Anyone Seen My Marbles?

[Crash Calestorm 0]

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there. - Albert Einstein

 

Captain Calestorm, like the rest of the Away Team, was exhausted. Sleep came easily, and it was the deep sleep of one who was surrounded by trusted officers, knowing she could do so within the relative safety of the cave.

 

Unknown to the command officer, her Chief Medical Officer had implemented a healing plan without her consent.

 

Similar yet unlike the mental help that had been offered and administered earlier by Lieutenant Belo, T’Aral’s manipulations were of a different discipline. The methods were linked, but were the product of vastly different resource materials and educations. As before, a mental imprint was left by the one responsible for the ministrations. Akin to a fingerprint left on a well used computer console, the mental imprint was indelible, leaving behind traces that could be linked back to the individual who had left the one of a kind impression.

 

Unlike the El Tee’s ministrations however, the contact initiated by the CMO was deeper, taking a more direct mental path to subjugate the specific points of injury to the inner ear that Calestorm had suffered when the shuttle had hit dirt.

 

In her exhausted sleep, Crash was dreaming, though she would have no recall of the dreams due to her level of exhaustion. Once T’Aral made the deeper contact however, Cale’s level of consciousness reacted to the unexpected influx, drawing her awareness a bit closer to the recall threshold; dreams and images not her own were introduced and enmeshed in the chaotically controlled dream sequences and snippets that formed the Captain’s experiences, fears, joys and innermost desires.

 

Pre-dawn broke over the distant horizon on the planet of Wei, the slight streams of sunlight beaming into the cave entrance. Calestorm woke from her much needed rest, and her senses took in the surroundings – rythmic light breathing, the smell of body odor wafting from herself as well as the humanoid landing party members regardless of species, a slight snore or moan as others began to slowly stir from sleep.

 

Overall, the captain felt refreshed. Gradually emerging from the muzziness of sleep, her immediate need was to answer a call of nature at the designated external latrine area. She slowly and carefully extricated herself from her sleeping spot, grabbing at her charcoal black jacket that she’d been using as a makeshift pillow; gently shaking out any loose dirt from the smart fabric, she shrugged into the garment against the slight chill wafting through the cave opening. Her head cover had long since been lost to the unforgiving terrain of the Wei tropics.

 

Halfway across the interior area of the cave depression, her boots making no sound on the fine dirt, she paused and touched her fingertips to her forehead. The action was more as a reflex rather then a reaction to any pain, because there was no discomfort. Any trace of nausea had diminished, and she felt and sensed that her balance was no longer compromised as it had once been. The assistance provided by Lieutenant Belo had somehow leached the nausea and motion sickness symptoms from her, dulling the impact but not removing the underlying malady. Her feeling was that her current state of health, the refreshment from sleep aside, was of a much more…permanent factor.

 

Other things were sensed as well, latent mental images of shared dreams or visuals, flitting across the waking consciousness. A fleeting image of a robe of Vulcan cut and make, laid out across a sleeping slab of intricately carved stone. Mountains of a reddish hue, beautiful and imposing in their natural construction from years of wind and shifting sands. Her final moments prior to the shuttle impact. Visual observations of herself as well as the landing party members from an…abstract viewpoint…medical duties as they were administered to patients…she was looking down at herself, lying prone. A disembodied hand established finger point contact with her jawline and temple...

 

Crash’s jaw tightened and a lancing gaze lit on her Chief Medical Officer, maintaining sentry duties as Acting Exec at the entry point to the cave.