“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”

Samuel Beckett, Endgame (1957)

“Captains Log. Stardate: 2401.7.20”

“In the end, it is difficult not to rail against the futility of recent events. Of paradise lost. Of potential squandered. What of the costly lives spent? Are they now squandered? Was their sacrifice ultimately in vain?”

“These questions haunt me as the USS Savannah makes her way back to Starbase 72, its own future uncertain. Will the ‘old-girl’ be returned to mothballs (or worse yet – decommissioned and broken-down?)? Will this young crew, my first (and in my personal opinion – the finest) command – also be my last? An ignominious end for the bravery they have demonstrated as they have been forged in the crucible of the Labyrinth. The answers to these questions, I do not know. My hopes are to retain command of the Savannah – but I am keenly aware that this may always have been just a ‘brevet ‘command opportunity at best.”

“What will continue to haunt my further passage is the pervading question of whether the decisions that I made, whilst in command, were the right decisions and whether those decisions have done more good, than harm in the Galaxy?”

“Chief and foremost of those is my decision to rescue the True Way terrorist, Gul Yomat Ghallir, from his fate – whilst marooned together in the realm of Underspace. With the benefit of what I now know, with the tumultuous events that my mercy gave birth to and its Impact on the Cardassian Union in particular – would I elect to walk the same path of honour – if given the chance to do so again? It is a difficult question and one where the right answer is not readily apparent.”

“Despite his incarceration by the Obsidian Order, to which he embraced far too readily for my liking, Gul Yomat Ghallir had already set the wheels in motion for his nefarious and Machiavellian plan to restore the Cardassian Union to its former heyday of aggressive territorial expansion.”

 “In truth, there was no way of knowing that, whilst the USS Savannah sought to heal the wounds inflicted upon us by the True Way vessel “Verran” – once we had uncovered Ghallir’s plot to falsely – implicate the New Marquis’ in a series of piratical attacks on civilian shipping – that the True Way commander had made contact with a disparate faction of the Kazon Collective, in the Delta Quadrant, and struck a ‘Faustian’ –  bargain therein.”

“It is perhaps telling of both Gul Ghallir and of myself that, faced with an opportunity as unprecedented as Underspace – with the Labyrinth itself both a neutral arbiter and conduit to a new future of science and discovery that could have ushered in a new period of peace and prosperity across the Quadrants; that in the Labyrinth I saw only danger and threat and Gul Yomat Ghallir saw in it the potential to foment conflict and disseminate political division.”

“If Underspace is a looking – glass into our souls, what do we see when we look inside and do we find ourselves lacking?”

“For my part, I am proud and resolute in the knowledge that I did all that I could to bring my ship and people home intact, although the deaths that balance that debt will forever haunt me, the Cardassian pilots that were lost in our ‘rescue’ of the SS Devore, no more or less than that of Special Services Crewman Aldus Coe – murdered – his only crime to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when a concerted campaign by the New Marquis to destroy this ship was being waged beneath our very noses.”

“Of my crew, I can report that my former Chief Engineer Carlito Herrera appears to be responding well, aboard Starbase 72, to the Nanomedical procedures being pioneered by my former USS Sacramento shipmate, Dr Abaywe Eboneke. I was pleased to see that Carlito received a promotion to full – lieutenant. It’s incongruous to have a 52-year-old Lt (JG).”

“The efforts of my Security Chief Myron Hayes & Chief Petty Officer Manningly in apprehending the duplicitous Ferengi Captain N’vok and commandeering the SS Devore with it’s illegal cargo of Cardassian Industrial-replicators bound for the Kazon – has provided vital evidence and a witness to the collusion of Gul Ghallir with sympathizers to the cause of the True Way within the High Command and done some damage, at least in part, to the True Way plan to destabilize the Detapa Council.”

“The advent of the arrival of Ensigns’ Ithariar Sh’eshikrar & Sabreen el-Hannan at Terminus Station aboard a commandeered Kazon Raider – complete with their entire crew in custody – is a tale that bears telling in full at the O -Bar (the drinks will be on me), but suffice it to say that those prisoners only serve to further confirm the existence of the plot against the council and once given evidence – they will be eventually returned to the Delta Quadrant.”

“I would like to say that those actions thwarted the plans of Gul Yomat Ghallir in their entirety, but sadly this is not the case. Life is seldom that symmetrical. As Lieutenant T’Vran correctly hypothesized, Ghallir’s intent was to decimate the Obsidian Order by unleashing the Kazon on the Cardassian Union – hoping to undermine support for the Detapa Council and strengthen the position of the Militaristic High Command.”

“But the net – effects is that, although the Kazon were destroyed & the Detapa Council has suffered but survived through those losses and is now more reliant upon the Federation for aid than ever, in the aftermath and its position thus weakened at home.

“Now is a time for diplomacy. For Taskforce 72. The bridge between quadrants has been broken by the Cardassian’s to secure their selfish hegemony, but we must somehow seek a new path together – one towards peace.”

“End Log.”