Personal log.
Acting Captain, USS Tycho Brahe.
I tried to talk to Carol today about Joss’ death. She knew how much it was bothering me. I just don’t have the words. This war, the constant fighting. It’s dragging me down.
We responded to a distress call in the Ceron system today. A wing of Klingon Birds of Prey had attacked a civilian transport and destroyed it, killing all those onboard. 200 people. Almost half of them women and children based on the passenger manifest. I can’t lie, when Admiral Quinn ordered me to clean up the system and eliminate the remaining Klingon forces, I felt a rush. I can’t say it was happiness. No, it was something more base than that. Whatever it was, I revelled in the chase, in knowing that those ships I was destroying deserved to be destroyed. I revelled in the fact that the people onboard those ships (and they were people, I can’t fool myself into thinking otherwise, yet) were dying and that I was the agent of justice that was killing them.
200 civilians dead at the hands of the Klingons. But how much blood have I spilt?
I hardly know myself anymore.
At least now, in retrospect, I realize that destroying those ships was an act of necessity. But at the time, while the torpedoes were flying, I didn’t give a damn about the war or orders, I just wanted them to pay. I think that feeling, that sense of justification, is what scares me most of all.
