What would Starfleet do?

[stule]

Ok.

We just completed our game and boy did the players throw me a loop. So I need your help to figure out what to do for the next game. This might be a long thread so sorry ahead of time.

Story
The Captain (A player in our group) commands an Intrepid Class Starship (Voyager) named The Valkyrie. They were on their way to Starbase Sierra 39 (Along the Romulan Neutral Zone) when they received an SoS from a Oberth Class Starship. They answered the call and discovered the Oberth floating near a strange Nebula. Her Warp drive had breached and they had to eject it. The explosion of the core had damaged their Impulse Engines. They were drifting into the Nebula. The Nebula had a strange effect on Starships, it drained their power supply. So the ship was losing power fast. As the Valkyrie pulled close and locked a tractor beam on the ship, the Counselor of the Valkeryie (A Deltan Female) felt an intelligence inside the Nebula. She told the Captain and he told her to keep an eye on it during their rescue operations. As they were freeing the Oberth, the Counselor was taken over by the strange intelligence (The Nebula was actually the conciousness of billions of lifeforms). She collapsed on the bridge. They took her to sickbay. The Valkyrie saved the Oberth and towed it back to the Starbase. The Counselor awoke a few hours later saying that the Nebula had overwhelmed her. But uknown to the crew, she was no longer in control of her actions. The Alien life form had taken her over. A few days later, the crew noticed that the counsilor was acting funny. The Captain discovered that the Counsilor was being controlled by an alien entity. The Entity told the Captain that unless it was allowed to leave, it would use the Counselor's telepathic ability to destroy the ship (Mind Control). Apparently the Entity was a criminal from the nebula that was trying to get away from it and had possessed the Counselor's body. The Nebula consisted of billions of intelligent energy life forms that had the ability to possess others. She was not going to give up the Counselor's body and if they did not let her leave, she would destroy the ship. The Captain allowed her to take a Shuttlecraft. As she was leaving the ship and pulling away, the Captain tried to talk to the Counselor that was trapped in her own body. In an impassioned plea, he begged her to fight the entity. It worked and for a brief moment she was in control. Then he gave the order to destroy the shuttlecraft. So the Security Officer did with a full barrage of Photons and Phasers. The crew was shocked, many (players alike) believing the Captain didn't do enough to try to save the Counselor (The Security Officer had a thing for her and he was the one that fired the Phasers that killed her.).

The Captain's reason was that he felt as soon as the life form was free, it would destroy their ship anyway. Her power could work far enough so that she could have destroyed the ship and got away. He said he saw no other choice.

Now my question.

What would Starfleet do about the Captain?
Was his order justified?
Would he be court martialed?
A Reprimand?

I am planning my story even as we speak. I am going to do a formal hearing at the start of next game. Any idea's u guys throw at me would be appreciated.

I just want to hear what you guys think.


Stule


What would Starfleet do about this?

[JALU3]

Well depends on your take of Starfleet . . . however, regardles of whether it is a militarty, semi-military, non-military entinty . . . one can say a board of inquire can be conviened concerning an abnormal loss of a shuttle, and the death of an officer. However, a board of inquiry, sometimes leading into a courts martial, are usually conviened when a capital ship is lost, for any reason . . .
However, we're dealing with a shuttle, where the scrutiny may not be as much, depending on the media coverage of the incident. For instance, it's one thing to loose a bunch of shuttles on an non-explored planet . . . but to loose several shuttles, and their crews, during a graduating ceremony of Starfleet Acadamy . . . is completely different.
The question here is, would the commanding admiral of this sector, consider the cercumstances of the event suspicious enough to convene a board of inquiry regarding the loss of a shuttle. Which we have seen is relatively more commonplace then loss of a capital ship. If the after action report is well written, and is agreeable to the command which the ship operates under, then nothing more will come of this. However, if other officers state opposition to what is stated in said report, a board of inquiry maybe conviened to validate how truthful the statements said in said report are.
As for whether the Captain was in her right to order what she did, that is argueable, but most would say yes. As a Captain of a Starfleet vessel, her duties are to defend and protect the Federation, to the best of her abilities protect the lives of Federation citizens, uphold the laws/rules/regulations of the Federation, to the best of of her abilities keep her crew out of harms way, and to protect the well being of her ship and its crew. Some can argue about the order of what was just listed, but those are the basics. As we all know sometimes the well being and sometimes the lives of the crew and their ship are sacrificed for the well being of others. I think this is the light that you have to view the decisions of the Captain.
Did the Captain do everything in her power, to protect the soveriegnty of the Federation?
Did the Captain do everything in her power, to uphold the laws/rules/regulations of the Federation?
Did the Captain do everything in her power, to protect the Lives of the greatest number of Federation Citizens and/or Starfleet Personnel?
Did the Captain do everything in her power, to protect the functionality of the ship and the vessels placed under her command?
If not, why?

