Amantus
Copyright© 2026 by QM
Chapter 25
Amantus approached the Devastator’s docking tube, then returned the salute from the Force Lieutenant on guard duty and showed his transfer order on his perscomp.
“Commander Amantus, you are expected; please go to the end of the tube, and someone will collect you and take you to the Captain and the Commodore,” the Lieutenant stated.
“Thank you,” Amantus replied, returning another salute.
At the end of the tube, Amantus was greeted by Commander Tuvis and asked to follow as she led the way to the command area of the battleship.
“I’m afraid you’ll have an uphill climb, particularly with the low morale of a lot of the crew,” Tuvis said as they made their way through the ship.
“They miss Hrilt that much, or has it been an underlying issue for a while?” Amantus asked.
“Mostly the latter, though there are a couple of his favourites left who avoided the purge,” Tuvis replied. “No doubt the Captain will fill you in.”
They reached the bridge, and Tuvis stepped up to the day cabin and rang the buzzer, then indicated to Amantus to enter. Amantus then saluted Captain Horth and Commodore Dorrus.
“Welcome aboard, Amantus,” Horth began. “I’ve heard good things about you by way of tactics.”
“Thank you, sir,” Amantus replied. “I’ll do my best to live up to your expectations.”
“You’ll be assigned to blue shift,” Horth continued. “They’re mostly new promotees, but there’s a morale issue on the Devastator caused by favouritism and lack of success by the previous command staff. I expect you to work on putting it right.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll also be assigning you extra duties to assist the various tacticians to improve their game,” Dorrus added with a smile.
“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” Amantus nodded.
“Good, the performance of the Sabre and the squadron around them got a lot of attention within Sixth,” Dorrus continued. “I’m hoping some of that success will rub off on the Devastator.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Commander Tuvis will take you to your cabin, read the standing orders and be prepared to hit the ground running at the start of your next shift,” Horth concluded the meeting.
“Sir, ma’am,” Amantus replied, rising and saluting.
Outside the day cabin, Tuvis led the way to Amantus’s cabin before returning to the bridge. The cabin itself was much larger than any of his previous cabins, and Amantus’s lack of personal effects made it look emptier than it actually was. Still, it had a large desk and screen, so Amantus was able to get to work studying the standing orders and reviewing the personal files of the officers he would be commanding. After that, he located a gym and headed down to go through his exercise regimen, getting a couple of surprised looks from Force personnel, though no comments.
After breakfast, Amantus turned up at the bridge twenty rotations before blue shift was supposed to begin. This was primarily to meet with his opposite number and continue his endeavours to get a ‘feel’ for the Devastator’s morale.
“Ah, the newbie,” Commander Limune said after the initial introduction. “The one here to improve our tactical performance.”
“That’s rather down to the bridge crew,” Amantus replied, noting the background hostility. “Best directions in the world aren’t going to help if my crew struggle to implement them.”
“Are you saying the crew of the Devastator aren’t up to snuff?”
“Never met my crew yet,” Amantus shrugged. “But I doubt it; most of the issues reported performance-wise seemed to come from the very top.”
“Commodore Hrilt was a good man!”
“Yet failed his review; I wonder why?”
Limune stalked off the bridge before his shift was over, clearly angered by Amantus’s responses. Amantus, however, didn’t log it, though he expected further issues at shift changeovers.
“Watch your back, sir,” the Sub-Commander Surej manning comms advised. “He was one of Hrilt’s protégés.”
“I know,” Amantus replied. “I did my homework.”
“Think you can turn it around, sir?”
“I’m going to give it my best shot,” Amantus chuckled. “A lot of it depends on the people around me.”
“Letting them get on with their jobs, not micromanaging and trusting their judgement might help,” Surej nodded. “But that’s only my opinion.”
“Good opinion, it matches mine,” Amantus nodded as the full bridge complement of blue shift arrived after his earlier summons.
Amantus introduced himself after the salutes, then led the bridge crew through a series of exercises drawn from various training formats. He soon found that his people would often hesitate to confirm orders and would also request direction rather than use common sense.
“You did well,” Amantus informed them. “However, you need to be more independent of me in doing the basics.”
“Commander Verkle would come down hard on any unauthorised movements or decisions, sir,” Lieutenant Torris replied. “Problem was, we had no idea what was unauthorised.”
“There aren’t many,” Amantus nodded. “Major course changes that might impact or endanger a formation, unauthorised use of weapons are the main two.”
“So we can just get on with our jobs?”
“Yep, the best bridge crews do just that,” Amantus confirmed. “I’ll normally be working tactical, so I’ll tell you what I want; after that, you should be able to manage fine, at least after a few more exercises to get used to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
More exercises followed, with the bridge crew gradually getting used to Amantus’s style of command. By the end of the first half of the shift, much of the bridge crew’s attitude had improved as they found that Amantus intervened only when something went wrong, rather than constantly micromanaging their activities.
“We’ll continue the exercises tomorrow,” Amantus informed them until then, carry on with your posted duties.”
