Defending the Delta

[Sombs]

---

These log entries are created in secret and aren't available to any other entity.

---

Log - Ezrael Vertiga

Things have gotten sort of crazy lately. Like, the batshit kind of crazy. I don't know what I talked last time about, but things have gotten really weird lately, and I'm not too happy with it. Time to recap.

First of all, Bretonia approved my request for a Hussar. Huzzah! Took the Apahanta's tech team a while until they managed to optimize it for the remote-controlled usage, but now we welcome a new member to the Rover family: The Attractive Rover. Obviously, the name isn't as creative or inviting as the other Rovers' names. Nancy got the Sweet Rover, then we have the Handsome Rover, the Charming Rover, the Seductive Rover, the Entropic Rover and now the Attractive Rover. Two Gitanos, three Hayabusas, one Hussar. Obviously, the Apahanta doesn't really have the capacity to move all of them around at the same time. Sweet and Handsome can be easily attached to the hull, and two of the Hayabusas can fit in the hangar, but the Hussar and the third Hayabusa might need to be controlled by our drone operation system or via autopilot at all times. With a rotation, to ensure all ships can be maintained well. Of course, that is only if we'd use all the drones with the Apahanta. Right now, however, I have deployed them at certain positions in Sirius. One in Bretonia, one in Kappa, one in Liberty. Rented some space for that, maintenance by a KSR each, that suffices for now.

The Apahanta is currently 90% operable. Hull repaired, heavy mortar replaced. I'll be honest, I still hope we don't need to ever use them again. Energy relais have been replaced, the IRG AI update adjusted. Technically, the Infinity Device should work. Looking at it from a realistic perspective, I decided to only use it when we really need it. The technology is that... out-of-the-box, it turns the Apahanta into a field experiment. I know, I made that choice by my own. However I might have to accept I spent 500.000.000 Credits on the research on something that might kill us. Sad trombone.

Financially, things are turning better and better, actually. HOT GEAR is expanding, both on Curacao and on Canaria and the exports have increased drastically. Turns out I made a good choice investing into that, and Paige has a hand for handling it. The idea is to open up outlets on Manhattan, Denver, Houston, Honshu, New Tokyo, New Berlin, Baden Baden and Stuttgart, maybe also Hamburg and Cambridge. Sombra is also still doing her part and pretty happy about it. She'll turn 27 in a week, so I might take her out for a dinner and what not.

Hm, about our people, Nancy is back again. The information I got from this Mason Coleman of the Forlorn Hope was incredibly valuable. So, here is what happened. Nancy was on a guilt-trip and tried to get in touch with Liberty. Liberty captured her, gave her to the 404. 404 let her roam around again, almost freely. So I moved to Liberty and picked her up at Manhattan, at a hospital. Asked her what happened, she didn't mention 404 at all and claimed Liberty didn't capture her. First discrepancy. So while she made up a new story, I thought about it. Why would 404 let her free? Why would Liberty not execute her for her crimes? What are secret services known for from all the movies? So my thought was she might have been forced to work with them. Of course that would mean they had some sort of controlling mechanism over her. Surveilance taps, stalkers, trackers, whatever. So I checked everything she brought with her. I checked for potential people following us, but nobody was around. For a long time I checked for that.

Her clothes were free of any bugs, though. So her stuff was clean. Brought Nancy to the Apahanta, wanted to have her checked there, claiming it was necessary to check her brain again because of her memory issues. Long story short, Nancy has a talent for collecting chips in her brain. Really, those 404 fuckers implanted another chip in her head. We wouldn't have ever found out if Thallia didn't gift us with her IRG equipment when she left the Apahanta to continue her research on Magur. So, we know she has a new chip in her head. We don't know what it does, could be a tracker, could also be an inhibitor, but what it might be is some sort of perception recorder. The chip is matter of factly part of her cerebral cortex, and Doctor Carr said she doesn't know whether she is able to remove it, similar to the other shit people stuffed into Nancy's body. Her guess for success was only at 10%, she said. Add another zero and I'd risk it. The theory is also supported by the fact Nancy didn't mention anything nomad-related by now. Not a single time. She avoids that topic entirely. She also avoids talking about the chip. We didn't confront her about it either, since we don't know what security measures 404 use in case of them finding out we know. It could kill her.

