- This article is about the rear admiral. You may be looking for the auditor.
Fareed Zembassi was a rear admiral in the International Fleet.[1] He was first introduced in The Swarm.
History[]
The Swarm[]
Zembassi was the commanding officer aboard the ship heading to the Variable Gravity Acclimatization School. One day, he called in the leader of the cadets, Bingwen, and Mazer Rackham to discuss the trajectories of the Formic-occupied asteroids. Bingwen inferred that most of the asteroids were being used to deceive the human observers and that the ship should voyage to a nearby asteroid, Castalia, that appeared to be an actual threat. Zembassi was resistant, but eventually decided to take the boy's advice, and called the Polemarch to confirm the change in plans.[1]
After arriving at Castalia, Colonel Vaganov confronted Zembassi with the problems in his plan, as he believed that by blowing up the Formic-created atmosphere around the asteroid they would destroy any discoveries about the bioengineered Formic bugs that could be obtained. Mazer and Zembassi were against the idea of sending in men to the asteroid, as the volatile atmosphere presented a high risk, but Vaganov had already conferred with the Polemarch and Strategos, and after detailing the fact that the cadet program was secretive and nobody would know if all the cadets died on the asteroid, Vaganov took his leave back to his quarters, and his plan was to be implemented. Through discussion with Zembassi and Colonel Li, Mazer decided to take fellow soldiers Kaufman and Rimas with him on the mission into the asteroid, along with Bingwen as he could fit into the tunnels.[1]
Two days later the breach team launched. During the investigation, Mazer called Zembassi on his HUD for directions, where he instructed him to bring in Bingwen as they had found no Formics on the asteroid's surface. Zembassi listened as Bingwen discovered the factory inside the center of the asteroid, and ordered for him to proceed in investigating it. Bingwen came upon a Hive Queen being birthed. After the workers began to swarm him, he pulled out an ignitor and sparked the atmosphere.[1]
After the asteroid was destroyed, Zembassi met with Mazer in his office to discuss the discovery. They inferred that the Hive Queen Bingwen saw was a "general" of the army, so to speak, and that either the further a Hive Queen from her workers the less control she had over them, or the more workers under her control the weaker her command of them. They decided that it was not a fully-fledged Hive Queen, but one "in-training". They mentioned the Formic ship that survived the blast due to its Hulmat composition, and that Vaganov had been promoted to vice admiral after the incident, making him Zembassi's commanding officer.[1]