"A Few Feet"

[Garnoopy 0]

Lieutenant Commander Garnoopy

Chief Engineering Officer

USS Manticore, NCC-5852

Personal Log Stardate 50503.11

“A Few Feet”

 

It’s the classics that make you chuckle. Sitting on screen is a reportedly Starfleet vessel ship that is now currently acting under the principles of a ‘hired gun’. The captain has gone astray to whatever political adversity or private entrepreneur that has managed to pull the latinum to fund his quest to plunge the Federation into a war. The only question I suppose to ask is how many sticks, strips, slips, or bars he’s being paid.

 

He’s a Starfleet officer. Duty and honor are supposed to be listed at the top of his resume yet here he is firing on ships that cannot possible defend themselves against his arsenal of weaponry. Instead of defending the Federation in legitimate terms as we state by our moral codes he has turned to undercover scheming. Why?

 

Does he think he’s right? At what point do we break and realize that the Federation cannot be maintained nor protected by our so-called ‘moral’ procedures that dictate we use politics and ambassadors to ensure we never go head to head. He has gone to using methods that are not approved of for attaining the safety of his Federation. Yet our ship transverses the quadrant searching out threats to the Federation and eliminating them in less than conventional methods.

 

At what point did this captain cross from the line of so called legitimate behind the scenes protection of the Federation to turning into a hired gun who on the basis of his intent to save his land and country turned to what we now call illegal?

 

As illegitimate as we would be seen if our ship was to decloak to the revealed eyes of the fleet of Federation captains sitting at Wolf 359 do we even have the right to state that this man has crossed the line? If we believed that the only way to ensure the safety of that sacred Federation we so readily jump to arms to protect was to hurdle it into the thorn bushes of the enemy would we do it?

 

And if so, how would the rest of the Federation fleet look upon our ship? Most likely as the ship with a crew that didn’t know when to quit. A crew that didn’t realize that the consequences were too high.

 

That is the difference between the Manticore and that captain sitting out there. Our crew knows that there is a line that cannot be crossed. We must always remember that we only stand a few feet from stepping from protecting the Federation to attacking it.