Captain's Personal Log....

[+ TyrWaltas]

Captain's log, personal. Filed under security lockout.

It's rare that I don't make my log entries available for public view, and I realize that, like all Captains' logs they've become almost required reading at Starfleet Academy to train the new cadets, but there are some things a Captain must keep to himself.

I just finished writing the last of the letters that will be delivered to the families of the fallen. This mission was, to say the least, highly demanding in both blood and treasure. A lost ship, a bioweapon, and dozens of lives lost.

As Captain, I'm expected to write the letters, say the appropriate things, and move on. As a senior Captain in Starfleet the demands become even more absurd-I'm expected to get used to it. I'm expected to set my jaw as I look at the young Vulcan burned beyond recognition while fighting a fire in Engineering. I'm expected to keep a..I believe the humans call it, a "stiff upper lip" as I pass by the now-still body of a friend who was killed in a firefight. I'm even expected to keep my emotions under control when a killer who has haunted my family for a decade is freed from prison and allowed to roam free on my ship.

And I somehow managed to do all of these things. But these four walls will tell no tales. This terminal will lock the entry away so that only I can retrieve it. And here I can truly say how I feel and let those emotions out for a long-deserved walk around my soul; for I am haunted. Haunted by ghosts from my past-all of those poor people that I'm expected to go on without. All of the flag-draped coffins and, even worse, empty graves, that are supposed to symbolize and epitomize the person. If I were to let the cynic in me run wild, I would snort in derision at the notion that they died for a noble cause. My Ba'ku upbringing demands that I believe every life is precious and needed in this universe; that the loss of even one soul diminishes us all. And somewhere I believe that. But there's something else I believe as well.

These people died fighting to keep what is precious to them from perishing. Each and every soul that I have laid to rest, each letter I've written to grieving parents, DOES have a meaning. It MUST, or I dishonor not only the person who has died but the cause they died for. I and everyone else sleep under the blanket of protection that they helped provide. Our way of life, our government, and our freedom is regularly cleansed and washed in the blood of patriots. Their sacrifice gives me the freedom to make this log entry. The freedom to raise my children as I see fit, in a society where I control who my leaders are and the laws that are made. They even allow those who want to destroy that society to have a voice, because freedom isn't freedom without it. Their sacrifice allows any race, creed, color, sexual orientation and intelligence to have an equal voice in their society and how it functions. By no means are we perfect, and by no means were their deaths somehow more or less effective than in the past-all life is significant, just as all freedom is precious.

As I sit here tonight, in my comfortable chair, gazing out the window of a starship that represents that society and defends her, I pray that they shall not have died in vain, and that their sacrifice is remembered by those who knew them, and respected by those who live in freedom because of them.

Computer, end log.

==============================

Captain Tyr Waltas

Commanding Officer

USS Discovery