Bill Woods wrote: Crandall added FF Commander Hago Shavarshyan to her staff at some point. Oddly enough, Adm. O'Cleary had "My staff intelligence officer, Rear Admiral Lavinia Fairfax." A fairly high rank, considering O'Cleary is only, what, a task group commander? Filareta's intelligence officer is only a commodore.
By Haven Quadrant standards, they're both absurdly senior for their roles; one of the symptoms of the SLN's sclerotic state is the over-abundance of Admirals. As for the discrepancy in ranks, that's easily-attributable to the institutional horse-trading and nepotism of the SLN; Filareta's intel officer had a lot of powerful patrons and got a plum assignment (as far as anyone knew) at a comparitively (by SLN standards) junior rank, whereas RAdm Fairfax didn't have as much backing and so got a lesser position.