The XO must have known about this vendetta and not told me about it; otherwise, I’d not have made him my XO. So he’s guilty of withholding critical tactical data from his superior officer, which is a court-martial offense. The XO is tried in a quick tribunal and blasted out in an escape pod as punishment. The aliens can do what they will.
Why must the XO have known about this vendetta? That’s not in the OP.
Captains don’t get to choose their XOs, dude. Particularly not a captain of ship’s company of only 50; that person is probably a lieutenant commander. Roddenberry lied to us all.
Anyway, why would the XO know that some lunatic he never met ws gunning for him because of what something his father did?
Story logic. You said yourself that your scenarios are taken from common fiction tropes; I think it’s fair to apply other common tropes. “Swearing vengeance” means they show up on your view screen and say they’re coming after you. They don’t just grumble to themselves on the toilet.
And anyway, it doesn’t even have to be true, just convincing enough to the crew that I can get away with the trade without turning them against me.
Ah, you’re the evil captain who betrays his crew trope. You know that no matter what you do, your crew will eventually find out and maroon you on a planet infested with monsters or brain parasites or something like that, right?
Scenario 1: The engineer goes in to make the repairs.
Scenario 2: Insist the XO can only be handed over in person. Once the ships are docked, hand out the space-axes and then it’s a boarding mission. Or detonate the engines and do as much damage as possible on the way out.
Scenario 1 - order 1 person to her death to save the other 249. She chose her job, and agreed to undertake the risks.
Scenario 2 - don’t give in to blackmail. If we surrender to threats, then aliens will just keep coming back and demanding more and more. All humanity will be under threat. If we go down fighting, and try to take some of them with us, they might not come back. It’s sacrificing 250 people for the good of a far larger number.
Or, as Kipling put it:
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
“Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
Betray? No, I just make the hard choices so they don’t have to. I saved their lives. I’m sure the crew suspects the truth about this incident, not to mention the strange disappearance of our resident empath after the encounter with the telepathic space-worm, but my lies give them plausible deniability. They know I have their best interests at heart.
I started this thread hoping for a discussion on the morality of the choices, not a cleverness fest. But I won’t complain; threads go where they go, an dnot even the writer of the OP can gainsay it. That said…
:: slips on Evil!Skald helmet ::
To live outside the law, you must first be honest. If you’re gonna be a villain, be a villain. If you’re gonna betray a member of your ship’s company to save the others (and yourself), go ahead and admit it; don’t faff about like some sort of elf.
I would think the choices are obvious here.
- My impression is that “lifepods” are a crapshoot anyway.
I also feel that this scenario requires a n omniscience that the captain wouldn’t have. IRL, it’s never a matter of turning some knob that will save the ship but the idiot who turns it will get bombarded with deadly radiation. IRL, the crew will generally fight to keep the ship going until it becomes obvious that it’s not longer possible because as far as you know, your efforts are the only thing keeping that magazine/fuel tank/warp core from exploding/imploding/depressurizing/destroying the known universe.
It’s less an issue of saving 1 vs the many as it is an issue of thinking the ship will explode and kill everyone before repairs can be made.
2) I mean, you aren’t really given a choice here are you? Surrender unconditionally (or with conditions you find unacceptable) or get blown out of the sky.
Why do people always want to fight the hypothetical? They are obviously just far enough away to not do any good.
The morality is obvious–sacrifice one to save everyone. Others raised questions about the willingness of the crew to follow you after making the trade, which is a valid point–so I presented another view.
Like my namesake, I’m not a villain. I’m one that makes hard calculations in the most desperate of situations. The choices are the right ones, and everyone agrees, even when they cling nostalgically to principles that have no relevance to the current situation. The others will eventually see the truth of my decisions, and even learn to love them.
