Soft Eyes
by Michael Marek

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In Starfleet, once you begin to attain senior ranks, you also begin to receive invitations to address classes at Starfleet Academy. Crazy Horse was home on leave after an extended mission doing survey work in the Beta Quadrant and Professor Talley invited me to speak to his second year ethics class.

My presentation itself, dealing with applying ethical principles to real life command situations, had gone well and it was time for Q & A.

“You made the point, sir,” said one well-scrubbed cadet, “that the reason we study ethics is so that when we are faced with a tough problem, we already have an ethical framework for our decisions.”

I nodded.

“But all of these principles -- objectivism and relativism and para-pragmatism -- it’s hard to know where to start. What one piece of advice would you give us?”

“Aikido,” I said, and noticed Professor Talley smile to himself.“It is a Japanese discipline. One of the things it teaches us is that surprise tends to cause people to attempt to defend themselves, rather than to think and synergize. They tend to narrow their focus and a ‘fight or flight’ syndrome kicks in. Aikido teaches that when surprised, we should practice what it calls ‘soft eyes’ and take in a bigger picture, to widen one’s field of vision, so to speak. A person mentally trained this way, when surprised, will NOT exhibit fight or flight, and by seeing the wider view, may make a more authentic, thoughtful, and valid response.

“I’m reminded of an occasion a few weeks ago in which we got a nasty surprise on the Crazy Horse...”

     “Can you find us a place where we can ditch these guys?” I called across the bridge to my wife, Charlotte, our science officer.
     An alien ship that had lured us in with appeared to be a distress call was attempting to lock onto us with tractor beams.
     The first officer, Moira, an artificial intelligence residing both in the ship’s computer and in an organic simulacrum body, was on helm. The USS Crazy Horse moved onto a new course.  We had, at most, a few brief minutes. Our attacker had considerably overshot at warp when we abruptly dropped to impulse. The ship would presumably swing back momentarily.
     We had no idea who our attacker was but the ship was huge. It size, however, reduced its maneuverability. That was our saving grace. Like a 300 pound opponent in Parisi Squares, if we could stay ahead of the bad guy, we had a chance.

“Would you agree that that qualifies as 'a surprise?'” I asked the cadets, and several nodded. “Let me back up and tell you the entire story.”

