Acting Captain, USS Hippocrates.
It wasn’t supposed to end up this way.
I’m a doctor – a scientist, not a soldier. I didn’t come out here to fight battles and shoot phaser rifles. I came out here to heal people, to do my research, to make people’s lives better, not end them. I know we’re in war. I know these are desperate times. I suppose I just didn’t realize how desperate. I never wanted to command a ship. I never wanted to see the people around me get hurt and die. I never wanted to feel the weight of other people’s lives on my shoulders, not like this.
Maybe I was naive to think I could join the fleet and not have to see battle. Maybe I was naive to think that I could be a scientist in a time of war. “Do no harm.” That’s the oath I swore as a doctor and those are the words I live by - “do no harm.” Yet, here I find myself ordering attacks on other ships, ordering others to their deaths. But when I weigh the alternative, I have to wonder if I’m not doing the right thing. Would I be willing to sit back and allow others to risk their lives to keep me safe, to keep my family safe, and not be willing to take the same risk? Would I be willing to stay on Earth, knowing that there’s a war going on and that others were putting their lives at stake so that I could be happy at home with my son?
There are no easy answers. When others would seek to destroy all that we’ve built and all that the Federation stands for, I can’t stand idly by. I will see that the least harm is done. It’s a heavy burden to bear, a difficult burden. But these are not easy times.
