The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [13]
“But other anonymous sources inside Starfleet have been considerably less kindly disposed to Captain Archer’s decision to withdraw from the Gamma Hydra sector massacre. Among these—”
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Reed said, and Hoshi responded by turning the sound down slightly below the threshold of hearing while a montage of stock images of Enterprise persisted on the screen.
“That goes for me, too,” said another voice from the bridge’s center. Hoshi turned in time to see Ensign Travis Mayweather looking sullenly toward her from his helm station. His usual good humor had been sparse at best ever since the Kobayashi Maru incident, and the news report—no doubt a painful reminder of the recent disappearance of his own family’s freighter—clearly wasn’t helping his mood any.
Worse, Mayweather’s foul temper made her wonder if some of those “anonymous sources inside Starfleet” to whom Brooks had spoken might not be billeted right here, aboard Enterprise.
You’d think that anybody who’d get that upset would at least have the decency to quietly apply for a transfer the way I did, she thought, disgusted. It sure beats stooping to telling tales out of school to the press about the captain.
As the ship’s comm officer, it was certainly within the scope of her abilities to find any surreptitious crew communications with Earth that might be buried deep in the subspace radio logs. But she had already decided not to take that step during her remaining time aboard Enterprise, unless and until the captain expressly ordered her to do it. Crew morale was bad enough right now without exacerbating matters by releasing a toxic cloud of suspicion into the ship’s atmosphere.
She deactivated the monitor screen, hoping to banish Enterprise’s tarnished reputation along with the starship’s image. Maybe there are some things we’re all better off not knowing.
Archer had been dreading the meetings he was about to face, but he knew he couldn’t afford to put them off any longer; if he didn’t sit down now with each of the crew members who had requested transfers—before Enterprise reached Tarod IX, where he and the entire crew would immediately get buried neck-deep in the next wartime crisis—there was no telling when he’d get around to doing so.
He had to admit, though, that Ensign Hoshi Sato looked at least as uncomfortable as he felt. I guess it’s not every day that an ensign gets to deliver a vote of no confidence directly to her captain’s face in his own ready room, he thought, feeling glum.
Archer watched in silence as Ensign Sato squirmed quietly in the seat on the other side of his desk.
“Why, Hoshi?” he asked at length.
She looked confused by the directness and ambiguity of the question. “Sir?”
“I thought you were happy here, Ensign.” He knew he couldn’t continue to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, so he decided to tackle the matter directly. “But since the Kobayashi Maru incident, I can certainly understand why you might— “
“That had nothing to do with my decision to move on, Captain,” she said, interrupting him, which was something he was very nearly certain she had never done before. A look of horror crossed her smooth, youthful face as she realized what she’d done.
“It’s all right, Hoshi,” Archer said, trying to sound encouraging. “I’m relieved to hear you say that. Now tell what this is really about. Please.”
Her brow creased slightly