A9 Personal Log, SD 50302.16

[Atragon9 0]

::voice-activated recording begins::

 

Mi Querido...

 

How... what...  Margaux Roget, my Tactical Officer, an amazing pilot, an able Security officer, the second in command of the department, a "cajun" mystery who has always been a bit distant and seemed to like it that way.  Margaux, who has been getting progressively angry with me over the past few missions.  Margaux who is ready to tear my head off and use it for a gravball.  Margaux called me "mi querido."

 

I don't understand...  I've sequestered myself in my Ready Room since striking Ensign McFly - and I'm just in a daze.  She used that term just before I met with him, just before he pushed ALL my buttons and would not Shut UP!  I'm not saying he didn't deserve the blow, but that doesn't mean I should have delivered it, either.  Did her idle comment make me crazy enough to hit him?  Was it an idle comment?  Why would she say that in the heat of anger?  She couldn't possibly know that it is the same term used by...   What in the universe...?

 

I've been looking through her record since she came aboard, exemplary officer, pilot, security operative.  I see a medical addendum from Jami about some sort of cranial implant.  Also, Margaux's history is shrouded in it's own mystery.  That is nothing new for this crew - I'm sure she was vetted by SF Intelligence before coming aboard as everyone did.  But the timing... I just realized the timing.  Her background files start about seven years before Manticore launched.  That's so close...  Proxima Centauri, the Aries, the Lincoln research facility... Megan.  

 

::voice-activated recording begins again after a 10 minute pause, as per the time stamp::  That was all over eight years before launch.  But she died there - they all died there.  Did someone get out, after all?  Did someone tell Margaux about me?  Did Megan tell Margaux!!?  How could that be, she would have contacted me!  She would have HAD to!!!

 

::Starts staring around the Ready Room in a panic::  I'm going crazy, is that it!!??

 

::Gets up and paces back and forth, then he stops and looks at the open cabinet behind his desk and pulls out a huge file folder of papers::

 

Melville - always I'm drawn to that personification of evil in my life!  I wonder just how much of my career is because of him, in spite of him.  He hated me and yet spurred me on.  And it all started at Proxima Centauri, I realize that now.  He was Megan's boss, he hated how we had gotten close, how we had fallen in love.  He pursued me across the galaxy ever since.  Right up to when he took his final revenge on me and killed himself at my hands.  Was this all over Megan?  Again, she haunts me.  ::sits down with the file::  His files are meticulous, they are arranged with the precision of an obsessive - somehow I feel at home with them.  I haven't really had the time to look into the entire collection.  It's time.  First, I have to look at Proxima, at Lincoln... at Megan.  I must see what he had, what he knew... what he did!

 

::voice-activate recording begins, again, after a 90 minute pause::  Oh my God!  She did make it out - they did it on purpose!!  The plague was staged, they killed all those colonists, I didn't think Melville could be any more of a devil than I had thought.  I was wrong.  If I had known this, I would have surely killed him and mounted him on a pike for all to see!  And Megan got out - he pulled her out.  The message to the Aries - from here - was faked, it was all to get us back to see the devastation, the death, and it kept me from ever looking for her. But she wasn't there!!!  The files show her with Melville after we destroyed the colony, destroyed the evidence.  Then he lost track of her, too.  She must have gotten away, she must have gotten to Margaux, or they met somehow and then...  I... I don't understand, I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!

 

Margaux, I have to talk with her again.  She can explain it to me, she has to, I have to make her talk to me!!  But how, what do I say to her.  I... I think I have to wait until tomorrow, wait until I sleep on this and try to make some sense of it all.  Maybe I should tell all of this to Sovak, get his "logical" perspective - but how much of this is logic!!?  Why would Margaux be ready to kill me and still call me mi querido... "my beloved."  We... I... ::stands up and walks out of the Ready Room, recording ends due to data activity timeout::