What Do You Know?

Posted on Thu Oct 3rd, 2024 @ 1:27pm by Ensign Aenardha Sh'vastarth & Commander Mindo

Mission: The Only Thing Left Was Hope
Location: Captain Cabin
Timeline: Current

Aenardha was feeling much better, able to see through public vision. It was not a big ship they were on, so she pretty much had full view of the entire ship from engineering to the storage bay to the lavatory to the bridge. It was a bit cramped for the crew it carried and she recalled hearing it to be about 30% over capacity. Hence the cots in the cargo bay, the freezer being Aenardha's quarters, people having to accept credits for shower time, the largest bedroom aboard which was barely big enough for two having to double as Mindo's sleeping quarters and captain's office.

That was where Aenardha was currently on her way to; the captain's quarters/office. She had to rub elbows with a few of the crew, bump into some, and turn to press herself against the wall as others passed by the way. Eventually, she was at Mindo's door. As there was no chime to depress, she knocked upon the door and waiting for response from within.

Mindo laid on his bunk watching one of his old movies on the personal PADD he'd had as far back as the USS Rhys. The bed was a thin mattress that would be too small for the average humanoid, but was the perfect size for a Fesarian. In every other way, the room was cramped, even for a Fesarian. The film he watched was the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup," and it hadn't been holding his attention. In fact, the film itself was why he was lost in thought.

The knock on the door was sudden, and Mindo jumped. Switching off the PADD and sitting up in the bed, Mindo said, "Come in."

The door opened and Aenardha entered, immediately tapping into Mindo's vision so she could see where she was in relation to him, where to sit. "Captain, sir," she said, "I was told you wanted to see me." Give the situation, them looking for the Pandora and Nyx being whisked away before he could say anything, she was quite sure Mindo wanted to know what she knew. "Once I was feeling better that is. I am feeling better, sir."

"I'm glad to hear that," Mindo said. "Zo told me of your situation. I asked him not to share it with the crew. I feel like that info is up to you to share. You should know, though, that I'm not a Captain, nor am I an active Starfleet officer. So you don't have to call me sir or Captain. Likewise, I am not in a position to give you orders, so if I ask you to do something, you can tell me to go to hell and there would be nothing I could do about it." Mindo gave a reassuring smile. "Right now, I'm talking to you as a friend." He gestured to the chair next to the desk.

"Thank you, sir," she said then suddenly found herself wondering if the 'sir' at the end there was really necessary. "To be honest, though the ship has been offered to me to use as I need, I view you as the ship captain. Considering the situation, you are the captain of this crew. Regardless of affiliation or rank..." she left it at that. "I am sure Lieut...um...Zo has informed you that I have developed some acquaintances of my own since the Pandora went missing. One being a Ferengi informant by the name of Poark. Reading Ferengis is awfully difficult but I did manage to get some information from him regarding the Pandora. Not a location, but some names and places, breadcrumbs you might say, that he seemed confident would point in the direction of the Pandora. If I share this with you, Poark would appreciate assurances that he is not implicated in our search, that we do not let anyone know where we got this information."

Mindo nodded. "A Ferengi covering his hide," he said. "Most Ferengi reputations are soiled enough. I don't see a reason for us to throw Poark under the shuttle. What information was he able to provide?"

"More like information I forcibly pulled from his mind," she said. "You see, he lost a game of Acquisitor's Might to me. It is a game where the object is to cheat to win but not get caught cheating. And if someone does call you out as cheating then they have to prove how you cheated, else they forfeit the hand. He was so sure he was going to win that Poark had no intention on sharing any information with me. When he lost, though..." she recalled the brawl she telepathically incited. "Long story short, I have the information. Only..." and she sought the best way to break the news. "The Ferengi mind is a difficult one to read because their memories work differently. The information I carry is mostly remembered images, pictures, places and faces, I also have names but mere names will be useless without these images to go along with. And I cannot find a way to verbally tell you what I know. I am afraid I can only show you...through telepathy."

