Uncharted System 37

[Sombs]

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March 14th, 829 A.S. - Uncharted System 37

I don't know where to begin. It's been weeks since we entered this system, and we were still trapped here. It was wearing us down. On one hand, we had this weirdly beautiful system, with pretty little particles whirling around the Apahanta, like little fireflies. There was the occasional flash of light from the ionic discharges between them, but it didn't harm the Apahanta. At some point, we didn't even hear the collisions with the hull anymore. It was like rain hitting the roof of a cottage or the glass of a window. I remembered the few days on Curacao, when Ezrael and I just had a great time doing nothing for a while. Just being there, enjoying the climate. He tought me how to swim in the pool of his mansion.

The memories of those days were something that kept me sane. Those memories were good, I kept telling myself. Those times were good. I needed to remind me, because this system was a trap. There was no way out, as the jump hole was unstable, and while we initially had hopes for this water planet, a few days in this system made us realize that something horrible was going on.

For some reason, whenever we went to sleep, we would get nightmares. Vivid ones. Every night cycle was a horror, and sleeping became less and less appealing. It didn't take long for us to realize that this was not normal. Almost every single person on this ship was suffering from those nightmares, except, apparently, Ezrael's daughter Luna. Nobody knew why, but Abigail assumed that her brain was not developed enough for whatever was affecting us to affect her, too.

The situation was bad, and it got worse each day, as the constant exposure to nightmares quickly changed the mood among the crew. People were more aggressive from the lack of sleep, and Abigail tried her best as the ship's counselor to comfort those who suffered more than others from it. Generally it seemed that people with a regular sleeping pattern managed to handle the situation better than those who would either need more or less sleep than the others. Sherry, for example, had locked herself up in her room, trying to focus on her duty to keep the ship maintained. Ezrael visited her occasionally to bring her coffee or just to spend time with her, but he said he had never experienced her in a mood like this. According to him, she was angry and frustrated.

Ezrael himself seemed to take it much better. Like most of us, the increasingly dark rings under his eyes made clear that he was suffering from insomnia as much as everyone else, but he seemed to counter it with... certain activities. It is weird to think about it this way, but his biggest talent has a positive effect on whichever crew member he was spending time with.

When we noticed that, Sombra made sure her and I would schedule some extra time for that, too. It was hilarious, in a way.

But it couldn't go on like this. In general, I mean, with the nightmares. At some point, we used the Rovers to take a closer look at the volcanic moon in the system and apparently, there is an artificial structure on it. This was horrible news, as we had hoped we would have been alone out here. Maybe we still were, considering there was just that one structure. Entering the thin atmosphere, one of the Rovers took pictures of it and it seemed to be like something the Dyson Sphere builders left behind.

Good - it was no human structure. Bad - it was an alien structure.

Considering we didn't know about anything causing memetic effects like nightmares, we assumed that this structure was causing the issue. I remembered the conversation Ezrael and Leon had one night in the canteen as they talked about the options. I was there to refill our Sombra's and my water bottles at the counter as they sat at one of the tables.

"The Rovers don't have the firepower to deal with the material, but the Apahanta can. That atmosphere is thin, we should be able to blow it up with an orbital bombardement," Ezrael proposed to Leon, who held his head with both hands, visibly struggling with staying awake, expecting his head to hit the table any second.

"So, you want me to modify the shields again so we can withstand gravity?" Leon asked in a sleepy voice.

"Yes."

"That would expose us to the radiation and discharges in this system." The blond boy shook his head.

"What if we put everyone in secure areas for the time being?"

"I'm more worried about the ship than the crew in this instance, Ez," Leon explained, rising his head for the moment to face the Captain. "Right now, the shields are modulated in a way that prevents harm from these constant ionic discharges. Once the shields drop, those particles around us would get attracted to the hull, not only corroding away the outer hull - admittedly slowly - but also turning the ship into a giant lightning rod. That would fry us, to put it in a non-scientific way."