     The day certainly began well enough. We had left Alinca III the previous morning after an enjoyable shore leave rotation, exploring that planet’s bazaars and beaches. Not often visited by ships from the Federation, Alinca III is on the edge of the Beta Quadrant where we were conducting survey work and emplacing subspace amplifiers in anticipation of expanded Federation exploration of the frontier.
     In the three months of our mission so far, we had made first contact with six space-going species and cataloged several more planets with intelligent life. More than one showed remnant cultures slowly rebuilding after Borg attack. Our science teams drew some interesting conclusions about the history of Borg activity in the region from the rate at which the gaping sores of former cities had eroded and filled with vegetation.
     Alinca III is a focal point of near-Beta Quadrant space. It has developed a multi-species culture that caters to travelers. It has both a vast university system that attracts scholars from many parsecs and diverse, resort-like recreational complexes.
     We were cruising along peacefully at moderate warp, on our way to our next survey benchmark. At 0720, Charlotte and I were finishing breakfast in our quarters, talking about Erich, who was a third year cadet at Starfleet Academy. The Com system in our quarters chirped.
     "We are receiving what may be a distress call," reported Moira, who commanded the overnight watch. "Course 113 Mark 4, range .6 light years. It is an automated beacon. I've ordered us to an intercept course."
     "Very well," I responded. "I'll be up shortly."
     I didn't have to ask how long until rendezvous. I could feel the engines ramping up, but even at warp 9, six tenths of a light year would give me time to reach the bridge.
     We advanced on the source of the message cautiously. The beacon had terminated abruptly an hour earlier. That could mean that the distress was over, or it could mean that the distress was greater than ever.
      "I can't guarantee that it was a distress at all," cautioned Moira. "The universal translator makes no sense if it. It did, however, contain several very ancient terms found in the proto-galactic lexicon."
      Some of the younger officers on the bridge frowned because of unfamiliarity with the term, but I am married to a science officer and knew what she meant. One of the biggest scientific revelations of the 24th century has been the discovery that life in many familiar star systems has a common origin. More than one little understood ancient species apparently sewed many worlds with DNA programmed to evolve intelligence. Other "ancient astronauts" transplanted species wholesale. In an effort to better understand this "panspermia," Federation scientists have recently been studying languages on many worlds, seeking common root words of what they call the proto-galactic tongue.
      "Ideograms are included in the message for 'damage,' 'great need,' 'succor,' 'reverence,' and 'gift,'" Moira elaborated.
     I ordered us to hold at 1,000 kilometers. We were 30 degrees above the ecliptic of a red giant star. we had also visited two weeks earlier on our survey mission. It was nondescript with no intelligent life, six rocky inner planets and three outer gas giants, plus the usual junk.
     "It is a huge ship, sir," reported Samantha, at Tactical. "Massive is more like it. It's at least 50 times our volume."
     "Readings from it?" I asked, looking at her.
     "Inconclusive," she shook her head. "It show signs of active power, but I don't read a power plant. No lifesigns, either. In fact, we read no interior detail -- the ship is well shielded. We’ve been sending continuous hails, linguicode, and friendship messages since we came in range. Still no response. It seems fishy to me."
     "Analysis, Moira," I said.
     "Oh, I agree with Sam," said the first officer, nodding at the big view screen at the front of the bridge where we could see the other ship. "There's no sign of damage that would cause her to be drifting like that. I would also point out that with her shielding, there is no way we can transport onto her. The design of the ship doesn’t match anything in our database. Continued caution is indicated."
     “Can you do an eddy current scan?” I asked. Any ship, in motion or at rest, gives off a certain number of atoms and molecules. On previous occasions, Moira had been able to shed light on ship movements by scanning particle densities and vectors and projecting backwards in time. It is a complicated procedure for her, requiring many trillions of calculations.
     “I’ll give it a shot,” she said. She moved to the first officer’s seat at the back of the lower level of the bridge, folded her hands in her lap, and stared off into space as she processed data.
     It took less time than I expected.
     “Not much to report. That ship arrived on a course from 252 Mark 358 about three hours ago, just before we received the distress call. No other ships have passed through the area since, and possibly not since our visit; not surprising because we’re in the middle of nowhere. The ship did no significant maneuvering. It simply stopped, began drifting, and transmitted the distress call.”
     We couldn’t very well leave the area without confirming the status of the situation. Like everybody else, I didn’t like this. It was sounding more and more like a nicely lain trap. Starfleet ships, however, don’t leave a possible distress situation. If there was even a chance that the other ship needed help, I had to try to make contact with its crew.
     "Helm, bring us in slowly," I said to the ensign on duty. "Let's go to Yellow Alert, just in case."
     We were down to 15 kilometers, a range at which we could scan the other ship millimeter by millimeter. It was interesting to find Trellium, an antiquated form of shielding, on the exterior of the ship. The substance causes psychotropic reactions in some species and is rarely used, but it was effectively blocking our scans.
     I was considering launching a shuttle, when a beam of green light burst from the prow of the drifting ship. Crazy Horse rocked as the beam hit us.
     “Incoming,” shouted Samantha by reflex, although we all knew it already. “It was a tractor beam, sir.”
     “Shields. Evasive. Red Alert,” I called out and Crazy Horse began to swing around as the alert klaxon sounded.
     “They’re not drifting anymore,” reported Charlotte from her science station on the upper level of the bridge.
     “I swear they didn’t scan us,” added Samantha. “They probably targeted us with passive scans only and...oops, they’re in pursuit, sir."
     “Hail them again,” I said, but after several seconds Samantha shook her head in the negative.

"So here we have a very big surprise," I said, pausing the story. "What would you do?”

I got several answers, such as “return fire,” “defend the ship,” and “evade and continue trying to open communications.”

“Remember what I said about ‘soft eyes,’” I prompted the cadets.

“In a fight-or-flight situation, widen your field of view. Take in the big picture. Look for other options and things you are missing.”