Mindo understood what she was saying. "You... need to read my mind..." he said, slowly letting out the idea.

"Not read your mind, sir, but have access to transfer what I carry to your mind. I will try to not read your mind and I ask you not to dwell too heavily on thoughts as they may shine before me like the noon sun on a cloudless day. All said and done, this will take only a few seconds, though..." and she felt duty bound to let him know, "some, afterward, have said that it felt like an hour or more."

Mindo had had experiences with telepathy before, mainly through his love affairs with telepaths. This was different and necessary, Mindo thought. He sat up straight, tried his best to clear his mind, and said, "Go ahead."

"Just relax, sir. You may close your eyes if you need. The only effort you need to put forth is to not dwell on anything for long. I may see things that you do not wish to share. I may do the same. We are both duty-bound to not share what we see, though we may discuss among ourselves should we both choose. Now..." she sat back and relaxed herself.

"My mind...to your mind. My thoughts...to your thoughts," she said. As she felt Mindo's mind begin to question her voice echoed again. "Where you do you think the Vulcans got that from?"

Mindo kept his eyes open, wide-eye and unblinking. The background and everything in his peripheral started blurring and waving about. He could not look away from her...and those bright peridot eyes, not looking back at him but beaming at him.

"Telepathic connection," Aenardha's words echoed throughout the cosmos. Her lips did not move. "Only relax."

Mindo's eyelids gently drifted down. His mind now completely linked with hers.

Images flashed forward; Feserius, a secret box which opened up into the Pandora, then came a tornado that morphed itself into a ship, Rhode Island Class Federation vessel to be exact, two kids with one chasing the other with the chasing kid possessing the name of Chase. Those images burned away as quickly as they appeared. A Changeling suddenly appeared. Aenardha burned that one away as well, but not before it could be replaced with her own memory of meeting a Changeling. What flashed forward was her last memory of seeing this Changeling in the distance speaking to two officers in solid black uniforms.

A growl roared in the distance and a giant reptilian foot came slamming down upon the ground, trampling upon a burning village of ice-houses. A flaming dragon swayed its head about breathing fire into the air. A little girl skipped gingerly from the flames of the village, humming to the tune of an unrecognizable song. She skipped along then suddenly darted away to the side. The entire image blurred and reformed itself into a single string. Floss, wiping away unwanted thoughts.

Returning to a push into Mindo's mind, there suddenly came, into view, an image of an Aenar. A great chasm spread between the two and the scene wafted into existence. It was of two people, a Feserian and an Aenar facing each other. Around them was an open field surrounded three ways by green forests, the third overlooking a cabin sitting on the shore of a large lake. Aenardha recognized the place. Not through any real memory of ever being in such a place but because Mindo recognized it. It was a personal place. A home. Possibly his own on Fesaria?

She recognized it as a dwelled upon thought and sought to power beyond it but Mindo was dwelling upon it heavily. As she had never opened a telepathic link with a Feserian before, she was unaware of their mental strength in dwelling upon thoughts.

The image waved and zoomed within the cabin, with the Fesarian and Aenar still facing each other. Aenardha did not need to see either to recognize the two were not just random people but Mindo and Aenardha themselves.

Not only was this a dwelled upon thought and not a memory but a free-roaming and constructing thought pattern as though a dream; more difficult to deal with. Aenardha attempted to wipe the scene away, again with the fiery dragon from before. Fire erupted around them but Mindo's dwelling upon his thought proved more formidable than she suspected. Visually scared, her doppelganger crouched down to avoid the flames. Mindo sat down next to her and took her hand. At his soft touch, the fire suddenly froze, and the cabin was suddenly an icy cave. She could feel the gentle touch of his hand in hers.

