Title: Behind the Curtain
Author: trek_in_tandem
ST: VOY, Janeway, Post-Endgame
Answer to Seemag's Lyric Challenge on the Live Journal community Trek_Fanfic.
You don't look at their faces / You don't ask their names - "Private Dancer," Tina Turner
Behind the Curtain
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. - The Wizard of Oz
Once she lead a crew of a hundred and fifty. Now she commands thousands. Once she commanded men and women. Now she directs a fleet, every kind of ship at her disposal, a hundred and more crews at her command.
Once she knew her own, her small flock. She took her meals with them, shared their joys and their pains, their little daily dramas. She knew each one’s hobbies and each one’s fears. Each of her people knew how she took her coffee and what holoprograms she played. They knew never to bet against her at pool and that her Achilles’ heel was self-recrimination. They also knew she never let that or anything come between her and her duty to them.
She was head of a clan. When their children came, she paced like the proverbial expectant father. She took late night visitors in her night gown. She played the counselor more times than she could count. She saw them through professional setbacks, illness and injury, and failed romances. With metaphorical hand on shoulder, and sometimes with a physical hand, she guided them.
Now she directs. She doesn’t know her peoples’ names or faces. She knows their service records, their specialties, their professional strengths and weaknesses. Not even her formidable scientifically-trained intellect can recall a face for all those records. They know only her reputation. She has never met the majority of her people, hasn't even spoken with most of them. She deals with captains and special projects heads. Even that interaction is limited. She hands out assignments and accepts reports.
She does know all the bridge officers' faces. It’s a point of pride with her to be able to acknowledge them all by name on the rare occasions she communicates real-time. It's part of the persona she fosters, her command mystique. They need to get the idea she has her fingertip on the pulse of every situation, has everything--and them--well in hand. Image is all when it's the only sense of her they have.
She gives them orders, tells them what she wants accomplished. She leaves them to see it through on their own. She moves her ships around the quadrant like little pieces on a colossal game board. She perceives the analogy: She keeps a three-dimensional scale model of the quadrant in her office, complete with tiny ships and space stations and solar systems. It’s a marvel of engineering. Those who have seen it--and those who haven’t--wonder at it amongst themselves but they don't get it. She knows they think it mere indulgence or, at best, eccentricity. It amuses her.
One wall of her office is a bank of windows. She’s so high up, she’d have to stand to see anything other than sky. She never bothers. There’s nothing new to see. The opposite wall bears silver models of her ships, each angled 45 degrees below perpendicular on gossamer-thin supports nearly impossible to see. It looks as precarious as the real world, the one she directs from on high. The one she presides over but is barred from. She’s surprised the weight doesn’t bring it all crashing down.
When she moves through the corridors or about the grounds, everyone shows reverence. Nods. “Admiral.”
“Captain. Commander.”
Abruptly interrupted conversations. “Admiral.”
“Commanders.”
Sometimes they stop and straighten up until she’s passed. “Admiral.”
“Lieutenant.”
Never how-are-you. A smile is too familiar. They know who she is, but they don’t know her. They offer up her rank in homage. And she wants nothing more from them. She doesn’t want to know them. She keeps her eyes at shoulder height. She has become so adept at the pip-check that her reflexive glance is imperceptible, even in a world where a scan of insignia is the new handshake. Everyone is a rank. Just another uniform and the uniforms are all the same.
Ensign. Lt. Commander. Captain.
These days, she doesn’t want to meet anyone who doesn’t wear a uniform. She’d have to look at their faces and learn their names. That’s one thing too much to ask.
She commands thousands. She decides what is studied, who gets assistance, which threats truly menace, and how they are met. She administers five sectors of space, but once she commanded men and women. Once she was bound to each individual entrusted to her care. Once she was a captain.
~*~
Well the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don’t look at their faces
And you don’t ask their names
You don’t think of them as human
You don’t think of them at all
You keep your mind on the money
Keeping your eyes on the wall
- "Private Dancer," Tina Turner
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