A9 Personal Log, SD 50301.25

[Atragon9 0]

::Sitting in his Ready Room, angrily arranging his PADDs and data crystals, one of the PADDs slides off his pile and he picks it up and throws it across the room::

 

aaAAAARRRRGGHHHHH!!!!  The Universe must think I'm some sort of punchline!!!

 

::deep sigh::

 

Ahhhhh, who am I kidding, the Universe doesn't care about me, it's not about me, it's about....

 

::presses membrane button on his desk::

 

Computer, Open Personal Log, Commodore Atragon-9, Commanding Officer, USS Manticore, NCC-5852, password *********

 

{whirr, click}

 

We've... I've...  ::deep breath::  Our mission to Citadel 18 has been less than spectacular.  Our first reconnaissance told us that an outside force was aiding the locals with their weapons development.  We then found out that an Intell officer, a Colonel Kurtz, was the source of the aid and particularly evil person, as known by Claire Eason.  Stupidly, I allowed my eagerness of being back in the saddle again to cloud my better judgment.  I let Claire take a small team down to contact Kurtz and discover his motives and plans.  ::sigh:: What *WAS* I thinking??

 

They were contacted all right - they were captured.  Claire was able to get Margaux Roget back to the ship but she and Dr. Faldorn were held prisoner on the surface, behind a dampening field that we could not penetrate.  Margaux led an assault team down to rescue our team and, after some trouble, they were able to rescue the two of them.  Faldorn was in pretty bad shape and they were rushing back to Manticore... when their cloak failed.  They were fired on from the ground and nearly destroyed.  Margaux was able to crash the Griffin back into the bay, but it was a very hard landing and it totaled both the Griffin AND the Wyvern, waiting in the same bay.  Most of the assault team were injured in the crash, but Sovak tells me that they'll all live.  He said that Claire was saying something about killing Kurtz, but I'll wait for the debriefing to find out.

 

We have pulled away from the planet and will decide our next move once I get a better sense of what happened down there and what the first team can tell me of the situation on the ground.  Why do I feel that it was all a waste of time and precious resources?  Why do I wonder if someone at Intell has picked up Melville's torch and are continuing their campaign against Manticore?  Is he laughing from his grave, knowing he set many operatives in motion on his behalf and Kurtz is one of them?  Or worse yet, that Kurtz was working for Intell and this wasn't the strange behavior we came to check on.  I guess asking for greater communications in Fleet Intelligence is a silly hope, isn't it?

 

::flips on his desk console::

 

Frak, look at that bay!!  First, we heal the people, then we heal the machinery... ::looking down at his exoskeleton suit-covered arm::  and how do I heal the human machinery??

 

Computer, EOM, EOT

 

{whirr, click}