Their hands felt frozen together, the way other hands would feel warmth. Aenardha's view took her eyes off of Mindo and looked toward her double, then to the image of Mindo. A deep sense of solace, as though solace had suddenly become a blanket in which one could wrap themselves up in, waved throughout the cosmos. She realized this may have just been part of Mindo's projection of her. But she could see the same solace in his eyes. The feeling built and Mindo smiled. The smile was soothing, and there came a stronger sense of affection that ended abruptly. Mindo's thinking was now more open, with a free void provided to fill with her information.

And with that, the scene wafted away effortless, the great chasm between her and Mindo was gone and she was looking him in the eye once again, his mind wide open for the filling or the reading. Aenardha called forth the memories she extracted from Poark. To better access the memories though...

A scene of a bar brawl sprang into being. No one was moving but both she and Mindo knew the scene. A bar fight with someone trying to escape. A Ferengi's scream of terror echoed and the scene moved to a corner of the barroom where an image of Greep was holding on tight to a scared Ferengi. Mindo's perspective move to the Ferengi himself and the encoaching face of the Aenar smiled evilly at him. Whereas Poark's mind opened up and freely gave the information, Mindo's mind was open to recieve said information.

Aenardha pushed forth all that she had gotten from the Ferengi. There were flashes of images of faces, grid coordinates, communication frequencies, a few names, images of places, a display of a ship which happened to be the Pandora itself. All in all, Mindo's mind freely accepted nearly a ton of information if said information could potentially be weighed. It was all there for him to sift through and make use of. And with the last bit of information she had gotten from Poark, Aenardha called for her ever effective dragon who stomped down upon them with a fiery foot.

Aenardha physically withdrew slightly as though avoiding a swipe at her face and she exhaled a sigh of near exhaustion. Her antennae drooped a little and seemed to move along with her and she breathed deep and exhale and relax.

Mindo was quiet for a moment, and when his eyes opened it felt like he'd been in a heavy sleep. He let out a long sigh, and after another minute of silence, while the two of them recuperated, Mindo said, "I can't think of a more appropriate name for a Ferengi than Poark."

"Hhmm," she hummed through her nose. "Same here. Though he says we pronounce it wrong. I think he wants it to be more of a 'Po'ork' but when he says it, everyone swears he is saying 'pork.' I think he has gotten used to it." She returned to the topic of their meeting. "I hope you can use the information I gave you and I do apologize if you start to dream of numbers and fiscal scams and ways of exploiting people and their weaknesses. As I said, a Ferengi's mind is very complex and they tend to multi-task constantly. Hence a spillover of some of the information I gave you. You may not feel you have any answers yet, but the memories will come to you...soon. You will start to know who to look for, where to look, who to contact, and what questions to ask. Just give it a day or two." She wrapped all that up with, "sir."

"Good to know," Mindo said, feeling odd and a little dizzy. There was also a strong and unexpected wash of fear coming over him. "You really need to go now... Poark's fear of you caused him to pee his pants... I might need to do some laundry. Weird thing is, this apparently happens to him a lot."

"Of course, sir." Aenardha stood and started her four-foot trek to the door. "I didn't know," she turned to look back at Mindo, using his vision to ensure she had connected with his eyes, "that Poark was scared of me." That memory had not yet surfaced in her mind. "Thank you." And, with that, she was out the door. With no one else about the corridor, she used her familiarity with the ship to guide her way back toward her freezer of a room. All the while, she thought about the scene at the cabin, wondering if Mindo had consciously dwelt on that thought or if it was free-forming, like a dream. In that case, he might have been oblivious to ever having that thought or having dwelt on it. Aenardha wondered what it meant, if he thought of her as something more than a crew member and colleague, even if it was on a subconscious level. And, as quickly as she started thinking about it, she decided to cast it aside and think on it no longer.

On the other end of the transport, Mindo did find a bathroom in time, and his irrational anxiety began to subside after he'd had dinner. He went back to watching the Marx Brothers, feeling depressed, alone, and very cold.