Pondering The Meanings

[Kallah Ramson 0]

Kallah was sitting up in the biobed in sickbay. The steady beat of the monitors behind her was an assuring metronome of life. Typically her well developed Minaran nervous system made her aware of her every vital sign but the numbness she now felt was like a blindness. She was healing quickly but she was more than pleased with laying here under the blanket for a while longer. She had other things to worry about as it was.

 

A computer terminal was pulled up next to the bed and a PADD lay in her lap. The main screen showed the scans of the pilot during the procedure. The PADD had her slowly growing notes on what different readings might be and some possible methods of extracting visual or auditory recordings from them. She also was trying to make sense of her own experiences. The images still burned in her minds. The brain scans seemed to echo what she had experiences but it still didn't make it much clearer. It was like a foreign word repeated over and over in your head to the point that you knew each possible spelling, every pronunciation, the word so clear it was like your own name... yet you still did not know what it ultimately meant. Yet Kallah kept looking and hoping for the one piece which would bring it all into focus.

 

And somehow the symbols marked on all the pilot's chests fit into this grotesque symphony. They meant something important. This was quite disturbing to her since she doubted the message the killers were sending and the one the pilot wished to give her were the same. Or, could they be the same?

 

It was all questions at the moment. She prayed that these scans would at least tell them what questions to ask. For her own sanity she needed to know she had done something to help her pilots, in life or death. And, to temper whatever the Captain's reaction to all this might or might not be. From what little she could sense of his character she felt he was one to boldly cross any boundary placed around him yet quick to chastise anyone else who did likewise. She would worry about that too at a later time.

 

For now she slowly added any notes she could think of as the scans scrolled across the screen. She made sure one note was at the top of the list. "Identify the source of the markings: Shape of the writing device, pressure applied, DNA and other samples not of the pilots, and.... whose blood had been used on each pilot’s chest."

[Kallah Ramson 0]

<<I have a pet peeve about logs posted the same day as a sim but I'll break my own rule since something just came to me. >>

 

 

Was it the key to the mystery? Or, was it simply the pilot named Peter's understanding of what was happening to him?

 

Peter was a history buff. Kallah had met him on a visit to the academy. At the time she was trying to recruit for the fighter wing being attached to Avalon. At the time he wanted nothing but to be a ship's historian and archaeologist. But she knew the spark of those old stories of adventure could lure this promising pilot into the cockpit. She had done just that and when he was available she quickly added him to the roster of the 310th.

 

History now might hold the key.

 

Assigning the message to all currently investigating the pilot's deaths the note went as follows.

 

"Please review attached files and logs pertaining to the USS Farragut circa 2257 and USS Enterprise circa 2268 pertaining to the dikironium cloud creature. Compare the autopsies from their files with those of our pilots to match for similarities in the extraction of blood."

 

"Additionally, I am aware we have encountered primitive Vorta and Jem'Hadar. I am unsure if any research exists in comparing Changling chemical makeup and other shapeshifters, specifically possible primitive subspecies of the Changlings and any relation to the dikironium cloud creature and it's abilities to change it's molecular structure. This may be a wise thing to look into considering our current mission."

 

"Medical, please review the scans performed on pilot Peter Lipscomb. See if any brain readings noted the olfactory sense of a "sweetly sick" smell."