Yesterday, I put out a call for anyone with knowledge about "INEDAM". Today, I missed my transport home to meet with such a person. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make in search of the truth. He's taken a Terran name which I've been asked to keep secret, but was once known as Ahemait. That was back when he'd worked on INEDAM itself. Yes, you read that correctly. Ahemait had worked on an Alliance station, called Masada, which developed the core of the system. His experiences with the project had been so traumatic that, after the Antares Federation declared independence, he decided to disappear into the milieu of Antares' Vasudan expat community - until, quite literally, six hours ago.

After the Battle of Deneb, the Alliance and the Imperium were staring down the possibility of extinction at Shivan claws. INEDAM was an attempt at retroactive revenge: an autonomous weapons system which would activate in the event of total extinction and carry on the fight. Ahemait and his Vasudan colleagues were invited to represent the Imperium and lend their perspective to the project. Ahemait worked under the GTA's Colonel Nkmurah - yes, that one - on integrating one of the OPHOSIS components, a non-local subspace sensor tuned to detect Shivan signatures at strategic distances. While there was some tension along cultural lines, the project seemed to be moving smoothly - at first.

You see, INEDAM was developed under the auspices of GTI.

When the Hades Rebellion went hot, existing tensions among the development team went hot along with it. Now they weren't just arguing about strategic heuristics for their weapon to use its strategic sensors effectively; they were arguing about whether to deploy the incomplete system on one side of the conflict or the other. The fighting ended abruptly when someone powered up the prototype with instructions to leave the system and conceal itself. The ensuing chaos as GTI rebels, loyalists, and Vasudans seized whatever ships they could lead to the death of most of the team, ending with Ahemait being stranded on the station for just shy of a year.

That's a lot to take in, isn't it? It was hard for Ahemait to talk about, too. But it does confirm something important. The INEDAM prototype's out there somewhere, and it has components Holly wants. So where is it? What's the Alliance doing to keep it away from them - or have they lost track?

