Package from Obambivas United Industries 4-13-3306
14 Apr 2020Nitehawk770
I awoke from a sound sleep to my ship's communication system beeping at me, telling me I had an important message. I groggily poured myself some coffee, and walked to the co-pilot's seat, taking a minute to enjoy the strength of the brew before tending to business. Obambivas United Industries has a datafile for me? They had known I was going to be a few good jumps away and unavailable for the next few days.....what could they want?Opening the datafile, my blood froze. It was an audio-file from OUI Vice President Raphael Marks. The only time we exchanged any sort of communication was regarding my father's disappearance, and it had been months since we last spoke. Swallowing hard, I hit play and mentally prepared myself.
"Jack, Raph here. Apologies for it being so long since we last spoke. It's been busy. The board elected me Vice President, and I sadly haven't had much free time as of late. Your mother was at the press conference announcing my promotion, and she had asked me if there were any new leads on your dad's case. I do have new information, and it may be a bit hard to digest. I haven't told her yet, I wanted you to hear it directly from me first.
When I was first assigned the case in January of 3296, FSS and I were jointly investigating it as a possible shoot-down incident. They had never presented an alternate theory, and had very little to go on in the way of physical evidence. As you know, by the beginning of 3297, the active investigation was halted, Robert was officially listed MIA, and the case went cold. In the interim, I had been looking at every angle I could entertain when I had free time.
Fast forward to last week. A Federation mission looking at the neutron star in GD215 came across a small debris field, and among that debris was a partially damaged hard drive. They took a listen to it, and forwarded it to FSS, and they sent it to me. Come to find out, it was a drive containing telemetry and jump data from the Magellan the day it disappeared. We know what happened, Jack......and it's not pretty.
Based on the data and the partial audio we could extract from the drive, we're fairly certain that your father came into GD215 from another system, and the point he dropped in was inside the gravity well of the neutron star. Not sure if you've been on a Type-9 since you were a kid, but they aren't the most maneuverable ship out there. Telemetry shows he spent 20 minutes trying to get out of the gravity well, including sending multiple distress calls. Unfortunately, it wasn't a heavily trafficked system, so there was nobody to come to his aid. Data shows he initiated the SD system and forcibly ejected some datafiles attached to a limpet, which managed to escape the gravity well. What happened after that is unknown, we can only assume he was killed by the gravity well.
I'm sorry Jack, this isn't what I wanted to tell you after years of working this case. I honestly hoped he had just staged his own death and disappeared, but it seems that's not the case.
If you need anything, you know where to find me.
Marks out."
I shed a few tears, but composed myself quickly. I had known for years my father was dead, just never knew HOW it happened. The last part of that log started to bother me, why would Raph even mention my father faking his own death? That wasn't something he would do..........would it? I had to get in touch with my mother. My gut told me to at least entertain the idea.