Uncharted System 34

[Sombs]

Previous: Uncharted 32

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December 20th, 828 A.S. - Uncharted System 34

I can't tell for sure what was the cause of the changed mood, but everthing got brighter when we left that damn nebula. Or maybe it was just the fact we entered the end of the year. A few crew members decorated some areas of the ship festively. There even was a fake tree in the canteen, made from a bunch of metal rods and spray paint. Nobody thought of buying a durable christmas tree when we left Sirius, so we needed to make our own.

Christmas was on my mind quite often lately. There was this one specific moment when I entered the canteen. Usually, the first person to be there in the morning was Sherry, to get herself a cup of coffee and plan her daily schedule for... probably an entire month. To be honest, I sometimes thought she was just reading a book or pretended to read while listening to the conversations at the table. I mean, nobody was more professional than her. After all, she was the Second-in-Command, and basically the brain, heart and soul of the Apahanta, and the most intimidating person on this ship, but come on, there is not that much to gain from scan reports and inventory checks and what not. Nevertheless, I never asked what she was doing. I just tried to not stare at her whenever we were alone.

This morning, we were, for a few minutes. Sherry was there, with a cup of steaming coffee, sitting at the big table, a PDA in front of her. I've never seen her wearing anything different than the Apahanta suit except during the daily workouts. To say her body was in a perfect shape almost sounds like an understatement. Athletic, lean body, well defined abs. For someone like me, who likes to draw people, she was basically the ideal example of a powerful woman. No surprise she got Ezrael's attention back when they met at Durham Station, before they stole the Apahanta.

I took my food tray and sat down on the other side, basically diagonally from her. "Good morning, Commander," I greeted her, as usual.

"Good morning, Noel," she replied. I was just going for the knife to cut my bun open when I realized she adressed me with my first name. Something she usually did not do. Surprised, I stared at her for a moment until she raised her gaze from the PDA to react. "What?"

"... You usually don't do that."

"Do what?" she asked.

"You use my last name or my rank, not my first name."

"Did I use your first name? Huh." She looked at her cup, then back at me. "Pardon that, Baker."

"Nothing to apolozige for. I mean, I don't mind that. It's just that I'm not used to hear you call my name." At this point I felt embarrassed to have brought it up.

"If you prefer it, I'll continue calling you by your first name."

Intimidated by the neutral expression she gave me I nodded. "Eh, nothing would make me happier!" Panic made me say that. Instant cringe moment. Ashamed, I focused on my food.

She dropped the subject with a final "Well then. Guten Appetit, Noel."

"Thanks!"

That was awkward, and for some reason, I interpreted her faint smirk as if she was fully aware of how uncomfortable I felt. The followeing silence didn't make it any better. She stared at her PDA, I prepared my bun. Sherry was hard to read. Her unbreakable professionalism, her size and her voice usually managed to make people try to remain at a careful, respectable distance to her. And from being in a relationship with Sombra I was conditioned to women being sadistic imps who love to make me feel awkwardly uncomfortable. Not that Sombs was in any way dominating, torturing or in any other way treating me badly. Not at all, I was happier than ever since we became a couple. It is just that she has an absolutely vile sense of humor.

For example, she has this horrible habit of saying weird things when we have romantic moments. A few days ago she surprised me with a really lovely dinner in our room. Everything was nicely decorated. Soft lighting, jazzy music, she wore a very sweet dress, the air was full of her perfume. We ate, then she took my hand, made me stand up and carefully made me slow dance with her. Our bodies were close to each other, she leaned in to place her head onto my shoulder - which probably looked funny, given I'm a head shorter than her - kissed my neck, grazed my ear with her teeth and whispered "Mmmmmhh, mommy needs a new diapy" in a very immersion-breaking baby voice to me. It weirded me out to the point where I wanted to take a step away from her, but she tightened her grip on me and continued to say funny, weird things to me. In the end, both of us broke and we laughed, but that is basically how she works. Of course, she does not wear diapers.

