Deciding that CWO Fish was an excellent Navigator, and wanting to retain her services over that of two midshipman (now Lieutenant Junior Grades) who would be outranked and stifled by the extra crew, you pull open the memo app. You quickly find the template to request an office be assigned to your command and hit a stumbling block. CWO Fish had accepted the offer of a commissioned rank and the 'mustang' crash course at an officers school to receive the requisite degree. But you've lost track of which school she was sent to attend, if she graduated, or what rank she was assigned.

Minimizing the memo app for the moment you drag open a database search tool, select the Surveyor's Corps database of serving personnel, and search for “Molly Hayden Fish”. The app chugs away for a moment before dinging that it has switched to FTL comm link mode to query the full database. You shrug and take the moment to ponder on the rank structure of the Surveyor's Corps. You hold the rank of Captain which, in the regular Navy, would put you either in command of a capital ship like a carrier or battleship or a a squadron of escorts. But in they Surveyor's Corps you are in command of only a single ship. Per the regulations you recall out-ranking Navy commanders but being out-ranked by Navy captains.

Out of idle curiosity you pull up the rank chart and attendant regulations. Much of it is boilerplate “X rank is senior to Y rank and is junior to Z rank. To attain this rank...” and of no use to you. You scroll down to the Surveyor's Corps section and search for an explanation. One comes in the form of a special notation on the Surveyor's Corps in general.

“The Surveyor's Corps often places Captains in command of their ships with commanders serving as executive officers. This is justified as each ship of that same organization must operate independently for extended periods of time. Thus the officer in command of such a ship takes on much greater risk and responsibility in the service of the Crown. It is also worth noting that, due to the lack of experience in commanding formations of ships, that Surveyor's Corps captains are out-ranked by Navy captains in integrated formation situations.”

You nod as your curiosity is satisfied. Idly you dig into the history of this decision. Before you get much further then discovering it was heavily tied up in inter-service rivalry and one upmanship the database search tool triggers it's 'search complete' jingle. You pull up the results and, as expected, there is only a single hit in active service. Your eyebrows rise as you read over the brief summary of now Lieutenant Fish's career. You skim over the bits you are already familiar with: enlistment and service in the Star Empire's merchant marine service, secondment to a Ministry of Colonization sponsored colonization expedition, the loss and rediscovery of said expedition, how she 'survived' thanks to the Hayden project, her service aboard the HMSCS Night Horse. Then you come to the new parts.

Acceptance of a commission, to rank to be determined by a promotion board and contingent upon graduation and receipt of a degree from the Navy's Wood campus in Nova Murmus. Accelerated course work, exceptional grades, and voluntary multiple degrees resulted in her appointment to the Navy War College's Command course. The Breaker, as it is known, is an absolute requirement for appointment to upper rank and the command of a ship in the Navy. Less so in the Surveyor's Corps, but failing it would still bar her from attaining a higher rank. She graduated, albeit no higher then the middle of her class, and went before the promotion board with achievements in hand.

They agreed that, in light of her achievements, she was entitled to a rank higher then that of Midshipman on the basis of achieving multiple degrees and her length of service (despite the forty-odd year gap due to her 'death'). They further agreed that a promotion 'out of the zone' was due based upon both her successful completion of the Breaker. However that also decided that appointment directly to a rank in direct command of a ship as a whole was not appropriate in light of her lack of experience as a department head in either the Navy or the Surveyor's Corps. Accordingly they had granted her the rank of Lieutenant and assignment as the head of a navigation department where she might earn that experience.

This was just over a month ago, but the Surveyor's Corps was having difficulty finding her a berth aboard a ship. Checking over the public reasons you spot three thinly disguised Body Purists. A further two Captains who were either better at disguising their opinion of cybernetics and automatons or who declined based upon the old superstition that a crewman who has survived a ship wreck will bring bad luck on their new ship. You shrug this off and pull the memo app back open to request her services aboard your ship to be.

An hour and ten minutes later you get a confirmation memo that your request has been accepted for consideration. Ten minutes after that you receive a second memo indicating that your request has been approved. Satisfied you dive back into the details of the HMS Ahywa Sofia. You are not familiar with the “Red Angel” weapons mounted aboard her, though the (comparatively) high mark number indicates a mature weapons system and not another test project being foisted off on an unsuspecting captain. Doing some research you turn up interesting information.

The 'angel' line of particle projectile cannons, including the latest generation 'red angel' weapons, are actually highly sought after in the Navy as auxiliary batteries to augment the fire of primary weapons. Their heavy fire is noted for superior armor penetration and range at the cost of decreased rate of fire as well as increased mass and power requirements per 'barrel'. You compare them to the older Thunder Strikes mounted on the Night Horse and run some math. The Red Angles have about ten percent extra raw damage per hit, have a fire rate of only thirty five percent of the Thunder Strikes, massively increased armor and hull penetration (and a corresponding increased change to cause critical internal damage), a fifty percent range increase.

This makes the Ahywa Sofia very much a 'sniper' of a ship. You aren't sure how you feel about that. On one hand her heavy guns can do critical damage at long range. On the other she only carries two of them, and any ship with enough shielding to shrug off a full broadside can probably have its shields back up in time to meet the next one. You figure that the Ahywa Sofia's weapons are effective against anything of light cruiser weight and below and useless against armored or heavy cruisers and larger without something else to strip their shields first.

You lean back and ponder this over for a moment. There is over a month between now and the expected handover date. You might be able to persuade the Navy to take off the Red Angles for a more conventional weapons system, perhaps putting Thunder Strike or the newer 'Blue Fire' Grade 6 extended range laser batteries in their place.