“Do you want to take first watch? I don’t think we should both sleep at the same time.” Scarlet asked, some time after their training.

“Nightwatch?” Keera asked back, but a yawn cut her question short.

“Well, I guess that answers it. You go ahead and try to get some sleep, I’ll wake you in a few hours.” Scarlet suggested and Keera, seeing the point went ahead, rolling out the tarp and crawling into her sleeping bag, taking off the overall once she was inside, sleeping in just her underwear. Scarlet had to hide a smile at that, wondering what the other would do if they were attacked during the night. If she was embarrassed by being seen by another girl, fighting or fleeing in her underwear might pose a problem. But likely, necessity would trump embarrassment in such a case.

“Do you have a good way to anchor your mental domination?” Scarlet asked, remembering that Keera had less training than she did and thinking that it would be a shame to kill her off for failing to control her crystal monster.

Keera had to think for a while, dredging up half-remembered lessons on mental domination, shielding and combat, trying to remember if there was such a way to keep a domination going, even while unconcious. But the lessons on mind control had mostly been for the advanced students, those who would never leave Federation service.

“No, do you?” Keera asked, admitting her inferiority, no matter how it grated at her.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Scarlet examined her memories and decided what would be the best method to teach Keera. She had been trained in a few of them, some more suitable for the task at hand, others less so. The one that was best suited made her cringe inside, when she realised what would be necessary to teach Keera the mental processes and disciplines. It had taken weeks, months for some of the students, her included, to get them down, pat, when faced with conventional instruction at the institute. Granted, there had been other subjects and a limited amount of instructors per student but still, normal teaching would take a week, if Scarlet even managed to describe the concepts in an adequate fashion.

Adjusting the skill to work with a mental control instead of the mind shield it was designed to do, that seemed rather simple and the base-pattern of the upkeep-pattern would remain the same. She shuddered, remembering the training she had undertaken to learn that particular skill, holding a mind shield in place, no matter what happened to the body holding it had been rough. The instructors had literally beaten the ability into students, even going so far to use torture in their efforts to check the durability of the mind shield. Mental attacks while sleeping, using the showers or even the head had been a regular occurence from that point in training onwards, infrequent and irregular but always when you least expected them.

She went through the mental patterns, adjusting them where needed and scrubbed as much of her personal feelings and memories from the information necessary to perform the upkeep, knowing that Keera would end up with small parts of her mind, stray thoughts and memories, no matter how careful she scrubbed. And she was not happy with that, but it seemed to be the only way to ascertain that Keera would be able to perform.

“Yes, sit up.” Scarlet ordered, unhappy about the required actions, it was a quick and dirty fix but nothing she would enjoy.

Keera wondered what the other was planning, even to the point that she forgot about her state of undress.

“God, I hate to do this. I’ll need to meld our minds for a moment, so please, relax, and it will be easier for both of us.” Scarlet grunted, mentally preparing to enter Keera’s mind, overcoming the subconscious shielding and copying the prepared package over. That way, Keera would get the understanding without days of dedicated training, something for which they just didn’t have the time.

Keera looked just as overjoyed about the plan Scarlet was muttering but she felt her mind slowly fogging from exhaustion and knew that she needed to learn that skill and learn it now.

She felt a warm hand placed on her brow, and then, she started to hear, a soft, melodic noise, like wind blowing through the trees, a complex harmony that made it easy for her mind focus on the sounds. Part of her wanted to tense up, knowing that the strange noises were not noise at all, they were a psionic illusion, they had to be. And it was one designed to make her conscious mind focus on them, allowing a psionic intrusion on a parallel pattern, similar to a different voice in a music-piece.

For her tired mind, it was far too easy to let the music lull her into a carelessness, even as the probe entered her subconscious and that was an intrusion she felt, almost like a sharp and painful poker, entering the deepest part that was her. Her reaction was purely instinctual and she pushed the intruder out, shattering the melody with the psionic equivalent of a scream.