There is also the fact that we have just one child on this ship, Ezrael's and Abigail's daughter Luna. Fully aware of her being in the age where she begins to understand and repeat words, Sombra's vocabular switches from romantic and eloquent to rotten, vulgar slang. To a certain degree I think she does that because she hates the child, or at least the fact that Abigail forced this child onto Ez, but on the other hand, I also believe that Sombra really just derives pleasure from the idea of children learning foul words from her.

Time passed and the other crew members joined for breakfast. Sombra sat down next to me and pecked my cheek. Ez, as usual, next to Sherry, as they used the breakfast to talk about the schedule. A bunch of other people, too. Others sat down a bit further away, like Abigail and her daughter. Most of the time, one wouldn't have been able to tell that Ezrael is the father, as they rarely spend time together in public. I knew it would be different for christmas, as, despite their differences, Ez and Abigail got a bit closer with another again. Most likely for the sake of parenting, and because Sombra was no longer available to him.

There was some random conversation going on, and it somehow ended up with the omnipresent topic of christmas again. The more they talked about it, the more I had to think about it. Sombra noticed I grew silent and poked me in the side with her finger pistol. One of her, annoyingly, most effective moves to get my attention.

"What up, my boi?"

"I wonder how people celebrate christmas on Curacao. How did you do it? I mean, there is no snow, right?"

"Really, the same way it's celebrated on most other worlds. Yeah, no snow, but OSC usually did festive events. You know, marketing. Sometimes it was about fake snow, sometimes it was summer christmas with people in revealing clothes and such." That being said, from what I knew about Curacao, revealing clothes were an everyday thing there anyway. If anything at all.

"One time OSC hired Synth to create a palma tree version of a christmas tree," Ezrael explained, smirking while thinking back. "It was about fifteen meters tall and instead of needles, it had long and heavy leaves in layers. It was a big marketing gag and everyone was wondering whether the tree was an actual organism or just an elaborated thing made of plastic. When the thing began to rot, they realized Synth actually created a pine tree with the characteristics of a palma tree."

"I remember that. For some reason, the thing was incredibly stinky. Like, first it smelled like a regular pine tree and when it started rotting, people complained about the stank all over the island."

"That sounds hilarious."

"I bet you always had white christmas on Hamburg."

"Sort of. It often was too cold to go outside. And when my parents got the freighter, we simply left Hamburg. Kind of a bummer, now that I think of it. I never got to build a snowman, and looking at the future, I guess we'll never get the opportunity to build one." The moment I said that I realized the impact of that line. Sombra glanced over to Ezrael, who frowned for a moment. For the rest of our lives, we would remain on the Apahanta. Visiting other planets was too risky, according to Ezrael. Flesh-eating bacteria, terminal viruses, potential hostile lifeforms and so on. It was not like we didn't have the means to explore planets, as we had the Rovers and the Apotheosis, but it was a risk not worth taking. Everything we needed could be grown on the Apahanta or extracted from asteroids.

Realizing I just killed the mood, I exhaled audibly. "Sorry."

"We'll have to come up with a bunch of new traditions, or at least variants we can do on the Apahanta. Maybe we can create some fake snow for a snowman." Ezrael looked over at the fake christmas tree. "It's all about the spirit, right?"

"Yeah! We'll simply pour white color all over you, place you next to the tree, put a scarf on you and ram a carrot into your face." She gave Ez an impish smirk.

"Well, maybe something less extreme."

"Nonono, it's all about the holiday spirit, Ez! You'll be our Snow-Ez! And then we put christmas hats on all 400 KSRs! And who doesn't insert at least one ho-ho into their sentences will get thrown out of the airlock."

"That- "

"HOLIDAY SPIRIT!!"

It was another rare instance of me noticing a faint smirk on Sherry's face. Considering she and Sombra used to be rivals, it was a bit of a surprise to see her smirk about her childish jokes. Or maybe it was about something else.

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Uncharted System Stories: 18 | 32 | 34 | 37 | 38 | 85

Templates: Character | Transmissions

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