Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [166]
Chakotay toggled in a command to initiate a sensor sweep and then for the information to be fed back to Voyager. (As it happened, their sensors were infinitely better than the Falnari’s, and Janeway had agreed to a demo and tech exchange.) “Considering that the Falnari live at depth, I suppose you could beam them directly to a decompression chamber and let them hang there for, oh, seven hours or so. Make a fine first impression. Now, we can tolerate the depth because the Doctor injected us with chelated formulations of nitric oxide. We won’t get the bends and won’t need to decompress.”
“I was being rhetorical.” Janeway sighed then. Anxiety always made her crabby. “Sorry. A little touchy.”
“That’s okay. Actually, I think the water’s pretty. I was telling Crewman Gilmore just this morning that those lights look like fireflies. During the summer and…” His voice trailed away when he saw her face. “What?”
Her face felt so tight over her skull she thought her skin would tear. “I didn’t know you were so friendly with Crewman Gilmore.”
“I’m your XO. We had coffee. We talked.”
The way he said that, she didn’t think she wanted to hear the rest. Ransom, what had happened on the Equinox made her… uneasy. “And?”
Chakotay hesitated. “She’s very angry. But I think most of that is shame, embarrassment, whatever you want to call it. Understandable.”
“Very,” Janeway drawled. She heard her tone, didn’t like it, decided screw it. “Considering that she aided and abetted what amounted to genocide. Gilmore should be ashamed. Ransom’s crew abandoned every principle of Starfleet reg…”
“Whoa, whoa.” Chakotay held up a hand, palm out, as if placating a snarling dog. “I understand. I agree. Yet, when we first met, you had even less incentive to trust me but…”
“Don’t tell me you’re taking their side in this?”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side… “
“You do this all the time. You have this predilection for sympathizing with people who run counter to protocol and training. Didn’t I relieve you of duty over that very issue and because of Ransom’s crew?”
“Captain.” Chakotay’s lips thinned. “Listen to yourself. Every time we talk about Ransom or his crew, you get defensive… no, hear me out, please. You’re just as angry as Gilmore, and I can’t figure out why. Captain… you’re so by the book with them. Every syllable out of a manual; regulations at the tip of your tongue, chapter and verse.”
“It’s the only language I know.”
“I don’t believe that. I know you. You wouldn’t lose a milligram of self-respect or their esteem if you looked on them as your crew instead of reminders of how another captain failed.”
“Ransom’s failure is neither here nor there.”
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”
Janeway’s eyes slitted. “Implying?”
“You’re so caught up with Ransom’s failures that you do a one-eighty when it comes to them because you worry you’ll make the same mistakes…”
“I am not Ransom…”
“And I’m agreeing with you. But you need to be their captain, not their taskmaster. They lost their ship; they lost their captain…”
“No, they haven’t. They’ve got a ship, and she’s got a captain, and that’s me. They’d do well to remember that.” She paused then added, “So would you.”
That stung. She saw a flush stain the skin along Chakotay’s neck and creep to his jaw. But taking the side of the underdog was Chakotay’s weakness, something she always had to guard against. Recognizing weakness, devising countermeasures to get the most out of her people: That’s what a captain did to make a ship work.
He said, very quietly, “I’m for this ship and this crew. I’m for you. Nothing will change that. But crippling someone by stripping her dignity…”
“Dignity?” Janeway felt her jaw firm in a stubborn set. A small voice in her brain whispered that Chakotay had a point; a good captain also listened to her XO. She clamped down on that but fast. “Gilmore