Equinox - Diane Carey [49]
She waited, no longer prodding him to speak as she might have in better times. If he had something to say, he would have to get to it himself or she would dismiss him and that would be that.
"I've been speaking to Gilmore," he began, as awkwardly as that, "and I have to admit some of her perceptions shook me up a little. She made me realize that Captain Ransom isn't taking care of himself. He's looking out for his crew. He's eaten up with guilt over losing half his crew because of one judgment call. Now the chance of getting the others home is consuming him, whatever the cost."
"I can't forgive him, if that's what you want, Chakotay," Janeway aborted. "He stepped over the line."
Adjusting his tone to mollify her, Chakotay tipped his head as if in thought. "All due respect, Captain, but that depends on where it's drawn."
Her brown eyes were cold, bitter, and lay upon him with acrimony. "Are we going to have a seminar on ethics, you and I?"
"You have to admit," he attempted, "the directives are deliberately elastic. They have to be. If not, we can't even defend ourselves. And we will, if they break in. We'll kill them to preserve our own lives. We've done it before. We draw and redraw the line every day. We draw it in one place to defend ourselves, in another to... answer a distress call, for instance. Ransom drew it where he drew it. If the galaxy had been as hostile to Voyager as it was to Equinox, what might we have done if we were handed a chance to get home? Do we sacrifice ourselves to an evolution that might or might not happen?"
"We don't know they haven't evolved to intelligence already," Janeway rasped. Her voice was strained. "We have to assume they do, and find out later that they don't."
"If you're in the woods and hungry, you hunt the moose. You take the bees' honey. And you don't wo rry that a million years from now they might evolve into a society."
In the shadow across the desk, Janeway's jaw hardened. "Are you challenging my order to relieve him of command?"
"I'm questioning it," he said, trying to keep from matching her level of frustration and steely resolve. "He's a post captain. His ship is still functional and could still be mended, and if he wants to kill the bees and take the honey, I believe there's precedent for his point of view."
"They're not bees," she insisted.
He leaned forward. "That's all they are so far.
There's no evidence of superiority. So far they're just flying around and screaming and showing their teeth. Are we never going to step on a bug because a billion years from now it might have a sentient granddaughter? What do we do when we reach the cats and dogs and dolphins? Never hurt one because they squeal and play together and attack in an organized fashion?"
Janeway slammed both palms down on her desk. "There's going to be a court-martial on this ship, Chakotay. You'll be one of the presiding judges. You'd better divide your empathy from your sense of law and order long enough to remember where you come from. Or have you retreated to your Maquis sensibilities and forgotten about the laws that give us everything we have?"
"Ransom knows he's up for a court-martial, Captain." Chakotay let his tone ignite. "He knew that all along. When he gets back to Federation space, if he ever does, he faces ruin and disgrace and trial. He knows there's a whole command of officers with your opinion waiting for him, but he was willing to subjugate bis own future so his crew could get home. If we make it back, Ransom's ruined. The same fate might be awaiting us-have you thought of that?"
The captain turned to frozen rock before him, and indeed it seemed she'd never thought of that. Could it be that she had always dug her decisions so deeply into her sense of regulation and directive that she thought she was justified every single time? Was that how she saved her sanity?
"He's wrong," she insisted. "You can kill the moose, but you can't kill the natives."
"Maria says they couldn't tell the difference between the moose and the natives."