Equinox - Diane Carey [63]
"Ransom wasn't an engineer or a warrior, Kathryn," Chakotay reminded. "He was a man who worked on high-flown theories, not hard physics. He thought in terms of leaps of probability. The reality of time and distance was more real to him because his ship would take twice as long to get home-not seventy years, but a hundred and fifty. They had no chance of getting home in their lifetimes, Captain. The Prime Directive? It feels pretty far away when one of those aliens hits you and sucks the life out of you. Take it from me-"
"I felt it too, remember?" Putting distance between them, she went behind her desk but remained standing.
"And it worries me what it might've done to you," he admitted. "Seems to me you're holding a different measuring stick up to Ransom than we've ever held to ourselves. We've stopped entire wars that would've happened if we hadn't accidentally been here. There are those who will argue that we were wrong, that we had no business tampering with destiny, even if the destiny was ugly. Do regulations condemn any and all interferences? Or just the interference that goes sour? What kind of rule is that? 'Don't interfere, unless it all turns out well'?"
"We stopped that warhead to save-"
'To save the ship," Chakotay said forcefully, "not to stop a planetary catastrophe. That's my point. If our
ship hadn't been in danger, would you have argued it wasn't our business to get between the business of two planets? Maybe that civilization's next Stalin is alive and well now because we stopped a disaster from happening. Ransom saved his ship his way, and we saved our ship our way. Yes, I know, this can drive a person crazy. Morality-what a problem!"
He flopped his arms uncharacteristically and the new skin on his cheeks flushed.
"Maybe you'd better leave," Janeway invited. "This isn't helping."
Raising his voice just a little, Chakotay moved to meet her as she stepped across the back of the desk. "It'll help if I understand your underlying motivations."
Janeway fumed, trying to isolate herself, trying not to think of him at all, but only of her own ground-glass responsibility. "It's my duty to make the call on Ransom and take him into custody. What I hope or understand doesn't matter anymore. I'm forced into the role of prosecutor. I represent the law here. Our law. His law."
At this, she visibly fought to control herself, to retain some of her old evenhandedness beneath the weight of her prosecutorial mantle.
"I understand his reasons, Chakotay. They're reasons, not excuses. Sometimes we have to step back and say that holding back is part of what our training and our obligation and our oaths are about, and we will hold ourselves to the ethics even though we die trying."
As Chakotay watched, hard-eyed, Janeway retreated deeper and deeper into the sanctuary of protocol, the
only place she felt safe. Her struggle showed in her face, a leathery mask of deep suffering.
"I have to keep us on the side of regulations," she said, "and interpret them strictly, even though I understand their elastic application in practice. That's not my job here now. My job is to uphold the strict interpretation, and also what I believe is right"
Chakotay braced his legs. "I'm just cautioning you, Captain, which is my duty. In my opinion, you're forcing yourself to defend a line you've never visited. We're a long way from home, just like Ransom. How desperate will we have to be before the laws of civilization break down under the laws of survival? Do you think we can never be that desperate? Don't forget... I know what it's like to have my ship overwhelmed completely."
In a move that surprised him, she shot up from her chair and met him in that challenging stance, with the desk between them and the gulf widening.
"Be careful, Commander," she warned. Her voice was a shredded wreck. "Don't you talk to me about lines and edges. I represent a standard of behavior that we certainly will