!html <div class='white'>WAYFARER INTERNAL</div><div class='white'>SOURCE: JersK</div>

For the attention of all Alliance personnel in Luyten: Please find attached a copy of <span class='red'>Captain Varner's</span> report on the INEDAM project. In light of the ongoing conflict, I have elected not to place it under any official classification level.

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I'd like you to think back to the early <span class='white'>Fourteen Years War</span>. Do you remember all the propaganda about the heroes of the Alliance fighter corps? That's not the word I would have used. We sacrificed entire squadrons to kill individual cruisers. I should know: my first job as an ensign was as a battlefield observer. This was years before the Apollo was even a blueprint. We were trying to hold back Neiths and Mekhets with Unification-era relics. INEDAM was my proposal for a stopgap: an automated transport to get artillery and mines where they needed to be without throwing away any more lives. That's all it was. It wasn't quite legal under the <span class='white'>Third Convention on Autonomous Weapons Systems</span>, but the Admiralty gave us the go-ahead anyway. I think they were as tired of writing official histories as I was.

Well, you know how things went. The Admiralty got their act together; our pilots got better equipment and our fleets got a proper cruiser. Honestly, it was a relief. We knew we were playing with fire, and if INEDAM could be just another dead-end project, we'd sleep better for it. Then Vega happened. One Typhon routed an entire fleet and killed the Eisenhower. Recon said they had more. Suddenly, canceling INEDAM was the last thing on anyone's mind. We got a blank check and a mandate to build something, <span class='italic'>anything</span> that could stop that ship. Fear of an existential crisis motivated us to continue. It was a similar story with the Hades, back then.

With money came corruption. I should have reported it, but GTI had a lot in common with the Alliance as a whole: they know how to make you feel like you're part of something bigger. Or maybe it was just the bystander effect. Anyone who was paying attention knew there was something weird around the Hades and around our own expense reports. Maybe we were all waiting for someone else to speak up. Either way, INEDAM went way beyond playing fast and loose with <span class='white'>3CAWS</span> to being a full-blown nightmare, and that's when I left the project. I guess that tells you the limits of my conscience.

I heard from Colonel Nkmurah when it was retasked to hunt Shivans, and I heard about the infighting. It sounds like the fundamental question was whether the Vasudans were planning a double-cross, and whether we should beat them to the punch. That was Rybak's doing, I think. It's the same rhetoric he used to bring people into his insurrection - those who weren't just in it for personal power, anyway. Once the Shivans were defeated, the Hades destroyed, and the Vasudans didn't go for our throats, I think everyone was all too eager to wash their hands of INEDAM.

Then we got a signal that INEDAM had gone active. My orders were to lead this task force and help the LNA investigate the Hammer of Light, while discreetly broadcast a kill switch to shut INEDAM down - in other words, to deal with the problem without airing the Alliance's dirty laundry. I made the same mistake as last time. I took the need for secrecy as a given, and I got a lot of people killed for it.

If it's all the same to you, I'd like to go back to my cell now.