     The ship shook again as a tractor beam attempted to lock on and our shields repulsed it.
     “What was I missing?” I asked myself silently. Species that have developed enough to be capable of spaceflight do not just attack for the sake of it. There has got to be something in their culture, their background, or their experience.
     And was this even really an attack? The tractor implied they either wanted to tow us someplace or dock for boarding. It could be a first contact situation, a case of piracy, or anything in between. Up until this point, I had taken no offensive action. Certainly my rules of engagement allowed me to defend Crazy Horse, but I knew nothing about the other ship.
     "Moira," take helm, I said. "We may need your reflexes. Baker, assist at tactical." Ensign Baker, the duty helm officer, handed off her console and Moira took over smoothly.
     "Tactical," I called over my shoulder. "Give them a warning shot."
     In a moment I heard the photon torpedo leave the ship. On the view screen I saw it streak across the bow of the alien ship, detonating a safe margin away from the other ship.
     “No reaction,” announced Samantha. “They are in pursuit. Range now 50 thousand kilometers. All duty stations report 'at Red Alert' as of seven seconds ago.”
     "Stay ahead of them, Moira," I ordered the helm officer.
     "Aye, sir," she said. "They have not exceeded half impulse."
     "Charlotte," I said, turning to my wife on the upper deck of the bridge. “Crosscheck for any similar reports in the area -- distress calls, attacks, big ships."
     "We're way outside Federation jurisdiction. Our information is bound to be spotty," she mused as she touched the controls to initiate the search. "But we did acquire a public domain database at Alinca III that is supposed to include near term events from several surrounding systems."
     The computer chirped at her almost immediately.
     "Three possibles," she said, scanning them as she spoke. "Big ship, unprovoked assault. Antimatter stripped from the engines by some sort of transporter, but no other damage. In each case the victim's were left on their ship with no casualties and 75% of their original antimatter."
      “We have to get to the bottom of this,” I muttered and turned my head to look at the security station on the upper level of the bridge. “Standby photon torpedoes, but do not fire first.”
     “Aye, sir,” Sam acknowledged, touching the control on her board.
     “Helm, warp one. Let's see how hard they want to chase us. Evasive pattern Isar Gamma.”
     “Warp one” reported Moira after a moment. “Executing pattern Isar Gamma."
     "They have followed us to warp," reported Baker.
     If this was the ship cited in the reports Charlotte had found, their intent was not to kill us. It made sense to respond judiciously.
     "They're at warp 1.1," added Samantha. "Gaining slowly."
     I deliberately stayed at warp, whereas most space combat takes place at impulse speeds. This kept our opponent from using phased energy weapons, if they had any. They continued to attempt to lock a tractor beam on us, difficult though that is at warp. We were able to dodge fairly effectively. Like a frigate squaring off against a battleship, Crazy Horse was much more maneuverable than our opponent.
     “Charlotte, can you find us a place where we can ditch these guys?” I asked my wife. We were on the upper level of the bridge at Science Station One.
     “No nebulae,” she replied, calling up the data on the star system from our survey two weeks earlier. “The three big planets all have ring systems, but none of the rings is substantial enough to shield us much from their sensors, by themselves.”
     She frowned.
     “Best bet is this one,” she said, calling up a display of the planet nearest us. It was Neptune-sized with thin fairy rings and a couple of dozen orbiting moons.
     “The combination of the rings, all the moons zooming by, and some metaphasic radiation in the planet’s magnetosphere...well, everything together may make it hard to pick us out with sensors,” Charlotte added, “at least based on our projections about their sensor capability. Analysis of their sensor beams indicates they are roughly one third as capable as ours.”
     I studied the screen carefully, reaching over Charlotte’s shoulder to overlay a grid on the display of the planet's surface, feeding it to my PADD. Then I headed down the ramp.
     “Can we make it before they see us?” I asked Moira after I had told her my plan.
     “Maybe,” she said, cocking her head and considering.
     I glanced at the tactical display on my PADD.
     “Execute the maneuver,” I said. “Then aim for the equator, 75 degrees west,” I added, using the arbitrary grid assigned by the scanners.
     “Aye, sir,” Moira answered.
     The plan was this -- moving just fast enough to stay ahead of the other ship, Crazy Horse dipped into the edge of the star system, generally in the area of the planet we had discussed. Moira selected an appropriately timed moment in our evasive pattern and dropped to impulse.
     I was counting on the bogie taking several seconds to realize what had happened, during which they would overshoot us, now moving at close to warp two. They would take more time to swing around, return, and locate us again, the last leg of which would presumably be at their apparent half impulse maximum sublight speed.
     Crazy Horse plunged toward the gas giant, toward swirling rings and hurtling moons.

