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**Sombs** · 05-15-2018, 11:03 PM,

Day 49 - Location unknown II

Days had passed. It was the evening of the 49th day aboard the Apahanta. The blue giant was illuminating the observation deck slightly. There were no lights on, just the sunshine from outside. It was a weird view Sherry got as she entered the observation deck with small steps. Ezrael sat there on a bench, half of his body in the sunshine, the other hidden in the shadow. Her eyes first had to get used to the strong contrast of the light values until the darkness of the room started to turn into a darkblue blur. The light of the blue giant turned less and less intensive. Inhaling deeply, Sherry looked down at herself for a moment, checking whether she was looking alright. Exhaling, she moved closer to the Captain.

Ezrael heard someone approaching, lowering his look slightly. The train of thought he had was vanishing with the sound of Sherry's boots hitting the metal floor, even with her steps being rather silent. The engine was offline. There were almost no microvibrations, no rumbling sound. A sound Ezrael loved and missed, yet now that the sound was gone, his senses were sharpened.

"We will run out of energy soon, Ezrael." No further steps. She was standing behind his bench, her hands infront of her, one holding the fingers of the other. As usual, her countenance was of neutrality, yet there was a certain melancholy to it.

Ezrael kept looking ahead. He knew she was right. He knew it himself. The Handsome Rover did not find anything they could use to produce fuel. The fuel the ship had would only suffice for a few weeks in idle mode, and very few days if they would use the cloak and the engines. It was about time Ezrael made another heavy decision. Once more it was in his hands to decide their fate. Hesitating, he stared out of the windows, opening his mouth in an attempt to say something, just to close it again as he did not find the right words. He wanted to say the right thing, but there was chaos in his head.

The silence was awkward and hard to bear. At some point, Ezrael did not try anymore and just remained quiet, keeping his mouth shut. It was only when he felt the imaginary warmth of Sherry's gloved hand on his shoulder that the silence found an end. "If you would at least talk to me, Ezrael, I would know how I can help you."

"Sit down for a moment," he said. His voice was quiet but imperative. Something she did not hear often from him. So she let go of his shoulders and moved around the bench, intending to sit down. "On my lap," he added as her rear was already aiming for the place next to him. She stopped right away, straightening up again just to eye him for a moment. He was still facing the window ahead of them, not even eyeing her for a second. It was uncomfortable, the way he acted, but she did as he said, moving infront of him to place her rear on his lap. To her surprise, he opened his legs as she moved to sit, effectively having placed her bum at his crotch, sitting infront of him instead of on his lap. She opened her mouth to ask something but remained silent as his arms started wrapping around her torso, sliding under her arms. One arm was at her belly, the other at her chest, a hand cupping one of her breasts. To her, it did not feel sexual at all, merely surprising. There was a pull from his arms, pulling her back against his upper body. She realized he was hugging her.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. The situation however felt less awkward now, for some reason. Not being able to see his expression, Sherry looked out of the window, seeing a blue, dark and creepy system. "Are you alright, Ezrael?"

"I would like to tell you a story," he began, his forehead slightly pressing against her back. She wished neither of them was wearing Apahanta-suits, as they always had the same temperature as their bodies, no matter the environmental influences. She wanted to feel the warmth of his body, but there was only the pressure. "I came to realization that you are already too caught in the web, Sherry. I don't doubt your loyalty to me and the ship, because there would have been plenty of moments you could have betrayed me already. You never did, although the repercussions of betraying me would have been far less dangerous than for defecting from the Core." There was a short break, and his hand at her breast was squeezing her slightly. "I realized that if you decided to leave the Apahanta one way or the other, you would most likely die anyway. So I want to tell you why. I guess you know it already anyway. I do know you did give yourself access to all security channels of the ship, except the one of my room. You're such a damn good woman."

The hand at her belly was moving down. The thick material of her suit was taking away the gentle pressure of his hands. There was nothing sensual about it to her. And she knew why he did this. "Tell me about it. All of it."

There was additional pressure on his hand at her legs as she placed hers onto his, guiding it slightly, then keeping his hand in place. "I told you the story about my reasons to join the Core, to make the Apahanta-contract with Nodtviet. Simple revenge for the death of my parents. Like in a cheesy movie. Killing the bad guys, the Nomads. Sombra didn't like it at all when I told her I would leave Curacao, but of course she tried to make it look like I was going to do something heroical. At some point, I probably believed it myself. Fighting the Nomads, bringing peace to the Omicrons and Sirius." The squeeze stopped, yet his hand was still holding her, lifting slightly what they held. "When I realized the Core was not intending to find a final solution to the Nomads, I wanted to bail out. The Core-Zoner-Conflict made it easier to find people to join me, and having slept with many women at Yaren was helpful, too, to know them better. To know who I can trust. You were one of those women. Lorena as well. But there was another women who I learned to know well. Sort of."