The Curacaoan with the long black hair returned a lopsided look. "That's no option, then?"

Leon chortled. "No, Ez, that's no option. We could try an orbital bombardement from a higher orbit, but that would weaken the shots. And then there is the question whether that thing is actually causing the memetic effect, and not inhibiting it."

"Wait, what do you mean?" Ezrael asked, raising an eyebrow while grabbing his cup of tea, ready to listen to a lengthy explanation.

"Well, we know nothing about it, so we shouldn't jump to conclusions yet. After all, we don't know if the particles around us are the cause, and the thing down on that planet is actually preventing the effect from being worse. Imagine we blow it up and then everything gets worse. And, you know, what if attacking it causes a direct reaction? Planetary defense? Just because we didn't see anything yet, doesn't mean there isn't anything down there to protect the installation. Or maybe it sends out a distress call and alarms both Daam K'vosh and the Nomads. Maybe-"

Ezrael lifted the index finger of his left hand, signaling his friend to stop. "I get it, Leon, yes. But we can't sit here and do nothing. If things stay like this, people will go insane, either from the nightmares or from insomnia." Weirdly enough, I felt like both of them hadn't noticed me refilling my water bottles, so it was definitely affecting them.

"Maybe you should consider using the jump drive, then. We still have the coordinates for Sirius."

There was an awkward silence after that, as Ezrael had a strong aversion against the thought of returning to Sirius. We all knew that he would do it, if there was no other option, but we also knew he would exhaust all other options first before considering it. Because if there was one thing he was more afraid of than his nightmares about Maren, it was Maren.

Ez however agreed that they needed to find out more about the structure, so he took the Apahanta closer to the volcanic world, and things got horribly worse. People started to hallucinate and daydream, and all of it was horrible. Basically, the nightmares didn't wait for us to fall asleep. We were exposed to them throughout being awake. Ezrael saw Maren on the bridge, and according to him, she was angry for him leaving Sirius. Sombra saw my corpse next to her and started to cry, and I myself heard Aphrodite inside my head. These fucked up moments lasted seconds, then minutes, until Ezrael has a moment of clarity and ordered the ship to move away from the volcanic moon. After that, the hallucinations ceased. Nobody understood what was going on, but Ezrael plotted a course for the edge of the system, sending us deep into the endless nebulae outside the bubble around the sun.

A few people got hurt because of the hallucinations, either by self-harm, simply not being able to handle the mental trauma, or by having interacted with tools or having mistaken other crew members for monsters. It was an absolute bummer and the morale was at an all time low. People held grudges against each other, which was new. However, with each day passing, the effect got weaker, and when we entered the nebula, there were nights without nightmares.

Realizing that the nebula was protecting the ship, Ezrael made us hide in it for now. It was time to get some rest and heal the wounds. So, we did that.

I remember being in bed with Sombs, we pretty much slept for about 16 hours when we didn't have nightmares anymore. Just sleeping and cuddling, nothing else. It was the best. Then, after our strongly belated morning routine, we walked to the canteen to get our breakfast. Nobody else was there, which was a bit weird for the ship's local time. But we didn't mind it. I wanted to do something special, so I used the kitchen myself and cut some of the freshly harvested fruits from the hydroponics for a fruit salad. Some of the apples looked really pretty, with a strong red, so I tried to cut them into pretty shapes and painted them with a layer of citrus extract to prevent the oxidation.

"You know, they talked about returning to Sirius if we can't deal with the thing on the planet," I told her, feeling like I needed to talk about it. We had talked a month ago about it, when things were different.

"And?" she asked, sitting at the counter, watching me cut an apple swan.

"I just didn't expect this to suddenly become an option," I explained. "Imagine it. We go to sleep again and when we wake up, we're back in Omega-49 or Cortez or, I don't know, Omicron Chi."

"Omicron Chi, why would you even want to go there?" Sombra asked with a frown.

"I don't want to go there, duh," I clarified. "I'm just saying it could be one of the systems we end up in. I mean, it was not that bad, right? Just a lot of radiation that prevented the cloak from working."