Scarlet had expected such a reaction and had been prepared, it was almost impossible to suppress the instinctual reaction of their mind, she had heard of people, romantic partners that shared their minds on a regular basis, who were able to let feeling and memories flow between them. Just the idea to trust anyone to that much, to allow anyone free reign and access into the deepest part of her, the part that made her who she was, her dreams, fears, hopes and desires, it was inconceivable.

Even to allow someone what she had just done, breaching that core to drop a packaged memory was something she would have to be incredibly desperate to do, something that seemed similar to Keera, judging by the look she had when Scarlet had suggested it.

Keera sat motionless for some time, her mind reeling with the memories springing from the package, some of them personal memory fragments from Scarlet, far too short and out-of-context to understand, barely flashes of thought but the important part, the ability to keep the mental domination, or a mind-shield, in place was there. Integrating the memories into her own mind would take time but she knew how to perform the ability, allowing her to keep the psionic process that kept her crystal monster in its dormant state going, even if she was not focusing on it. There were drawbacks and it would take time for her to get used to it, but she would be able to sleep.

“Thank you.” Keera said, her voice soft and stifling another yawn. Not even managing to open her eyes again, she simply sacked back down, pulling her sleeping back around her and falling asleep.

Scarlet, on the other hand, wiped the blood from her nose, the intrusion had taken quite a bit out of her, but what had to be done was done. Afterwards, she made sure that her gear was put away before comfortably settling in for her watch. The main part of her vigilance was keeping up a passive scan of the surrounding area. After about an hour of resting her mind, she got a little itchy and curious, so she started to probe the connection between Cyca and herself. She had noticed it before, there was not just a flow of commands from her to her crystal monster, the way she kept Cyca under control allowed for a bi-directional flow of information.

Sadly, she was only able to make out that there was the obvious connection she used to control her monster and that in that connection, there was a feedback that allowed her to partially tap Cyca’s senses, maybe more. As with many things Psi, it was not an exact science, especially without laboratory conditions and double-blind trials. It would take a lot of time to understand and unravel the strange sensations she was feeling and experiencing through the connection, but if there was anything she would have in the future, it was time, not like there was a lot of entertainment on Verdun.

Once she had exhausted what she could find out about the connection to Cyca, she simply sat and let her mind wander, wondering about the future and consciously working through the experiences she had in the day. Every so often, she actively scanned the surroundings, in addition to her passive vigilance, but her senses were not roused. She was entirely relying on her psionic senses and the connection to Cyca, her ordinary senses next to useless. While her hearing was unimpeded, maybe even more sensitive than normally due to the absence of loud noises, it was unhelpful due to the fact that she had no idea what the constant soft noises meant. Was the rustling of leaves in the trees just the wind, or something more nefarious? Was she hearing one of the squirrel or mouse-analogues scurrying around, or was it something more dangerous? Experience would teach that but for now, she would have to rely on other senses.

Interestingly, Cyca was able to see even in the almost absolute darkness of the forest and that sight gave Scarlet an idea where things were on their clearing, adding to the memory she had to form a comprehensive picture. Luckily, the handheld scanner had a clock in it, allowing Scarlet to make a circle around the camp every hour and after doing six such circles, she decided that her watch was over and woke Keera up by shaking her shoulder.

Keera felt a touch at her shoulder, her mind slowly coming back to wakefulness, confused by the near total darkness around her.

“Sam? Where am I? What’s going on?” Keera asked, sleepy and confused.

“Wake up, it’s your turn to stand watch. And there’s no Sam here, just me.” Scarlet grumbled, staying awake had been quite difficult for the last hour, her body reminding her that the day had been exhausting and the drugged unconsciousness not the same as restful sleep.

“So it wasn’t a nightmare.” Keera muttered, crawling out of her sleeping bag, forgetting her near nudity.

“How the hell do I watch if I can’t see anything?!” she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

“Your ears and psionic abilities. Now, let me sleep.” Scarlet said, walking over to her own sleeping bag, pulling off her shoes and crawling into it. Cyca was called into the bag as well and forced into her crystalline state. Sleep came almost instantly, her mind shutting down due to physical fatigue and mental exhaustion.