My name is Craig Murt, and I was once in a position of influence on a Nephilim with my entire family, serving as the head of maintenance.
But then tragedy struck, we were ambushed by a bunch of uncloaking chameleon nomads and in the subsequent battle too exciting to describe, the ship's shields failed and a powerful purple beam tore through my family's little shack in the biodome, killing my three wives, two fathers and my twenty little adopted children who I promised their deceased parents to take care of. My grandmother was lucky to avoid getting hit directly, but the nanobot officer was too late in activating the nanobots in that sector, and she was flung out the hole in the decompression after the tree she was clinging onto failed to stay in the soil itself.
Needless to say, that scared the crap out of me. More to the point, the alien beam absolutely decimated my safe of credit cards, and I was broke as hell.
A week later when an Aquilon finally answered our distress call, the captain said to us in that motivational speech, "The voyage we have in our explorations is going to be long and dangerous, and it will only get worse. What happened today is only the tip of the iceberg. If anyone wants to leave in that Aquilon now, I'll understand, and he may do so." I opted out immediately.
Long story short, I'm a bit broke now, and none of the other exploration ships will hire me despite my excellent maintenance skills - I also have a heavy freighter pilot's license and I think I would make an excellent trader for OSI.
