To: Nick Stenn | From: Ezrael Vertiga

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Neural Net ID
EZRAEL VERTIGA

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Nick,

I've been thinking quite some time about what happened. I can't express how sorry I feel for what happened. We've done some research on our end, trying to find out how the chain of events lead to all this. I don't know whether you are interested in listening to this at all, but in case you want, here is what happened.

In June 13th we picked up a new crew member from Livadia, a young boy of 23 years who didn't have any place to go. Background check told us he was the only survivor of the destruction of his family's ship in Omicron Delta, they got shot by Nomads. I should have gotten suspicious about it already back then, about the one and only survivor of that. A Zoner ship picked up his life pod and brought him Livadia. He used to live there with everything he had, which was literally only his life pod.

I accepted his application and he started working on the Apahanta. One of the girls of my crew showed interest in him, her name was Lorena Hawkins. They became a loose couple and slept a few times with another, until on July 26th a medical emergency was reported. The boy was incredibly weak, his throat beyond sore, but nothing life threatening. Lorena pretended to wanted to explain what happened and we moved to my room while my ship's doctor took care of the boy. Lorena then revealed the fact that she was infected.

Lorena, or Aphrodite, as she called her incubus, was a Vagrant Incubus, which explains the different approach, as K'Hara would have, so I believe, been more disciplined and less confrontational. She said she wanted to use me to get you, which evidentally worked. She told me you kidnapped a spaceborne Vagrant - something which in any other circumstances I wouldn't have believed - and forced me to do anything she wanted or she would have killed my crew, one by one. Plenty of other threats were voiced as well, and later she tortured me in multiple ways. Trying to save my crew, I did what she wanted me to do. I contacted Samantha, asking her whether she could do something for me, luring her to the Apahanta. It was my believe that, if everything would work out, nobody would get hurt.

We captured Samantha like that, and Aphrodite told us a few things. I was forced to contact you, pretending I would harm Samantha, while Aphrodite also threatened to force me to rape her. Since it didn't look like you were going to comply, Aphrodite demanded it from me. I resisted, telling her to kill me since I wouldn't do that. Instead she locked me away in a mind merge for, in my perception, multiple months of being imprisoned in a Lane Hacker interrogation cell. In reality, only a few hours had passed, and the torture ended the moment your ships, the Night Fury and the Haven, appeared in Sigma-13 infront of us. In the meantime, Aphrodite applied bomb chokers to our necks. What she didn't know was that these bomb chokers were fakes, since I never wanted to have such cruel devices on my ship. My crew didn't know these were fakes and treated them like some of the horrible loyalty-ensuring tools the Core used in case of, you know, insubordination.

And the rest you know yourself, Nick. We came over to the Haven, you shot Aphrodite, killing Lorena and the parasite inside her, and my only explanation to Samantha's death - I sadly have to assume she died - was that Aphrodite used a telekinetical attack on her the moment she got shot. A few seconds more and she would have killed you and me the same way. All it takes for a Wild is to cause a telekinetical induced aneurism in your head or rip an artery apart. They can do that, and I have no idea what the range of that ability is, if it is limited at all. After all Nomads, both the spaceborne and the incubi, are telekinetic and telepathic beings.

The Vagrant warform that appeared in Sigma-13, apparently called Kapheira, caused heavy damage to the Apahanta, but we made it out alive and have repaired the ship by now. I don't know what happened on your end, though, but I assume Kapheira was too strong to get beaten by a crayterian cruiser.


I am deeply sorry for your loss, Nick. I didn't know Samantha well, but she fought til the bitter end. I just wished both Lorena and Samantha wouldn't have needed to die because of this.

But it happened.

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