We're back to Sirius. I wish I could say nothing has changed, but things have. First of all, while to us only 51 days had passed, it was around 65 days in Sirius. Two weeks difference. Not bad, could be worse, to be perfectly honest. However, to me, it is at least one week to late.
First of all, the situation with Maren. She was searching for me for the entire time, or almost the entire time. Want to know what this means? She sat in her ship most of the time, aimlessly flying around, searching, hoping she would find any hint. She knew there were no debris of the Apahanta in Delta. She knew we were somewhere. She asked so many people to help her. But in the end, people gave up. She gave up. One week before my return, she build a grave for me on Canaria, at the exact place where we found Mittens. She was accompanied by Jessica Snow. Apparently, Maren fell in love with her, whatever that term means to her. And then she began to whore around. She admitted having slept with not only Jessica Snow, but also Mason Coleman, Nick Stenn and Nancy. Four people in just one week, AND, she said she fell in love with Jessica. That being said, the creepy pervert John Silverstone once told me something about said Jessica Snow, about her being related to Division Nine, a group of liberty-operating infected. Small universe.
So what happened when I returned? We reached Sirius from Omicron Chi, Maren first told me to have intercourse with myself, then to not move and wait for her to arrive. We moved to Kappa, dodged some Gammuians, Apahanta moored with Livadia, Maren came over, and then she told me about things. Not caring at all about what I did outside Sirius. What I had to endure. She was mad at me for returning after she decided me to be dead. Her being in love with Jessica. So here I was, having a cast-away situation, only that I wasn't gone for five years but only two months. First we did was contacting Jessica, conducting a meeting with her on the Siren's Bell. So we went there, talked to Jessica and the blonde was nice enough to not make things more complicated than necessary. Maren even tried to convince her to a polygamous relationship, trying to make me seduce her to live with us - Maren was extremely desperate - but in the end, Jessica didn't want to be in the way. By now, the situation with Maren has reached a certain normalcy. A certain one.
With Nancy, it's different. Maren told me what happened, and it is stupid. Apparently, Nancy was in a hospital on Denver, Maren visited her and took her with her. Sounds good so far, right? It's not. It was an LSF asset, 404 according to Mason Coleman. Maren took Nancy with her, thinking 404 was mistreating her. According to her, she didn't kill anyone, however she forcefully took Nancy with her, out of Liberty. That is kidnapping, at least. This means: Maren is now considered a criminal in LIberty; Nancy's chance to redeem herself for her actions as Sangria Reaver is gone; and neither of them can return to Curacao - because the security there would be likely to inform the LSF about them. So Nancy lost her home on Curacao, and Maren can't go there anymore either. The woman I love will not be able to settle down on my homeworld with me.
But that's not the end. Nope, not at all. Since 404 was spying on us via Nancy, as the chip in her head sent all audio and visual of eyes and ears to the LSF - meaning they definitely had a very nice first-person blowjob recording of Nancy and me - they know she was with a boy called Leon Isley. They know his name, they know he is a curacaoan and they can find out anything about him and use him to get to her.
Leon, of course, was very eager to leave the Apahanta after two months of deep space horrors. He still hates space and does his job as my Chief Engineer only because he can't say no to me, and because he loves the possibilities we offer him here. Nevertheless, he hurried to Nancy as soon as it was possible, spending two days with her, probably mostly in bed, knowing both of them. Their initial happy reunion ended with Leon's realization about the consequences of Maren's action. Because now, matter of factly, he is the key to find Nancy, for the LSF. Aware of 404 pretty much knowing everything important about him, he instantly left Nancy and headed home for Curacao, told his parents they may or may not be in danger and told them everything about Nancy, about her being a former Reaver and that the LSF may or may not look for her, for him and maybe do it via his parents. Once they believed him, they realized nothing good has come from him leaving Curacao, and he told me in his transmission to me that they will inform the LSF about him being in contact with Nancy if he leaves Curacao again. They probably bluff, why would they fuck up their own son? Yet Leon didn't risk it and now remains on Curacao. He can't leave the planet. He can't return to the Apahanta. Meaning I need a new Chief Engineer.