"So, what was my plan?" I asked the cadets.

“Ambush,” called one cadet, who apparently hadn’t been listening very closely.

"You didn't want to destroy them, sir, until you knew for sure that they really were bad guys," countered another, more thoughtful cadet, a redhead.

I nodded in the affirmative. I held up fingers as I listed alternatives. “We could have just declined to engage and left, since they obviously were not in distress after all and we could outrun them,” I said. “Crazy Horse also had enough power to destroy them fairly easily, but that wouldn’t have solved the mystery.”

"That's what you meant by 'soft eyes,' isn't it?" ventured one cadet. "Figuring out the bigger picture?"

"Exactly," I said. “The third alternative to ‘fight or flight.’”

     Crazy Horse was nestled in a crater of a minor moon, its shields radiating the same molecular signature as the surrounding rock, when the bogie stormed up. We watched on passive sensors as it searched for us. As Charlotte had predicted, the metaphasic radiation combined with the scattering from the particles in the rings left our adversary unable to find us.
     They searched for three hours, crisscrossing the area around the planet, then abruptly broke off and headed out into deep space. When they neared the limits of our sensor range, I had Crazy Horse follow, on the assumption that they couldn’t see us even though we could track them.
     They kept to a straight course at a consistent warp 1.1.
     We followed them for almost five days. I was wondering, and I am sure the crew was, too, whether our pursuit was worth the time and effort.
     We were in that zone between stars once thought completely empty, populated by particles still in motion from the feather-light press of the solar wind that initiated their outward journey geological ages ago. This interstellar "void" also contains a few rare planetismals, primordial leftovers from the formation of star systems. Their orbits of tens and hundreds of millennia let them range so far from their parent star that they can reach a significant percentage of the distance to the next nearest star.
     It was toward one of these solitary wanderers that our target was headed, so Samantha told me when I entered the bridge on the morning of the fifth day of our pursuit.
     "It's one of the reddest objects I've ever seen," observed Charlotte, after she exercised the science officer's prerogative and scanned the object herself. "In Kuiper and Oort Cloud bodies, redness generally correlates with age. It's unlikely that this one is native to the relatively young red giant star it's orbiting."
     "You can bet our friends aren't headed there out of scientific curiosity," I mused.
     "As secret bases go," suggested Sam, "this one isn't bad. Anybody searching the star system wouldn't look way out here."
     Charlotte was still peering at her display screens.
     "I thing there may be an installation on the surface," she said slowly. "Resolution is horrible at this distance, but I am reading a point heat source on the planetismal. And our friends are taking up a synchronous orbit above it."
     She directed her display to the main bridge screen. I saw a dark reddish disk, magnified so much that the edges were pixilated. A couple of background stars showed as pinpricks nearby. Various statistics on the planetismal, as revealed by sensors, filled the left and right margins of the display.
     "Here's infrared," Charlotte added, and as the planetismal disk darkened almost to invisibility, one spot at the very edge began to glow yellow. Nearby, a second spark sprang to life. "That one's our bogie," Charlotte explained.
     "Are you reading anything else in orbit?" I asked.
     "Nothing artificial," Charlotte shook her head.
     I studied the data bordering the image of the planetismal, looking for something that would suggest a plan. One detail grabbed my eye, and a plan fell into place.

"So what was my ethical position?" I asked, mindful of the subject of the class.

"Sir," said the red-haired cadet. "You still didn't really know if they attacked you. Locking on with tractor beams at rendezvous might be their procedure for friendly greetings."

"But they kept trying when Crazy Horse made clear they weren't interested," said another.

"Remember they'd been stealing antimatter from other ships," added another.

"Allegedly," countered the first. "We don't know it was the same ship."

I put the first cadet on the spot.

"So what should I do?"

"Make first contact, sir," she replied with confidence. "Standard procedure, with extra attention to the safety of the away team.

