Meredith en Thielles time as the Captain of the Invictus is a long and storied one. We’re not even sure how much of it is true, and how much of it hasn’t been told because of the classified nature of the missions and, indeed, even her employer at the time. Unfortunately, since her disappearance in YC86, she is unable to be reached to clarify.

This is the first, and only, log recovered from that time.

— Edoualian Delassi, Research Assistant to Professor Gerret Nagachaux, Caille University – Bourynes

Geminate/N-K4Q0/MR4-MY VII
March 31st, YC70
Invictus Captain’s Log

I never thought I would be doing these again. When you’re on a frigate or a corvette and all by yourself, your log only needs to be cursory at best. That actually makes them easy to fill out. Just say when the ship was maintained, where, and what needed to be done. How much it cost. Mission notes, if need be.

This is a bit different. I have a crew that I’m responsible for and someone out there may want some sort of accurate (or my take on events) report on things. I need to keep track of crew, human resources, cash flow (or, very rarely, the lack thereof and what we had to do to kickstart that).

I won’t get personal, well, not too much. My X-O tells me the point of this is for someone out there to disseminate my mental state if something goes right, or wrong, or just plain sideways so some personal journal keeping is fine.

My X-O.

Even that has a strange ring to it.  I’ve never been a captain before, especially not in something that technically shouldn’t even exist yet and definitely in something that was meant mostly for combat and not scientific missions.  It can do that. The scanning suite is above par.

My new ship is a Minmatar made, but obviously the tech on it is from somewhere else and I really, really don’t want to know where that was, strategic Loki-class cruiser named the Invictus. I don’t even want to think about the implications of history almost repeating itself here, but I’m not wandering aimlessly through the stars. I was given a mission by the Society of Conscious Thought (SoCT) and while the point of it is still unclear, my employers have definite requirements. The crew was hand selected by them, me included although I have no idea why me.

Especially not as the captain.

But you didn’t come here to read about my self doubts.

So, day one of being the captain of the Invictus and we were sent to investigate a murder on the Ice planet in MR4-MY, a system run by SoCT.  I’ve worked with SoCT before, but it’s been years. However, it is kind of sort of Jovian in origin (a Jove or two may have had a hand in founding it) so their memories are as long as hell. Since the work I did was successful and I had a reasonably good reputation, they contracted me again.  When I accepted, I had no idea that they would make me a captain of a ship, but anyway.  I’ve voiced that enough already.

Part of me knows perfectly well why.

It doesn’t make me like it.

Now, admittedly, investigating a murder is a bit out of my league. Sure, I’m able to research and investigate things–it’s part of what I do as a scientist–but my expertise lays in Astrogeology not murder investigations.

But, despite my misgivings, my ability to ‘read rocks’, as my X-O says, came in handy as the murder had something to do with my field and the Invictus was needed to pursue other clues and suspects in the way a Loki-class strat cruiser only can.

One part scanning them down, one part doing it under cloak, and the other part sneaking up on them and opening up with the guns and the drones before they knew what was happening and leaving nothing but a wreckage and a warp scrammed escape pod with a suspect inside in the emptiness of space. All we had to do was yank them inside the ship, and then throw them in the brig while we warped back to base.

Job done.

I thought things were over with that.

Apparently, all we did was pass the test run. There’s something far bigger than this random job that they need us for, and we just got the job.