Another collaboration between myself (the writing) and 
Coffee, bad news, and bad decisions –- the real life of a full fleet admiral when faced with bad decisions like the toy white hole of the Prameranian usurpers. Looked at as imaged above, it really does resemble an oscillating fan – just a floating anti-gravity model.
Full fleet admirals like myself are always old. It just takes a certain amount of time to get up that high in the fleet if you make it at all – I was stunningly young when gaining my last promotion at 53 – and at that point you go into semi-retirement, because the praying portions of humanity and its fellow sentient beings pray that there is no reason for you to have to seriously clock in every day. There are all these people coming up to you in rank that are supposed to handle the problems at that point – ten times more so on the science track, up which I had come.
So, if a full fleet admiral was out putting a fleet together on the fly, you already knew there was trouble. A theoretical white hole having materialized on approach to planetary systems including the Solar System – that kind of trouble was the only kind for which full fleet admirals rolled out of bed in the morning and clocked in.
And then, there's all the time it really takes to get a full fleet together … when you read stories of great sea engagement on Earth, that's often missed as well … sea and space are vast, each in their own way, and the distances that have to be crossed by each and every ship are immense. Pramerania was near-Earth in the fleet's classification of planets, so it didn't take as long as it might have, but still: weeks had gone by since my husband showed me the gift that had started it all – the pendant that was the model of the “model” white hole Pramerania had launched on itself.
And, that led to the other reality of the matter – my staff of admirals and commodores already knew what was going on. Pramerania was in slow-motion civil war. We weren't supposed to know about it, and all radio and official communication followed the official line: the consortium had not sent teams of scientists until requested by Pramerania, and I had come as team leader by special request because Pramerania is matrilineal and I am a female admiral.
We also had not begun massing the fleet until it was mutually discovered that the anomaly would not only pass and damage the Prameranian system, but had been nudged off course by the binary stars having a storm, and would hit the Solar System. Since the anomaly was not in Prameranian space, we didn't need permission to destroy it, at that point.
“But that lets the cat right out of the bag,” said venerable old Admiral Robert E.W. Lee, the heir of a general that, four centuries earlier, knew a little something about the American Civil War. “If any humanoid fleet thinks they can sail up on a white hole and can destroy that thing, then everyone knows: that isn't a white hole, and this is a fraud, a con, a cheat.”
The old Virginian gentleman was agitated by the situation in a way I rarely saw him.
“My fingers are itching to just beam up every person and every piece of equipment we have on Pramerania,” he said, “but of course, ma'am, I await your orders.”
“You're in charge when it comes time for that, Admiral,” I said. “Like our favorite Book says, 'be ye always ready.' That shoe is going to drop on Pramerania, any day now.”
Indeed, it did, and it was swift and violent. A group of scientists made a hasty exit from the surface of Pramerania, hauling at light speed for the fleet – as they were going, knowing they would be pursued, they let the cat right out of the bag: the usurping line of Pramerania's royal family had ordered their anti-grav weapon rebuilt, and it had been done by those in the scientific community that supported them.
You simply cannot make it at light speed if your pursuers can get up above it and are willing to do a warp jump in system to catch you. These defecting scientists made the ultimate sacrifice for the truth. Admiral Lee wanted desperately to save them, but the situation planetside was also deteriorating, and his duty was to pull our people off the planet's surface safely and not get involved in the Prameranian Civil War.
“I know the Prime Directive and I know my job,” he said sadly.
“E.W.,” I said, “your actions and your report speak for themselves, and you do not have to explain to anyone, my friend.”
So: the fleet was present when one of our consortium planets dissolved into civil war. We offered mediators, and were rebuffed – in fact, this was the first of only two occasions I have ever gotten cussed out by a royal pair. I would make the second the last, but that in its time.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Captain Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr. knew which way the wind was blowing, and he got the shopkeeper who had gotten the pendant to me and her family to safety, because the way the usurping royal pair had talked with me had told him they were out of control now. Sure enough, the shopkeeper's shop – and really the whole building – looked like this the next day, just before folks came to work, a fiery ruin.
Bad news and REALLY bad decisions – but I kept drinking coffee and working on what I was supposed to be working on, because, there are people that deal with one member planet just doing terror attacks on Earth property.
Admiral Lee was delighted when he heard that no one was harmed in the attack, and what it meant we in the fleet could now do.
“So much for the Prime Directive!” he said. “We didn't attack them – now, they have attacked us!”
“We have to wait for the investigation, but, yes, E.W., the rules of engagement have indeed changed just that much.”
Sure enough, the usurping pair hadn't covered their tracks well – they had ordered the discovery of who had gotten the word out to me in the beginning and found out everyone along the line to the shopkeeper: the true ruling pair and their scientists loyal to them had made the pendant, and passed it from hand to hand until Earth was reached, and the shopkeeper passed it to me.
This was when we found out that the brave run of the scientists killed was really diversionary action – the true queen of Pramerania, her consort, and their most loyal knights and scientists had gotten out. Their ship was hiding on the far side of the biggest Prameranian moon, powered down to avoid discovery. Admiral Lee quietly beamed them aboard once their rivals had crossed the line to terrorism on Earth – now, at least to the extent of doing rescue of refugees, we could take sides.
While all of this foolishness was going on, the fleet came into the state I needed it to be in to do what needed to be done. Pramerania's usurpers had made their shows of force, one big, and one small, both of which were acts of terror against their own citizens that had leaked over to endanger life on Earth.
Because Pramerania was matrilineal, perhaps the impact would not have been as great had a male admiral said what I said in my next communication to the Prameranian usurpers, but I made a great impression speaking and would make a bigger impression doing:
“Play time is over,” I thundered. “You'll deal with the consequences of your foolishness at leisure, because the consortium you belong to is not weak and will not tolerate your behavior. We would have had nothing to say about your internal affairs, but your internal affairs are now damaging other member planets. That stops today. You think you can do anything you want, but I'm going to break your toy white hole terror weapon in front of you, and there's nothing you can do about it but get a good seat and enjoy the show.”
Pramerania's usurpers actually powered up their planetary fleet, but … .”
“Don't make me have to show you my Lee side,” Admiral Lee growled. “Go read a history book about Earth life in 1862 if you don't understand what I'm saying.”
The reading was done, or at least cooler heads figured out that just half of Admiral Lee's wing of my fleet could have turned Pramerania's fleet and the whole planet to dust. So the Prameranian fleet powered down, and Admiral Lee left his half his wing there in orbit as our rearguard and brought the other half to join the formation the rest of the fleet would need in order to do what we now had to do.