Why did Vermiana do it?

How was she persuaded into participating in the bio-weapon test phase? Stylphus, the renegade arms manufacturer, thought they could create a pathogen that taps into the sex drive as a means to craft soldiers into compliant, and yet highly motivated killers. What could possibly go wrong with that?

What went wrong is portulaxis, ‘the sickness that all despise.’ Her infection has turned Vermiana into a deadly enchantress. Her beauty is mesmerizing, but her intimate touch carries the lethal spores of portulaxis. In every outbreak since that first one on Stylphus’ home planet, the female survival rate is zero. And for just one man in a million, survival comes at a steep price—a life of eternal servitude, dominated by the self-aware community of spores living in their bodies.

Vermiana has amassed a harem of such unfortunate men, their wills broken, their lives a brief, wretched existence of adoration and obedience. But as her slaves perish, she must seek new victims, relying on the potent power of her hypnotic gaze to seduce one man and begin the process afresh. Never has she failed, for a man like that’s mighty rare.

This job calls for Io, he’ll get help from Dexter

The will to deny her, the skill to perplex her

They find out the planet on which she has landed

They make plans to meet there and off they fly