Sometimes, even when you do the right thing, it can be the wrong thing in the long run, but you have to make decisions regarding the priorities placed in front of you.

This crewmember died because their death garunteed that the lives of the rest of the crew.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

So is there something about the nebula which acts as a host of the energy life-forms?
If not, the creature could probably just float around in space or surreptitiously possess someone else.

And this creature had the power to destroy the ship–but not save itself? Could it have been reading minds/intent and then controlled someone to beam the host out at the last minute?

---

The difference between this shuttle lost and (probably) the majority of others is that it was deliberately destroyed by the captain with a crewmember inside. That's definitely a cause for an investigation, probably by an impartial third party sent by the admiralty or something.

Additionally, who outside of the Crew would be angry for her death? What is her family like?

[Pericles]

I have take a harsher stance on this one. Given the circmstances you mentioned, if the captain had fired knowing the conselor was still under control of the alien, then he MIGHT have been justified, but the Federation's stance on saving lives has been powerfully hammered home during every series made. That he ordered the shuttle destroyed knowing his conselor was in control of herself can only be viewed as manslaughter, if not outright murder. Getting the counselor to throw out the alien, beaming her off in that split second, then destroying the shuttle, would probably have just ended in a reprimand, but taking the actions that he did, I just can not see anyway to keep your captain out of a penal colony.

[Tobian]

Hmm to me, the problem was it wasn't a very Startrek ending was it!

I think, given the situation, no the captain didn't have that much of a choice, at that given point in time. The question I would ask was: What were the other officers and indeed even the Captain doing behind the scenes, what more could they have done to help save her, before the situation got to the point it did?

Solutions that spring to mind are:

Scan the entity, to see if the energy entity could be isolated from her biosigns / detecting any weakness / find a way to help boost the Counselor's ability to defend herself.

Contact the alien cloud, and get them to deal with their criminal!

Try to determine if the alien was bullshitting! But either way buy for some time to assess the actual threat!

It also raises questions of the power this character had: How come she had a powerful enough ability to destroy the ship using mind controll. If this mind controll ability was controlling other PC's they would both a) have the ability to resist and b) start working on safeguards to stop them from being able to do it to themselves! I'm assuming here that this version of Mind controll doesn't involve massivelly powerful telikinesis or being able to shoot lazers out of her eyes or something (which is frankly gimped hahah). It also raises the question that if she could do that, why couldn't she use her mind controll powers to protect herself, if they were SOO powerful?! If the entity was fighting the counselor for controll of her body mind and indeed powers, that would have been the point to have at least tried something. They could have beamed her away from the entity, or indeed just beamed them into a pattern buffer. Even if the entity could escape that (likelly, given it's some sort of energy being) no one else on the crew would likelly have such a formidable mind controll ability to have posed such a threat!

It's a tough call but my personal opinion is he should be given a reprimand for doing not much other than trying to talk her out of it (that only works with Kirk and the nomad Probe haha). Based only on what you've said here. It may be that the crew did frantically try to do something about it, and you just didn't write about it In which case then no, it could not be helped and it was the 'right' thing to do.

With regards to the crew: Regardless of the outcome of it, I suspect a lot of grudges are going to be nursed over this, and rightly. Officers and crew died in the line of duty, but it's the captain's responsibility to keep them safe; If they feel he could have done more then they are going to be angry about it! Of course that's not an excuse to go about like petulent children, but it will come out, especially when family members get involved, as TDK mentions, who aren't required to act professionally about it!