You Are in Command Now: Difference between revisions

** In ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy]]'', Pellaeon is revealed to not have been a full captain at Endor, receiving a [[You Are in Command Now]] promotion when his captain was killed... and that he, as the survivor with the highest rank, was the one who [[Know When to Fold'Em|sounded the retreat]]. Due to various [[retcon]]s, Pellaeon now ''was'' a full captain at Endor; it's just that his ship was commanded by an admiral, so he was still second in command until said admiral was killed.

** At the end of the trilogy, when Thrawn dies, Pellaeon takes command of the fleet, and several books set later have him reporting to or working with various high-ranking Imperial [[Villain of the Week|villains of the book]]; he always survives their inevitable deaths, and since he's actually very competent he becomes Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet by the ''[[Hand of Thrawn]]'' duology. That's somewhere between Thrawn's and Vader's level of authority. That's right, Pellaeon becomes the most powerful man in the Empire, or [[Vestigial Empire|what's left of it]], by being unspectacularly good at his job and surviving ''everyone'' who outranked him. It does take years and years of work — he's in his 60s in the Thrawn trilogy.

* In ''[[Valiant]]'', Michael Jan Friedman has a certain Second Officer Jean-Luc Picard (who would have held the rank of Lt. Commander at the time) on board the Stargazer. Captain Daithan Ruhalter and First Officer Stephen Leach are killed and critically injured, respectively, suddenly forcing Picard into the position of temporary CO. He doesn't exactly have an easy time of it, but since future canon has him as the Captain of the Stargazer, he eventually gets a two-grade jump to Captain.

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''After Doomsday'', Lieutenant Howard after the captain and first officer are killed. He's so ineffectual that Donnan, by acting as [[The Leader]], takes over.