Prelude:
An Officer
All members of the Thousand Worlds Contact Service are officers. The great responsibilities conferred on each and every member of the Service are such that commissioning is requisite. Accordingly, all Contact Service officers shall conduct themselves appropriately. At all times they shall display conduct becoming an officer including, but not limited to, the following requirements:
*An officer is courteous at all times, in his encounters with subordinate and superior officers, as well as with the general public of the Thousand Worlds. He must remember that he embodies the Service; that the Service itself will be judged by his actions.
*An officer is competent, and responsible for maintaining his competence. Training at the Contact Service Academy at Alton is intended to assist an officer in instilling such competence; the failure of the Academy program, however, to include training in a particular field of knowledge or achievement does not excuse an officer from command of and/or competence in that field of knowledge and/or achievement, should the task at hand require it.
*An officer is fair and just. No deserved praise due a subordinate shall fail to be promptly voiced by an officer; conversely, no flaw in a subordinate shall escape his attention. While an officer shall exercise due process over fellow officers who have been duly placed under his command, such exercise shall be made totally with respect to the applicable regulations and facts; such exercise shall be made totally without respect to a subordinate's social status, sexual or associational preferences, rank, or ancestry.
*An officer is a willing servant of the human race, as embodied in its agent, the Council and Government of the Thousand Worlds. By accepting commission in the Contact Service, an officer has waived his rights under the Articles of Association of free speech, free association, free conscience, survival, and trial by jury.
*An officer shall always keep in mind that the universe is merciless; he shall always be aware that precedent is no excuse for failure.
*Above all, an officer shall always keep in mind the fact that the failure of the Contact Service or any officer of the Contact Service may endanger the survival of the human species.