NCC-76682
Ship's Log
CAPTAIN'S LOG Stardate 100540.0
Another war over. What does that make, six? That I have to think to count them… Nineteen years since I saw my first. I was nineteen when I joined up for the MACOs. There was war in the air before I even left the program. Six wars in nineteen years. And I didn’t even see them all. This can’t be what they thought a better future would look like when the United Federation of Planets was formed. This can’t be the better future we look to on the horizon… Can it?
I finally let Taalim write some of the letters. Cheveik practically cheered. I couldn’t think straight for a few days, and when I tried to write the first one I threw up. My bell has been rung a few too many times, I guess. I wrote that one anyway. And the next five. But they deserve better than a shaky hand. It’s better than 52 letters, at least. Better than someone else having to write letters for all of us. I know it’s better. I’m not so lost as some of them think I am. Still, I can’t shake the thought loose from the dark corners of my mind; did it have to be this way?
I’ve never believed war was truly avoidable, and I’ve never shied from a fight. Perhaps that is a character flaw in this line of work, as my father believes. Or perhaps, as some of my peers seem to believe, it is necessary to it. I’m still not sure which I believe. I had no trouble accepting that the Terrans breaking into this universe again meant unavoidable war. That’s what the Terrans are. War. But with the Star Empire, there was some glint of hope that this road need not be traveled. However faint that glimmer, it was there. I dream of reconciliation. Of the ways it could have been, if it had been better.
In nightmares I see that green blink, all the lives crushed into nothing by a singularity core implosion. Somehow that’s worse than the bodies from back in the commando days.
I’ve been given a chance. This command… “captain” still sounds wrong in my ears, on my tongue. Sometimes I still make like I’m going to the cabin to fill out some report, only to lean on something and take a breath as the reality of commanding a starship catches up to me, years on. But I’ve never feared it any more than I feared war. Or pain. Or loss. No, what I fear is not making it count. Not making things better. I may have this chair because of war. Cetratus Squadron may have been formed in war. But I believe—I have to believe—that these can be stepping stones on the path to peace.
Still, I fear how many of us, like myself, in some way miss war. Maybe that’s necessary, too.