"Maren," Sherry said quietly, using her free hand to stroke his leg slightly. More of a gesture than an actual touch. The way he held her was slowly becoming comfortable.

"Maren was ideal to help me, as she was an outsider. A seemingly neutral one, unprofessional, slightly weird but charismatic enough to catch my attention. So she helped me getting in touch with the Lane Hackers. With Yoshida. Charming person, sadly an evil one. A magnificent bastard. As charismatic as Nodtviet, but a dozen times more clever. He helped us getting the system override software we used to keep the Core from using the Apahanta's killswitch, and in return, we had to deliver a message to the VWA, some Bundschuh sect of Rheinland. Maren did this for me. She shot down a VWA ship, as intended. A woman with neuropathic hands that never had a professional fighting training fought off a Bundschuh rebel. I should have realized she was lying to me all the time already back then. Instead, I started to fall in love with her." The pull of his arms on her was increasing, and Ezrael placed his lips on her back for a moment. Her perfume was nice. Slightly fruity, something he loved. "After three months of a happy living with her on my home ship, the Hoffnungsschimmer, we had a fatal meeting on our ship. Thallia was there, Noah Xonnel was there, Leon and Nancy were there as well. Leon and Nancy disappeared to make love for the first time with each other in the engine room, Noah started to feel sick and left for the toilet. After a while, Thallia went to look after him. Then Maren. Then I. I saw something strange happening there in the bathroom. Thallia and Noah were like frozen, laying at the bottom of a toilet stall. It was the day I learned she was somehow... altered. One of her hands was modified by a nomadic artifact. Her other hand was modified by one of her cybernetic experiments on Cambridge. Long story short, Maren knew about it. She did not tell me. I left the bathroom, trying to wrap my head around it. Maren hinted why she knew about her nomadic alteration. An artifact Thallia found on a planet in Omicron Zeta. Thanks to that artifact, she was ignored by the Nomads. They liked her, matter of factly. Maren liked her very much either. It was that day when I realized I was living with an infectee for three months. Maren, at that time already the woman I was having my longest relationship with, was the host of a nomad incubus she called Sans Valeur. Valery."

Sherry remained quiet, yet her hand at his leg stopped moving, instead she held his leg with her flat hand. Ezrael inhaled deeply and his chest slightly pushed against her back. She was able to feel him breathing. His hand between her legs moved a little bit for a second, then it stopped again. "Maren thought I was going to kill her, and god damn, I should have done it. Her incubus was weak back then, a baby. Her powers were limited. Today, she is a one-man-army with a range of twohundred meters. Telepathy, telekinesis, illusions, she has any means to kill everything she wants. At least that is what she said. But I did not kill her. We made Noah leave my ship, and Maren collapsed next to me, dropping on the floor, looking up at me. Begging me to make it quick. With watery eyes. But she never did any harm to me. She loved me, and she was fighting to keep my affection. So I told her I loved her, no matter what she is. And like this I won a second friend. Sans Valeur, which I then started to call Valery. And this was where things started to get out of my hands. Noah was telling Auxesia he suspects Maren to be infected. Auxesia told the Lane Hackers and the Bretonian Government. It was the reason why we went to their flagship for a screening. Of course with a trick. Valery temporarily left Maren's body to fix the health issues of Nancy, staying in her body for that time. This allowed us to trick Auxesia and their scanners. All they saw was Maren's cardamine-altered body. We tricked them. We tricked the chaotic lawfuls. They informed Bretonia and the Hackers. Bretonia gave me green light for moving the Apahanta in Bretonia around. Yoshida of the Hackers however was not willing to believe. He thought he was helping someone under nomadic influence to get their hand on a battleship, and he demanded a mania-interrogation of me. Nothing else would clear my reputation for them."

