"Absolute Wrongs, Absolute Rights"

[Garnoopy 0]

Lieutenant Commander Garnoopy

Chief Engineering Officer

USS Manticore, NCC-5952

Stardate 50806.19

 

“Absolute Wrongs, Absolute Rights”

 

The padd made a clattering as it landed on top of the desk. Garn stood up and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. The data contained in the padd was infuriating, it all was infuriating. There was a time in his life when his enemy was obvious. Fight the Romulans, fight the Cardassians, fight the Borg, fight Atragon. But not anymore, oh no, now the lines had been blurred. Gray was becoming the new most prominent shade of their lives.

In the vast empire that we call the Federation, and it is an empire, there are obviously people who wish to do others harm. It is human nature, greed and power eat at the soul and cause it to bend the morals that we as ‘advanced’ creatures claim to abide by.

Of course none of this helped the anger boiling up in Garn. He was tired of dealing with people who stepped out of line. People who thought that they knew better than everyone else. Death, destruction, when had it become so commonplace in his life that he no longer was surprised by it? The notion that the Federation may have been behind possibly hundreds of meaningless deaths hadn’t even shocked Garn.

That was what was bothering him. When he had seen the data that showed Federation weapon signatures he had cataloged the data in his brain and moved on, not even giving it a second thought that the all mighty Federation might be behind this.

His hand swept across the desk, sending a dozen padds flying to the floor with a loud crash. He sat down and closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. Whatever was going on here probably has a reason, but that probably doesn’t justify what may have been done on this planet.

There comes a day when there is an absolute wrong and an absolute right, but those days almost always come with body counts. An empire as large as the Federation has to be able to deal with the gray areas that come almost every other day.

That was the task of the Manticore though, deal with these gray issues. Garn sat straighter and opened his eyes. A thought had occurred to him. If this was a gray issue, and the Federation had done it, then why wouldn’t they tell their gray ship? Why would they let us fly around and possibly discover it was the Federation? Something was very wrong here, but the question was what?