Again, I hope the translation would be ok :)
That night I didn't sleep.
The few words exchanged with Mai and Mikoto on the Kiyohime's elevated dock echoed in my mind. Can the voice take the consistency of a color? While I was undressing, abandoning the dynamic space suit with the imperial stripe engraved on the right arm, the voices of my first pilot and mechanic came in my mind, shaded in a dark and violent red, the same red as that of the cruising lights into my personal cabin.
I knew I had to rest, I knew it very well, while I was caressing the blue sheets in my bed, but I also knew that the sleep was a distant mirage, a blessing that I couldn't catch, that night.
Again, I felt the Kiyohime came in resonance with me, as if it had understand my pain, in its personal way. Its voice, made by thoughts and wordless, received me in a warm embrace. Cradled me. At least, Kiyohime was me. And I was the Kiyohime. We couldn't heal reciprocally. And, more important, I couldn't take its weight alone, because its mind was too much powerful for anybody. It could destroy me, devour me. Consume me. For all that reasons, I need the crew members by my side. To take force from them, to share that power with them and to make it shine. But I didn't want to think at the day when I would have lost that sparkling connection, that umbilical cord, that bond between my ship and me. I did'nt want to lose the stars. Stars. As stars were the crew members: stars dancing around the Moon that wink at her Earth. That we was.
I lay in my pillows, following again the flow oh my meditations. Mai's and Mikoto's words were there, shining in the black veil that was my mind.
- There is no doubt, Captain. We have already planned everything to make the Kiyohime invisible.
- Motors are also ready. We are awaiting for the velocity stabilization, while radiations are already vanished. So, Captain, is all in your hands: there is no reason to wait. This time we are lucky.
Were really we lucky? Lying in my bed, I smiled at that new thought, as I have smiled to them, rising from my seat and looking around me, an hour before.
- I leave all to you...
That was my unconscious sentence.
We knew that our mission was barely a test, to verify the Kiyohime crew's loyalty to the Empire and, beside, my faithfulness to the Council. Complete that task was for them synonymous of my competence. I was conscious that the task we were assigned was only a way to come back blessed by the glory, to make people love me more than how much I was loved. And I was very, very mad for that. I hated their tricks, the way adopted to make me the new misleading symbol of freedom and power, of democracy. The new puppet suitable for Alyssa and for the Council, in reality.
I breathed deeply, in my cabin, alone. I was scared. I was damned scared for my future: I loved the little Alyssa, her smiles, her voice. But that wasn't that kind of special love. I didn't want to marry her, becoming her new tutor, her bride… the Empress. I was Captain Shizuru, with my mission, my old mission, that mission I didn't want to stop now: keep on with that chase forever and ever, to avoid my return to the Imperial Capital. And now, instead, the Council pretended successes. I hated that, but I couldn't help it.
However, even if I preferred that endless hunting, we have really attempted to catch the most notorious Sharan's Nomad Tribe a lot of time, running after them from years, but we weren't able to capture them: they were as dancers between the quadrants of the Universe. They had a speed and an accuracy that made me lose breath. Nomads. What a strange way to identify them: another Council's trick to avoid the reality. They were pirates. And their existence was a very, very great problem for the perfect appearance of the Empire.
I smiled again. In a strange and personal way, I felt that I really loved that pirates.
And then was the dark.