Once more he made a break and both of them remained silent. The palm of his hand at her chest was making little circular movements. He realized what he was doing and stopped. "Of course you knew she was infected. You knew it was her when we I rushed to the Apahanta to intercept something in Omicron Kappa. The MND snub, Unschuld, which was doing something with the Commune. You remember it, I know that. You also accessed the medical scans of every single time Maren entered the Apahanta and ended up in the decontamination chamber. The scanners there can detect incubi. You knew it all the time and tried to hide it, to remain protected. You are an incredibly smart woman, really. And I start to understand what you meant when you said you killed someone of the crew." Both of his hands were grabbing her roughly in the places they were holding her. She gasped in surprise, feeling instantly uncomfortable. "To protect the crew, you did something. I don't know how you did it, but you killed Lindsay Camillo. It took me a while to reconstruct it. You deleted the recordings of her counseling sessions with Sombra, made it look like Lindsay had deleted them. But I let the Apahanta reconstruct the audio parts based on what was audible in the adjacent rooms. Sombra did something stupid. She trusted Lindsay would stick to her oath and not use any information she received from Sombra to do something. Sombra told her about Maren being infected. Lindsay tried to play it cool but started to panic, believing her Captain was under nomadic influence. She wanted to return to Bretonia, I guess, telling everyone on the Apahanta she would just take a few days off. But she never reached Bretonia."

The way his hand squeezed her breast was more than uncomfortable. It hurt, even with the suit protecting her. His fingers were drilling into her flesh. "Yes," she admitted, not showing any signs of pain in her voice. "I took the Camara I bought from Isley, told Lindsay I wanted to come with her and then shot her little shuttle in Omega-41." She gulped, inhaling deeply. "If I had not interfered, she would have contacted Kaze Dagon or Admiral McIntyre. She would have told them about Maren, and possibly about you helping her. They would have trapped you and you would stay in prison or something, and Maren would have been killed."

She heard him breathing audibly. Adrenaline started to rush through her veins, and under the skin-tight Apahanta-suit was nothing but goosebumps. Ezrael's grip loosened slightly and he let go of her breast, raising his other hand as well, placing both loosely on her thighs, left and right. "I know. And now I wonder, Sherry. Is it loyalty to me? Or did you all of this merely because you know Maren is out there. Are you protecting me and refusing your own command because you know if I die, Maren will come and take this ship and kill everyone who is under my protection? You know you are caught in this web. You can't leave because you would be killed if you did. You can't get rid of me because if I die, Maren will clean up. That is why you never wanted this ship under your own command."

Ezrael had his eyes closed. His forehead was still leaned against her back. Sherry was not emitting the slightest sound, sitting there between his legs, with his hands on her thighs while staring unfocused out of the window. With each second of her silence, Ezrael's heart was beating faster and louder. No words, no sounds apart from heartbeating. Not only his, but also hers. Even Ezrael found it unnerving, to have her so close to him but remaining quiet. "Say something."

But she remained quiet.

"Say something, now!"

But she remained quiet.

Releasing his anger, he pushed her roughly forward, with enough force to make her reach the window. She caught herself, not falling to the floor but pushing her hands against the window. Ezrael stood up, moving towards her. Forcefully he turned her front towards himself, just to be met with Sherry's desperate eyes, watery and about to release the tears. His hand aimed for her neck, grabbing it ungently, pushing. He was furious, yet she was not defending herself. He knew she could. Why was she not!? With the sound of rage in his voice, he pushed her to the side, causing her to fall to the floor. Shaking his head, he looked out of the window. "The worst thing about this is the fact you did me a favor killing that poor woman. I can't think of a scenario we could have prevented her from leaving the ship and informing Bretonia. If I was her, I would have done the same."

There was a desperate frown on his face. He felt horrible, and then he turned towards Sherry, who lay on the floor, not moving an inch. She lay there, her face halfway covered by her hair. Her body was turned towards the floor, her head however lay on the side, a cheek against the metal grid ground. The view was incredibly uncomfortable. She just lay there, like a puppet. Ezrael exhaled annoyed, silently wondering what to do now. The anger was slowly fading as he watched her laying there on the floor, and instead he started to feel regrets. What if he was wrong? What was wrong about her actions anyway? Maren was the evil one, not her. Yet he just hurt her. He had never hurt Maren, though.

Minutes passed. She was still there, on the floor. Gasping, Ezrael finally reacted, moving over to her and dropping on his knees, grabbing her to pick her up. Wrapping his arms around her torso, he lifted her slightly onto his thighs. "Say something, please," he said quietly to her, yet she refused. Her body was relaxed, he was able to move her easily without any resistance. Making it himself more comfortable, he moved to sit on his bum, legs stretched out and Sherry's body infront of him, facing him while her legs were on the side. "Say something, Sherry."

But she remained silent.

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