Caretaker - Part VI: Closure

Posted on Sun 25th Mar, 2018 @ 3:54pm by Commander Mikaela Locke
Edited on Sun 25th Mar, 2018 @ 4:01pm

624 words; about a 3 minute read

"Mikaela Locke, personal log - supplemental.

I have come to the end of my first day as acting-commander of Vanguard.

As much as it is a privilege and an honour, it is not something I was ready for. Nor were the circumstances in which it was thrust upon me.

Horatio Drake's death was a shock to everyone - myself included - but I couldn't shake the feeling that, somehow, someway, I should have prevented it. I should have prevented it by making him see sense... By making him see the idiocy of his plan to board that transport in an attempt to capture a murderer who had already proved herself to be devious, capable and deadly. Even as a marine, it was not his place to be on that ship attempting to apprehend her. It was a vendetta... It was an decision based on emotion not logic or strategy.

It was stupid.

And despite knowing this, all day I have blamed myself for his death.

So, it seems, does Lieutenant Perry, who seems to feel very much the same as I do. That she should have done more.

But the more I think about it, the more I replay the events of the past twenty-four hours, I wonder whether any of us could have done more.

I'm not a big believer in fate or destiny - I believe your choices are your own and you make your own life, but there seems to be a certain degree of inevitability about what happened earlier today.

Conversations with Counsellor Graves and Ms Lantz, of 'Orchids and Jazz', this evening, have led me to conclude that the colonel was certainly interacting with something that the rest of us were not party to. It's impossible to confirm whether those things were 'spirits,' 'ghosts', hallucinations, alien entities from another astral or temporal plain or... any other damn weird thing in the universe. The autopsy results showed some interaction with chronometric radiation, although not in sufficient quantities to provide a definitive conclusion. The bottom line is that it seems something, other than pride and stubbornness, was affecting Drake's decision-making in a way that went beyond his normal cognitive reasoning and, if that is true..? If that is true perhaps he would have boarded that shuttle no matter what I, or anyone else said. Perhaps his death was inevitable.

The great Starfleet captain, Jean-Luc Picard, once said, 'It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.' He said, 'that's not a weakness, it's just life.'

Perhaps it wasn't my fault... Perhaps the mistake was not mine after all...

Or perhaps I am simply looking for a reason - any reason - not to face up to the consequences of what I failed to do.

I was negligent in my duty.

I was negligent in my duty and I was rewarded for it.

How the hell am I supposed to face my fellow officers knowing that?

How the hell am I supposed to look in the damn mirror and face myself?

...

...

I can see only one correct and appropriate course of action. As soon as a new CO is assigned to Vanguard, I will be tendering my resignation to Starfleet Command. I cannot stay in Starfleet, and I certainly cannot stay here.

And maybe, one day, I will come to terms with what has happened. I will learn to call it 'fate' or 'destiny'; I will embrace the inevitability of it all and I will make peace with the memory of a man I considered a CO, a colleague, a mentor and a friend - and perhaps, even, I will make peace with myself.

Maybe one day...

But I suspect not.

Computer, end log."

 

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