JEREMIAH HAYES

There was an illusion about Starfleet, before the Dominion War. That Starfleet maintained a higher moral standard than its peer powers at all costs, even the cost of Federation lives. This illusion became so prevalent that officers in the service began to believe it themselves. There was an entire generation of cadets, my generation, that came through an academy which stamped ideals of duty, honour and loyalty into the core of our beings. While some officers went through the academy and went on into careers that never forced them to test those ideals, I wasn’t so lucky. As I moved up through the ranks I found myself frustrated by increasing amounts of friction whenever I put forward, or started work on an idea or project that I knew the Federation needed. But that didn’t fit into that rosy view that so many had of us.

While I still believe in those ideals, they need to be put into the context of the galaxy as it is, not the galaxy as we would like it to be. The occupation of Bajor was a moral failing on behalf of the Federation. A century ago, we wouldn’t have blinked twice at the notion of saving a people, a warp capable people, from a fascist occupying force. Instead, the Federation insisted on diplomacy. Even as Cardassian vessels attacked our ships and outposts within our own borders. We called it a war, but it was a game to them. They knew we would be defenders, but never aggressors.

As the Klingons later proved, if Starfleet had decided to go on the offensive. The Cardassians would have crumbled in days.

Without the influence or authority to put what I knew needed to be done into motion, as I moved out of the Captains chair I chose to focus on putting the foundations in place. In the hopes that an administration and leadership with a more utilitarian mindset might come to power. I found that sensor and communications R&D was far easier to get approved than shields and weapons. I resigned myself to the fact that even if we weren’t able to defend ourselves adequately from the next big threat, if we had a little more advance warning we might at least be able to save a few more lives.

Then the Enterprise got flung to J25, and suddenly those walls I’d been pushing up against for years began to crumble. A year later, Wolf 359. Those walls fell completely. Suddenly, the Admirals that had been metaphorically (and in a few cases literally) laughing my suggestions out of the room were calling on me to be involved in every meeting.

Now, don’t misunderstand me here. I wish Wolf 359 had never happened. It was a tragedy of life. But it was also the wake up call the Federation needed. Without the Borg… I’m not sure we would have survived the Dominion.

I’ve always believed that a good officer is not afraid to learn from their adversaries. The mindset the Federation fell into had officers believing that morality was very black and white, every adversary had a heart of gold. You just had to find the right diplomatic strategy.

The galaxy doesn’t work like that, but while our adversaries may not always have a heart of gold they do always help us remember that there is more to learn. The Romulans, the Tal Shiar, The Obsidian Order. Hell, even the KDFs Intelligence branch can and did teach us about the galaxy that we live in, and while those lessons may not have been heard until after 359. They were heard. When I found myself in Strategic Command, I recommended that we should reach out to the other major powers in the quadrant. The Dominion was the perfect spark for this particular fire. They were all eager for more information, and we held the keys to the wormhole.

The Romulans practically fell over themselves to make an exemption to the Treaty of Algeron, give us a cloaking device, and station one of their operatives onboard one of our new ship designs. On that first mission to find the founders.

Likewise the Cardassians were all too eager to give us insight into their communications technology, under the guise of working on a Wormhole Communications Relay. We knew it exceeded ours in areas - particularly for surveillance. That honey pot worked particularly well, and we even got the attention of the Obsidian Order.

Then…

The problem with these sorts of operations is that they’re high risk, high reward. Some, like the intelligence sharing agreement with the Romulans and the Wormhole Relay Project worked very well at first. But what we didn’t realise until it was too late was that we weren’t the only players in this game. As I’ve said. We had been resting on our laurels for decades. We had some early successes, but we completely missed the alliance between the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar. We didn’t know how closely they were working together until their incursion into Dominion Space, despite the clues being there. Both of them had struck deals with us, we knew the Obsidian Order was building forces and both of them had attempted to collapse the wormhole. Too much, too quickly for it to be a coincidence.

We also let the ball slip as tensions with the Dominion rose. We had been arming up since 359. But it still wasn’t enough, we had plenty of ships. But not enough crews. We had cadets on Defiant classes out in at-risk sectors ‘circumnavigating Federation Space’ trying to collect intel on what were officially ‘training missions’ just before the war broke out, and we didn’t learn our lesson there. I reckon we almost handed an alliance with the Romulans to the Dominion when we sent a prototype out for a shakedown cruise, far too close to their borders…