     And that's what I did, more or less.
     Within a couple of hours, the slow rotation of the planetismal took the bogie ship and the surface installation out of sight and Crazy Horse zoomed into orbit at high speed, taking up a synchronous position where the other guys couldn't see us. Then we sent a special probe equipped with passive sensors only to slip above the horizon and return. It is a tactic I have used more than once with success. The ship in orbit turned out to be uninhabited, apparently left in parking orbit. As far as the ground station went, even first-rate sensor systems don't scan right at the horizon -- the surface clutter effectively masked our probe.
     Our probe detected no sign of sensor sweeps from the surface. The shields on the ship in orbit were down and no lifesigns registered, so I felt it was warranted to move Crazy Horse above the horizon of the facility on the planet. We rendezvoused with the big ship and kept her between us and the planet. Security chief Dolores Scott took a team onto the other ship and occupied it. Meanwhile we made plans to make first contact with the people on the surface.
     "The facility is built on a radial plan with three spokes," Charlotte briefed our away team. "The whole thing is the size of a small city, but this was clearly designed to be where it is. The hub contains an antimatter power unit, but the radiation counts indicate that the reactions are somehow pulsed and not continuous."
     "It's ingenious," commented Ray Brown, our chief engineer. "I'm guessing they have some way to instantaneously store the energy from the reaction so they can use it as they need it. I'd love to see how they do that."
     "But that level of technology doesn't match the bogie ship," Samantha pointed out. "Commander Scott reports the surface installation is much more primitive."
     "We'll need full environmental suits," Charlotte directed. "Only about 300 cubic meters are within Class M temperature ranges. With passive scans, we can't tell whether the air is breathable, but most of the complex is so cold that any breathable gasses are in solid form. The lifesigns are clustered in the central hub -- only 20 in all."
     "We beam down in 20 minutes," Moira said, concluding the briefing with a nod. As first officer, she would lead the mission, joined by Charlotte, Ray, and Sam, plus a security team of three NCOs.

"There's not a captain in the fleet who wouldn't rather lead the away team personally, rather than sending people into danger," I told the class. "Not that I didn't have complete confidence in the people I sent to the bogie ship and down to the planet. Even if the regs didn't prohibit captains from leading most away teams, the practical reality is that in exchange for higher ranks, you have to give up much of the hands-on work."      

     I found ways to pass the time between Away Team check-ins. I deliberately did NOT haunt the bridge, leaving LtC Marina Lemar in command of the watch. She had regularly stood routine watches and I considered her ready for an out of the ordinary situation. I did, of course, give her instructions in private, as I would anyone, on how to handle various contingencies.
     Moira reported in when they beamed down safely into a frigid corridor outside the habitable region. She reported when the team entered the livable zone, when they met the inhabitants and found them to be non-threatening, and a significant time later, when the team was ready to return.
     A half hour after the team's return I met with them in the observation lounge briefing room, behind the bridge.
     "They call themselves the Go'Meay," reported Moira. "They're a religious cult, devoted to the creators of artifacts their people found on this planetismal hundreds of thousands of years ago, when it passed near their star system."
     "An earlier civilization on their world built this complex, but the planetismal was perturbed by a passing star and retreated farther and farther away," Charlotte added. "The immediate ancestors of the people we met reached here several thousand years ago in the ship we followed. They see themselves as the last guardians of sacred relics."
     "What was their justification for raiding ships?" I asked.
     "Religious tithe," she answered with a shrug. "They barely understand their own technology, operating it based on rote learning. For example, they didn't deliberately set their ship to drifting while waiting for a ship to respond to their 'call to tithe.' They had forgotten the concept of attitude control while not under thrust."
     "When we finally got them to understand," elaborated Charlotte, "that their actions were seen as piracy, they were mortified."
     "Their power systems are way off specs," added Ray. "If we can stay here a few days, I can do a general overhaul and then they shouldn't need more antimatter for years."
     "Good work," I complimented the away team. "I'll recommend in my report that the Federation send a cultural mission to the Go'Meay."

"So," I made my point again to the class, "neither of the gut reactions of 'fight or flight' would have been the best command decision, in this case.

"Remember that command is not just about making right or wrong decisions, judged by black and white standards. It is also about making sure you have the right information to make the most valid decisions, resulting in the greatest good and the least harm. Some of that comes from having the right crew members in the right jobs, including people who will stand up to you, when necessary. A lot of it needs to come from inside you, from training yourself to go beyond your own black and white first reactions.

"And that," I concluded, "is why we study ethics."