Basically, what we do now, is acting suspiciously insuspicious. No Valery, not a single time mentioning Maren's infection or anything related to it. It's tough, but so far it worked. The really bad part about all this is that we can't tell Nancy that we know about the chip, since it might be that they will see and hear anything she does. We also don't know if Maren could use a mindmelt on Nancy to contact her, since we don't know whether they can only see and hear or if they even can record her... in that way. It sounds crazy, being able to record thoughts and dreams, but really, I don't want to risk it. Leon currently keeps Nancy at a distance, being weirded out by the fact she is very likely to spy on us for them, and she thinks he hates her or is disgusted by her. They really had a difficult relationship.

I really don't know how this will work out. Nancy is such a kind soul, but it is almost like she is not allowed to be happy anymore by fate.

And then we have Maren, of course. She was behaving weirdly cute recently, and I forgot about the many troubles I have to bear because of her. We recently had a funny dinner on Curacao at one of those cat-themed restaurants that are in right now. Some shopping afterwards, then she was nice to me. The next day we moved to the Apahanta, as I offered Nancy to have our doctor to get rid of her scar at the belly, and Maren mentioned the Hoffnungsschimmer was available again. My home. While Nancy and Leon remained on the Apahanta to have Nancy have some rest after the surgery, Maren and I moved to Omega-58, using her Sabre. Weirdly tight cockpit, she sat on my lap during the flight. She first tried to not show me the way to Omega-58, however since I followed her once already, there was no point of doing that.

I told Maren how extremely uncomfortable I feel whenever I entered a nomad-dominated system. As if thousands of eyes were piercing me with their looks, knowing I was present. She on the other hand described it as them being upstairs in a lonely night and they hear someone on the lower story but can't locate them and don't know who it is and what the intention is. If that metaphor is right, it means the Apahanta's cloak might be less useless against Nomads than I thought. She moved her Sabre towards the shipyard in that system and I saw those creepy ships, the Scorpions. They look like gunboat-sized incubi with a gag-ball. The worst thing however was the Hoffnungsschimmer. At first, it looked pretty normal, but then I saw those tentacle-esque things emerging from it. Like, even if you never heard anything about the Nomads, you would know it was them. Maren brought the ship to that damn drydock promising they would fix the ship. Instead, they turned it into a hybrid more than it was before.

We landed on Kaarst and I had trouble keeping it together. There was not a single soul around, and Maren just lead me to the Hoffnungsschimmer. Both Kaarst and the Corvo were horribly silent. The Hoffnungsschimmer itself looks from the inside as it looked when I bought it. Still everything OSC-themed, luxury, all my stuff was still there, but the entire engine section and the power core have been, well... nomadified? I think I described how it looked in the previous state in some other log, with crystals all over the place. Now, the section looked more like they somehow managed to smoothen all of it, getting rid of the crystals and pixie surface, turning it into a weirdly luxury looking mix of nomad-ish materials in a human-ish constructed and formed way. A nomad reskin, maybe. I saw it and asked the Hoffnungsschimmer to activate self-destruction, but it is unable to do that. The nomadic materials have completely replaced the old Thorium-Mox reactor. I can't even blow up my own ship. After an argument with Maren, I told her to keep the ship but hide it, and that I would break up with her if she ever gets seen with that obviously nomad-ish ship. We barely managed to survive the trouble with Auxesia, the Lane Hackers are still after me and Bretonia only plays along as long as I am an asset of Kaze Dagon and whatever secret service the damn girl was working in that moment. I guess I am lucky they never asked me to do anything after the research of the New London AJAX 009-A-NLXX-01.

That's it for now. I'll have a meeting with Enma Loyola soon, the new Core Guildmistress, and I might contact Elena somewhen for another talk. I want to know what she thinks, after that disaster on Curacao.

---