“Yes, sir,” they all replied.
Other than the officer on comms, Amantus remained on the bridge, going through the various tasks expected from him.
“We have a call from Admiral Kleevi for the Commodore, sir,” Lieutenant Honack on comms reported.
Amantus checked his perscomp, finding that the Commodore should be awake and placed a call through, getting permission to put the Admiral through.
“Looks like a potential mission,” Amantus observed.
“Wouldn’t that come through Admiral Carse?” Honack asked.
“Not if it’s a diplomatic request,” Amantus replied.
“Diplomatic?” Honack frowned.
“Base Admirals deal with visiting dignitaries,” Amantus explained.
“Ah,” Honack nodded. “Just we never had one of those under Hrilt.”
“It’s my first,” Amantus admitted. “Plus it’s just a guess on my part.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a good guess on Amantus’s part. The Devastator’s standing orders were updated several rotations after the Admiral signed off to prepare the ship for escort duties of a Treman cruiser and a diplomatic staff.
“Wonder what that’s all about?” Honack mused.
“No idea,” Amantus admitted. “The Protectorate doesn’t really have issues with the Confederation. Apart from their ships trespassing our claimed systems hunting down planet raiders who are changing their flags.”
“Why do they come out of XD space to do that?”
“Because in XD space you can’t change a characteristic like that,” Amantus explained. “It’s only when you transition that your signal vanishes for about a rotation.”
“So they pop out and vanish from detection of any pursuing ships, then change their identification beacon?”
“Yes, it was a safe method for them to vanish, only the Treman’s started posting cloaked vessels in various systems to take them out.”
“Never ran across anything like that,” Honack admitted.
“Space is vast, and from what I can tell, Admiral Hrilt stuck to assigned routes and never changed his routine.”
“Yep, same route, same transition zone and nothing to report.”
Amantus said nothing; he now suspected Hrilt had done so to avoid interfering with his sponsors’ smuggling activities, assuming that was what they were up to.
Amantus handed the shift over to Commander Tuvis.
“The paperwork is up to date?” she queried in surprise. “I thought you were doing exercises?”
“Just for half the shift,” Amantus smiled. “They do have other duties when docked.”
“True, though the rumours were that they weren’t happy, rumours spread, I believe by Commander Limune,” Tuvis said quietly so that Honack on comms didn’t overhear.
“I met him at the shift changeover; to be honest, I suspect he’s more worried over his position than hostile to mine,” Amantus shrugged.
“He ought to be,” Tuvis grimaced. “Once he was looking at a bright, easy future; now he’s under pressure to perform in an environment where he has to produce results, where he just got golden reviews, not graded honestly.”
“I take it you had issues with him?” Amantus asked.
“Yeah, top reviews, but Hrilt wanted one of his own, and Limune never let me forget it!” Tuvis groused. “Hopefully Commodore Dorrus will be less inclined to favouritism.”
“Well, she got me, despite my former Captain’s attempts to keep me,” Amantus chuckled, liking Tuvis a lot for her forthright honesty. “Not sure if that gives you comfort or not.”
“I’m told Hrilt wanted you demoted,” Tuvis chuckled in return. “Along with Captain Tukle for making his people look like imbeciles.”
“Wasn’t hard,” Amantus replied with an outright laugh, setting Tuvis off with a fit of giggles.
“To a golden future,” Tuvis finally gasped out a drinkless toast.
“One where the best are allowed to shine,” Amantus smiled.
As was his habit, Amantus made his way to the canteen for a meal after the shift ended. Once there, he sat alone and went over anything new in the standing orders, eating his meal on autopilot as he opened a data drop on the Tremans.
The Tremans were somewhat of a mystery to the Protectorate. Yes, their claimed territory was known, but their system of government wasn’t; just that it was run by a regent, though there was no indication of who they were the regent for, or even if they were. They claimed fifty-seven worlds and were regarded as neutrally hostile by Fleet. Though Amantus suspected that part of that was down to their refusal to permit Protectorate Clans to trade in their territories.
It was known that they were hostile to the Tarpheli, Troneks, and Gershonians, and that they occasionally suffered raids by planet raiders (as did the Protectorate). However, their fleet size and composition were unknown, and no combat stats on any of their vessels were detected. These were regarded as not quite as good as their Protectorate counterparts. However, from what Amantus could tell, that was purely guesswork on Fleet’s part as the Tremans tended to avoid confrontations with the Protectorate.
After his meal, Amantus returned to his cabin to continue his studies and finally sleep.
The handover at the next shift change was markedly hostile from Limune. Amantus kept a game face on and didn’t respond to any of the verbal jibes. He did check the ship’s log, however and found that several of the tasks that red shift had been assigned had been allowed to slide over onto blue shift.
A full bridge crew had assembled again, and Amantus set them away on an advanced exercise, telling them to figure as much of it out as they could from the exercises they had carried out the shift before. This he observed as he checked the various tasks that red shift had left and assigned them to service or engineering as required.