Luckily, I already have a few new people joining the crew soon. The plan I had with HOT GEAR seems to be fruiting now, as Paige sent me the first applications of people who have the skills to work on a battleship. So in a few days, I'll interview people here and hopefully we can raise the crew number from ten to... hopefully more than ten. I also need to buy more Kishiro Service Robots again, and a lot of other stuff.
I'm tired, to be honest. To a certain degree, I miss being out there. Outside Sirius. What we found there was amazing. But I am more interested in all the things we didn't find yet.
Things are pretty messy, still. Maren is weird, Nancy is angry. The latter mostly about me doing things with the SIS, trying to clean her name. She is not a fan of it at all, not trusting the SIS. Who can blame her, really. Intelligence groups are always rather hideous. I do think Miss Perry is reliable, though, and what she suggested is in no way risky for me or Nancy. A simple scan of her, right infront of Perry, and it could clear her criminal records. What I do understand is her fear of getting caught after it. The SIS obviously can't pull off such a thing as long as Nancy is under my protection - simply because I am too much of a possible danger. A battleship packed with the ability to show up at any point in space, unseen, with heavy weaponry and weapons of mass destruction, and the fact that I know some of the SIS' plans, for example about recreating a Munich in Gallia. One transmission sharing this information could fuck them over majorly. It could also be my ticket for getting in touch with Saint-Yves again. Or the nice lady I met during the Vault raid.
But I shouldn't think about such things at all. Bretonia and Liberty are protecting Curacao. Sadly without much success, as the Carcassonne is getting closer and closer. I really hope they don't attack Curacao. Really. Even now that Maren and Nancy are both banned from Liberty and probably, by extension, on Curacao, I still want to settle down there again. It's my homeworld. My home. The only one Maren can't take from me.
After the talk with Nancy I was also talking to Valery, as she is currently in Nancy's body in the attempt of fixing her health issues. She apologized for having threatened me. That kind of surprised me, as I expected her to care less about it. I guess she is turning more human after all.
In the meantime I was doing the interviews with all applicants Paige sent over to the Apahanta. They are competent and I will probably hire all of them. One of them didn't get this was not a joke. The poor girl thought she was going to a porn casting, considering I am known as actor. Only during the... interview she realized it was more than just a setting. Quite funny. At least we're increasing the numbers of the human crew now, from ten to 25. Still not much and they need to get used to the Apahanta first, which is why we will need to avoid combat situations for a while, but with the help of the 300 remaining KSRs the ship should at least be operable.
Speaking of combat situations, though...
Yesterday, we found ourselves in an uncomfortable situation. A Bismarck-class warship was erecting a blockade in the Cambridge system at the gate to Omega-3. They made an announcement on the public channels, claiming only rheinland-identified vessels may pass from now on. I quickly relayed the message to the BAF and they sent a response fleet for the RNC-Bielefeld. The Apahanta remained cloaked, scouting merely for the BAF. I sort of embarassed myself, to be honest, as I only later found out it was Admiral McIntire on the Victoria. Didn't recall his voice. Called him Captain. He didn't mind it, though.
The RNC-Bielefeld appeared to be equipped with nomad weaponry and wasn't hiding that fact at all. That was the moment where we had to bail out. I still don't know whether the ship was using Rheinland-researched nomad equipment or whether it was a ship of the Wild. In the latter case, interfering would have meant my death, by Valery. So we remained in the distance and just watched the BAF and Crayter doing their magic. The Bielefeld had an entire battlegroup with it but the combined fleet managed to deal with it without losses, apart from two snubs.
This was the second time I saw the Sparta-2 showing up. An Aquilon-class Carrier, by now equipped with our sweet guns from the catalogue. I now can say almost dying on the Titanic back then in Omicron Chi was definitely worth it as I made a huge amount of money from it by now. Like, very, very, very huge amount of money. I've sold weapon blueprints to Battlegroup Harmony, Admiral Richard of Crayter, the Sparta-2 and today to the Corinth, a Fearless-class Destroyer. And I made a very good deal with the Captain of the MNS-Galicia, who bought our three Thumper-type turrets for a fucking billion credits! I mean, they were expensive in the production, but man, with all the deals I made in the last months, I made over one point five billion credits profit. With the selling of the Titanic to that weird scientist guy of Cauldron, I made two billion credits simply by salvaging.
Two billion credits. That's what I paid the Core for the restoration of the Apahanta two years ago.