Lt JG Imril - Questions In The Dark
Chris Taylor
((Holodeck 1 - Deck 2 - USS Artemis-A ))
Though they had advised Roy to be conservative with his words, Imril could not quiet their mind as they crept deeper into the misty cavern. Slinking from one stone outcropping to the next. Little questions kept popping into his head with the regularity of the many-echoed drops of condensation.
How well could a Betazoid hunt a target with their psionic senses alone? They could sense emotion, sure, but could they hone in directly on the source of those emotions? If so, could Lt. Storm sense the curiosity ticking away in Imril’s mind as coming from a particular area in the same way as one might track the sound of their footsteps? Or did she have to do the empathic equivalent of triangulating a signal? Keep moving -- or keep letting Imril move -- until she’d ‘pinged’ them enough times to draw a bead on them?
What impact did the space-bending properties of a holodeck bring into this question? There was only so far the three officers could actually go to separate from one another in the confines of the room; at some point, the illusion of distance would be crafted for them as the holodeck wrapped them each up in individualized simulations. They’d start walking upon invisible treadmills. Their senses would be tricked by audio and visual dampers. They’d be drawn deeper and deeper into prisons of forced perspective.
How did that disconnect -- the appearance of distance from versus actual distance from Imril and Roy -- affect her impressions of them? Was it like drunken double-vision? An echo? Did she experience a being’s mental presence trailing after their body like a shadow, always chasing after but never quite catching up?
The most important question of all, the reason why the engineer allowed themself this potentially ‘noisy’ mental diversion was this… Could Imril exploit said audio/visual/empathic disconnect in some useful way? Oh, say, somewhere before they felt the sting of a Tactical Officer’s phaser?
Also, and of much less importance… Were Storm and Bancroft flirting back there at the target range?
The scuff of their boot against the side of a stone column shocked them into redirecting their thoughts back to the slow chase. If Storm hadn’t ‘felt’ any of their hypothesising, she’d almost certainly felt that.
Light and shadow played their tricks, columns of stone sparing with ribbons of light. Imril tried to find some pattern to their interplay. Silently as they could, they passed from one shield of stone to the next. Listening. Looking. Calculating.
A shadow came into view that was not like the others. One side of a black column was abnormally bulged. Possibly two shadows, one nested behind the other. Or taking cover behind it? Imril leveled their weapon. Allowed themself to hesitate just long enough to see if this blacked form behaved like all the others. To light up the area wasting a shot would doom them.
Something about the shadow’s curvature…
The suspect blot of darkness didn’t react to Imril’s observation, so they dared to sneak closer. Just enough forward, and to one side, to separate the two silhouettes. Imril moved into position behind a stalagmite. From this vantage, there was little doubt they were looking down the length of their phaser at a female form cast in black.
Why wasn’t she moving? If they could see her, surely she must see them!
Storm’s shadow changed, just one side of it, quick and sharp. Imril fired. A line of light revealed the junior lieutenant's position, and also confirmed the identity of the figure which it was headed for. Storm!
Storm/Bancroft: Response
The hit was good; her upper back was now home to a golden circle marking Imril’s success. But the holodeck didn’t return to the cube-shaped grid. It was waiting for Storm’s command to disengage the illusion… Or instead of giving it, she might have some other surprise in store for her students.
Imril took the defensive, ducking behind the stalagmite. Listening for which way a counter-attack might come from. Prepared to shoot from the opposite side of the column. The chase was still on until the instructor said otherwise.
Storm/Bancroft: Response
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Lieutenant JG Imril
Engineering Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240110I12