And They Ask Me Why I Drink

[Atragon9 0]

{It is the fifth day since their "arrival" at Mars' Utopia Planitia and the crew is finally settling back into their routines while the ship is brought back to life with new computer cores}

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

::Sitting at his desk in his Ready Room, scanning the repair reports on PADDs and consoles, he pauses and picks up his personal PADD::

 

Computer, open Personal Log, Admiral Atragon-9, Commanding Officer, USS Manticore, NCC-5852, password *********

 

[whirr, click]

 

What an interesting visit I had with the Consul General over there... then again, my visits with her are Always interesting... and I tell myself that I'll not be surprised by anything I find out anymore, but still...

 

It's nice to know that we don't always mess up when we are sent on special missions, sometimes we actually succeed. It's funny to realize that this one was a success after all.

 

::pauses and looks out at Mars through his window::

 

It seems that the strange and alien power source from the Ganges Chasma wasn't first explored by Manticore. It was detected about 2 months back and Starfleet sent the USS Tyco, a small Science ship, to check on the event. After a week, they stopped making regular reports back to HQ. After another week, they were finally boarded, as they orbited the planet - but it was too late. I'm not sure what S'aar had in store for them or how they reacted, but the crew was found in a similar configuration in their ship, except that they were all dead. It looked like they had all starved to death over a matter of days.

 

The fleet could not figure out what had gone on and were not keen on attacking an unknown presence on Earth's neighbor. That's where we came in, unofficially. The Consul General felt that the Federation Council was taking too long in their deliberations over how and what to do. She felt that this threat was very real and could spread if not stopped, so in we went. I suppose it would have been nice if she had briefed me on it before we stumbled in on our own, but between not knowing what really happened and the usual cloak-and-dagger work we get assigned, it wasn't a shock. What was a shock was that her private team had been keeping a very close watch on us as we went silent and could even tell that we had been... "arranged" and they did nothing. She told me that they would have boarded us in another two days in order to keep us from dying, but they wanted to see if we could find out why and what and where. Well, maybe I'm not surprised that they waited, but it ticked me off that she had planted observation devices onboard and she didn't tell me.

 

So, we succeeded! We didn't die, we found out what the energy really contained and now they get to neutralize it properly. I'll be curious to see what story pops up about a terrible event in the Southern hemisphere on Mars - they'll have to burn it right to the core of the planet, I would think.

 

As for the crew, I don't think I can tell them of our success as they will not see it as a positive event, more of further proof of our being a tool of the secret military industrial complex. ::sigh:: And we are... but I firmly believe that having a group of truly talented and morally centered individuals responsible for this type of work is what makes the society persist and our civilization grow.

 

Or I'm just trying to convince myself there's a reason for what I do...

 

Hmmm

 

Computer, EOM, EOT

 

[whirr, click]