On Admiral Xenopoulos’ History with Admiral Mfume
Before I shipped out, the recruiters hosted an event where DEPers were taken to Fort Hood to get a bit of a glimpse of Army life. (Some of the soldiers on post urged us to reconsider our decision, but we’d already signed on the dotted line.) At the end of the day, we were taken to a sports bar on post where my recruiter happened to see an old battle buddy of his. After catching up a bit, he commented on how small a world the military is. That idea stuck in my head and I’ve applied it to the Tico series. I’ve got a rather long list different points of convergence with various characters (even if they never realized it). I allude to the long history between Admiral Mfume and Admiral Xenopoulos and thought I’d give you the details here as a commentary post.
It all began in 098 when a Lieutenant Xenopoulos was assigned to the cruiser Galahad as Assistant Operations Officer. Commander Mfume was XO and later captain. The met again when Xenopoulos was assigned to the Leonidas as First Lieutenant where Captain Mfume, fresh out of the College of Naval Staff and Command, was assigned as XO and later captain. Commander Xenopoulos moved on to the Memnon as Assistant Operations Officer and Mfume followed in 107 to take the billet of captain. After War College, Mfume became the Assistant Staff Operations Officer and later the full-fledged Staff Operations Officer of CVBG43 while Xenopoulos served as Operations Officer, XO and ultimately captain of the Lysander (the battle group’s flagship). (Mfume was with the battle group from 111 to 117 and Xenopoulos was with the Lysander from 113 to 118.) Captain Xenopoulos narrowly avoided the Lysander‘s destruction when he was transferred to CVBG28 to serve as Staff Operations Officer while Admiral Mfume was the battle group commander. In 120, Xenopoulos served as Chief of Staff for CVBG27 while Mfume was deputy commander of 6th Fleet and then you already know about Admiral Xenopoulos as commander of CVBG28 joining the Ticonderoga in Operation Orpheus and the Battle of Mars in 122. As you can see, that’s a good chunk of their respective careers that have overlapped. That’s a lot of history to have tied up when Marshal Van Daan gave Xenopoulos the order to hunt down the Tico.
These two are a rather extreme case of the small world effect, but it’s precisely why there’s a lot of emotion simmering beneath the surface. Hopefully you found this interesting. We’ll see what sort of commentary post I come up with next. Stay tuned.
Tags: Characters, Commentary, Space Arc, Tico4, Ticonderoga
Characters, Commentary, Space Arc, Tico4, Ticonderoga | James Carmack | 22 June 2015 |
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