A couple thousand years from now, you witness an attack on a planet.

You're in command of a ship, kinda like the Enterprise from Star Trek, thousands of years from now. Oh, congratulations. So, while exploring a system of planets 20,000 light years from Earth, you see another ship attack and destroy all life on an inhabited planet. The attacking ship completely ignores you and your hails. Your ship is greatly more powerful in just about every way and the most they could do to you is scratch your paint. You do not have a means of boarding their ship, at least not without damaging it and ripping a hole in its side, which would probably kill some of its crew and possibly even destroy the ship completely.

Your crew has investigated and determined that the planet they attacked was never a threat to the attacking ship. They also report that this attacker can not travel to Earth and pose us absolutely no threat.

What do you do?

 

Behave like the naturalist observing wildlife. Conclusions re motiv[ation] are far too subjective. There's probably millions of the stupid little planets.

 

Sure. Your ship could travel all the way out there, so our technology is much more advanced since they can't travel that far.

 

Hmm. I wouldn't have thought of an entire planet in the same frame as, say, a single deer being eaten by a bear for food.

 

Obviously you lack the 4017 mindset.
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Your interesting post...immediately I tended toward thinking the commander of the 'Earth' vessel was not 'there,' as such. I didn't like him wading in, playing chief, thought that scenario needed talking out

[Or...you play God, you write it, I read it.]

 

I have no idea what you are saying.

 

Well I never said snipper dipper. Maybe someone has my p-word? I'll look again, see what I did write, see if I was being a fool...

 

I thought that in 2000 years time, the idea of a commander behind a control desk/panel was not so plausible, this would be a 'remote' situation.

[And then the other thing I said...it might be more fun if you wrote it, but that's writers, heh.]

 

Sometimes I clip quotes for brevity while keeping the quote tags so everyone knows who I'm talking to.

 

I'll buzz off, leave you be. I'm not that sci-fi. all best.

 

I'll buzz in. I'd be quickly wanting to hand the reins back to whoever gave me the 'kinda like Enterprise'. Pinch myself maybe to wake up, and not really be feeling it about the inhabitants of imago-planet, nor their assailants. I'd be too concerned that the LSD Mat lent me (to look after in my mouth) was taking me on a bad trip. Overwhelmed as well at being 20,000 light years away, yet only 2000 years from now. The maths, the breaking physical laws—my poor head. How? How? I'd ask myself, even the best conjecture in New Scientist never considered this! Pinch again, click my red shoes together and wish for Kansas.

 

You would just leave a violent event with possibly billions of dead beings? Pff. Fine.

 

Those laws are dependent on our current understanding and engineering solutions. There was a time, just a few hundred years ago, that the same could be thought of about lifting men up in a balloon that could reach the moon. Just think about all the cheese they could've brought back.

 

I'm not doing THAT. Just my sentencing is not working in current form to communicate with fellow members of the planet. Sometimes this happens at weekends especially.

 

Possible threat eliminated. Time to go home?

 

To be fair, it'd be like you're the commander of a tank who just witnessed a gurellia force shoot villagers with guns that aren't strong enough to seriously harm your tank, and they completely ignore your very presence. What do you do?

If it were me, I would notify the high command immediately. Any intervention might risk war, and I'm sure the last thing they'd need is to have to deal with a sudden conflict between Earth and that alien civilization because someone decided to play a rouge hero. Maybe even contact them and ask them in a non-threatening way what was going on to make them want to destroy that planet?

 

Of course, that would mean we and they would have to spend a lot of time learning languages, assuming that is even possible. But this species as a whole isn't interested in talking with us. At all. And do you mean that you would follow them to find out where they're from?

 

Load the heavy rails, and hit where it hurts.

 

What if it's a smaller scale ship, like a scout, and you piss off a much bigger and more advanced fleet?

 

Whatever you do isn't going to bring those billions back to life.

You are totally ignorant of the motivation.

You are also ignorant of the local ecology; what if the attacking ship is a representative of the only known predator for the species endemic to the destroyed planet? There are, as has been suggested, millions of these "infestations", which the predator species goes around wiping out and maintaining the fragile eco-system of this nebula. They are only able to wipe them out at around the rate at which they proliferate. You step in and wipe out the only known predator, and bingo! the whole eco-system goes belly up and centillions die of starvation. Good job!

Regardless of who was right and who wrong, under what Imperium do you (a military officer countless miles away from home) claim judicial jurisdiction over this quadrant of the galaxy?

Also, the aliens have planet-destroying technology, which is wholly inadequate to damage us; this implies that our technology is a quantum leap more than mere planet-destroying; what possible motivation did we have to develop such awesome power?