LCDR Nolen Hobart — Ready, Steady, Go
Nolen Hobart
((First Officer's Ready Room, Deck 1, USS Khitomer))
Nolen took a deep breath, his racing mind having already run down several dead ends. There were a number of paths to avoid the ugly one Shayne was leading him down. The problem was, none of them went very far. He could insist the Captain withhold or delay a promotion from an officer who was deserving of it, grand scheme, but that would be utterly petty. Even worse, it would surely be discrediting in the eyes of Captain Shayne. He could condition his support, make a demand in exchange for it. It’s what pre-Starfleet Hobart would have done, but it would be a betrayal of the job he was put there to do.
And so, he closed his eyes and resigned himself to the only viable path before him, no matter how uncomfortable it was.
Hobart: ::opening eyes:: Far be it from me to argue with you and—apparently—me, sir, this will make me look really bad. And in light of the fact that it’s a… less-than-great reason to oppose it, you’ll have my support.
Shayne: Nolen, it will make you look like an unfeeling, hard-nosed bureaucrat; the quintessential first officer. More to the point, it makes it look like you’re doing the hard work, and that we are a better team than we have any right to be.
Hobart nodded distantly, the idea that this was his job and he was doing it feeling a cold comfort to the deeper understanding that his job was often to be the Bad Guy, to force people into line so that the Captain might lead them where they needed to go. That was the job of the XO. But Nolen began to wonder, silently, whether that was the only job he was suited for. He’d been thrust into the center chair, and, in the absence of the Captain’s stable and inspiring hand, he’d continued to play the role of enforcer on behalf of pips that weren’t present on the bridge.
Hobart: ::stifled chuckle:: Only looks that way, sir?
Shayne: Ninety percent of magic happens before you ever know there’s a trick to be seen. We’re a mystery to most of the people beyond that door. So we roll with it. Go with the flow. Let the smart, capable, occasionally frustrating people out there do the math, draw their own conclusions. Contradiction? Nah. A point to be made. All we need to do is not compromise the illusion. They’ll fill in the rest.
Hobart: I understand, sir. ::beat:: I’ll get the fog machine.
((Timeskip, Holodeck 1 - DS 33 ; Simulation of Broken Tepui Aerie, Klowahka))
The scenery was Lieutenant Semara’s idea. Nolen would have preferred their usual set-up in the Arboretum, with real vegetation and real smells rather than the holodeck’s simulacrums and replications. But he was going with the flow, and he could see that thirty seconds into a future where he objected, he’d be overruled anyway. He wasn’t sure that’s what the Captain meant by it, but it was a new approach to try if nothing else. The door to the holodeck appeared, opened, closed, and disappeared repeatedly behind him, as officers and crew joined the mounting mountain celebration.
Hobart: Pleasant shoreleave, Lieutenants?
As the sunlight filtered through vegetation and around towering rock remnants, Nolen found himself most pleased at the ability to simply describe the three officers before him as such. Not an Ensign or Lieutenant Commander among them, it was a minor delight to be able to address them all with a single word. The delight was tempered by the brief note of melancholy he picked up from the group, but couldn’t quite place. He wasn’t sure what it was about his arrival that inspired it, or what they’d been discussing previously. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could trust it. With his inhibitor long-since removed, his empathic sense had returned to him, but unsteadily. Like a limb sat on too long and suffering from limited circulation, it tingled in objection at being used. He assumed that would go away, in time.
Charles / Harford / Zerva: Response
He quirked an eyebrow. He kept to himself whatever doubts he had cause to harbor.
Hobart: No, no word on our next assignment, yet. I’m hoping for a nice, easy milk run. Get a break from the war. How does a Second Contact mission sound to you all?
Charles / Harford / Zerva: Response
Nolen chuckled, and caught motion out of the corner of his eye. The Captain was in the Holodeck, and he was inbound. For the briefest moment, Nolen wondered if anyone would notice if he hurled himself off of one of those nearby cliffsides.
Hobart: ::smiling:: I'll do what I can. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lieutenants, duty calls.
He stepped away to intercept the Captain as he approached, to keep whatever Randal needed to say away from the junior officers.
Shayne: Ready?
Hobart: ::low voice:: No, sir, but I am steady.
The Captain gave him a sympathetic look, and Nolen knew it was genuine. He sensed the mind of a man who’d been there, forced to pretend to be directing the tides in order to keep up the crew’s efforts to wall them off. Without another word, Shayne walked towards the podium, and Nolen kept behind him and to his right.
Shayne: May I have your attention please…
TBC
——— ○●● ———
Lt. Commander Nolen Hobart
Executive Officer
USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)
A240001NH3