grip on its domain, Viktor formally resigned his position as Commodore, along with sixty percent of his officer core, forty percent of non-commissioned officers, and thirty percent of those enlisted and left the Republic for Sith-occupied territories. It is notable that he did not take any of his military ships with him, only transports, nor did he compel any soldier or officer to follow him that did not wish to do so. The only things of value he took with him were numerous files of the Republic’s defenses in the Outer and Mid Rims, which he had access to before, and knowledge of criminal contacts and informants he had built up as a Commodore. He used this as a bargaining chip to secure a favorable position among the Sith Military, arguing that they needed competent, experienced commanders for the influx of new forces joining them and that such intelligence would prove crucial for success against the bloated and corrupt, but still formidable, Republic.
His offer was accepted, and he was promoted to Rear Admiral due to a lack of senior officers in the Sith Navy.
Present Time:
At present, Rear Admiral Suvorov is building up a fleet and training the crews necessary to operate that fleet for combat operations. He estimates that his fleet will be ready deployment in the near future. His flagship, which is rumored to be a hybrid between a supercarrier and a dreadnought, has been said to be unique in that it eschews traditional turbolaser batteries for Railguns and Missiles, with only the point-defense systems retaining laser capability.
RP Sample:
*Knock*
There was a small rustle within the Rear Admiral’s darkened office.
*Knock* *Knock*
“Sir? Are you there?’
Silence.
*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
A small rustling, and then a crash.
Damn it, thought Victor if I had only managed to stay quiet a little longer, he would have thought I was on an inspection or something.
“Sir! We really need to get that report on the environmental sustainability of our fleet to Central Command. It’s been four months past the deadline sir.”
Sighing, Viktor turned on the light, and pressed the button on his desk,
allowing Ensign Kursk, his personal assistant, to enter.
“No. Whoever even bothered to come up with such a report should be shot dead.”
“Sir, I don’t decide policy.”
Sighing, Victor took out a small pen and began to fill out the form.
“And then you have to decide whether or not we wish to participate in the Healthy Hearts program.”
“What in the H-“
“It’s a petition to remove all desserts at the mess and all snacks from the vending machines from your ship in order to improve fitness.”
“No.”
“They’re willing to give everyone a one thousand credit bonus.”
Viktor stared at his assistant with such a look on his face Kursk involuntarily took a few steps backward.
“Let me explain something to you, Ensign. See, it is important as an officer to notice the little things. Little things such as how we are often sent out on missions lasting weeks, months, and even years without stopping at a port. And, as you can notice, there is not much in the way of luxury on a warship. Now, to a bureaucrat sitting in his office receiving reports from scientists that sweets are not conducive to physical fitness, the logical thing to do would be to simply remove sweets from the menu and make them unavailable. But as an officer, I have to consider other things. Things such as the fact that most of my crew will not be seeing a significant other for a long time. That they are stuck doing largely boring, monotonous work, day after day, to simply to keep this vessel running. Men need things to keep them going. Patriotism, appeals to values, rhetoric, that can all work in the heat of the moment. But in the long term, Ensign, men look forward to the little things. Little things such as that single chocolate chip cookie after dinner. Remove those little chocolate chip cookies from people’s lives, Ensign…and, well...you learn that they will do whatever it takes to get them back.”
Kursk stared at him. That was the single longest speech he had ever heard from his commander, in the six months he had worked with him.
Viktor noticed the stare.
“Yes?”
“Ah…nothing sir.”
“Good. I’m going to go to the CIC. Deal with this for me, will you?” said Viktor, gesturing to the pile of paperwork on the floor and getting up from his chair and walking past the Ensign.
“Si-Sir! I need your signature!”
“But you don’t need me there to fill out the forms, right?”
“Well, err, no, but sir, I’m supposed to ask for your opinion and write it down in them!”
“My opinion is the same as your opinion.”
“Sir this is unf-“
Ensign Kursk’s complaints were cut off as the office door closed behind him. He clicked a small controller on his belt. The door locked. He figured leaving Kursk in there for eight hours doing paperwork would maybe leave just enough space for him to take a nap there and relieve the small, guilty pang he sometimes felt about being grossly neglectful of such things.