"I wouldn't mind Cortez. We could all use some quality time on Curacao, just enjoying the beach, stocking up on some food we can't have anymore... maybe do some weird things."

"I feel like you'd need some time to reintegrate into society again."

"Public nudity is legal on Curacao. And there are only few areas where fornicating in public is illegal, too," she reminded me.

"Maybe it's best if we stayed here, then," I teased while using a brush to paint the apple swan with the citrus extract.

"Oh, come on, that would be funny. We'd wait for some tourists to walk past us and then I'd say "Now let's do a funny one!" just loud enough for them to hear it. And then I act like a Kusarian woman and call you "Noel-senpaiii~" and say weird things like "My hips are moving on their own!" and narrate the entire act out loud."

"Maybe it's really the best if we stayed here." Although the idea was funny, but maybe it was enough to have that just between the two of us. "We would need to lay low, you know that, right? If we returned to Sirius, that is."

"You do remember I was a smuggler, right?" she asked, winking at me as I moved over to her with the apple swan sitting on top of a little spiral of apple slices. "That's awesome. Way too pretty to eat it!" She grabbed her PDA and took a picture of it.

"Would you want to work as smuggler again, though?" I asked her before trying an apple slice myself.

"Hell naw. My boi, I think I've put my life at risk more than often enough. Like, think of it like this: We left right after the Gallic War was over, so Curacao is probably back to its former glory again. And both Ezrael and I left a lot of money on our accounts, so I guess we got some nice interest in the meantime? We could make a decent living on Curacao without ever needing to work again, so you and I could get a little house with a garden and a pool, make it comfy to us and fornicate until you die from a heart attack."

I didn't like that last part, but it was realistic. She would definitely be the cause of my death. "Just you and me?" I asked, having expected her to rather like the idea of a big mansion with Ezrael and Leon and maybe other members of the crew.

"Just you and me, unless you want others to join, too." She smirked at me, reaching for my hand with one of hers. "I don't mean to be mean, but after years on this ship, with our room being next to Ezrael's room, I wouldn't mind some distance between him and us, to make things less complicated."

"Is it complicated, though?" I asked her, knowing what she was referring to.

"To a certain degree, it is. If there is one thing I learned from all the nightmares, it is that Ez still means a lot to me, and I don't think it's good."

I exhaled audibly through my nose, staring into her apologetic eyes. It was a topic we had talked about a lot of times. It was something that made the thought of returning to Sirius a little bit more compelling. It was not an issue, to any of us, but it made her feel bad, having feelings for two men at the same time. "Emotions are complicated, that's fine."

"Let me slaughter your bird," she said and grabbed more than a few slices of the apple swan, filling her mouth with them. "Itf awrite wo, aw heff no pwobwems wiff haw ut iff."

Her talking with full mouth made me chuckle. "I'd really love to have a house with you on Curacao. Or even just a small apartment, like the one you had. Just you and me, the cats and two service robots. Plants everywhere, the window blinds weakening the blue sunlight of Cortez, you and me just hanging out on the couch, watching some shows. I find that really appealing."

"I mean, we can do all of that here, too. We can recreate the entire setting, you know? Would take a few days, but we can craft the furniture in the workshop, use some holographic lights for Cortez, put blinds over it and tinker with the life support settings of the room to create a Curacao-like atmosphere. Ezrael did that on the Hoff... Hoffen... his Corvo, too."

"Hoffnungsschimmer. But yeah, that sounds like a cool plan. We could steal some plants from the hydroponics and install some fans to recreate the wind and maybe do some scented candles or something for the air."

"Fuck yeah, let's do it!"

For a while, doing that gave us some peace of mind. No nightmares, no drama. Just Sombra and me doing fun things. I was so incredibly happy with her, despite her chaotic nature. I wanted to have with at my side for the rest of my life. And I wanted to live very long.

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

Templates: Character | Transmissions

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