I agree that the choice is pretty clear in the first scenario. t’s the second that seems iffy to me. I think it’ questionable at best to sacrifice the exec because it’s breaking faith with hi and by extension the entire ship’s company; it’s acceding to the demands of a known terrirust,
But that is not what I was calling villainous. The evil comes from blaming hte exec for the ssituation. It’s a way to avoid hte captain’s moral responsibility for making a hard choice, and is a way to avoid making a choice as surely as saying “And then a dozen Green Lanterns arrived and used magic rings to repair the engines” would be.
Perhaps. It would not reduce my moral responsibility to myself–I would have many sleepless nights. The blame itself has no real meaning; it is just cover for an unpleasant but necessary action. In fact I’d also regret having to sully the XO’s reputation, but if necessary to keep a cohesive crew, then it is still the right choice.
To be honest, I’d hope that the XO would volunteer for the mission. I would arrange a scenario (or simply invent a story) where I attempt to prevent the XO from leaving, but he manages to do so anyway. The XO dies a hero, I maintain control over the crew, and everyone else walks away happy.
You may still call this an attempt to avoid responsibility. Call it what you will; the goal is to maintain crew morale while keeping them alive, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen. We are too far from home for anything less.
Although you didn’t specify, your description of the aliens is reminiscent of the “honorable warrior” trope, which fights according to a strict code and requires a “blood for blood” exchange. I do not see any particular risk of this turning into a Dane-geld situation. Had they been space pirates or the like, my choice might have been different.
You clearly don’t know very many military people; in my experience, they’d view the XO (unless particularly hated) as one of them, and probably be incensed that the aliens would want the Captain to just surrender him without a fight. One of the central tenets of the military culture is loyalty, and in this case, the loyalty would be to one’s shipmates, wardroom buddies, etc…
Being cowardly and selling out your shipmates to save your own sorry hide is generally frowned upon in every navy I’ve ever heard of…
Dr. Strangelove, you’re not going to maintain crew morale by blaming the XO for the alien attack. The crew isn’t going to fall for it. They may accept the necessity of it; they may think you should have told the aliens Nuts! But by being so flagrantly dishonest with them, you will have exposed yourself as untrustworthy, and if they think you’re untrustworthy, they’re going to decide you decided as you did out of simple cowardice. They’re all gonna slam you at the ineviable board of inquiry that will follow this incident, and you’ll just busted down to lieutenant j.g. if you’re lucky and put in charge of latrine maintenance.
And whether the XO should volunteer is irrelevant. The captain has to decide whether to allow it.
… Assuming that the crew doesn’t mutiny before you reach port.
Nah. You mutiny to get out of danger or duty. If the captain were going anywhere BUT port they’d mutiny, but they won’t bother on the way to port, since there’s a guaranteed board of inquiry at a minimum coming up. The nearest thing to a mutiny would be the second officer getting orders from base to relievthe CO while they’re under way.
ETA: Though a white mutiny may ensue.
Nonsense. I’ve risked my life many times for them in the past, and they know it. Really, I need to cut down on those away missions. The tissue regenerator awarded me an “achievement” recently for having reached 1000 kg of regenerated body parts. And I’d already had one for coming back from a scorched, 4.97 kg mass. Honestly, this medical gamification isn’t making me feel better.
Perhaps you’re right and I’m not giving my crew enough credit–I have molded them in my image and they understand the tradeoffs as well as anyone. Still, it feels improprietous to not have some kind of cover story, no matter how flimsy.
No, in the second scenario the “trade” is just 1 for 49, and the 49 are all crew, not passengers in our charge.
I would look at from the merchant marine sailor attitude.
If the ship is going down then the crew should be doing everything to save the passengers first. So passengers should go first into the escape before the crew. Think of the passenger ships where the captain was one of the first into he life boats.
I don’t see the captain being able to order one of the engineering crew to repair the engines (though space travel crews may be organized differently than a merchant ship). But the Chief should meet with his crew and decide how to repair the main engines. Then the Chief ask for volunteers or makes the choice of making the repairs himself. If no one on the engineering crew agrees the captain could refuse them a place on the escape pod.
If you are going to take the big bucks when it is easy then you should be willing to go when the job is bad.